8 Beginner Tips to Make the Most of your Page Titles

The page title (also known as the meta title) on your website is an important area to get right for SEO purposes.
Firstly it helps the search engines to determine what your page is about and secondly it helps the searcher to decide if yours is a page worth visiting.

The page title is not the title that appears in the content on your website, but rather it is what appears at the top of the screen in the browser tabs on your PC; it also is the title that is used when a page is bookmarked and perhaps most importantly, it is generally (but not always*) what the search engines use as a link to your page in the search results. The page title usually forms part of the snippet in the search results.

Here’s our 8 best tips for getting the most out of your page titles.

1. Make sure every page title is unique and contains the keywords / phrases you want to promote for that page.
2. Get the length right. You should use between 55 and 60 characters if you don’t want any of the title truncated in the search results. That’s because Google  now only allows 512pixels for page titles. Anything beyond that is simply not displayed. Having said that, don’t get over worried about slipping over the limit. You shouldn’t be penalised for doing so.
3.  Include the most important keywords first. Keywords which match the terms used by the searcher are highlighted in bold and will stand out as they scan the search results. Seeing the terms they are looking for will help them decide which page to click on. It is possible that keywords earlier in the title have greater SEO value than those used later.
4. Don’t include your company name in the page title. This is a waste of the value of that space. A properly constructed website should rank well for the company name without the need for it to appear in the page title. You can utilise the meta description for including the company name on some pages. This is the description that appears beneath the link in the search results.
5. Don’t use single-word page titles. Simply speaking internet users don’t search using single words. Anyone searching “Dog” for example would be presented with millions of search results covering all sorts of canine information and would just be overwhelmed by the choice. It would be far more likely they would narrow the search based on the information they want to find. Furthermore, a page title with a generic heading is of no SEO value at all. No one is searching for “About us” so any page title on your website that uses that term is wasting its SEO value entirely.
6. Use keywords in your page title that are relevant to the actual content on the page. However, don’t simply repeat the header from the content on the page. That has its own SEO value, so maximise the value of each by using different keywords in each.
7. Avoid repetition. Don’t simply try to stuff as many keywords as possible into your 60-character space or it looks a bit like spamming. What Google wants to see is the words in your page title reflecting the words it finds on the page so it can be sure that searchers will find real, high-quality content based on the search term they used.
8. Go local. If you run a business which you wish to primarily promote locally, then include your locality in some of your page titles. For example, a searcher looking for a garage to repair their car is most likely to include their nearest town in their search phrase. If your title tag contains that town then your result will jump out on the page because the town will be highlighted in bold.

*Of course it is important to be aware that you, the website owner, have little influence over how Google chooses to present your website in the search results. If you create really meaningful page titles and meta descriptions they are more likely to utilise this in the snippet, however they may decide they have found information on your web page that would create a better snippet. You may even find that the snippet for your page will vary depending on the search term that Google is responding to!

Here’s an example of a search snippet:

You can watch a video of Matt Cutts explaining how and why they sometimes create snippets for you rather than use your page tilte and meta description.