-details.jpg)
When you search for something on Google or Bing, you get a list of options, all with a distinct title telling you what the article is about. Those titles you see are title tags. To be more precise, title tags are HTML elements that you insert in the code when uploading your content.
SEO agencies are well familiar with this term, but to make it simple and easy for everyone, we devised this SEO title tag guide. In this guide, our experts discuss what title tags are and how to write title tags that drive clicks and wrap up with a few best examples.
Table of Contents
What Is a Title Tag?
A title tag, also known as SEO titles and meta title tags, is an element in the section of the HTML code of your web page that specifies its title on search engine results pages. It appears in search engine results pages as a clickable title like so:
Title tags are short, summed-up alternative page headlines whose purpose is to inform the searchers of the content they can find on the linked page. In other words, title tags have two main purposes:
- To summarize your page’s content
- To motivate people to click on it
How Are Title Tags Different From Header Tags?
Title tags and H1 header tags are not the same thing. They are sometimes confused with each other because they can have the same copy. In fact, most websites do this and create the same title tags as the H1 headers.
But they’re different! Title tags appear as titles of web pages in the SERPs, web browsers, and social media posts. They exist to allow page managers to reformat their headers, so they fit the allotted space in the search results.
On the other hand, the main header (or H1) appears as a title on your website’s page.
Title Tags Benefits for Content
An SEO title tag helps search engines understand what your website’s pages are about. As we pointed out above, they mainly appear front-end in three places:
- SERPs: Search engine results will list the titles and URLs of the pages. The title tag acts as the page’s main title in SERPs.
- Social networks: Certain social networks use their own SEO title tags that allow marketers to specify titles that are different from the main title tag.
- Internet browsers: A unique title tag acts as a placeholder and is useful in instances when a user has many tabs open, helping them keep track of your content.
SEO titles are important for your page because they:
- Can create a good first impression: Title tags are often the first thing a potential visitor sees on your page. As such, it will form the first impression of your content
- Leverage brand recognition and identity: If your business is a familiar brand, displaying your brand name prominently in your title tags is beneficial to cement your identity. If you’re a growing business, it can also boost your brand recognition by exposing your brand name to searchers.
- Provide context to users: An SEO title tag tells searchers and search engines what content and information they can expect to find on your page.
- Are important for SEO: They also provide context to search engines and work to establish the page’s relevance in search query results. This way, Google and other search engines can make sense of your web page.
- Entice clicks and grow your traffic: Unique title tags increase click-through rates by providing value to the interested audience. A steady influx of readers to your pages is an SEO signal to Google that may award you with a better ranking position, further boosting your traffic.
How To Write Meta Tags That Drive More Clicks
Follow these six tips to make your SEO title tags irresistible to searchers:
- Research Keywords To Understand Your Users’ Intent
- Emphasize Your Most Unique Values
- Use Action Words
- Don’t Mislead Your Audience
- Get Personal With Your Readers
- Entice an Emotional Response From Your Readers
1. Research Keywords To Understand Your Users’ Intent
User intent tells you what the user is looking for when they are conducting a search query. It’s an identification of what they want to find online. Additionally, you won’t be able to truly optimize your title tag and make it attractive for users until you understand what and how your audience is searching.
Knowing what phrases and keywords your audience uses means you won’t need to guess what title tags to create. Conduct SEO keyword research and look for keywords relevant to your pages, and that most people use.
You want your content to rank, so make sure to include keywords in your title tag. This gives searchers an immediate sense that they’ve found what they’re looking for on your page. To do this the right way, place the important keywords at the beginning of the title tags, so search engines can detect them more easily.
For example, instead of this:
- Brand Name | Secondary Keyword - Primary Keyword
Do this:
- Primary Keyword – Secondary Keyword | Brand Name
Pro tip: Never insert keywords generically or add many of them to your title tag. Google’s algorithms are very sensitive to keyword stuffing and will detect it. This may result in the search engine changing the title of your page or, worse, penalizing your website.
2. Emphasize Your Most Unique Values
You need to make the qualities and advantages of your content clear to potential visitors with a title tag. For example, look at these two pages selling the exact same item, but with different title tags:
- Cheap Slippers - Men’s Footwear | Brand
vs
- Men's Beach Slippers on SALE - Worldwide Delivery | Brand
You see that the latter example emphasizes the most unique values of the page by stressing out facts like “sale” and “worldwide delivery”.
Creating unique title tags boosts each page’s SEO value and increases clickthrough on search. Some things you should focus on to set yourself apart from other businesses and their title tags are:
- Brand reputation: Consumers are more likely to click on a search result that indicates the brand name in the title tag as it convinces them the page is trustworthy and reputable. Remember, your brand name should always feature at the end of the title tag to prioritize the information your user is looking for.
- Brevity: Concise and to-the-point content earns users’ attention in an era of information overload. Each page’s unique title tag should be between 50 and 60 characters long, although this is not set in stone because characters can vary in width, and Google's display titles max out (currently) at 600 pixels.
- Thoroughness: As much as the speed of delivering the important points matters, users also value well-researched, thorough resources. You should signal such content to your audience by adding phrases such as “ultimate guide”, “complete”, “step by step”, “definitive” and so on to your title tag.
- Format: There are numerous opinions on the ideal format for the title tag. While following this is not as important as focusing on the length and content of the title tag, it’s not a bad idea to format your title tags like this:
- Primary Keyword - Secondary Keyword | Brand Name
- Fresh and current articles: For a lot of users, up-to-date, current resources are the only valid ones. For such queries, outdated content from years ago is not going to be popular with readers. Make sure you communicate the freshness of your content by adding the year and month (if possible).
3. Use Action Words
A great method for enticing users to click on your page in search results is by using so-called “action words” in your title tags. Action words are terms that express action and provide a promise of value to your readers.
Some of these words include:
- Take
- Get
- Learn
- Boost
- Increase
- Make
Users are more motivated to click on search results that contain these words in title tags because they give a specific, actionable solution to their pain points. For instance, if you use the word “get”, your SEO title tag lets the user know that a service or instructions on achieving a goal await on the page. The term “learn” hints at an educational opportunity.
Pro tip: Create a title tag that complements the information in the meta description so that potential readers get an even clearer idea of what to expect on your page. Also, avoid stop words such as “a”, “and”, “but”, “so”, “or”, “the”, “was” etc. — these limit your character count for action words.
4. Don’t Mislead Your Audience
It should go without saying, but your page’s content must always deliver on the promise a title tag makes and vice versa — your title tags must be honest about what’s on the page.
Creating titles and title tags that suggest “X actionable tips” for solving an issue and then failing to deliver those tips or, worse, providing a sales pitch for a product or service, can permanently damage a brand’s reputation and users’ trust.
You want your audience to believe you so that they keep coming back for more of your content. So, avoid damaging your brand and inflating your bounce page rates by pointing out in your SEO title tag exactly what your page is about — no more, no less.
5. Get Personal With Your Readers
When writing content and SEO tags, a third-person perspective can come across as unapproachable and cold. Fostering personal relationships and relatability with your audience in title tags can do wonders for your click-through rates. In fact, 89% of businesses believe that personalization is key to their success.
Try to use pronouns such as “you”, “your” and “yours” in your meta tags, when the occasion allows. If your readers feel like you’re talking directly to them, they will be more enticed to click on your page.
Plus, delivering on the promise in your title tag and addressing your audience directly will significantly boost their trust in your brand.
6. Entice An Emotional Response From Your Readers
The goal of every meta tag is to create an irresistible urge in potential visitors to click on your page’s link. Bold statements in title tags stir up curiosity and excitement. For instance, you could mention something contrary to popular belief to generate a sense of wonder in the readers.
Using power words like “irresistible”, “revolutionary”, “impressive”, or the so-called “curiosity gap” are some of the effective techniques for enticing curiosity and evoking emotion in your readers.
Making an unexpected, emotional claim in your title tag, or something that is expected but with a twist will give you a competitive edge over other content out there. Of course, bold statements that create an emotional response should never be clickbait. There should be enough evidence in your content to back the claim from the SEO title tag.
How To Measure Whether Your SEO Title Tag Is Effective?
You can track the effectiveness of your title tags SEO over time with Google Analytics and similar tools that provide metrics of your visitor’s website engagement. One thing that’s effective for this is A/B testing.
Set up two or more title tags for a single page and monitor their performance indicators such as CTRs, page dwell time, and bounce rate, and see which one performs the best. This is an efficient method if you already have an SEO title tag set up, although it is time-consuming as it requires gathering stats over prolonged periods.
So, is there a way to analyze your title tag before it’s even set? For that, you can use one of these tools:
- WordPress SEO Yoast: A popular plugin, Yoast helps websites rank higher. It has indicators that inform you whether your title tag is too short, too long, or of optimal length, as well as provide helpful hints for SEO.
- ToTheWeb: A tool that creates Google SERP snippet previews when devising and optimizing title tags. Just like Yoast, ToTheWeb lets you know whether page titles are of acceptable length.
- SEO Spider: A website crawler tool that analyzes and audits technical and on-site SEO elements such as title tags in real time. SEO Spider tracks title tags and identifies too-short or too-long titles as well as any pages with duplicate or missing content.
- RocketClicks’ Data Studio: An excellent tool focusing on optimizing title tags for CTR. RocketClicks’ Data Studio is a tool that measures the effectiveness of your title tag’s split test in a scalable way with Google Data Studio.
5 Examples of Good SEO Title Tags
Simply looking at Google search results for a given keyword or topic with a critical eye can already provide a great deal of insight into the DOs and DON’Ts of title tag writing. While there certainly are a lot of examples of this, we present you with five effective title tags and our reasoning for why they work.
1. Neil Patel’s Blog on Content Marketing
Neil Patel’s title tag for a page on content marketing best practices tells you exactly what you will find on the page. It also retains the air of mystery by playing on readers’ curiosity which enhances the emotional impact of the title tag.
2. Active’s Fitness Article
“Best exercises” is a very competitive keyword and is quite difficult to rank for. Active.com’s 7 Best Exercises for a Full-Body Workout page manages to do so despite big competition. A concise title with only 53 characters tells the reader exactly what to expect. Note that the brand name is at the end of the SEO title.
3. Schuh’s Nike Shoes Site
When a user wishes to buy new trainers and shoes by Nike, they are most likely to type in “Nike trainers and shoes”. That primary key phrase is precisely what this page delivers right at the beginning of the title tag. It also uses separators to discern between items, a category, and the website’s brand name.
4. Rank & Style’s Clothing Page
Like the example above, Rank & Style’s page on men’s blazers uses keywords that users most likely search for. It’s a list-based page, listing 10 items that are the best in their category, which is always a strong motivational factor for people to click.
5. DigitalSilk Crisis Communication Guide
DigitalSilk’s title tag for the crisis communication article tells you exactly what the reader will get on the page and promises great educational value. The title tag, complemented with the meta description, establishes the brand as an authority on the subject.
SEO Title Tags Takeaways
Even though it’s just a short line of text on search results pages, title tags are extremely important for your website traffic and should be able to entice the audience to click on your page. Stick to the tips for writing SEO titles we just covered and don’t forget to continuously refine your title tags over time.
Title Tags FAQs
1. Can a title tag be too short?
Yes, a title tag can be too short. It's recommended to have a title tag of at least 50-60 characters to provide enough information for search engines and users.
2. Are title tags visible on the website?
Yes, title tags are visible on the website. They appear at the top of a browser window or tab and are also displayed as the main clickable link in search engine results.
3. Should every page have a title tag?
Every page should have a title tag. Title tags are crucial for search engine optimization (SEO) and help users understand the content and purpose of a webpage.
