seo_optimized_page_titlesThe art of creating a good title for your website, web pages, and blog posts can be very complex. There are a number of factors that go into a good page title, from length to keywords to probability that a person will click or share the post.

In this article I’ll discuss how to optimize page titles from an SEO perspective, which can help lead to greater visibility in organic search results.

How Page Titles Help SEO

Firstly, its important to understand exactly how page titles help your SEO ranking.

Page titles are listed among the 220 characteristics set forth by Google as factors in a site’s search rankings, but simply knowing this fact doesn’t tell you much.

The fact is, page titles are one of the most important features and should be a focal point of your on page optimization strategy. In a well-optimized page, a post title is not simply a reference to content, but is the determining characteristic of the post or page URL.

Setting page titles automatically to become the display URL for posts should be a default feature in your WordPress blog, but if not you can change the setting via WordPress or the All in One SEO plugin.

This way, your page and post titles are really getting to multiple points of the SEO formula. Not only are they noticed as the “title” of the page, but they form the display url.

SEO Optimized Page Titles

To optimize your page or post title for SEO, it should meet a few characteristics:

  1. It should be roughly between 60 and 70 characters long. This is an approximate display length for search engines, so anything beyond this length will be cut off from view.
  2. It should target 1-2 long tail keywords. If you don’t include at least 1 keyword you’re not taking advantage of an easy SEO boost, but more than two keywords may run the risk of looking like you’re trying to use the less than savory technique of ‘keyword stuffing.’
  3. It should be relevant to the page. Not having a title that’s relevant to the page content sets off a big flag both for readers (who view it as spam) and search engines, which might flag the page and lower rankings for the entire site.

I hope these tips help you create optimal page and post titles the next time you’re ready to publish. If you want to read more you can check out my post on how to learn SEO basics.