Week 20 – Title Tags

🎯 👓 Eyes down, it’s Week 20 of the #atozofseo

𝕋 for Title Tags ✅

Open any page of any site in your browser and the text you see for the tab information at the top is the humble <title> tag.

It is also, of course, the blue link on a search results page (99% of the time anyway as Google is known to dynamically tweak them a bit from time to time) and still plays a very important role in SEO. Every page has a Title Tag (or should do) and these should be unique to help users and bots understand the main content of the page. Trying to rank for ‘red widgets’? Don’t have 3 pages with a Title Tag of Red Widgets then, make it the main/best page for that product line.

Title tags are primarily written with space in mind (around 65 characters) otherwise you’ll see the … as it wraps on a Search Result. HOWEVER, there is some conjecture that these tags can be pretty much any length you like in order to get the intent nailed. In other words, what Google ‘reads’ & what it ‘shows’ can be 2 slightly different things.

Most people include their brand to make it clear where a user will end up and, remembering that, this tag also becomes the bookmark label, this is often good practice (especially for a homepage). It’s not essential though, as ever with SEO – test, test and test again.