Is Page Title Still Relevant In SEO, Google Says Yes

Search Engine Optimization is increasingly becoming complex and little things can play a vital role in the page rank. Page title is a very important thing in the search engine optimization process.

Page title is very important according to my point of view. The proper use of keyword use and positioning can help you rank. Google itself says:

“A title tag describes users that, what is the topic all about? If your document appears in a search result page, the contents of the title tag will usually appear in a search result page. This should be relevant to their search…”

It is a known fact that a better than average click-through rate (CTR) is likely to lead to higher rankings. On social sites, a good CTR means greater page views. If the content is good, it results in more social shares. This things matter a lot in the search engine algorithms.

Why Title Tags are So Important for SEO

A title tag is the main text that describes the online document. It is considered as one of the most important on-page elements.

Since title tag is very important, it becomes all the more important to implement best practices in he Search Engine Optimization process.

Pay Attention on the Length of Title

Search engines truncate the title after a certain length so be careful of the proper length of the title. However, it is not a rigid rule. Long titles have been often found to work better for social sharing. However, placing certain keywords close to the front of the title has been found to work better. According to the SEO experts, the more near is keyword to the title tag, the better it is for ranking point of view. Many experts recommend using the name of brand name at the end of tile tag.

Creating a compelling title tag is extremely important. This is very important from the point of the holistic user experience.

Studies have proved that character count is a false measure. If you fast forward the Google’s most recent redesign, you will find the variety of title length. You might disagree. My suggestion is 55-60 characters is a reasonable limit, however it is not hard and fast. Google still processes the length beyond that. Here are the examples few news sites:

Avoid Spamming the Title Tags

Avoid using the keyword stuffing at the beginning of the page to tell Google. This will be highly counterproductive. The title tag should be simple. You should aim to keep html page title elements relatively simple. It should look human generated.

Google May Ignore Your Title Tag

In an answer Google’s Matt Cutt posted a video on explaining the situation when Google can ignore your title tag and instead uses something else for snippet title. Explaining further he says Google wants that title should answer the question of the searcher. The Google has following criteria

• It should be relatively short
• It should offer a good description of the page
• And it should be relevant to the query.

In case, your existing title tag satisfies the above criteria, Google can most likely use your title tag. If not it can use content on your page or anchor text links pointing to the page.