The title tag is probably the most important part of a web pages onpage Google SEO and should be optimized for a small number of keywords or keyphrases, don’t keyword stuff the title tag.

The title tag is actually an HTML element, so it’s correct name is the “Title Element” not the “Title Tag”, but most webmasters and SEO experts call it the title tag, so…

Title Tags are VERY Important to Google SEO Rankings
Title Tags are VERY Important to Google SEO Rankings

The title tag is found within the HEAD section of the HTML of web pages and is very important to Google ranking. A webpages title is probably THE most important part of a pages onpage SEO (especially for placement in Google) and should ideally be search engine optimized for a small keyphrase, preferably just the one main keyword phrase for that page.

This SEO tutorial article is a general SEO title tag optimization article, if you are a WordPress user also see the WordPress SEO Title Tag Tutorial.

What a Title Tag Looks Like in a Browser

Let’s quickly deal with what a title tags looks like etc… so we can get on with the search engine optimization information.

When viewing a webpage in a browser like FireFox or Google Chrome you can see the pages title tag in the tab part of the browser window, if it’s a long title tag it’s truncated, hoverover the browser tab and you’ll see the entire title tag as you can see in the screenshot below.

Title Tags
Title Tags

In the screenshot above there’s four webpages (this webpage Title Tag SEO Tutorial, Books to Read, Classic Literature and Children’s Picture Books) loaded in FireFox and Chrome for comparison.

Title Tag HTML Example

To see the title tags HTML source in the browsers FireFox or Google Chrome “Right Click” anywhere on the page (avoid images, videos, links… so right click on text) and select “View Page Source”.

This will show the web page you just clicked on HTML source (the HTML code that creates the site). The screenshot below shows the head section of the Books to Read home page with the title tag code highlighted in blue.

HTML Title Tag Example
HTML Title Tag Example

I use the free Content Management System (CMS) WordPress on most of my sites and all this sort of code is built into WordPress and WordPress themes, but if you planned to create a webpage from scratch the minimum HTML code for a web page would look something like this:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" “http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>Title Tag Here</title>
<meta name="description" content="Create the perfect meta tags for high search engine placement.">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1″>
<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css" media="all">
</head>
<body>
Content code here
</body>
</html>

Even the above is more than is needed, below is a bare minimum web page with a title tag:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" “http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>Title Tag Here</title>
</head>
<body>
Content code here
</body>
</html>

The title tag HTML is:

<title>Title Tag Here</title>

If your websites web pages HTML lack this code or there’s more than one copy, something is wrong: ideally every web page will have unique title tags. View the HTML source of a few pages on this site and note they all have unique title tags.

Quick SEO Tip – Checking multiple title tags from a site takes time, for a quick overview do a Google site: search (site:URL). For example search Google for the text below and you’ll see all the pages indexed on this site:

site:https://seo-gold.com/

Very important SEO wise to aim for unique title tags, Google uses them as primary source for determining what a web page is about. If you’ve setup your Google Search Console (used to be called Google Webmaster Tools) when Google spiders webpages on a site with identical title tags you will see them listed within the search console.

Title Tags Are Used by Google
Title Tags Are Used by Google

Right, let’s get back to the SEO…

Title Tag SEO

The exact number of keywords, keyword density** and keyword proximity used for a title tag is dependent on a number of SEO factors including the difficulty of the keyword phrases (are they competitive and hard to rank for), the PageRank (PR) of the page (though we no longer have access to public PageRank figures), if you have control over the backlinks and anchor text to that page (so you can change the anchor text of the links) and the age of the sites backlinks: older backlinks generally means it’s easier for a site to rank well.

Title Tags Keyword Usage SEO Tip
Title Tags Keyword Usage SEO Tip

** There is no evidence adding a keyword two or more times to a title tag increases the title tag SEO benefit for that keyword.

For this reason it is advisable to only add a keyword once unless it makes sense from a user or keyword proximity perspective: for example for keyword proximity reasons a title like “SEO Tutorial – SEO Title Optimization” could be better than “SEO Tutorial – Title Optimization” IF your main SERP is “SEO Title Optimization”, but you also want your potential search engine visitors when viewing a Google SERP to know the page is an SEO Tutorial.

As a general rule of thumb when it comes to the title tags less is better than more as it concentrates the SEO benefit of the title over less keywords.

That being said it’s 2020 and Google has been around a long time (it’s indexed billions of webpages) and for some competitive SERPS you do not stand a chance of ever ranking even in the top 20 let alone the top 5 where the money is. It’s highly unlikely this site will rank high in Google for the one word keyword SERP: SEO.

Set Realistic SEO Goals
Set Realistic SEO Goals

Since it’s unlikely this site can rank for the single keyword SEO, it would be a waste of SEO resources (link benefit etc…) to target a webpage at the SEO SERP: be realistic with your SEO goals.

Example – This web page WordPress Title Tag SEO Tutorial is optimized primarily for the phrase WordPress Title Tag SEO Tutorial and a few related SEO terms including Title Tag SEO, WordPress SEO Title and various phrases including the relevant keywords.

I could have stuffed the TITLE element with all of these keyword phrases i.e. –

<title>WordPress SEO Tutorial - WordPress Title Tag SEO</title>

Or even a list of phrases like this as the title tag-

<title>WordPress SEO Tutorial - WordPress Title Tag SEO, Title Tag SEO, WordPress SEO Title</title>

Instead I Optimized the Title as-

<title>WordPress Title Tag SEO Tutorial</title>

I decided to use this title element because this concentrates SEO benefit from the title tag to the main phrase “WordPress Title Tag SEO Tutorial”. Since Search Engines like Google rate the contents of the title tag as important you ideally want THE most important phrase for that page on its own or with information for potential search engine visitors (like your brand name if branding is important).

At the time of updating this page (September 2018: moved the SEO tutorial to the SEO Gold site) I had a different title tag for the WordPress page above. A Google search for the entire (old) title “WordPress Title Tag SEO 2014” used to list the page high in Google (1st result). As you can see from the screenshot below the Google search shows the pages title tag plus my name: even though my name isn’t in the title tag, Google has associated my site to my name David Law: due to all the comment backlinks that use my name.

Google Title Tag SERP
Google Title Tag SERP

While it was the year 2014 having the 2014 increased the click through rate, people think SEO moves on quite quickly (read about the Google Hummingbird algo), by adding the current year it suggests it’s up to date information. Now that it’s 2020 it required an update and I changed it to “WordPress Title Tag SEO Tutorial” this time.

For the record this article has been online for 15+ years, though I keep it up to date it hasn’t changed that much over the years (one major change is the next “Title Tag Length” section): the title tag was important to Google 10+ years ago, it’s important now and will be important 5+ years from now.

Title Tag Length

There are exceptions to the loose rule of only use the main keyword phrase, if you have a very small website and lots of keyword phrases you wish to target, you have little choice, but to double or even triple up your titles keywords.

Small sites tend to be much harder to gain search engine traffic for.

Also if you have webpages with a lot of quality backlinks (backlinks are VERY important SEO wise) and are having no problems keeping the main keyphrase for those pages, you could experiment by adding further highly relevant search phrases to the title tag: it’s a risk, but you can always change it back.

Take care not to over do it, what you do today may not show full effect for weeks or months. For example if you added an extra phrase and 2 weeks later your main SERPs had not dropped, so you add another phrase, you might not see the negative effects of the first change for over a month. You may find months after the first change losing the webpages main previously stable SERP!

When making changes to a successful page err on the side of caution, SEO is a very long term process and requires a lot of patience. If you are taking a risk (like adding more phrases to a title element) give the page at least 2 months and preferably 3 before deciding if it was successful or not. If a recent change results in a major drop in SERPs seriously consider reverting to the original page, but be aware what you see today might be the result of what you did months ago or could be a coincidence, the search engine may have changed it’s algorithm (check the forums for reports of big changes) or some links to your site have been removed or changed.

Maximum Title Tag Length SEO Myth

Google used to show a set number of characters and this resulted in the SEO myth there was a maximum title tag length: the SEO belief Google only counted the part of the title shown for a Google search (not true). As I mentioned above you should aim to keep the title tag as short as possible, long enough to cover the search phrase target, long enough to cover potential visitor needs (you want them to click your link from a Google SERP).

Consider Modifying Truncated Title Tags
Consider Modifying Truncated Title Tags

In 2020 Google doesn’t show a set number of characters, Google shows a set number of pixels.

Others have tested the title tag length and found it can range from 70 odd characters to over 100 that fit within the pixel limit (some letters are wider than others). It is generally important that what a users sees for a SERP is enticing them to click your link (like an ad), so always keep in mind with a longer title something near the end might be truncated and look awful, same for keyword lists.

Title Tag Optimization

Long Title Tags are Truncated by Google
Long Title Tags are Truncated by Google

All because within a Google SERP a title tag is truncated when Google runs out of pixel space this does not mean Google ignores the words within an extremely long title tag. Google indexes the entire title tag, it will still index it all and count it towards SERPs, even if the title is 50 keywords long (been a while since I did this SEO test mind you).

This does not mean because Google WILL index and count long title tags you SHOULD create the perfect title and stuff what in effect will be hidden to Google search engine searches. Google will share the title tag benefit over the entire title tag, if you’ve added 50 words to a title, each word will gain 1/50th (2%) of the title tag SEO benefit.

If your main phrase for a page is 4 keywords long like “Best Title Tag Length” each of the four keywords will gain 25% of the total title SEO benefit. If the above is the start of a 50 keyword title “Best Title Tag Length… 46 more keywords” each of the important keywords gain only 2% of the title tag SEO benefit!

In conclusion what you put between the <title> and </title> element is very important so try to get it right.

David Law

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David Law : Technical SEO Expert with 20+ years Online Business, SEO, Search Engine Marketing and Social Media Marketing experience... Creator of multiple WordPress SEO Themes and SEO Plugins. Interests: wildlife, walking, environmental issues, politics, economics, journalism, consumer rights.

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