LifeStyleByChoice | Tips for Writing Good Title Tags

Lynn Rockwell — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 17:53:57 +0000

I want to share a few tips I’ve learned about using Title tags and Meta Description tags that are both SEO friendly as well as user friendly. Many times these two little items are the most overlooked by new website owners and new internet marketers, but yet can be the top traffic “getters” or top traffic “killers” for your site.

For those not familiar with them, both of these html tags go in the header section of your code – so between the and lines of code.

The title tag is pretty straight forward and looks like this Put your Title Here.

The description meta tag looks like this

Here are some tips for uses of both.

Always make sure you have a title for every page of your site, and never, never duplicate titles amongst pages – make sure every page has a unique title tag.
Make sure that the title tag is 65 characters or less. The reason for this is that you will then avoid the dreaded “…” being appended to the end of your title when displaying them in the SERP’s. And believe it or not, it’s been studied and proven that people are more likely to click on a title without the “…” than one with it.
Use your keywords in your title, but don’t “stuff” your title with keywords to the point that it becomes a meaningless blog of words. Remember, your ultimate goal is to have a user click on your link, so it won’t matter if you rank #1 on the page if no-one ever clicks your link. You are not only writing for the search engines but for humans looking for information as well.
Along the same lines as above, be sure to keep your meta description to 150 characters or less. By doing this you will again avoid the “…” being appended to your description, thus increasing the readability and odds of being clicked on. See the examples below to view what I mean. Both are on the 1st page of google, however the first example is much less readable and informative than the 2nd example.

Write your titles and descriptions as if you were writing sales copy. Your ultimate goal is to get the reader to click your link and visit your page/site. Make the text interesting – grab attention, create curiosity, evoke emotion or confirm the search intent of the user. So again, remember that you are writing for humans as well as the search engines. If you leave out the description meta all together, then the search engines will take a snippet from your website and use that in the SERP’s. This most likely will not be optimal from either an SEO or user experience point of view.
This isn’t a title or meta description tip, but make sure that your page headline – preferably put between
tags – confirms the topic of your title. This will reassure your visitor that he has indeed reached the page he thought he was clicking to.
Use your title tag to brand yourself/your site. So put your site name in the title if you have room. I use the pipe “|” but you could also use the hyphen “-” or possibly the “>” symbols as well. This is a unique opportunity for you to build brand recognition for your site, and as more people recognize you as a trustworthy source of information you are more likely to get those clicks.
If you are using a Wordpress blog you can still utilize these tips by using any number of plugin’s that are available. The one that I use and like the best is the All in One SEO Pack plugin for Wordpress. It allows you to enter both an SEO friendly title and description. Or if you are using the Thesis theme, as I am here, you can use the “custom fields” section when writing your post, utilizing the field name “meta” and then enter the description you want.

I hope these tips help.

Things to add? Think I’m wrong? Think I’m spot on? Leave me a comment and let me know!

To your success!

Life Style By Choice » description meta tag

LifeStyleByChoice | Tips for Writing Good Title Tags

tags – confirms the topic of your title. This will reassure your visitor that he has indeed reached the page he thought he was clicking to.