“What is an SEO title?” That’s one of the first questions people ask when they start doing SEO.
The SEO title, also called the Tag Title, is an element written in HTML (a markup language) that specifies the title of a web page.
SEO titles appear in search engine results pages (SERPs) as clickable headlines. In practice, they’re the blue links you see when you search for something on Google.
Here’s an example of an SEO title written in HTML:
<head>
<title>Example of an SEO title</title>
</head>
What are SEO titles for?
SEO titles matter because they help search engines understand what your page is about, and because they’re the first thing people learn about your page — the title tag is what shows up in the SERP, in the browser tab, and on social media when the page or article gets shared.
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What is the meta title tag?
A meta tag is a piece of HTML code placed inside the page. The main meta tags are the meta title, the keyword and the meta description.
The meta title tag, the title tag, the SEO title and the tagtitle are all the same thing written in different ways. Worth knowing, so you don’t get lost in a glass of water — especially if you’re new to SEO.
How to optimize the SEO title
Writing the HTML title tag properly is an important part of optimizing a page for search.
Here are the practical rules for getting it right:
- Use a different title tag on every page of your site. This is essential so that only one page of your site gets indexed for the keyword you’re targeting. That way you won’t confuse Google or the other search engines.
- Be specific: write SEO titles that describe in detail what’s on the page.
- Watch the title tag length: aim for no more than 60 characters. A useful tool for SEO optimization is a plugin called Yoast, which gives you a preview of your SEO title and tells you whether you’ve used the right number of words and stayed within SEO parameters.
- Put the keyword in the title — this is essential. The SEO title is the first thing search engines analyse to work out what your page is about; without the keyword, the crawler won’t understand that you’re covering that topic.
- One thing you must NOT do is stuff the title with keywords. Google takes a dim view of this practice — it’s called keyword stuffing and it’s treated as grounds for a penalty. It applies not just to the title but to the whole page, so watch how many times you repeat the keyword in the SEO title and across your content.
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How do you add title tags?
These days you rarely add the title tag by hand, because CMSs have made the job much simpler. In WordPress, the most widely used CMS, you can set it inside the Yoast plugin (usually found above or below the article, depending on your theme and page builder).
The difference between the SEO title and the page title
Are the page title and the SEO title the same thing? Absolutely not — they can and should differ. The page title can be longer and more descriptive, and it has to contain the keyword. The SEO title, having to stay shorter, will be more focused but still needs to carry the keyword.
Useful SEO tools
Here are a few tools we find genuinely useful for writing pages with SEO in mind, analysing websites and much more:
- SEMrush and SEOZoom: two paid tools offering a wide range of research and analysis features.
- Google Search Console: useful for assessing how the site and its individual pages and articles are ranking.
- Google Ads Keyword Planner: free, and useful for finding keyword search volumes and getting suggestions.
Conclusion
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