Writing Better Page Titles

In my previous article I talked about the importance of page titles, and why you should use them to their full potential. Today I am going to give you some pointers on how to write much better page titles, and how you can use them to greatly improve your site’s search ranking.

Use keywords and phrases

Well - you can’t get any more obvious than this. When writing a title you should try to use at least 4 keywords. Do not make your title into a list of keywords, instead use them in a sentence or two. Even better, use phrases.

Make your title a bit longer

You should try to make your title at least 64 characters. The W3 recommends not making it longer than 64 characters because it will be cut off, and that is good advice. However, you can make it a hundred characters long if you want.

You should know that some search engines may view really long titles are being a form of spam, and they can actually hurt you. But they have to be really long for that to happen.

Use your web site’s name on every page

This step is easy if you use blog software like WordPress. You should use your web site’s name in the main title of every single web page. This is a good way to let people know that the page is still on your site.

Don’t spam

As I said above, your title should not be super long (150+ characters) because it can hurt your rankings more than it helps. Many search engines view long titles (in the title tag, or even the H1-H6 tags) as being a form of keyword spam, which, of course, is bad.

Describe your article

Your title should describe your article. The title is much more important than even the first paragraph of an article - it is generally the first place where users look. If your article is about growing flowers, then the title should be something like “101 Tips to Make Your Flowers Grow Faster”, and not “Growing Flowers”.

It should be short enough to remember, and more importantly, it should be catchy enough to get the attention of the prospective reader.

Use your article title in your page title

This is also fairly easy if you are using good blog software. The article title is generally what appears inside header elements (H1-H6), but it doesn’t hurt to have it as part of your page title as well. The reasoning behind this is pretty obvious, search engines love keywords, and your article title should be keyword rich. I would not recommend using your article title more than 2 or three times on a single page though - if you use it more than that search engines may detect it as a form of spam.

Avoid common words

You should try to avoid using common words such as: “and”, “or”, and “but.” Using these words in your title can make your title uncomfortable to read, and they don’t help your rankings any. Try to avoid them as much as possible.

Conclusion

It is very easy to improve your page and article titles, there really is no reason to not do it. Search engines love it, and more importantly your readers love it. The titles of your pages and articles are what initially catches the reader’s attention. They can make the difference between a regular reader and a one-time viewer.

Please subscribe, or else I will cry. Do you really want to make a programmer cry?