How to Write Amazing SEO Page Titles in 2017

Is your website missing out on opportunities to reach new customers and clients because of your page title tags? There’s a strong possibility that it could be. 

First off, what is an SEO page title? 

On your website, the page title tells Google and visitors what the page they are landing on is about. It’s the text that is used when Google shows your website to searchers and also shows up to the user in the top of their browser. 

Depending on how your website is built, adding page titles doesn’t have to be technical. For most of our clients here at BLU, we use WordPress. Within WordPress, we use the plugin Yoast. Yoast is an easy to use SEO helper that we highly recommend. It will rank your SEO efforts based on a keyword that your page is about, then tell you how to improve that rating. 

How long should page titles be?

Google doesn’t count a particular number of characters but it does has a fixed width in which it can show the title. This means it could show many more i’s than it could show w’s. Typically, your title should be anywhere between 55-65 characters.

How do you write page titles that will attract users and appeal to search engines at the same time?

This article from Yoast explains it perfectly: “There are two goals that a good title must achieve: it must help you rank for a keyword and it must make the user want to click to your page. These two goals are not mutually exclusive, but they do sometimes have competing interests. If you’re ranking but nobody is clicking on your result, the ranking doesn’t do you much good. Be aware that if you’re ranking but never getting clicks, over time, your rankings might deteriorate.”

Previously, we have practiced a “piping” method of writing titles. These titles made use of all of the character space and piped out exactly what our targeted keywords were. In these previous practices, an optimized title would look like this:

Advertising | Marketing | Web Design | The BLU Group | La Crosse

However, now Google is shifting to give higher rankings to websites that have titles that are more directed at attracting the user, and truly enticing them to visit your website. This can be difficult because it has to be a balancing act. You should still optimize for your keywords, but do so in a way that is engaging for users. So with this new update, a better page title would be:

Advertising, Marketing, & Design Agency in La Crosse | The BLU Group

You may be asking, “what’s the difference between those titles?”, and it comes down to the user. One is made for only search engines, and the other is made for both search engines and the user.

Still have questions about title tags? Give us a ring at 608-519-3070. We’d love to help you out and put an SEO plan together to help grow your business.