Title Tag Best Practices – A 10 Step Guide

Your title tag is the text that appears in the very top of your browser when looking at a web page.

The page title tag is a very strong indicator to search engines about what the topic of a page is and what search terms a page should highlight in the organic listings.

The page title is indexed by the search engines in its own right and its influence is emphasised if the keywords used within it are also used inside other key elements of the page such as the H1 tag. The title tag is read from left to right and the keywords towards the left have a higher relevance than those on the right.

The Magnolia Soft admin has several areas where you can manipulate your title tags and so we have put together the following 10 step title tag best practices primer to help clients exploit them to their fullest.

1. Move keywords to the front of your title tags

Your primary keywords and phrases should be he first words within the title tag and the title tag should be as close to 100% keyword rich as possible. It’s really simple to do but it really does work.

2. Repeat your title tag keywords the headline

Re-using the title tag of each page as the H1 header tag can be valuable from both a keyword targeting standpoint and a user experience improvement.

3. Branding is beneficial to your traffic

We believe that it is important to brand your traffic and recommend a combination of keywords and brand terms for your title tags. The ideal approach is “Keyword(s) – Brand Name”. If you use your brand name at the end of every title tag it helps searchers know where they're going and to increase return visits.

4. Try to be unique

Ensure that every page within the website has a unique title tag if possible. This will ensure maximum exposure and search engine saturation.

5. Limit length to 65 characters (including spaces) or less

Only the first 65-70 characters are shown in the various search engines so keep the titles relatively phith so you avoid the words being replaced with "...".

6. Incorporate keyword phrases

Don’t just stuff your titles with random keywords but actually include the phrases that you wish to target.

7. Use a separator

It is often useful when splitting up title tag content to use some form of separator or divider. When splitting up the brand from the descriptive, you may use the "|" symbol (e.g. the pipe bar), an arrow ">" or hyphen "-" or colon “:”. The use of such content separators also helps to change the format of the title tag and make things marginally more visually appealing when listed in the SERPs.

8. Focus on click-through rates & conversion rates

A title tag is listed in the organic search engine listings as follows:

The tag is very similar to sponsored adword text and can this have a significant impact on your click-through rates and conversion rates. If you are prominently offering things like “Sales”, “Special Offers”, “Discounts” then these emotive terms can definitely increase click rates. You may also want to consider using a call to action on title tags if you feel this is appropriate.

9. Be consistent

If you create a good formula for your title tags, keywords and product in a particular part of your website then be consistent and stick to it.

10. Monitor, review and amend

Once you’ve created your title tags, ensure that you monitor their performance and continue to review positive and negative progress. Keep making small amends and fine tuning as the search engine algorithms are always changing and you need to keep on top of things.