How To Properly Write A Title Tag
The Keyword Heavy Title Tag
Ever see title tags in the search engine that look more like lists then anything? Yup I’m talking about the “Keyword 1 | Keyword 2 | Holy Crap I Can Fit One More Keyword Here too!” I will admit it, I was a huge fan of this strategy in the past and it’s something I have been changing over time. Let’s go over the good and the bad for this technique.
The Good:
It’s pretty easy to get three, four, or even five keywords in the title tag this way. This gives you several opportunities to rank your homepage across the web for multiple keywords.
The Bad:
The title tag doesn’t read very well to the people who could potentially be clicking on it. In fact, it looks manipulative and some would even deem it spammy.
The Way Too Long Title Tag
Ever see a title tag that reads something along the lines of “John Doe writes about SEO and is super good at …” What’s John Doe super good at? SEO audits? Link building? Maybe baking apple pies? We don’t know because the search engines truncate the title tag after 70 characters. If John Doe stayed within the 70 character limit we could get a better idea as to what his site is about. For example “John Doe Is An Award Winning SEO Strategist and SEO Writer”
The Good:
Not much, possibly brand exposure if John Doe has people searching for him via his name.
The Bad:
The message doesn’t convey anything; you have no clue what value this site will offer you. A carefully crafted title tag can meet the 70 character limit and still get the message out clearly.
The Title Tag That Is Used On Every Page
Congratulations on creating a valuable title tag for your homepage! But why are you using it on every page within your entire website? Ideally your interior pages are of a different subject matter then your homepage right? Write a title tag that is unique to each page within the website.
The Good:
You’re not running around with a blank title tag… that’s about it.
The Bad:
Title tags are to be unique for each and every page. If you use the same title tag throughout the site you likely aren’t getting much search traffic to your internal pages. This is in addition to confusing your sites visitors.
The “Home” Title Tag.
How many sites do you visit where you see the homepage displaying “Home”? Maybe they even go the extra mile to name their about page “About” but that’s about the end of the use of the title tag. Unless your websites is about “Homes” then this isn’t the most appropriate title tag for your site. Try writing a title tag that helps explain what your site offers to your visitors.
The Good:
Your title tags might be unique for each page but if they use ambiguous terms then they won’t help you much.
The Bad:
Ambiguous title tags don’t explain what your site is about and certainly won’t help you rank well for appropriate keywords.
The Readable, SEO Friendly Title Tag
What does this title tag tell you? “Buy Pizza Online at Minneapolis Pizza Shop -Nicksters Pizza”. Hopefully you understand that this website offers an opportunity to purchase a pizza online from the local pizza parlor. It’s not keyword stuffed but still includes the keywords in an easy to read statement. This title tag should be effective in optimizing for terms such as “Minneapolis Pizza”, “Minneapolis Pizza Shop”, or even “Buy Pizza Online”.
The Good:
Your title tag accurately describes your sites service and includes keywords you would like to rank for as well. The title tag is appropriate in length so it won’t be truncated in search results. Finally you include the company name at the end which helps with brand imaging.
The Bad:
“Buy Pizza Online” may not be the best keyword to target if you only sell your projects locally. However, this is another article at another time 
I have outlined the 5 common types of title tags that you see on the web today. Some may work better then others and it’s probably not right for me to tell you which one is best. I personally have made the transition to the readable, SEO friendly title tags and don’t see a reason to ever return to any of the alternatives. What type of SEO title tags do you use and what value do you see come from it?
Nick LeRoy
Nick LeRoy is a Minneapolis SEO consultant offering custom SEO audits & monthly SEO services to clients in all niches. He also regularly blogs about SEO at NickLeRoy.com
RSS Feed
E-mail Feed
Follow Nick on Twitter!
Great tips for writing title tags. The key to title tags is to remember that they should be unique to every page and stay within the character limit. Each page of a website contains different content (or it should anyway) and the title is an opportunity to showcase it. Staying within the character limit is important because you don’t want the dreaded “…” to show up at the end on a results page.
Nick, I agree with you 100%. The only time I flirt with the … is if it is only truncating the domain name or brand name at the end of the title tag. Still not ideal though. Thanks for dropping by
Wonderful article, Nick. If we know the art of using smart title tags then it will easier for us to rank well in the search engine results page. Apart from this it will also be good if we have a good permalink structure which matches the title tags. Both of these factors are very important for Search engine rankings.