There are many factors that determine the rank of a website on search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. Optimised Meta Tags on a web page is one of most basic factors.

Meta tags are special HTML code typically added in the head section of the HTML code. Meta tags inform search engines about the content of the web page. Of the three main Meta tags i.e. Title, Description and Keywords, Title is the most important for search engine ranking.

In this article, we take a closer look at the Title Tag and discuss the main tips for optimising your Title tag for SEO.

1. The Right Length

Try to keep your Title tag less than 70 characters in length including spaces.

2. Include Keywords

Include your primary keywords in the title tag. Many websites simply include the page name e.g. About Us. This is not optimised as no one will search for About us on Google and you are not making full use of the 70 characters allowed in this highly useful tag.

3. Keyword Placement

The placement of words in your title tag is also important. Words that appear at the start are given more importance by search engines. As such it helps to include your primary keyword for that page at the start rather than towards the end of your title tag. If you wish to include your company name or name of the section, you can always use it at the end of the title tag.

e.g. “Web Design Company – About Us” is better for SEO than “About Us – Kronik Media, Web Design Company”

4. Don’t Over-use Keywords

The benefits of using keywords in your Meta Title tag for SEO is widely acknowledged. It is however not to get carried away and use keywords excessively. It is better to optimise one page (including Meta tags) for one or two keywords only. I prefer to optimise a page for a single keyword phrase only. This way I can focus all my attention to optimise the page for that keyword. Some people also make the mistake of repeating the same keyword multiple times in the title tag for a page. This will not improve your chances of ranking for that keyword. If anything, you risk appearing as spam to search engines as well as users.

5. Avoid Stop Words

Try to leave out stop words from your title tag e.g. a, the, in, for, from, etc. Your title tag does not necessarily have to read like a sentence as long as it appears logical in describing what the page is about. Title tag is very important real estate and you want to make the best use of the maximum limit of 70 characters that are considered by search engines.

6. Use Unique Titles on Each Page

Use unique title tags on each and every page of your website. Some of the keywords can be common on more than one page howevet the entire tag should not be same. You will be surprised with how many websites have identical Meta Tags on all pages.

7. Make Sure it is Relevant

Make sure your title tag is relevant to the page. Don’t try to mislead users or search engines. It does not make sense for the title tag to say “Accounting Services London” if the page is actually the “About us” page for a Tax Lawyer in New York.

Optimised Title Tag – Examples

There are many ways to write an optimised Meta Title tag. The suggestions discussed above will allow you to create Meta Tags that are optimised for search engines. Some experts suggest on using | as the separator for your keywords in your title tag. One format that works well is:

Primary Keyword | Secondary Keyword | Company Name or Page Name

For example, with the above logic, an optimised title tag for the about us page for a Web design company could be as follows:

Web Design Company | London | Kronik Media

Or

Web Design Company | London |  About Us

Or

Web Design Company | London | Kronik Media | About Us

Conclusion:

One needs to focus on many on-page and external SEO factors to rank favourably on search engines. Meta Title tag is one of the important on-page SEO factor. You can use the tips discussed above t you can use to create search engine optimised title tags:

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