Day: November 6, 2021

Writing great page titles is an essential skill for anyone doing SEO. Why? Because the title tag can be the first thing a user sees in the search results and it’s also one of the most important factors that Google uses to determine the topic of a page. This makes page titles essential to SEO and this article covers both why you need great page titles and how to create them.

Table of contents

What is a page title? What’s the (SEO) purpose of a page title?What does the SEO title check in Yoast SEO do?How to write a title with an optimal width for SEOWhat does the keyphrase in title assessment in Yoast SEO do?How to use your keyphrase in the SEO titleShould you add your brand to the SEO title? Optimizing page titles after publicationTitles for social mediaConclusion: Page titles – craft them well!

Yoast SEO also checks if you’ve used your keyphrase in the SEO title. Read about how that check works, and how to use your keyphrase in the title.

What is a page title? 

Let’s start with the basics. If you look at the source of a page (right-click on the page, then choose View Page Source), you find a title in the head section. It looks like this:

This is an example page title – Example.com

This is the HTML title tag, which we also call the page title or SEO title. When you look something up in a search engine, you get a list of results that appear as snippets. Often, the SEO title is part of the snippet together with at least a URL and a meta description. Of course, some rich results also display ratings and other additional information.

An example of a snippet with an URL, meta description and title in the largest font

In most cases, the first thing people see, even before they get on your site, is the SEO title. Just to be clear, you should not confuse the SEO title with the main heading of the page. The main heading is what users see after they click on the SEO title and get on the page itself.

In tabbed browsers, you will usually also see the SEO title in the page tab, as shown in the image below.

A page title in a browser tab

But, Google won’t always use your page title

In August 2021, Google announced an update on how they generate web page titles. This means that sometimes they will show a different title in their search results than the one you set. Before we get into that, it’s good to note that in most cases (more than 80% of the time) the HTML title tag that your page outputs is still the most likely used.

Although we’re talking about an update here, Google deciding on how to display your page title in the search results is nothing new. They’ve been doing this for a while now. What is new is that they now want to use one title only, and won’t change it up anymore for different search queries. And that they will use different elements on your page to decide on what this title displayed in the search results will be. Elements such as your title tag, headings, prominent text on the page, and even how you link internally to this page.

So what does this mean for you? Right now these changes don’t require you to do anything different. The page title you set is still very likely to be used, and more importantly, your page title helps you rank for a keyword. These changes don’t impact your page rankings. The title you give is what Google will look at when deciding how your page ranks. Just like before.

But, with all these changes, it doesn’t hurt to keep an eye on how Google displays the titles of your most important pages! So we recommend you monitor the situation with your site for the time being. Keep an eye on Google Search Console, spot-check your search results, and look out for changes in the click-through and bounce rates for your key pages. If you find anything problematic (or just really, really wrong) you can let Google know in this feedback thread.

What’s the (SEO) purpose of a page title?

The purpose of your SEO title is to make people click on it, visit your website and read your post or buy your product. If your title is not good enough, people will ignore it and move on to other results. Essentially, there are two goals that you want to achieve with a title:

It must help you rank for a keyword;it must make the user want to click through to your page.

Google uses various signals when deciding how relevant you are for a specific keyword. Even if you’re initially ranking well, but nobody is clicking on your result, your rankings might deteriorate over time. The opposite is also true. At first, you may be positioned lower in the search results. But, if your title gets people to click on it, Google will notice. Consequently, over time, your rankings may improve.

Also, as mentioned before, Google uses what has been specified as your page title as ranking input. So it’s not just about those clicks, you also need to make sure that your page title reflects the topic being discussed on your page and the keyword that you’re focusing on. The page title you use has a direct influence on your ranking.

Now that you know about the importance of SEO titles, you’ll be pleased to know that Yoast SEO can help you craft them. In its SEO analysis, the plugin checks two crucial aspects of the SEO title: the width of your title and whether you use your keyword. 

What does the SEO title check in Yoast SEO do?

You find this assessment in the SEO tab of the Yoast SEO sidebar or meta box. If you haven’t written a title yet, the assessment will remind you to do so. In addition, Yoast SEO checks the width of your title. When it is too long, you will get a warning. We used to give you a warning if your title was too short as well, but we’ve changed that since our Yoast 17.1 release. A title with an optimal width gets you a green bullet in the analysis.

You can find the SEO title width check in the Yoast SEO sidebar or the meta box

How to write a title with an optimal width for SEO

If your title doesn’t have the right width, parts of it may be cut off in Google’s search results. How the result looks may vary, depending on the device you’re using. That’s why you can also check how your SEO title will look in the mobile and desktop search results in the Google preview in Yoast SEO. The tool uses the mobile version as a default, but you can also switch to view it in the desktop version.

Here’s a desktop result:

The Google preview in Yoast SEO lets you switch between the mobile and desktop results

And here’s the mobile result for the same URL:

A mobile preview for this particular page

Width vs. length

Have you noticed that we talk about width rather than length? Why is that? Rather than using a character count, Google has a fixed width for the titles counted in pixels. While your title tags can be long and Google doesn’t have a set limit on the number of characters you can use, there is a limit on what’s visible in the search results. If your title is too wide, Google will cut it off visually. That might not be what you want. Also, you should avoid wasting valuable space by making the title too short. Not only that, the title often informs other title-like elements, such as the og:title , which also have display constraints.

Luckily our Google preview can help you out! You can fill in your SEO title and our plugin will give you feedback straight away. The green line underneath the SEO title turns red when your title is too long. So keep an eye on that, and use the feedback to create great titles.

The Yoast SEO Google preview modal in the WordPress block editor

What does the keyphrase in title assessment in Yoast SEO do?

This assessment also appears in the SEO tab of the Yoast SEO sidebar and meta box. It checks if you’re using your keyphrase in the SEO title of your post or page. The plugin check for this is quite strict. Since Google uses the title to figure out your page’s topic, not having the focus keyphrase in the title may harm your rankings. In addition, potential visitors are much more likely to click on a search result that exactly matches what they were looking for. For the best results, you should try to add your keyphrase at the beginning of the SEO title.

This check finds out if you’ve used your focus keyphrase in your title

How to use your keyphrase in the SEO title

Sometimes, when you’re optimizing for a high-competition keyword, everyone will have the keyword at the beginning of the page title. In that case, you can try making it stand out by putting one or two words in front of your focus keyword, thereby slightly “indenting” your result. In Yoast SEO, if you start your SEO title with “the”, “a”, “who” or another function word followed by your keyphrase, you’ll still get a green bullet.

Other times, like when you have a very long keyphrase, adding the complete keyphrase at the beginning doesn’t make sense. If your SEO title looks weird with the keyphrase at the beginning, try to add as much of the keyphrase as you can, as early in the SEO title as possible. But always keep an eye on the natural flow and readability of your title.

Want to learn all about how to write a text that’s pleasant to read and optimized for search engines? Our SEO copywriting course can help you with that. You can get access to this course, and all of our other SEO courses, with Yoast SEO Premium. This also gives you access to extra features in the Yoast SEO plugin.

Go Premium and get access to this feature!

Get access to lots of features and all of our SEO courses with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin:

Get Yoast SEO Premium Only 89 GBP(ex VAT) for 1 site

Should you add your brand to the SEO title?

For quite some time it was a fashion among some SEOs to leave the site name out of the page title. The idea was that the “density” of the title mattered, and the site name wouldn’t help with that. Don’t do this. Your page title needs to have your brand in it, preferably in a recognizable way. If people search for a topic and see your brand several times, even if they don’t click on it the first time, they might click when they see you again on their next page of results.

If you don’t include your site name in your title tag, you’ll also run the risk of Google automatically changing the title for you. As explained in our article on why isn’t Google showing my page title, Google thinks it needs to be there too. If you want to read more about branding, be sure to read this post by Marieke: 5 tips on branding.

Optimizing page titles after publication

A while ago, while looking at our Google Search Analytics data for yoast.com, I noticed that, while we ranked well for [wordpress security], we weren’t getting a lot of traffic for it. I optimized the page title and meta description for our WordPress security article and this increased traffic by over 30%. My changes to the title were done around the same time as the update – indicated by the vertical line in the graph below:

The change was fairly simple. Instead of the title being:

WordPress Security • Yoast

I changed it to:

WordPress Security in a few easy steps! • Yoast

As you can see, this doesn’t necessarily improve the rankings of this page at all. From a keyword perspective, the title isn’t much better, but it is more enticing, and it did lead to many more clicks, which, of course, was the desired result.

Titles for social media

What might be a good title tag for SEO isn’t necessarily a good title for social media. In social media, keyword optimization is less important than creating a title that entices people to click. You often don’t need to include the brand name in the title. This is especially true for Facebook and Twitter if you include some form of branding in your post image. Our social previews in Yoast SEO Premium can help you with that.

If you’re using Yoast SEO, you can have a separate title for Facebook, Twitter, and Google. Just enter the Google title in the Yoast SEO snippet editor. The Facebook and Twitter title can be entered on the social tab in their respective fields. If you don’t enter a specific Twitter title, Twitter will use the Facebook title instead.

Conclusion: Page titles – craft them well!

In conclusion, the main point of this article is to encourage you to invest a little more time in writing good page titles. It really is worth it. Going back and optimizing some of your page titles after publication might also be worthwhile. This is especially true if you’re already ranking well, but aren’t getting very many clicks.

Read more: How to create the right meta description »

The post How to craft great page titles for SEO appeared first on Yoast.

Did you miss our previous article…
https://www.digitalnativeaus.com/?p=277

To write appealing copy for your online audience, you need to know them. Who are those people that read your stories? Who are the people that search for the terms you want to be found for? Where do they come from? How old are they? What are they interested in? And how will you be able to reach those people again? In this post, I’ll help you with researching and analyzing your audience, as this is essential for SEO.

Why it’s important to analyze your audience

If you don’t know much about your audience, it can be quite hard to write texts for them. Should you write texts that are difficult or very easy to read? Which topics will interest them the most? Which search terms do they use? What blog post will make them come back to your site? These questions are especially important if you want your audience to become regular visitors of your website or if you want them to buy something in your online shop. And that’s when audience analysis comes in handy! If you know a lot about your audience, it will be much easier to adapt your texts to fit their needs. As a result, you’ll become more successful in selling your stuff and gaining those return visitors. 

What kind of people are your online audience?

A good place to start researching your online audience is in your website or social media user data. This can help you find out all kinds of helpful information about your audience. Or audiences. You may not have considered it before, but there could be different groups of users visiting your site for different purposes! You should analyze your audience to find out what kind of people are visiting your site, and use that information to adapt your content.

udience analysis in Google Analytics

The best way to start analyzing your audience is by using Google Analytics. Google Analytics will tell you at what time a day your audience is on your site; where they’re from (at least from which country); which pages they like most and whether they use a desktop or a mobile device. That’s all valuable and usable information.

Closely monitor which pages and blog post generate much traffic and investigate possible patterns. Perhaps posts about a certain topic generate a lot of traffic, while posts about other topics don’t get many visitors. Use that information when choosing the topic of your next blog post.

A sample of the kind of data you can find in Google Analytics

Social media audience analysis

Google Analytics can tell you a lot about the visitors on your website, but if you want to know more about the people you reach on Facebook you’ll need to use Facebook Insights. Check which posts get many views and which posts don’t get attention from your audience. Experiment with buying ads on Facebook too.

Of course, every social media platform has its own analytics (we’ve also written about YouTube Analytics, Twitter Analytics and Pinterest Analytics). Monitor the analytics of the channels you use on a regular basis.

Not the audience you were hoping for?

If you find yourself surprised by the kind of people in your online audience, there are two things you can do with that information:

Firstly, you could ask yourself why your website isn’t reaching your target audience, or why your content isn’t appealing to them when they see it in the search results or on social media. Are you using the same keywords those people will be searching in Google? Do your SEO title and meta description match with their search intent (and does the content on the page live up to that promise)? These kinds of things can help you reach your intended audience and keep them coming back.

Alternatively, you might not have the online audience you were expecting, but it is an audience, and they came to your site for a reason! So another option is to learn more about your actual audience, and make more content with them in mind.

Finding out more about your online audience

Regardless whether you choose to grow your existing online audience(s), adapt your content to target a different audience, or both, the next step in analyzing your audience is the same. You need to find out more about these people and what they want!

Do surveys

A great way of getting to know your audience is to have them fill out an online questionnaire. In a survey, you can ask them anything you want.  You can, for instance, set up a survey that pops up when someone enters your site or you can send a survey invitation to your newsletter subscribers or to the buyers of your products. There are lots of packages that allow for online questionnaires. Many services offer a free account, which will suffice for most small companies.

Remember that most people do not participate in online surveys. Still, if your audience is large, you’ll easily get a decent amount of people to fill out your questionnaire. To get more participants you can always try to win them over by raffling a nice incentive among the respondents.

Please note that it’s always a certain group of people that’ll be willing to fill out a survey. That group is highly selective and not representative for your entire online audience.

Talk to your audience

Analyzing your audience doesn’t always need to be a desk activity! Just having a conversation with a part of your audience also remains a great way to find out more about them. In an online questionnaire, you can ask a lot of people about your product, but their answers will probably remain shallow. If you’re able to really talk to some of the people from your audience in person, that could help you to get a better idea about who your audience are. Ask them what they like best about your website, your products, or your blog posts. Ask them why they come back to your website. Invite them to talk about their experience and don’t be scared of some criticism.

For instance, if I’m at a WordCamp or a congress somewhere and I encounter people using our Yoast SEO plugin, I always like to ask them what they appreciate most about our product. It helps me to understand our users. And, by understanding our users, we’re better able to anticipate their needs. If we know which features in Yoast SEO they like best, we should optimize or expand those features for sure.

Read comments and discussions

If you want to analyze your audience and find out what kind of people it consists of, you should look at the comments on your blog post. What are people saying about you or about your post in the comments below your articles? Which aspects of your blog post are they talking about in their comments? Which topics are so important to them, that they are willing to engage? Analyze audience comments on your website, and don’t forget to monitor comments on social media too!

Aside from the comments your audience are leaving on your website and social media, you could also take a look at what they’re talking about on other websites too. Sites like Reddit and online discussion forums can be a treasure-trove of information. If you can find out where your audience are hanging out online, be sure to take a look and see what they’re talking about!

nalyzing online audiences is hard, but valuable

In conclusion, researching your audience can be a tough nut to crack. Google Analytics and the analytic tools of the numerous social media platforms are useful, but they don’t tell you much about the intentions or desires of your audiences. Surveys are great, but as most people won’t fill out an online questionnaire, the data aren’t that valid and representative for your entire audience. Talking to your audience can bring useful insights, but you won’t be able to have a conversation with all of them either.

All the different ways of analyzing your audience do add value in their own way though. However, by using them all you will get a clear impression of your audience. So don’t just sit there wondering who’s behind those clicks. Get to know them!

Read on: An introduction to user research »

The post Online audience research: how to analyze your audience appeared first on Yoast.