Google will love your title tags if you follow these simple rules

Google is always changing and editing its algorithm, but you can’t worry about that. They pay thousands of people to perfect internet search, so let them do their job and we’ll do ours. As web publishers and internet retailers, we just have to try to stay ahead of the curve and make sure our pages and websites continue to be found among the billions of pages on Google. This is part of a series of articles I’ll be posting on how to force Google to show you and your website love.

Title tags with your keywords in them – Title tags used to be more important now than they are today, but there is no doubt that title tags play a huge factor in how Google sees your site. Google displays your title tag as your title in every search listing on your site. Every page on your blog, website, or store should have title tags. DON’T BE LAZY MAKE TITLE LABELS.

Some important factors when creating your title tags are as follows.

Make sure your title tags aren’t cluttered with keywords. Keyword stuffing used to be the craze in the past, but today it will only hurt your online image as far as Google is concerned. A good title tag can do wonders for your search engine ranking in Google, but a bad title tag can cause Google to ignore you. Don’t piss off the boss (Google is our boss in the SEO world, whether we like it or not) and make sure your title tags are a good representation of your business with carefully placed keywords.

When you can see the endpoints after a Google listing, the title tag is too long. I don’t recommend title tags that are that long as Google will cut them off and I think you’ll have a higher click-through rate when your entire title tag is visible in search listings. Keep your title tags to 65 characters, including spaces.

Use dividers in your title tags to separate your brand name and keywords from each other. The “|” The pipe symbol is a popular divider, as are the arrow “>” and the hyphen “-“. You can see that both the pipe and dash symbols are effectively used in the “gold watches” search above. When using your brand name in the title tag, make sure it is separated from the title description or keywords with a separator. This is shown in the above link to GoldWatches.com separated by the “-” from the product descriptions.

Remember your search audience when creating title tags. Your goal with a title tag is not only to make Google happy and get you listed for your target keywords, but also to entice users to click on your listing once it’s listed. You should have different types of title tags for main index pages, research pages, product description pages, etc. For example, a main index page that links to your main website will have a more general title tag. Pages that focus on research articles will need a slightly more detailed title that describes the topic and name of the article. If you’re selling a product on your page, be sure to include terms like “buy XM radios here,” “buy cheap Movado diamond watches,” download Usher songs for 0.99 cents, etc. in your title tags. In this day of SEO you really need to approach titles as copy first keywords second and I think if you take this approach you will be amazed at some of the results and conversions you get. Think if you had a title that attracted 1000 visitors and only 1 person bought something from you because the title was misleading and not descriptive enough or if you had a title that attracted 50 visitors and 10 people bought something. Which would you rather have?

If your title tag just can’t fit everything you need to describe your page, you may need to create a new page. Making lots of pages that focus on more focused content will not only help you create more efficient title tags, but it will also give you a better chance of being indexed by search engines for more keywords. So if you get to the point where you can’t put everything you want in your title tag, don’t worry, just create more pages with more specific content on each page.

DO NOT USE THE SAME TITLE TAG ON ALL YOUR PAGES. I won’t go into detail about this, just don’t.

Keyword proximity is very important in title tags as well as the rest of your website. I feel that keyword proximity is one of the most overlooked and important factors in how Google decides which keywords to index. Keyword proximity refers to how close your keywords are to each other. Search engines like Google ignore many words called “stop words”. Some stop words are “the”, “and”, “or”, etc. Using these words among your main keywords is simply breaking the importance of the keywords. Never split your most important keywords with stop words. It is important to keep the key phrases as close to each other as possible without using “stop words” between them. When used correctly, keyword proximity can earn you higher rankings in Google results, as keyword proximity in the title tag is considered one of the most important factors in determining Google search rankings.

Learn from your keyword competitors and see which title tags work for them. There is nothing wrong in the world of search engine optimization with taking what your competitor is doing and trying to outdo them. Look at the proximity of the keywords, the number of keywords in the title tag, the length of the title, the dividers, etc. and create your own formula to try to move up the ladder. If you remember these lessons, you should have no problem creating effective title tags that not only make Google happy, but also drive your dream customers to your website from Google search listings.

Go ahead and create some great title tags and quality web content that people want to read and Google will love you for.