Page Titles: Best Practices for SEO Results

 

Page titles act like a representative of what follows ahead and most of the people are aware of the fact that page titles are quite important when it comes to search engine results. Google has emphasized to give more importance to page titles because “page titles really matter”. This article would help you understand what the best practices for SEO results are, so that you can optimize your titles in the best manner.

Relevant Page Titles

Since page titles play an important role when it comes to the On-Page SEO it is also very important that they are relevant to what follows next – the main theme/topic of the page. Moreover, it’s also important to create a relevant title because it probably appears on a web browser’s title bar and most importantly it may appear in clickable search snippet link on major search engines like Google, Bing and others.

Best Practice: An optimized and effective title should contain the primary keyword that is being targeted for a certain page or post and it’s relevant to the post as it’s important for SEO results.

Creating Titles for Humans and Computers

You have to create titles that are understandable by both, the humans and the computers (search engines). It has to be good enough to explain the visitors what the post is all about yet interesting enough to leave them curious, so that they end up reading the post. Google reads all the characters and/or words that are present in the title even if it is oddly lengthy as long as you are not spamming.

Best Practice: The best practice is to write a title that has as much as 12 words (that will do the job) and try to include the primary keywords in the first 8 words. It can be shorter than 12 words, but don’t forget the primary keywords.

Making Titles More Descriptive and Interesting

Some page titles do a good job with a call to action as it might be exactly the same thing users are searching for. For instance, to buy something, to learn something or to hire someone. These can be your hook in search engine results page (SERP). Moreover, if your page title is showing in search results snippets then don’t forget that there’s also tough competition out there. When optimizing a title, try to include as many terms possible but don’t stuff the keywords. For this try long tail-keywords approach, adding a complete phrase rather than just one word.

Best Practice: Focus on titles that are truly unique, Google’s Hummingbird update focuses on quality content and page titles are included in it. This means you should try to come up with titles that are not easy to find out yet there are many users out there searching for those words (titles). Try to include a call to action and using long tail keywords approach to further optimize the page titles and make them descriptive and interesting.

These are three of the best practices for SEO results when it comes to page titles among many others. However, these are all important ones and shouldn’t be taken light in your SEO strategy.