What is a Title Tag?
A title tag is used to give the user a brief insight into what a webpage will contain. The title tags you write appear in the search results pages above your meta description. Title tags should be optimised for with SEO techniques to ensure that the user is seeing the most relevant websites for their search query.
Keywords
The title tag can be found in the <head> tag within your site’s html code. To utilise your title tag to its full potential, implementing keywords into the title of all the pages you want to rank for will help your SEO rankings and get your content found.
Your most important keyword/s should be as close to the beginning of the title tag as possible. A title tag is usually split into three sections: page name, category, and brand name. This rule is commonly implemented on every page of a website to keep it consistent. This rule doesn’t have to apply for your homepage, which can be unique and contain your targeted keywords alongside your brand name.
For example, the title tag for our homepage can be seen below:
<title>Digital Marketing Agency in Birmingham: SEO & PPC Services | In Front Digital</title>
The title tag for one of our latest learn articles:
<title>How To Find Your Online Competitors – In Front Digital</title>
It is important to have a structure to the layout of your title tags and keep it consistent throughout your website.
Where Do Title Tags Appear?
Whilst title tags may look like they simply define the name of your page, they do much more than that. The title you write will appear in the search results, so it has to be relevant to what the user is searching for and has to entice them to click on your listing rather than other results on the page.
Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter also use your defined title tag on links shared in status updates and tweets. The example below is a good example as it also lets the user know it is an infographic, which are especially popular on Facebook:
Optimisation of Title Tags
Your title tag needs to sum up what your page is about, but it also needs to stand out from your competitors as well as containing at least one keyword relevant to that page. When deciding on a title, keep in mind that there is a cut off limit of 50-60 characters. If your title tag has more than 60+ characters then it may not display properly in Google, so ensure your keyword is towards the beginning of the tag. The character limit for title tags was once 75 characters but since the rise in mobile searches, this had to be reduced to fit on the 512 pixel display of mobile devices.
Despite having a character limit for your title tag, make it enticing and make the reader want to click on your page to read more. Try to stick to the character rule but if you have an engaging title that is a little longer, that’s okay too. Another point to consider is that some letters are larger than others which take up more room (including capital letters), so your finished title tag needs to fit on a 512-pixel display.
Well-known brands such as Amazon and Ebay go against the title tag rule by putting their brand name first. This is because they already have a developed brand so people may be searching specifically for the brand name and the product they are interested in.
For more advice on how to improve your SEO, read our learn articles.