How to Optimize Your Title Tags for SEO

Title tags are often overlooked by business owners and web designers. I don’t mean that title tags are forgotten entirely, but are often not optimized for web searches. Title tags are a key component of effective on-page SEO, and it doesn’t take much time to write a quality, descriptive title tag. Search engines look at a title tag to get an idea of what the page is about. By keeping a few points in mind, you can optimize your title tags. With a little effort, you’ll begin to see positive results in organic searches.

The Basics of an Effective Title Tag

It’s absolutely important to have your company name in your title tag. Odds are good you’ve already done this, but your specific wording might need some work. For example, let’s assume you own an e-commerce site named LoremIpsum, and you sell discount golf clubs and golf supplies. It’s a better idea to write your title tag as “Discount Golf Clubs – Golfing Supplies – LoremIpsum” than “LoremIpsum – Discount Golf Clubs – Golfing Supplies”. Google only displays the first 70 characters, putting more importance on keywords that appear earlier in the title. Unless your brand is world famous, people are going to be coming to your site by searching for what you sell, not who you are.

Don’t Copy and Paste

Each page on your site needs a unique title tag. When you’re writing a title tag, remember not to simply lift a few keywords directly from the body copy of the page. Not only will Google and other search engines penalize your site for duplicate content, but the title tag should be the best description of the page it belongs to. Going back to my earlier example, while “Discount Golf Clubs – Golfing Supplies – LoremIpsum” might be a good choice for your landing page, this title tag won’t be a perfect fit for every page on your site. Let’s assume you have a Contact page, and you’ve also got a physical store located in Louisville, KY, in addition to your bustling e-commerce site. A more appropriate title for a contact page would be “Louisville Golf Equipment – Contact Us – LoremIpsum”. Using different pages on your site with unique and valuable keyword combinations is another way to get visitors to your site.

Title tags, much like headers and bread crumbs, are an important part of a site’s architecture. Moreover, these elements provide guidance to users and valuable information about your website to search engines. Search engines put a lot of weight on the information contained in a title tag – after all, it’s supposed to be descriptive and relevant to what your site is about. By spending some time making sure your title tags are unique and descriptive, you’ll provide better guidance to your users and place better in search rankings.

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