Did you know that the title of your web page or blog post is one of the first things that pops up when searching for your website through the search engines. Not only does it give the user an idea on what the webpage is about, but your title plays an important role in the position of your site within the rankings. To make sure that your webpage titles are completely optimized, follow these simple steps:
#1 Title Length
When your website’s page title is displayed within the search engine results page, a maximum of 70 characters will be displayed. If you go over 70 characters, you could find some of the title is missing and it won’t make sense. Alternatively, with some of Google’s recent updates, they will occasionally reword your webpage title if it is too long to ensure a better user experience. If this is the case, it could prove to be very detrimental to your click-through rate.
On the other hand, make sure that your titles are not too short. Keep them at a minimum of 50 and not more than 70 characters to get the best possible click-through rate.
#2 Get Your Keywords in Your Titles
It is really important to include the keywords that you wish to rank well for within the titles of your webpage. Try to avoid just having ‘Home’, for example, and get in some relevant keywords. See this great blog post on how to find the most effective keywords for your website.
#3 Keep it Fresh
Last but not least, all of your webpage titles must be unique. Each different webpage has to have its own webpage title to show that it has its own unique content. Failure to do this can result in your website being punished and leaving your potential users very confused. If you’ve been adding pages to your WordPress site, you will notice that sometimes a number is added after the URL – for example /contact-2. This is a result of adding an updated page with the same title without deleting the prior. These pages are stored in the database, so even if you update the URL, if you didn’t delete the prior page, WordPress will automatically add that number.
Follow the above steps and you should be on your way to creating healthy, SEO friendly webpage titles that will help your website rank well within the organic search listings. Ignore them and you could find our website is losing out on a lot of potential visitors.
