How to Write a Good Title

I get many requests to write basic SEO articles which concentrate on the implementation of  SEO techniques rather than the theory. Following on from the basic SEO 101 post what better way to start than with one of the most important factors in writing a page namely the title.

The title is the text that appears between the <title> tags at the beginning of the web page code. It is not the main heading of a web page. The title does not appear on the web page itself but it does appear in the browser window in the title bar. It also appears in the search results as shown below:

The title is important because it is the first indication to the search engine spider  what the web page is about. A good title should be descriptive for users (as it appears in the search results) and it should also benefit you in terms of search volume.

Google has a maximum title length of 65 characters as this experiment from Hobo SEO shows. (In fact it is 66 characters if you count the space, although this could be inserted by Google. ) Looking at search results for a number of queries it does not cut off  the title in the middle of a word.

Using the same page indexed for the experiment and counting the number of characters returned we can see that Yahoo returns a maximum of 72 characters while Live has a maximum of 66 characters.

So the limit for the number of characters in all three major search engines is 65-66 characters. The extra characters offered within a Yahoo title is unlikely to yield any extra benefit so if you want your title to be seen in all the major search engines keep the length to 65 characters.

Within this character limit we need to target the best key-phrases that will give the greatest overall search volume. This is where good keyword research is important to find keywords that are suitable for the page you are optimising. One might argue that the top level page should use the most generic keywords in the hope that traffic will come to the page and be funnelled into the particular section of the site they are interested in. However, competition for keywords goes hand in hand with search volume. The chances are,  these generic keywords are difficult to obtain especially if your site is not well established.

Another strategy is to choose keywords in the title that are more specific and will give you small amounts of targeted traffic. While lower in search volume these keywords may be more likely to target your users needs. When your site becomes more powerful, these keywords will rank for more competitive terms.

For example, to rank well for SEO or search engine optimisation for example requires a great deal of power.  More specific terms such as Search Engine Optimisation Tips are  still fairly competitive. Targeting a phrase such as  Free Search Engine Optimisation Tips would be more likely to result in success.

Make a list of the possible keyphrases: Search Engine Optimization Tips, Search Engine Optimization Tutorials, Search Engine  Optimisation Techniques gives a list of possible key phrases that describe the content of the home page that covers as many outcomes as possible. Note that variations in spelling can also have an effect. The American spelling of Optimisation with a z is a far more commonly searched for term so despite being based in the UK, I have gone for both spellings.  These key phrases can be combined into the meaningful title:

Free Search Engine Optimization/Optimisation Tips, Tutorials and Techniques.

In the search results, the title is marked as being related to the search query if there is a direct match between the words in the query and the words in the title. However, the title would indirectly match other term all be it separated by other words in the title. This title does contain direct matches for

• Search Engine Optimization
• Free Search Engine Optimization

And indirect matches to:

• ~ Tutorials
• ~ Techniques
• ~ Tips

(where I have used ~ to stand for Search Engine Optimization or Search Engine Optimisation)

Many more useful variants which can result from the permutation of this title that are likely to be high search volume terms  yet it still describes the content of the page even using alliteration.  For category pages, where there is still a range of different search terms that can be used to describe the page would keep the keywords slightly more focused but still allow for some variation in the search terms. While for individual pages within the site, I would use titles that really target on the content of the pages to pick up the long-tail searches.  It is a fine line between optimisation and keyword stuffing so I would limit the titles to a few words.