Page
Titles are too often over looked or have little to no effort put into
them. Even those that write really good content for their website
usually finish then just strap on a Page Title and publish it. Page
Titles are actually
important, yes I dared to
capitalize that and make it bold, Why? Because I wanted to make sure you
read it ... oh you mean why is it so important.
When your web page shows up in the search engines the Page Title is
the main heading shown (and the link to your web page) so you need to
make sure it pulls in people and entices them to click on it. Just there
is a major reason why you should write good Page Titles, but wait
there’s more. Search Engines put a lot of value into the Page Title when
determining what your website is about, so a well written article will
give the search engines more accurate keywords to rank you for.
Now let’s look at how to go about writing good Page Titles, here are my Top 9 Tips to help you write better Page Titles;
1. Perfecting The Length Of Page Titles
A good Page Title needs to be long enough that you can fully describe
the page but at the same time you don’t want to go over the cap for
Google’s (and other Search Engines) Titles in the results. You don’t
want your Page Title being cut in half on the results page, it would
look bad and less people would want to click on it. Also I’m sure Google
don’t like listing pages that have a Page Title that long they have to
cap them. You also have to think about your visitors, no one likes
reading a 3 line page title.
A good length to aim for would be up towards the 70 character mark,
that is about the max length that search engines will show. It’s ok to
have less then this (even less than half) if your Title still describes
your page well.
2. Targeted Keywords Towards Your Content
To make your Page Title add a strong SEO effect to your Web Page you
will want to make sure you have Keywords within your Page Title. Not
just any keywords related to your website, make sure the Keywords in the
Page Title are well targeted and matched to the content on your page.
This will make the page title look better in the eyes of Search Engines,
if the keywords in the page title match what the search engines scanned
out of your content that has to be good.
3. Important Part Of The Titles Goes First
Now this is for both Search Engines and people. Some people believe
(no one can really be sure though) that Search Engines place more value
on the words that appear closer to the start of a Page Title then the
words towards the end. Now even if that is not true it is still a good
idea to make the starting of your Page Title contain the more important
information. This is because of the way people read, as you may have
noticed we read from the start of a sentence.
When I say important stuff first I mean things like the strongest
keyword closer to the start of the Page Title rather than the end. For
example a bad page title would be “If You Want More Visitors To Your
Website Learn Search Engine Optimization”. A better Page Title for this
would be “Search Engine Optimization – Get More Website Visitors”, now
that’s just a quick example there would be many other ways to right a
good Page Title for that.
4. Unique Titles
I mentioned earlier about the amount of content on the internet and
how there is so much more being added every day. This is where making
your Page Titles unique can help you a lot. Try to stay away from common
Titles. If you have an article on say SEO you don’t want to give it a
title that 50+ other articles have, like “Learn Search Engine
Optimization”. Common Page Titles means that you will be competing with
many other page to get ranked, be unique and lead the rankings.
5. No Keyword Spamming
Don’t think that if you stuff your page title full of multiple
keywords that you will rank high for all these different keywords. In
fact all this will do is ruin your chance for ranking with any of the
keywords. Search Engines won’t know what to rank you for and search
engines are very smart they will see what you are trying to do, dedicate
each page to a small amount of targeted keywords.
6. Writing For Your Visitors
I know I have been talking a lot about what looks good in your Page
Titles towards the search engines but what about people. Remember that
you main goal here is to offer good information to real people. Don’t
get caught up focusing just on search engines, you need to make sure
that your Page Titles are easily read and understood by real people.
After all it is your visitors that you want to please, you website
wouldn’t really exist without people to read it.
7. Page Titles Need Description
On top of everything else your Page Titles should describe what your
page is actually going to be about. You need to make sure that if
someone reads your page title it explains to them exactly what the rest
of the page is about. Don’t make any false or misleading Page Titles,
this will just annoy your visitors and you will be less likely to have
returning visitors, your goal is to increase your traffic.
Sorry about the length of this page, I will try to wrap it up soon
but I wanted to get out all the information in my head about Page Titles
on a single page.
8. Question Page Titles
Don’t be afraid to make your page title look like a question, if
people are looking for answers and see the question similar to what they
are asking then they are likely to click on it. Also question Page
Titles seem to intrigue people more (in my opinion) so give it a try,
try a few pages with normal Page Titles and then try similar content
pages with a question Title and see what the results are.
9. Quality Even If You’re Lonely
If you are writing for your blog or even your website and you have a
very small amount of traffic don’t lower the quality of your Page Titles
(or content). Some people seem to have the thought pattern that I am
only writing for 5 people at the moment so I don’t have to try as hard.
You couldn’t be more wrong, your early content is what actually builds
your website. The better your content is in the beginning the faster
your website will grow and the better your reputation will be.
Well that about does it for me, that is all I can think of at the
moment to help you write better Page Titles. If you have any other ideas
for this page please send me an email (Contact Me link at the bottom of
every page), even if you have any questions about this page you can
contact me, I’m happy to help.
