If you’re serious about getting more traffic to your site, a great place to start is by taking control of your title tags. Before you can do that, however, you need to do what they are, why they’re important for SEO, and how to change them.
What are title tags?
The title tag is exactly what it sounds like: the title of your page. Appearing as the text inside a browser’s tab and the anchor text of links in search results, this element is key to letting both users and search engines know what your page is about. Every webpage is required to have a title tag and may not have more than one.
Why are title tags important for SEO?
Given that this is what you’ve named your page, title tags are an important factor when search engines are deciding if your page is relevant for a specific search query. Including your primary keyword or keyword phrase in your title tag is a must when attempting to rank for a given term. This is also likely to increase your click-through rate (the percentage that indicates how often users click through to your website when it is shown in the search results). Tips for writing SEO-friendly title tags:
- Keep your title tags under 60 characters in length. This will ensure that your title is not getting cut off in search results.
- Put your keywords as close to the beginning of your title tag as possible. This will increase your page’s perceived relevancy to specific search queries.
- Accurately describe your page’s content. This will not only improve your site’s user experience, but also help to decrease your site’s bounce rate (the percentage of users that navigate away from your site after only viewing one page).
- Include your site’s brand name at the end of each title tag. This can increase brand awareness and is considered best practice for title tags.
How do you change your title tag?
If you’re comfortable editing your webpage’s HTML, you can easily add your title tag inside the section of the page like this:
If you don’t want to touch any code (although it’s helpful to know HTML if you’re doing SEO), most platforms have an easy option available:
- WordPress – Many SEO plugins are available including the popular “Yoast SEO” plugin, which offers a variety of SEO features beyond updating title tags.
- Drupal - Like WordPress, Drupal has many SEO solutions to choose from including the “Drupal SEO Tools” module which features the ability to change a page’s title tag.
- Shopify – Unlike many other platforms, Shopify natively offers an interface for changing the title tag of any page.
As most platforms automatically generate a title tag from your page’s title within the CMS, they can be easy to ignore. However, the importance of well-optimized title tags in both SEO and user experience make them a necessity for any website.
