Publisher growth tactics for election season | WEBINAR
Publisher growth tactics for election season | WEBINAR
After going through this module, you should be able to understand what title tags are, why they’re important, how to write a good title tag and the most common issues to avoid when trying to create SEO titles and headlines.
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The Title tag is an HTML tag that is placed within a page’s source code to define its title for search engines. This is important information as it tells web crawlers what to display in search engine results pages (SERPs).
The text entered within the Title tag is the clickable link that shows up in SERPS. It is also the text that appears as the heading in browser tabs.
Within a page’s HTML source code, the Title tag is placed in the <head> section.
In the screenshot below, the hyperlinked text that appears in the SERP results is what was placed within the Title tag in that page’s source code.
This text also appears as the heading of the browser tab when we click on the page.
When we right click anywhere on the page (while using Chrome) and select View Page Source, we see the Title tag at the very beginning of the source code right after the <head> section begins.
You should understand, however, that while you may have set your Title tag, Google may still choose to ignore it and choose another title of its own. So, why does it do this?
The Title tag isn’t the only content signal Google examines. If it decides the title you’ve picked doesn’t do a good job of representing a page’s content, it will choose another.
Google uses the following points to decide what a page’s title should be:
For this reason, it’s important to make the various headings on your page visually distinct and of different sizes to avoid confusing web crawlers. Also, ensure that you write different and not over-optimised headings to prevent Google from automatically rewriting them.
Google uses Title tags as a ranking signal. We know this because in the company’s SEO starter guide, Google says that Title tags help inform search engines as to a page’s content.
Understanding your page’s content helps Google sort and classify pages more efficiently and serve the best results for search queries.
The Title and <H1> are two different tags that serve similar purposes. This is why sometimes the terms end up being used interchangeably in discussions.
However, there is a crucial difference between the two that needs to be understood for better SEO practices.
As already explained, the content that goes within the Title element is displayed in three places — the SERPs, the browser tab and also within social media posts.
The content that goes within the <H1> element is displayed as the largest heading on your page. In most cases, this is the same as the title. Even though you can have different Title and <H1> elements, it is good practice to keep them the same to avoid confusing readers and search engines.
If the title is too long, or does not align with the page’s main content, Google may pick up some other prominent text from the page and use it as the title. However, Google has stated that up to 80% of the time, it generates titles based on what is inside the Title tag.
While Title tags are a direct ranking signal, many publishers are still struggling to master this page component. There are a number of reasons for this.
Many lack the time and resources needed to maximize their Title tags to improve page click through rates (CTRs).
Some will also have a limited understanding of how to use different formats based on search intent and niche variables to improve timeliness and CTR. For example, publishers looking to match the search intent of those looking for a list of the best new shows on Netflix should consider including a month and year in the title. A best product list, however, only really needs to include the year in the title.
Other publishers, meanwhile, will not understand why, when they include Title tags, Google picks another heading and to display instead.
Don’t worry, we’re going to explore ways to overcome these challenges.
Now that we know what title tags are, and why they’re important, we need to know how to create a great Title tag that is optimized both for search engines and for your visitor’s needs.
The text within the Title element is what users see displayed in SERP results, when they search for a query in Google search. This in turn plays a deciding role in shaping their decision to click on a link or not.
How To Do This
If you are using a CMS such as WordPress, the H1 will by default be selected as the title.
If you want to change the title of a post or page, you’ll need a plug-in such as Yoast or All in One SEO Pack. With one of these plugins installed, when you edit a post you’ll see the option to edit the Title tag.
If you’re not using a CMS to build your website, you’ll need some knowledge of coding and experience in using an HTML editor such as Chrome DevTools. It’s best to speak to a developer before making changes to your website’s HTML code.
However, you can easily view the existing Title tag of your page by right clicking on any blank space within the page while using Chrome and clicking View Source Code.:
To create a good Title tag requires understanding some of the best practices related to the process. These include:
We’ve seen the best practices that go into the writing of good Title tags. Now let’s turn to the rules of writing good title tags.
We discussed the essentials of creating SEO titles in the previous section. Next, we’ll look at some practices which, while not essential, greatly help with creating good titles and headlines.
You can choose to display your website or brand name in each title that you create for every page on your website. This strategy front-loads the brand name, and is a good way to enhance your brand value and build recognition.
For instance, consider the following Title tag:
Title examplesite.com: Create New Account </title>
Using this format for several, or at least your most important pages, helps increase brand recognition as users see not just information about the specific page in the title, but also your website’s name.
If you’re a news provider that publishes content frequently, manually creating SEO title tags may not be feasible. In such a case, you might want to consider using a Title tag generator tool such as copy.ai to automate the process.
So far we’ve talked about the things we need to do to create SEO titles. It’s important, however, to also look at things we should avoid doing that can hinder our rank chances.
If you’re repurposing content over a long period of time and your title contains dates, years or other “perishable” information, remember to update the title whenever you make changes to the content.
This is a very common oversight as the title is usually edited at the backend, unless your CMS is automatically picking up your H1 as the title.
For example, if your title is:
Title Best Digital Publishing Software in 2021 </title>
Be sure you update it when you refresh and republish the content for 2022.
Boilerplate titles are those that are used without any changes for multiple pieces of content, which can lead Google to classify them as duplicate content.
For certain kinds of content, it’s unavoidable that titles may end up being very similar. For example, if you run an entertainment news website and publish content on TV series, you’re likely to publish multiple articles dealing with different episodes and seasons of the same TV series.
In such cases, it’s essential that you differentiate each title with the relevant episode or season number identifier to avoid duplication.
Here’s an example:
Let’s look at two websites that have SEO Title tags and see if there’s still some room for improvement.
Upworthy.com is a popular news website that publishes feel-good stories. In the example below, we typed the keywords “organic food planet” into Google and saw their story on organic food ranking fairly high in the SERPs.
At one glance, we notice the following about the title:
This last point distinguishes this particular search result from the ones preceding and succeeding it. This is the reason why you’re likely to remember the name Upworthy but may easily forget news.climate.columbia.edu or eatingmadeeasy.com. The title here is working towards creating a strong brand recall.
Once we click on the link, we arrive at the following page:
We can see that the title is identical to the H1, minus the publisher’s name. Furthermore, the H1 is the largest and most prominent body of text on the page to avoid ambiguity.
When we right click on the page and look at the title element in its HTML source code, this is what we see:
Notice how the title has been written in simple sentence case, while the name of the publisher has been set off with a hyphen. This is reflected in how the result appears in the SERPs.
Collider.com focuses on publishing TV, movies and entertainment news. We’ve chosen this example to demonstrate how it gets most things right, but still has room for improvement.
When searching for House of the Dragon Season 1, this page is among the top results from Google.
We notice the following about its title:
When we click on the link, we are led to the below page:
We notice that the H1 is the largest heading on the entire page, and thus is the most prominent text, leaving little ambiguity about what should go in the title.
We can also see that the H1 and the title are in title case with all the major words capitalized and articles, prepositions, etc. left uncapitalized. This, as we discussed, is a good rule to follow when creating titles and headlines.
At the same time, we also notice that the H1 is not the same as the title of the clickable link that appeared in the SERP results.
Does this mean that this page has a different H1 and title?
When we look at the HTML source code of the page, we see that the title given in the Title tag was the same as the H1.
What happened in this case, was that Google automatically truncated an unusually long title and replaced the portion of the title after the colon with the name of the publication.This was most likely done because the title in this case exceeds the usual norm of 50-60 characters we discussed earlier.
While this page adopts most of the best practices for creating titles and headlines, it still has some room for improvement when it comes to title length.
We’ve seen in this module why titles and headers are important for SEO, and learned the best practices for implementing them.
We now understand the difference between a title and an H1 and have learned how to create effective titles and headlines that inform not just search engines, but also our audiences about our content.
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