SEO-friendly titles: 10 tips to write better SEO-friendly title tags
Writing SEO-friendly titles is one of the essential on-page SEO best practices every blogger must always take care of.
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Meaning, you don’t have to spend a dime to have your content appear on the first pages of search results.
SEO, quite simply, involves designing your website to improve its ranking in organic search results on search engine results pages (SERPs). By optimizing for terms that your target audience will use to search, you will drive relevant traffic to your site that has a better conversion rate.
Search engine optimization is the one thing that is here to stay. Your website/blog won’t be able to rank higher if you don’t optimize your pages.
I know many people think that a Post Title and Page Title are the same. Well, they are not. To avoid an unnecessary mix-up, I want you to understand the difference between a Page Title and a Post Title.
Page Title is what you see on the address bar while Post Title is what you see within a post. This post can be considered as a small guide for writing SEO-friendly page titles.
Search engine spiders crawl through page titles. Website users also see page titles. Writing SEO-friendly titles will help your website perform better on search engines. You should write keyword-focused title tags, and even as you do that, make sure your page titles make sense to your website readers.
People will not click on your page titles in search engines if they don’t understand your page titles properly. So, craft titles that are good for both the search engines and your website visitors.
A page title is written using tags and placed in the header section of a page. Here are the top 10 tips to help you write SEO-friendly Page titles for your websites and blogs.
How to write SEO-friendly titles
1. You should never exceed 65 characters in a page title
When writing titles for your website pages, you should ensure that you don’t exceed 65 characters. Google used to ignore web pages with titles of more than 65 characters.
That is, a web page with a title of more than 65 characters just won’t appear on the search engine results pages, so make sure to limit your page titles to under 65 characters to optimize your pages in the right way.
2. Your page titles should be relevant
Google bots or search engine crawlers get confused when they find a post that has an irrelevant title.
Make sure that you write a 100% laser-focused page title. It will be good for both the search engine crawlers and humans.
I see some bloggers using some phrases in their titles to catch readers’ attention. Writing content and creating irrelevant page titles doesn’t make any sense and won’t add any value to your SEO efforts.
3. Keywords should come first
The best way to write SEO-friendly titles is to use your primary keywords at the beginning.
For example, the primary keyword for this story is SEO-friendly titles, you can see how I wrote the page title for this story. The keyword came first and then the rest of the information followed.
Don’t use too many keywords in your page title section. It will be spammy.
Your keywords should appear as close to the beginning of the page title as possible. And even when you use keywords at the beginning of the page title, try to make the whole title sensible.
4. Keyword stuffing
In as much as you should be using keywords on your page titles, avoid keyword stuffing.
Keyword stuffing means keyword repetition. Many people think that using the same keywords over and over again on the page title sections increases the chances of their sites ranking higher for the keywords. Well, here is the thing, they are wrong. Google considers it keyword stuffing and will penalize your posts for such a thing. So, avoid keyword repetition by all means.
5. Use of plurals
Even when you include keywords in the title section, use their plurals. Plurals will make your page title optimized for both the singular and plural versions of that keyword.
Assuming you are to write a blog post about an internet marketing tool you came across at a conference, you should use internet marketing tools in your title tags, as it will make the page optimized for both internet marketing tools and internet marketing tools.
6. Localized page titles
This one kind of addresses the local SEO metrics but it’s also an important aspect of SEO-friendly titles.
If a web design company is offering its services within a city like Moscow, it should include Moscow with the keywords in its page title section. So that the page title would be something like, “Quality Web Design Services in Moscow”.
7. Different titles for different pages
Make sure that every page within a website has a different title. Do not use the same title for different pages on your website. And while crafting titles for each page, you should always have in mind the content and keywords.
Also, avoid by all means possible, including the homepage title in every page title section.
8. Describing words
While writing SEO-friendly titles, use descriptive words to make your page titles look more natural.
Let’s get this straight, you are not just writing for search engines, you are writing for humans too.
Descriptive page titles tend to get more clicks than the ones that don’t get to communicate with your users.
9. Promoting a brand
If you want to promote your brand through your titles, you should add them towards the end of the page title. As I had said, you should always keep in mind the content and not the brand name while creating page titles.
10. Meta description
Write friendly search engine meta descriptions. Keep in mind that users also read the meta descriptions of your pages that appear on SERPs along with the titles before clicking on the titles.
The meta description is what comes under your page title on Google search results.
Using your primary keywords on meta description can also drive you lots of organic traffic. So, don’t forget to optimize your rich snippets (meta description).
Bonus tips to write SEO-friendly titles
For WordPress bloggers, some plugins can help you optimize your page titles for SEO.
Plugins like All In One SEO and Yoast SEO. Use either of them. Yoast SEO, for example, lets you edit the page title and the meta description and always keeps you in check.
Like, it won’t let you exceed the 65-character limit for page titles and 150-character limit for meta descriptions. Yoast SEO is mostly free and easy to use. Do not struggle too much. Make use of these SEO tools.
Avoid using all caps on your page titles. You should instead capitalize the first letters of each word in a page title. Something like, ‘Blogging Tips For Beginners’ and not ‘BLOGGING TIPS FOR BEGINNERS’.
Writing page titles in all caps will make you look like you are shouting at your users. Be soft.
Conclusion
Before hitting the publish button for any blog post, make sure that you have optimized their page titles for SEO.
Make sure their page titles are within the 65-character limit. Use focused keywords on your page titles and use them at the beginning of the titles.
Do not use the same keywords again and again on your titles as it may destroy your SEO efforts. Also, use meta descriptions along with your titles to get more click-through rates from SERPs.
Question
I believe you now know how to write SEO-friendly titles. Let’s see. Do you have some other tips for writing SEO-friendly titles? Do share them with us in the comments section below. I’d be glad to respond to your comments.
