Cornerstones of Creating the Best Title Tags

Let’s go back to basics and look at title tags. I get asked on a daily basis things like ‘how long should the title tag be?’ and  ‘what should be in a title tag to produce effective SEO?’

Instead of answering these individually I thought, why not produce an article that covers the major points? Genius…

• Put your keyword(s) in the title tag for a corresponding page – This is absolutely vital, in fact, I cannot stress enough the importance of this element. The title tag is the first thing that Search Engines will look at to decipher what a particular page is about, ensure you have the adequate keywords in the title tag.

• Do not make the title tag too long – Here we are faced with a slight problem. We can assure you that in some circumstances Google will read up to 70 characters in the title tag (more commonly it reads between 65-68), but other engines will read more. Given that Google is most people’s bread and butter though, we will tell you to use a maximum of 65 characters in the title tag – don’t over egg and spam the title tag with keywords, it will simply not work – looks messy too.

• Brand Your Pages – Use your company name in each title tag throughout the site, whether it’s at the beginning of the tag or at the end. It is paramount that your visitors know which site they are using – this can increase your ‘return visitor ratio’ – central to future success as a brand.

• Incorporate the same title in your header tags as your title tags for each page throughout the site –andtags can be used to give a page a ‘topic heading’ and can be immensely effective when using the same keywords in your Title Tag as you do in your H1 and H2 tags.

• Keep it targeted, keep it relevant – i3Search.Worx are firm believers in being as relevant as possible to achieve the best results. Ensure your title tags cover the exact topic for the corresponding page, try not to cover too much with one page. A lot of people make the mistake of trying to drive all traffic through their homepage, thus cementing it with around 20/30 key terms. Build internal pages relevant for each individual topic and promote that way – it will be far more effective in the long term.

• Keep consistency throughout pages – Once you have found a way to brand each page with it’s unique title tag, use the same formula throughout the site. This is important for both search engines and usability/branding for customers/visitors.

If you have any other questions with regards to title tags, feel free to contact our team at studio@i3media.net - or visit our Search Engine Optimisation section for more information on our organic optimisation.

Posted: 02/08/10 09:54