How to optimise your Title Tag

Carl Hopkinson

We’ve written in the past about the importance of the Title Tag within SEO, but just how should it be optimised and how are some SEO companies optimising this tag?

The Title Tag is perhaps the most important on page factor of your website’s pages, and that right there is the first tip; pages, plural. Your Title Tag should be unique in every page of your website, rather than featuring the same content on each page.

If you expect Google to index every page of your website, you need to make them different so that it knows which pages to return when users search for information related to your website. If all of your Title Tags are the same, how can Google differentiate between your pages?

So, you know that they need to be different. They also need to actually contain information that is relevant to your website. You’d be surprised how many websites still have Title Tags containing ‘Home’ or worse still ‘Untitled Document’. Just how do they presume this is going to help the indexing of their website?

What about your company name? Many websites feature their company name in their Title Tag. This is good, it shows potential visitors what company your website is for, and creates brand consistency. However, some SEO companies wouldn’t advise this. Instead of your company name, they would instead to choose to feature relevant keywords in your Title Tag.

Keywords are good. They show Google what your website is about. However, just how are keywords going to look in search results, where your Title Tag forms the heading of the results, the anchor text of the results?

Keywords are good, yes, but you still need your company name or brand in order to show users who you are.

Examples

Here are some examples, which of these would you say was the best Title Tag layout for a firm that creates wedding stationery. The pretend firm is called ‘The Wedding Company’.

Wedding stationery,wedding stationary, wedding invites,wedding invitations,weddings,brides,thank you cards
The Wedding Company
Wedding Stationery, invitations and cards | The Wedding Company

If you think that the first one is the best Title Tag because it features more keywords, and even a misspelling of ‘stationery’, then you’re wrong. This is a keyword stuffed Title Tag and will not attract anyone to click on it, even if it does rank within Google.

Yet some SEO companies still optimise this way.

The second Title Tag does feature the keyword ‘Wedding’ but it doesn’t offer any indication of what they actually do, meaning that again, their click through rates would be low. The absence of any keywords also means that their rankings would be adversely affected.

The third Title Tag features the company name and some important keywords, while still being usable and readable.

How are the Title Tags on your website optimised?