Google clarifies best title tag practice for SEO

Google has recently updated its documentation for title tags to make it clearer and more straightforward, and has removed some of the ambiguities within it.

What are title tags?

Title tags are shown at the top of your listing within the search engine results page (SERPs). Although they are not used as a ranking factor by Google, having a clear and interesting title can help to improve your clickthrough rate from search engines, resulting in more visitors to your website.

For many years, Google has rewritten title tags for websites if it thinks they could be more descriptive and give users a better understanding of the content on the site. The rewrite feature dramatically increased in the summer of last year, which caused some controversy within the search engine optimisation (SEO) community due to some title tags that were incorrect. Some SEOs reported that they saw decreases in search traffic due to this.

What’s changed in the documentation?

Changes to the guidance for title tags include:

• Clarifying what Google means by the term “headlines”, as this could be the title at the top of the homepage or headings in the HTML elements of your website (H1s, H2s, H3s, etc). Previously, Google used the two terms interchangeably, so it is now using phrases like “main title” to distinguish between the two
• Emphasising the importance of your main title being different to other text on the page so that it stands out as being more prominent

To conclude, the guidance for Google has not been changed, but rather updated and to make it clearer for people in the SEO community to understand, helping them write better title tags for websites.

Are you looking to get more traffic to your website? At Engage Web, we can create a digital marketing strategy to help your business to increase its visibility online through a wide range of digital marketing services, including search engine optimisation (SEO), copywriting and Facebook Ads. To find out more, get in touch with our friendly team.

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Jonathon Roberts

Jonathon lives and breathes marketing, boasting a degree in Business Management and Marketing Management and a diverse list of experiences both professional and voluntary. Having grown up in the thick of the digital and social media age, he has been quick to dive into online marketing and search engine optimisation in his career and spare time, spanning such fields as academics, local business and sport.

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