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How to make SEO-friendly title tags

OK, I really wanted to call this post “Title tags - the most oft misused SEO factor”. But then I realized that more search using “how to” phrases when they’re looking for this kind of information. At the same time, I also realize that SEO-friendly is improperly structured - it should just be SEF (or Search Engine Friendly) title tags, but quite frankly SEO-friendly just looks better! And with those disclaimers out of the way, I present to you my findings :-).

One of the services I offer as part of my overall SEO solution is that of a site analysis. I look at the content, HTML coding and tag structure, and link structure throughout the site. I provide a report to each client on what they need to or should change, and often that report is much larger than they anticipated! On almost every single report I’ve delivered to date, the <title> tags have been in serious need of attention.

The title tag is perhaps the most critical component in on-site and on-page optimization. It alone can mean the difference between a top ten result and a top three result. Search engines are very literal, they assume that the title of a page tells you what the page is about - imagine that! So you need to keep in mind that a title tag is responsible for dictating precisely what each individual page is about - even before the spider indexes the content.

Now, understanding that, I will explain the three most common misuses of title tags that I run into, and go through each individually:

1. Identical titles
2. Overly branded or descriptive titles
3. Keyword stuffed titles

Identical Titles

This particular issue boils down to one thing, and one thing alone - laziness. Web developers are so thrilled with the concept of web templates and include files, because it means that they can produce the common pieces of a site only once (the header, navigation, footer, etc) and then only worry about the body content on each individual page. The often unfortunate consequence of this is that the title tag gets lumped right in there with the other ‘common’ components! The result is that you’ll have a site or an entire section of a site - many very different HTML pages - that are all the same thing according to their title tags.

Let’s use the example of a fictitious company: ACME Shoe Corporation. Now, this company provides all sorts of shoe types, sizes and colors. However, every single page on the site has the title tag “ACME Shoe Corporation”. This will have the outcome of either a) all pages ending up in the supplemental index or b) simply lower search results, because the pages don’t appear to be relevant to search queries.

Discussing the supplemental index would take an entire article. Essentially, it’s the means by which Google keeps their search results top-notch. They take pages that appear to contain similar or identical content, and remove them from the default search result display.  Searchers need to click the “Repeat search…” link on the last results page to see them. I imagine that this link is clicked by probably less than 1% of all searchers, so the chance of your page receiving search traffic from supplemental results is very, very minute.

The second result is pretty straightforward: lower search results, they’re bad. Enough said.

To resolve this issue, it’s simply a case of spending a little bit of time cooking up a unique title for each page, that describes the contents of the page.  Every template and CMS allows this, so don’t be lazy, do it! But what are some guidelines for generating the unique titles? The next two mistakes explained will equip you with all you need to know to create highly optimized title tags!

Overly Branded or Descriptive Titles

Some of my clients have taken the time to add unique, descriptive content to each title tag on their website. However, along with that great content sometimes comes quite a bit of extra description. For example, ACME Shoe Corporation’s page offering red pumps bears the title “The largest online selection of red pumps | ACME Shoe Corporation”.  This presents two potential issues:

1. No one searches for “The largest online selection of red pumps”, they search for “red pumps”.
2. Adding the “| ACME Shoe Corporation” can result in being deemed as less relevant to just “red pumps” by search engines, and therefore result in slightly lower ranking.

For the first issue, remember that a title tag is not an ad, and doesn’t need to motivate or sell. It just needs to match a searcher’s query, that’s all they want. So, in that case, a title tag of “Red pumps” would be far more effective, and receive more clicks.

As for the second issue, well, that can be a bit of a tough call. Many companies will be adament about keeping their business name in the titles, for branding purposes. What they don’t realize is that you can easily incorporate the company name into the meta description, and it will still be shown on search results pages. However, in some cases, it’s advantageous to keep the company name in the title, because then it gets added to bookmarks and such. So, there’s no absolutely definitive answer! I end up using just search-targeted terms for titles on some pages, but on tutorials I add in the company name, as they’re more likely to be bookmarked, and they receive a high enough search result anyways. It just requires some thought and testing to find the right balance.

Keyword Stuffed Titles

Sadly, I run across titles that have been jam-packed with keywords and phrases. What makes this so sad is that it’s often the result of hiring a low quality SEO ‘professional’ to optimize the site. So, you’ll run across pages with title tags like: “Red pumps, red runners, red high-heels, red sneakers, blue pumps, etc | ACME Shoe Corporation”.

So again, no one is going to search on such a ridiculously long search phrase. Your title tag should contain the primary phrase that you’re targeting with that page. In fact, it’s pretty clear that you’re trying to ‘cheat’ for multiple terms, and Search Engines do their best to keep cheaters from prospering. So, expect low search results with such a title. Simply put - keep them focused, you’ll have better results.

Conclusion

Yes, it’s a pain to go through your entire site and fix each and every title tag. But it’s really only a pain the first time. Once you see the results, you’ll be obsessed with tweaking. I still have improvements to make on this very site, and will constantly be monitoring my web analytics reports & SERPs to see where I need to tweak a title!