What is a Page Title?
A Page Title is an HTML element that sits in the <head> section of a web document and specificies the title of the page. It provides a brief synopsis or description of the HTML document.
Why is a Page Title Important?
The page title is the name of a web document and it can be seen as the single most important HTML element for SEO. The page title is a search engine ranking factor when determining the order of search results.
My name is “Edwin” and it’s a significant part of my identity. In a similar fashion, search engines place a high level of importance in the name of the web document as it attempts to understand its identity.
Because search engines crawl and extract the Page Title from a webpage, this provides webmasters an opportunity to tell search engines how relevant a webpage is to a specific subject. You can insert keywords or phrases in page titles.
By using keywords in your page titles, you improve the likelihood of ranking for those keywords.
Where do Page Titles Appear?
Page Titles appear in a few locations, some more visible than others.
HTML
As it’s an html element, you’ll be able to view the page title tag directly in the html source code. Below you can see the page title for my homepage.
Search Engine Results
When Google populates search results for a search phrase, each website that is ranked appears alongside various text. Page Title makes up the blue text that links to a webpage.
Because the Page Title is so public facing, it’s crucial to ensure that the element is engaging and remains relevant to the search phrase.
Browsers
The Page Title is also found at the top of a browser and can be seen on its own tab. Keeping the content at the start of the Page Title helps users identify the tab among other tabs that are also open.
Social Platforms
Social platforms, like LinkedIn, pull in the Page Title to provide a summary of a link that is going to be shared.
Other external sites may also lean on the Page Title to generate this type of experience, including Facebook and Twitter. You may not need to use the same Page Title to optimize for social networks, as they use their own markup – Facebook uses Open Graph Tags and Twitter uses Twitter Cards.
Page Title Best Practices
Although page titles are a ranking factor, they can also impact how users interact with your web listing in the search results.
As such, you’ll want to ensure that you write an effective, compelling, and relevant page title for your webpages. Here are some recommendations to help you get started.
Important Keywords First
To a degree, page titles are like real estate. With real estate, it’s about location, location, location. Page titles are similar, in that regard.
When adding keywords to a page title, make sure you put the keywords that are an SEO priority at the start of the tag. Doing so tells search engines “This keyword is more important than the text after it”. Keywords closer to the start of the tag have a larger impact to the ranking of your webpage.
For example, if you sell “dog bandanas”, you might have the below page title,
“Shop Our Extensive Supply of Dog Bandanas | Dog Bandana Shop”
But your target keyword “dog bandanas” is not prioritized in the page title. To help optimize, you’ll want to place the target keyword towards the start of the page title, so it reads,
“Dog Bandanas – Shop Dog Bandana Shop”
Notice we placed a focus on “dog bandanas”, which will tell search engines there is a sense of priority in the page title.
To help understand which keywords to place as a priority, you have to perform keyword research that looks at how relevant a phrase is and how much Monthly Search Volume it accrues. Monthly Search Volume (MSV) is how often users search for a phrase. To help see which keywords would be prioritized and what their MSV are, perform keyword research using tools such as,
Watch Your Page Title Length
When you look at search results, you may notice that a page title may include an ellipsis, or “…”. This denotes that the page title has gone too long and Google is truncating the page title, or cutting it off.
Notice the above page title for Overstock and how search engines truncate the rest of the content.
It is generally recommended that page titles stay between 60 – 65 characters long. It’s also important to consider pixel width, or the width of the container that houses the page title. The pixel width can range but below you can see Overstock’s width is 523.78 but it isn’t the same across all results.
You’ll want to ensure that, at the very least, you abide by a reasonable character length. To measure the length of your characters and pixels for a page title, you can use this tool.
Avoid Keyword Stuffing
Keyword Stuffing is when you attempt to place multiple keywords into the page title.
Remember, Google appreciates you placing a keyword, or target phrase in the page title; it helps them understand your page. By doing so, you improve your likelihood of ranking for that keyword.
However, the issue is when you use too many keywords you’re trying to rank for.
Let’s say you sell watches and want to rank for as many terms as possible so you include a lot of keywords and your page title looks like this,
Watches for Men, Watches for Women, Watches for Kids, Blue Watches, Red Watches, Watches for Sale
The above doesn’t help with user experience and Google can see that you’re trying to rank for as many keywords as possible. With that, there’s less of a reason for Google to rank your website.
It might be tempting but avoid keyword stuffing.
Create Unique Page Titles
Search engines put great weight in unique and original content. That includes content found in a page title. The page title serves as an opportunity for you to tell search engines about a unique experience on every page of your site.
Creating duplicate page titles contributes to duplicate content and doesn’t help distinguish a target keyword for a set of pages. Focusing on unique page titles allows you to expand the amount of keywords you can target – widening the amount of keywords you can rank for.
Write for the User
One of the reasons why Google has been so successful is because of the value it brings users. At the end of the day, it’s about the experience of the search user.
When writing your page title, make sure you keep the user in mind and that the page title satisfies something that the user is looking for. If you keyword stuff, it’s not helping the user; it’s helping your brand. Google understands when a site tries to keyword stuff and it’s why they won’t rank a webpage with a spammy page title.
By writing a compelling page title, you entice users to click through to your webpage. Remember a page title is the gateway to your site, make sure you include content in the page title that is worth them clicking it.
