When it comes to finding your business online the first stop for many is the search engines. The search engines contain billions of pages of content and you want to be found in the top free organic spots. To do this one of the items you need to focus on is your page title. As we take on more customers as part of their monthly SEO we've developed a checklist that we use to optimize the page titles of a website. We will cover a good portion of these items below.
What is a page title?
Your page title shows in multiple places. The first is when someone goes to your website it shows in the title bar of your web browser. The other critical place that your page title shows is within the search engine results pages (SERPs) of each search engine. The page title is the first visual queue many users will notice about your online web business.
Being honest
Whenever you work with JM2 Webdesigners in Northwest Alabama you will always hear about "Rule #1" of no lying which means being honest in everything you do. The reason for this is that when you are honest and don't lie people will respect you more. When you are honest and obey the rules of the search engines it's known as "White Hat". This means you don't break or skirt the rules to try to move up faster than you should. SEO is truly a marathon and takes weeks, even months, to start to move up. If you hear the I can get you to X position in Y days, you are most likely being lied to so that the person can get your money. Be very wary of these situations.
Making the Cut
The search engines have been very clear that they "may" use your provided title or will use their own. This doesn't mean you should not provide your own title; you truly should. Just a thought to be aware that if the search engines do not feel your provided title is representative of the page they will use one they generate themselves.
The Length
Back just a few years ago the recommendation was to stay 70 characters (including spaces) or less to be great. This has since changed back in 2014 when Google let Webmasters know that they are allowing 512 pixels for page titles. What is 512 pixels when it comes to letters. That is truly a tough answer as a "I" will take up less room than a "M". From a number of characters' standpoint, the new range is between 50 and 60 characters in length (still including spaces). If you go over this length you risk the … showing up in your title. This isn't a horrible item and lets your visitors know more information is there.
Being Unique
When it comes to your website we all know (or should) that having unique and quality content is key to the success of your website. The same is true for your webpages. Each page should have a unique title that is representative to the page being viewed. Under most circumstances the page title should not match that of other pages within your site.
Keywords
We know that most people will type words such as "Cullman Web Design", "Valpo Web Design", "Northwest Alabama Web Design", and even just "Web Design" to find web designers in a particular location. When it comes to titles using keywords is an important part of your SEO strategy. The keywords should not be "spammy" and should flow for someone reading them. A title of "Valpo Cullman Web Webdesign Web Design" would not be a great title. A title of "Serving Cullman Alabama for Web Design | JM2 Valpo" would be a much better title. You will see from that sample that we are using "Cullman Alabama", "Web Design", and "JM2 Valpo" within the title. Now if our page also uses those words that adds relevance to the title and will be more apt to be used by the search engines.
When you are working on your title it is always good to avoid repeating your keywords. When you have a title with a keyword repeating multiple times it often is treated as spam and often will be replaced with another title.
Separators
As you create your titles you will notice that many sites use a pipe (|) command in the titles. This is a common and excepted value for separating in titles. You will often see a pipe used when separating the title from the name of a company.
Another character seen is the dash (-) as a separator. Either works fine and will routinely have a space before/after the separator character.
Branding
Branding is an essential part to marketing your business. Your company name should always be at the end of the page title in most situations. The reason for this is you should rank in the top spots for your name. What you need to be working on is those non-branded and off-brand keywords as part of your page title.
Handling Losing your Title
You've crafted a unique title for every one of your pages. You are very happy with the results. Google and the other search engines have chosen different words for the title than you wanted. So what do you do now? The key here is to change it up and make it work better for you.
Conclusion
A page title is one of the area's most often missed by beginners and experts alike when it comes to SEO. You need to take your time in crafting your page title just as you do your page content. Well written titles can help bring people to your result. Generic titles will often lead people to go to another link. Having your content writer craft appropriate titles can help take your page content from good to great.
If you would like help with SEO, content writing, or a great website contact JM2 Webdesigners in Northwest Alabama to help you achieve success. Our team is dedicated to making your business grow and we become a business partner to help you achieve success. You can reach us at 256-258-8593, email at sales@FawkesDM.com, or through our online contact form.