Want to double your website traffic? Here's one simple way to do it.
It's called a title tag. It appears in the organic listings on the top ten results pages of a search engine, and because it appears so prominently, it can make or break your web traffic.
However, many people create their title tags in haste and don't give them the care they deserve. That can result in a lot of lost opportunities! In fact, research shows that between 75% and 90% of all people who use a search engine never scroll past the first three results—so if you're not on that first page, you're missing out on most of your audience.
With one simple trick, though, you can get more clicks (and therefore more web traffic) to your site from these top ten results pages. If you want to learn how to do this for yourself, check out our guide to creating an effective title tag!
What exactly is a title tag and what are the best practices to write one?
Whether you’re a content creator, an SEO specialist, or a small business owner, it’s likely that you’ve heard of title tags.
Title tags are one of the most important on-page SEO elements (the most important being overall content) and are used to tell both users and search engines what any given page on your site is about.
Title tags are HTML elements (they look like this: <title>Title Goes Here</title>) that specify the title of a web page. Each page on your website should have its own unique title tag. Title tags are also often used on search engine results pages (SERPs) as the clickable headline for a given result and are important both for SEO and social sharing.
What Is the Point of a Title Tag?
Title tags play a huge factor in SEO, usability, and social sharing. The goal of a title tag is to concisely and accurately describe what your page is about so search engines can understand it, humans can read it, and social media platforms can get a sense of what your page is about in order to show it to users who might be interested in it.
If you want to grow traffic from Google or other search engines, you need to make sure that they can crawl through your site so they can understand what topics you cover so they know which search queries you're relevant for. The title tag is one of the best ways to communicate that to Google.
A good title tag will help your page rank well. A great title tag will help searchers click on your result and visit your page. In addition, title tags are usually one of the first pieces of information your potential clients will see.
Your title tags should be unique per page.
If you have a major category that has numerous subcategories, it's perfectly fine to use the same title tag on every subcategory (as long as each is unique).
However, don't use identical title tags across your site. This will harm your SEO performance, and won't provide visitors with any additional information about the different pages.
The second reason why you need to create unique titles for every page on your website is to help search engines understand what each page is about. These titles will appear in the search results, so if you want people to click through and visit your website, these titles need to entice them to do so.
Search engines display the title tag of a web page in their search results, but only the first 50-60 characters. This is to ensure that title tags don’t take up too much space on Google’s search results pages.
One way to guarantee that your title tags will be short and concise is to simply write your title tags as you would write a page headline. As SEOs, we often recommend writing unique, keyword-optimised titles for each page on your website, but you should feel free to use the same structure when writing headlines for pages.
How do I write a good title tag?
Your title tag should be short, sweet and unique to each web page on your website. The ideal length for a descriptive title tag is approximately 70 characters including spaces. This allows your page title to be displayed in full in most SERPs without getting cut off by ellipses ("..."). As you might have noticed, Google truncates the title tag of a page if it is too long. Because of this, your SEO strategy for title tags should focus on creating concise titles that accurately describe the content of your page.
However, it's important to note that every search engine handles this differently. For example, Google will show up to 70 characters but Bing may display between 60-and 67 characters.
When you're optimising a page, it's better to put your target keyword at the beginning of the title tag rather than at the end, because Google gives more weight to words closer to the beginning of the title tag. Page titles should include keywords relevant to the page's topic and your business name if relevant (e.g., “ACME | How to Fix Your Blender”). Avoid stuffing irrelevant keywords into your title tags, or using keywords that don’t match up with searcher intent.
Conclusion.
Title tags have a significant impact on how your web pages are viewed by Google and other search engines. When well written, title tags can help users determine whether your site's content is a good fit for their queries. When optimized, title tags can also attract additional traffic from search engines by including your target keyword in the title tag.
Remember, the title tag is one of the most important on-page elements you have for your website. Take great care to ensure that it includes your target keyword, is unique to each page on your site, and is no longer than 70 characters.
By following these guidelines, you'll be able to craft a title tag that contains your target keyword, and also performs well in search engine results. Optimising your Title Tag's website should definitely be one of your SEO Agency's top priorities!