Last Updated on May 29, 2019 by Numinix Developer
Writing a strong title for your web page may seem elementary, but you’d be surprised how many people whiff when it comes to something that appears to be so simple. I have been guilty of mucking it up myself. I always want to be clever or witty, not realizing that what I am trying to be clever about is not clear to the average reader. So, I am here to offer you some advice and keep you from making the errors I have made. That will save you time, money, and the headache of trying to figure out where all the traffic from your site went.
Why The Title Is So Important
First, a little of the why. You want a good title for several reasons. The title tag of your web page is used as the headline on the search engines. It is used when bookmarking a site. It appears in the history section of someone’s web browser. Many people use it when they are linking back to your site. For instance, if you have a site about the history of baseball and you title it “America’s Favorite Pastime”, well, that could mean many things. You need something better than that. You want the title to draw people to your site and help them remember what you are all about. Then they will keep coming back.
Tips For Writing a Great Title
Okay, on to the title itself. First off, let’s keep it short and sweet. Google cuts title tags off at 64 characters, so you want to keep it shorter than that. You also want your title to be descriptive. Using the above example, you could use the title: “The History of Baseball: America’s Favorite Pastime”. That is much stronger than the first version. Make sure that you include your keywords at the beginning of the title tag. Remember from my earlier blog that the most important stuff goes at the front…always! You definitely want to avoid stuffing your title with all of your keywords. One keyword per page that you want to rank on is all you should do. Also, make sure that you don’t title every page on your website the same. You don’t want to leave your customers in that kind of confusion. You want to keep it simple, succinct, and relevant.
Put It To The Test
One more thing. Don’t just title a page and leave it that way forever. Run some analytics on it. Test it out to see how it is working for you. If the keywords that are getting hit on are different than what you have in your title, change it. Find the top three phrases that are driving traffic to your page, and use the one that makes the most sense in your title. The key here is to be flexible and keep tweaking it until it generates the traffic you want.
Now, that wasn’t so hard was it? I never said it was brain science or rocket surgery! Just remember to keep the title short and sweet, relevant, keyword-rich, and descriptive. Don’t be afraid to be flexible. Do all of that, and you should be extremely pleased with the results. It worked for me.