I’m keeping these 1 A Day SEO Tips in July quick and simple – and again, this is just my preference, backed up with observations I’ve made over the last few years I’ve been learning / practicing seo. This is the stuff people ask me on a daily basis at my seo company – What Is The Best Title Tag For Google?

<title>What Is The Best Title Tag For Google?</title>

Title Tag Best Practices

For me, a perfect title tag in Google is;

  1. Highly relevant to the page
  2. The “crown” of a keyword targeted article with keyword once
  3. Probably 5-12 words, but ideally under the 70 characters limit, so the full title appears in Google SERPS (search engine results pages) but it depends on the page content – character counter.
  4. A call to action which reflects exactly a searcher’s intent (ie to learn something, or buy something, or hire something. Remember this is your hook in search engines!
  5. The perfect title tag is unique in relation to other pages on the site
  6. I like to ensure my keywords feature as early as possible in a title tag
  7. For me, the company name goes at the end of the tag, and I use a variety of dividers as no one way performs best
  8. I like to think I write titles for search engines and human
  9. Know that Google tweaks everything regularly – why not what the perfect title keys off?
  10. Don’t obsess! Natural is better, and will only get better as engines evolve
  11. I think the more unique a title is relative to the site, the better in the long run. For instance, I’m probably going to change the title of our blog, to just ‘Hobo’ – one word. If all my titles were different and had ten words, that’s 90% variation title to title. I like this and will be moving towards it. I would expect Google to reward this lol

Note;

When you write a page title, you have a chance right at the beginning of the page to tell Google if this is a spammy site or a quality site – for example – have you repeated the keyword 4 times or only once? I think title tags, like everything else, should probably be as simple as possible too, with the keyword once and perhaps a related term if possible.

I think its fair to surmise Google might treat title tags (or title elements) on more authoritative domains differently than on new sites, too, that is, as with other things, more trusted domains might get away with more spammy titles, but from a user point of view and with searcher intent (and Googles commitment to this) at the forefront, I’d try and keep things as simple and looking as human-generated and unique as possible.

I’m certainly cleaning up the way I write my titles all the time. How do you do it?

Did you know when you link to a Hobo SEO post we have search engine friendly links back to your site if approved? Our comments are also search engine friendly you know (once you've commented on a few posts)! Do you need any more encouragement to get involved in the conversation ;)