How to Write the Perfect Page Title for your Website

This is the next installment in my “What is SEO” series teaching you how to carry out effective SEO. In the last article we looked at what is On Page SEO and the value each factor provides. The conclusion was there are two on page factors that provide measurable results. Remember I did not say that the others don’t provide any result, just when you compare the time it takes to carry out those factors to the results they provide it is not ideal use of your resources. Do not waste time on diminishing returns. For competitive sectors, most on page factors will not provide any positive change in the top 10 results.

As displayed in the pie graph above. The title is the single most powerful on page SEO factor. If you were to only do one on page factor this is the one. You can forget optimising all the other worthless tags and just put your effort in to the title and H1- H6 tags then once ranks are gained tweak the other on page factors if you feel the need.
Note: As I said before. If you are building a website from scratch add optimised on page factors like alt tags, link attributes, bold text, keyworded URLS etc. But if your site is up and running the result you will get from going back and adding all these factors is not worth the time you will invest.

The title element is displayed as a blue hyper link text title to your website in the Google Search engine results pages. Known as the Serps to us SEO’s.

The title tag is coded in your websites header in between the tags

Visible Cut Off Length

The title element has a visible cut off length. What does this mean?
When you look at the search engine result page displaying your query outcome. The blue hyper link title to your website will have a maximum character length that can be displayed.

What Are The Cut Off Lengths?

Google – 64 characters
Bing.com yahoo & Ask.com – 70 characters

Although Google’s normal cut off rate is 64, 69 characters have been seen. Don’t forget that spaces also count.

The perfect page title

I break up the tag into sections conforming within the visual cut off length. Although this is just a visual cut off and ranking value can still be passed after the limit. I think as this restriction is in place it is good practice to try and work within these boundaries.

My Method For Structuring Page Titles

Keywords | Call To Action | Branding
Keywords 30 characters
Call to action 20 characters
Brand 14 characters

Keywords

The weight provided across the title tag is not even. The most weight is passed at the beginning, the first phrase should be your most important. I would say the first 30 characters are the most important in terms of passing ranking value. I try to never make blind guesses so let the page itself tell you what the keywords should be. Focus on a single phrase or a cluster of phrases. The home page will always be slightly different as this is normally the gateway page that does not focus directly on one category but your site theme as a whole. Don’t just look at your competitors and copy them. Really read through the pages and let each one educate you on what the correct phrases for that page should be. I will produce an article on website structure and categorization later on.

Call To Action

This is what will entice the searches to click on your website. Price points, what makes you or your service different then your competitors. Use this space to grab some attention.

Branding

This will be for brand name or acronym.
If the brand name is the same as the domain address I do not always place it in the title. You will naturally rank for your brand name in any case. If you feel you need or prefer to have your brand name seen on the page title then do so. You could always put the brand name after cut of length. Especially if you happen to have a long brand name.

Word Placement

I never fuss too much about the order of the phrases and keywords words that I place within the title other than the most important one first. That does not mean that I just plonk them in any array I like. If it is not perfectly readable as a whole I do not stress too much. This causes all sorts of arguments or discussions between SEO folk. Some say it is very important to make sure that the title reads naturally as this will increase your clicks. Of course you do not want it to look spammy or too off the mark but like I said above it does not matter too much as long as you include the keywords so you can get partial matches.

Partial Matches

A partial match is when you have one or more of the users search terms or keywords in your title tag. So it really does not matter what order you put them in as Google and search engines will bold the words matching your users query in your title. The page content plays a role in this too. You can be assured they will be drawn to the partial match. As a human, most of us will subconsciously just notice the bolded words that match what we are looking for. This is when our call to action comes in. If you have a powerful call to action for example your lowest price point, a free offering within your service, etc. You are going to get clicks especially if you differ from your competition. Clicks are much more important than ranked impressions. Ranked impressions are no good for anyone. Well no one but Google’s keyword tool ( I will talk about that in a later article)

Do not waste title real estate as it is valuable.

Do not repeat words
Do not use stop words like in, and, at, to, on etc

Instead

Use symbols & * | ~ > / \ = + – to break sections and draw attraction.

One thing that is a real bugbear for me is when the begging letter of title words is not capitalized . It looks untidy.

So now you know how to structure and create page titles let’s take a look as some examples.

Bad Example Title Tags

I will use this website swbdesigns as the first example.
The Homepage:
Title: Website design Woking Website Development Woking cheap websites SEO and search engine marketing Services from swb web designs Woking

Bad Repetition
Way over character limit
No Capitalisation on words
Use of stop words
No call to action

A better example for my index page.

Title: Website Design Service | Woking Surrey | HTML, Flash, PHP & ASP @SWBDesigns

Capitalisation Of words
No repetition
Most Important phrase first

Now this is a better structure a little long it is 69 characters at ASP. If you Google search website design Woking you will see in this case Google is showing 69 characters as the cut off in the serps. That just leaves my branding after the cut off which I think works just perfect.

Web Design Page:
Title: Web Design Woking Website Design Woking Website Designer Woking Surrey swbdesigns

Bad Repetition
Way over character limit
No Capitalisation on words
No call to action

A better solution and what I have in use

Title: Web Design Service Woking Surrey | Starting at £500 @SWBDesigns

This again is a much better example. We have the most important phrase first which is web design service and my geo location. Remember that the page this title is for is well categorised for web design and the page content dictates web design. The title along with the content ensures we will be shown in the serps for partial matches. Through natural writing and LSI.
Don’t go keyword stuffing your body text. For example web site design, web designer, woking design service. There are other factors that will ensure we show for these partial matches but if you keep following my articles I will provide you all the answer you need to carry out effective SEO on your site. Then we have my call to action “starting at £500” this price point will act as a CTA to get the users to my site something my competition are not doing. Then we have the branding.

Let us look at one more example this time from the web.
I do not like to publicly criticise others work, but this is a good example of what not to do. I have contacted this company and gave them free advice on how to produce better title tags that would provide better results back in November which they ignored or have not acted upon yet. So let’s do it for them.

The domain is www.andrewmartin.co.uk/

This is an example of a website that’s product range is a brand name the same as the domain. Here are two shocking useless examples of how not to write your page titles.

Home Page:

Index: Andrew Martin, Andrew Martin Furnishing, Andrew Martin Furniture, Andrew Martin Fabrics, Andrew Martin Fabric, Andrew Martin Design, Andrew Martin Interior Design, Modern Furniture, Asian Furniture, Fabric Suppliers, Suppliers of Fabrics, Interior Design.

First off this title has 258 characters secondly it repeats the brand name in this case Andrew Martin seven times. They have also used the brand name as the first phrase in the title which we know will be passing the most power. What a waste of real estate, as this site as with all sites will clearly rank for their brand name. If we counted how many characters this title is with just the brand name it is 91. All the somewhat more relative terms that would have more of an effect on this site are to the end.
Now it is clear that this website offers some very nice bespoke designed products from some big names in the interior design industry. The site is well structured with categories for each product line. Without knowing too much about the brand I would at first instance change the title tag to.

Interior Design | Fabrics, Furniture, & Accessories @Andrew Martin
Or
Interior Design | Fabrics, Furniture, & Accessories * Free Shipping *

Now we can look at a category page for this site.
I have chosen the coffee tables page.

Title: Coffee Tables, Furniture, Andrew Martin, Andrew Martin Furnishing, Andrew Martin Furniture, Andrew Martin Fabrics, Andrew Martin Fabric, Andrew Martin Design, Andrew Martin Interior Design, Modern Furniture, Asian Furniture, Fabric Suppliers, Suppliers of Fabrics, Interior Design

Once again a huge page title 281 characters, the brand name has been repeated 7 times in fact other then coffee tables at the begging which in this case is the best thing we can take out of this tag it is a complete duplicate of the home page stuffed with phrases.

My Version

Coffee Tables | Bespoke Design ~ Be Different ~ @Andrew Martin
Or
Designer Coffee Tables | Bespoke | Be Different @Andrew Martin

My title tags are not perfect as I have not studied the brand. I think they are more suited than the current page titles in place and would provide more value for organic search.

Look at the possible keyword matches I could create from my title.

• Designer Coffee Tables
• Bespoke Coffee Tables
• Designer Bespoke Coffee Tables
• Different Coffee Tables
• Bespoke Tables
• Coffee Tables
• Etc.

You should feel more confident about creating that perfect page title. There is no one size fits all. Just let the content talk to you. Then use my structure along with what I have taught you and you are well on your way to the perfect page titles.

If you have any questions or doubts about your title tags get in touch via twitter or leave a comment and I will happily give you some advice.

 

SwbDesigns 41 Huntingdon Road, Woking, Surrey GU21 3JP‬
‪01483 853985 ‬‎