How to Write Title Tags Your Customers and Google Will Love

Getting more traffic to your website or blog is a top priority for many small business owners. Today we're going to learn how to write a Title Tag for your reader and the search engine. Title Tags are an important part of your overall SEO or search engine optimization because they help Google understand your page or blog post. However, that's not the only reason your Title Tag matters. Title Tags are important because they help the person searching to click on your website or blog by sharing information about what they'll find there.

Where do you use Title Tags?

You use Title Tags on your website or blog. Every page or post you write should have a unique Title Tag. It's important to create new Title Tags for each page rather than reusing the same one multiple times.

Why do you need Title Tags?

Having a unique Title Tag helps in several ways. First, it helps potential visitors understand what they'll find if they click on your website or blog. Second, it helps the search engine understand what that page or post is about.

What does a Title Tag look like in the search results?

The Title Tag is the first thing your potential website visitor sees when they look at your search result. The Title Tag is above the URL on the results page and helps them decide whether they want to visit your website.

How do you write a Title Tag?

Start with your keyword for the website page or blog post. You want to use your keyword in your Title Tag. If you're unsure how to choose a keyword for your page or post, this blog post can help you decide. Use your keyword as close to the beginning of the Title Tag as possible.

 You can write a Title Tag in several ways, and either is OK. You can choose to write them in sentence format, question format, or as keywords with a | and brand name. It's up to you. I use a mix of the three options on my website and blog, but I prefer sentence format because it's most enticing to the reader.

According to research studies, if you can include an action verb such as learn about, shop, find, or discover, that can help increase your click-through rate by up to 30%. 

Where do you write your Title Tags?

The Title Tag can generally be edited in the same place you create your blog post or website page. If you're using WordPress, you want to use the Yoast SEO plug-in to edit your Title Tag. Some other website platforms already have the Title Tag or post editor on the page. If you're unsure how to edit the Title Tags on your website or blog, quickly search for "how do I edit the Title Tags in (insert your website builder here)," and you'll find the instructions for your specific website builder.

What are common mistakes to avoid when writing Title Tags?

The most common mistakes I see when it comes to Title Tags are either using the same Title Tag on every page, using only the page name as the Title Tag, creating a Title Tag but not using the right keyword, or not creating a Title Tag at all. In each of these four instances, the SEO benefits are limited.

If you use the same Title Tag on every page, you limit the number of times that Google will show your website or blog post to potential searchers. Google will only show your website two times for a keyword. If you've used the same keyword on every page or post, you limit how many people might discover your site through Google.

Using the page name as your Title Tag doesn't seem enticing to the potential reader, and they're less likely to click on the result to learn more. An optimized Title Tag that includes the keyword will generally get more clicks than one that's just the page name.

When you create a Title Tag but target the wrong keyword (one you can't rank for or no one searches), you have less opportunity to be found by people searching for keywords related to your business because you aren't going to show up high in the search results in the first place. They won't have the opportunity to see your website and click.

If you don't bother to write a Title Tag at all, you'll either not show up in the search results because the search engine doesn't know what your page or post is about, or if you do show up, the click-through rate will be lower because it's not interesting to your audience. Sometimes, if you don't create a Title Tag, Google will create one for you by pulling copy from your website or blog post. If you want to control the message your Ideal Customer sees when they're searching, you need to write Title Tags on every page or post.

Best Practices for Writing Title Tags

To write the best, most SEO-friendly Title Tag you can, you need to choose a keyword that your website can rank at the top of Google so you have a chance of being discovered by people searching for information.

Next, you need to write your Title Tag and use that keyword near the beginning, if possible. You can write it in a sentence, question, or keyword | business name format. Remember, if you include a call-to-action verb, you can potentially increase your click-through rate, which means more people who see your search result visit your site.

Keep your Title Tag between 50 and 60 characters to display how you want it to in the search results. Keep it under 60 characters, including spaces, to avoid truncation (where it cuts off or they add . . . part way through and delete words to make it fit). 

Are you ready to write great SEO-friendly Title Tags for your website or blog? Get my free SEO Content Quick Start Guide today to get started. It will walk you through how to do this, and you get organic traffic from Google.