Title Tag Writing Best Practices for Search Engine Optimization

As part of the on site optimization phase of an SEO campaign, it’s best practice to write well optimized meta tags that include targeted keywords. Perhaps the most important of the meta tag elements is the title tag. Why? For a few reasons. First, unlike other meta elements (like the meta keyword element) the search engines index the title and second, it’s the clickable link that appears on a SERP (search engine results page).

When writing title tags for SEO, here are a few guidelines to follow:

Each Title Should Be Unique

Every page of content is unique (or should be, anyway), so each page of content should have a unique title tag to go along with it. If every page has the same title tag it makes it difficult for the search engines and searchers to differentiate the pages or decide which page is most relevant to their needs.

Include Keywords

Select the most relevant one to two keywords that you are targeting on the page and include them in the title, preferably at the beginning of the title. Unless your company name includes the keywords that you are targeting, place the company name at the end of the title instead of the beginning.

70 Characters at Most

70 characters is the maximum amount that will show up on a SERP. If your title is longer, it will appear as “…” at the end. Keep titles clean and succinct and follow the 70 character (including spaces) policy.

Don’t Stuff Keywords

While it’s important to include keywords, you don’t want to go overboard and try and get every potential keyword in the title. It’s obvious (and frowned upon) to the search engines and provides a poor user experience. Just because you are allowed 70 characters doesn’t mean that you need to jam that space with as many keywords as possible. If you write a good title tag that is only 60 characters, that’s perfectly fine.

Include Location for Local

If you are targeting a local audience, the city, state, neighborhood, etc. in which you are located should be incorporated into the title tag for every page of content. This not only helps the search engines but also qualifies the visitor.