What is a title and how to write it correctly. Correct page title, SEO title Title writing rules

Tag is the most important part of any website's page, so it's worth paying a lot of attention to how you compose it. Creating headlines is like an art and not everyone can create it the right way the first time, this requires knowing some subtleties. By applying these 12 tips for using and optimizing the title tag to your sites, you will avoid a lot of problems in the future.</p> <p><b>1. The title should reflect the essence of the page.</b></p> <p>This point relates to usability. It must be remembered that the title is shown in search results in all search engines and is the first thing users pay attention to. From what you put in the tag <title>The click-through rate and, accordingly, the amount of traffic received will depend.</p> <p>The title is also used when describing a page (or site) in some directory of sites, a directory of useful links, social bookmarks and other social services. If it does not reflect the essence of the content, then the page will not receive high-quality targeted traffic. For clarity, compare the following examples:</p> <blockquote class="ad"> <p><title>Site's home page
And
NIGMA – intelligent search engine

or internal pages

Test
And
Test: Are you a real blogger?

2. Include your brand in the title of the pages.

Use your site's name or brand at the beginning or end of the title tag on every page to help users understand where they will go and increase return rates. Some search engine users skim down the search results to find a trusted brand.

Option 1: Search Engine Optimization
Option 2: Search Engine Optimization - Wikipedia
Option 3: Optimization.ru: Search engine optimization and website promotion

3. Use different titles on different pages.

The title tag must be unique on each page, and it must also be unique throughout the search results. To uniqueize the tag within your site, use the names of articles, sections, categories, and so on. If any article is divided into pages, then add text at the end of the title Page 2 of 10 or simply Page 2. To uniqueize page titles throughout the search index, it is convenient to use the brand name in the title. Identical headings can cause duplicate content to appear and, accordingly, some pages to end up in “additional search results”.

4. The title must contain keywords.

The keys should fall into the title naturally; search engines will assign the greatest weight to these words out of all those found in the text. Therefore, when optimizing a page for a certain key phrase, it is worth, first of all, including it in the title. Internal links to a specific page most often contain its title in the anchor, just as with natural external links people anchor the title of the page, so if this tag does not contain keywords, then you are losing a big opportunity to cost-effectively make the page more relevant for a specific key phrase and promote your site for it a little higher in the search results.

5. Don't include too many keywords in the title.

It is necessary to add keys to this tag, but you should know when to stop and find the line between SEO optimization and usability. When adding keys to a title, make sure that it remains readable. You should not put more than 2-3 key phrases in the page title; first of all, leave the title readable and understandable for users. If you have a large number of keywords, create several pages on the site, each of which will be dedicated to 1-2 keywords, this way you will shorten the headings and increase conversion.

Examples of long and short headings:

Download music in mp3 format: dance, club, electronic, download clips of new songs - music portal Muz.ru

MP3collection.ru >> Dance music, electronic club music

6. Don't use safe words in your title.

Search engines do not take into account stop words - those that appear in texts so often that they cannot be meaningful for the search. As a rule, these are pronouns, prepositions and particles. Search engines usually ignore stop words, even if they appear in the query text.

Among the Russian-language stop words we can highlight the following: O, And, or, To, I, Not, before etc. Among English speakers it is a, about, an, as, are, but, be, or, and, for and others.

7. Each word should not be repeated more than twice.

It is better to combine words, insert derivatives of words, etc., focus more on users. When a word appears in a title more than twice, the title becomes long, unreadable and spammy from the point of view of search engines. For example, this header:

Nokia 3410 – phone, case for Nokia 3410, case Nokia 3410 battery for Nokia 3410

not at all usable, its redundancy resembles spam, which strives to remind search engines what the page is about. It is better to use this type in this case:

Nokia 3410 phone – case, housing, battery, accessories

8. Don't use page titles that are too long.

Limit on the number of characters counted in the title tag for google is 70 signs so that the name in the sickle fits into one line. IN Yandex is taken into account in the title no more 15 words, but no more is displayed 80 characters. If your title is more than the maximum value, the search engine will automatically truncate it (google will add an ellipsis at the end).

9. Keep the title length to no more than 8 words.

It is quite difficult to fit more than 8 words into 70-80 characters, however, some still make the title too long. For Google it is eight, for Yandex it is 16. Remember that users, when linking to your pages, do not like to change the title by inserting it into the anchor of the link. By focusing only on Yandex and making the title more than 8 words, you lose in Google.

10. Place the most significant keys at the beginning of the title.

This way, even with a long title, you will be sure that the keys will be included in the anchor of internal and external links and will influence the link ranking. If you like long titles, then put the brand at the end, not at the beginning of the tag. Pay attention to how different companies and services make headlines. For example, Wikipedia:

Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia

however, for the inner page:

Federal constitutional law - Wikipedia

11. Use patterns.

A pattern is a template. If you need to place multiple keywords in the title tag, or use multiple modifiers, then use templates like this:

[mod1 keyword] + [mod2 keyword] = [mod1 keyword mod2]

For example, Find a job at home + Work from home via the Internet = Find a job at home via the Internet.

Templates can be different, here are some of them:

KW1, KW2, KW3
KW1, KW2 and KW3
KW1 | KW2 | KW3

However, it is worth remembering that with long keywords you may not fit into the required heading length restrictions.

12. Don't use special characters.

Search engines support a number of special characters that you can place in the title tag. These are the following symbols (not the entire list):

In search results, special characters look something like this:

Previously, other special characters were also supported, which are currently simply ignored. Unsupported characters include ASCII characters and the following HTML entities.

Hello everyone, Anna is with you again! Glad to see you on our blog. It seems to me that it’s time to talk about such an important component of pages and articles as the title. If you have already worked with text, then you have probably come across this concept.

In fact, everyone does title, but not everyone produces something worthwhile. Why? This is a special art, the subtleties of which need to be learned.

Are you still looking at becoming a copywriter? Don't pass by, learn to work with the title right now. Working with SEO titles is one of the responsibilities of a writer. Once you master this skill, you will be a step above your competitors.

Once a regular customer on a text exchange confronted me with a fact: “Write a good title.” As a newbie, it was difficult for me to figure it out. I gave my 100%, but with experience I realized that this was not enough. Until the rules are firmly ingrained in my head, I won’t be able to write high-quality headlines.

In this article I will tell you what titles are, how to write them and why.

Friends, never give up and connect to our knowledge base. You will succeed!

If you have questions while reading the article, ask in the comments. I'll be happy to help.

What is title?

Title is the name of the page displayed in tabs, browser bookmarks and search results as a link. Its content affects relevance, ranking, and behavioral factors. Together with the description, it favorably presents the page in search results.

We rely on search results. This is where users carefully study the names. We need to attract their attention so that they click on our link in the search results, rather than choosing our competitors.

Title - a paired meta tag without attributes, which is written in the HTML code in a block . To verify this, you can right-click or use the Ctrl + U keyboard shortcut in your browser.

Among the heap of lines you will see our meta tag . Webmasters and bloggers do not have to write code from scratch. Install your site on the WordPress engine, connect it, configure a special plugin for publishing, and you're done. I can recommend “Yoast Seo”, “Frontend Publishing Pro” and “WP User Frontend”. These are plugins with advanced functionality that are easy to use.</p><p><img src='https://i2.wp.com/iklife.ru/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/kak-otobrazhaetsya-teg-title-v-html-dokumente.png' align="center" width="100%" loading=lazy loading=lazy></p><p>Our goal is to create meaningful, readable headings with keys, so that people enjoy reading, and search engines slowly promote the page.</p><p>In fact, many copywriters cope with only one task - either coming up with a beautiful title without keywords, or trying to cram them in as much as possible.</p><p><img src='https://i0.wp.com/iklife.ru/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/kak-vyglyadit-title-v-html-formate.jpg' align="center" width="100%" loading=lazy loading=lazy></p><blockquote><p>Titles are not created without a semantic core and a well-thought-out article structure.</p> </blockquote><p>You will become a pro when you can express the essence of the article in 3 - 5 words of the title, without forgetting the key phrases.</p><h2><span>How to write a title correctly: 11 current rules</span></h2><p>How to prepare to write a title:</p><ol><li>View page metadata for a TOP 10 search query.</li><li>Go through the list of keys again, think about how to enter them naturally.</li> </ol><p>If you make the right title, your page will have a chance to get into Google's quick answers column. The snippet of the website of the “lucky” one who got there is larger in size and is located above the competitive pages. The click-through rate of such projects is off the charts.</p><p>Here's a real example.</p><p><img src='https://i1.wp.com/iklife.ru/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/bystryj-otvet-google.png' align="center" width="100%" loading=lazy loading=lazy></p><blockquote><p>To better and faster learn the rules of writing titles, I advise you to write them on stickers and paste them near your desktop.</p> </blockquote><h3><span>We reason logically</span></h3><p>The title is not only an important SEO element, but also the heading. We must not forget that we write for people. We follow grammatical rules and ensure consistency.</p><p>Let’s say we have the key “baby food”, we cannot enter it in the exact entry, otherwise it will turn out to be gibberish. We decline, change places, add a low-frequency request.</p><p><b>Right:</b>“Child nutrition: list of allowed foods.”</p><p><b>Wrong:</b>“What foods can a child eat?”</p><h3><span>Brevity is the soul of wit</span></h3><p>We don’t inflate the title into 2 sentences. The permissible size of headings for Google is 69 characters (12 - 13 words), for Yandex - 70 (14 - 15 words). Everything else is cut off and hidden behind the ellipses. Waste your time and the user will not understand what information he will find on your page.</p><p>This is how long headlines are cut off.</p><p><img src='https://i1.wp.com/iklife.ru/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/primer-nekachestvennogo-seo-zagolovka.png' align="center" width="100%" loading=lazy loading=lazy></p><p><b>Wrong:</b>“With my own hands in half an hour. How to sew a pleated skirt” - I found this title in real Google results. There are several errors here: incorrect declension, 2 sentences.</p><p><b>Right:</b>“How to sew a pleated skirt in half an hour with your own hands.”</p><p>The optimal title length is 44 - 63 characters.</p><blockquote><p>After analyzing the search results in Google and Yandex for several queries, I noticed that pages with a title of several sentences were omitted. They are at least on the 3rd - 4th page of the search results.</p> </blockquote><h3><span>Beware of over-optimization</span></h3><p>It is necessary to insert keywords, this is how the search robot evaluates the relevance of the site to the request. But don't overdo it. Add 1 - 3 keys, make sure that the title remains readable.</p><p><b>Wrong:</b>“British cat: character, care, education, photo, what to name.”</p><p><b>Right:</b> we create several headings and pages, write articles separately for each request:</p><p>“How to get along with a British cat: behavioral features.” <br>“What to feed a British kitten?” <br>“How to teach a British kitten to bathe?” <br>“Basics of raising and training British cats.” <br>“Nickname for a British cat: 20 best options.”</p><p>This is a beneficial breakdown, because by making an internal one between these articles, you will increase site traffic, trust and the share of each page.</p><h3>Do not lie</h3><p>Your title is a heading that describes one page, not the entire site. If a visitor likes the content, design or products/services of the site, he will look at other sections. Don't insist on it so vehemently.</p><p>For example, if the page is dedicated to Teddy bears, do not make the title: “Large selection of soft toys.”</p><p>Another serious mistake is to cram everything into one page or indicate something that is not there.</p><p><b>Wrong:</b>“Buy a Teddy bear: history of toys, varieties.”</p><p><b>Right:</b>“Buy a Teddy bear with delivery throughout Russia.”</p><p>If we are entrusted with writing an article about the causes of glaucoma, there is no need to come up with a title: “Causes and treatment of glaucoma.” The visitor will not find the information he needs, and the site will lose trust.</p><h3><span>Be careful with the signs</span></h3><p>Prohibited: periods, exclamation marks, apostrophes, pluses, minuses, equals.</p><p>Allowed: dash, colon, question mark. If necessary, you can put a comma or quotation marks.</p><p>If our title is structured as a question, be sure to put the appropriate punctuation mark.</p><p>Special characters that are supported by search engines:</p><ul><li>& (ampersand),</li><li>© (copyright symbol),</li><li>® (registered trademark),</li><li>™ (trade mark),</li><li>(bold dot),</li><li>§ (paragraph sign),</li><li>£ (English pounds),</li><li>€ (euro sign),</li><li>° (degree sign),</li><li>(") (right-handed double quotes),</li><li>(¼) (simple fraction).</li> </ul><p>This is how it looks in search results.</p><p><img src='https://i0.wp.com/iklife.ru/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/specialnye-simvoly-v-tajtle.png' align="center" width="100%" loading=lazy loading=lazy></p><p>I do not recommend using them actively. If installed, monitor the CTR (click-through rate).</p><p>It is necessary to avoid unnecessary characters, but sometimes you have to break the rule in order to get a high-quality, readable and unique SEO title.</p><h3><span>Main key in direct occurrence</span></h3><p>How I want to throw out all my literary talent on the title. Change the form, add phrases and adjectives between the keys. Stop. The main key cannot be diluted or tilted if it can be succinctly inscribed.</p><p>For example, we were given the keyword: “The left side of my head hurts.”</p><p><b>Right:</b>“Why does the left side of my head hurt?”</p><p><b>Wrong:</b>“Why does my head hurt on the left side?”</p><p>The difference is small, but the search results are different.</p><blockquote><p>Try to use the master key at the beginning of the title. Dilute low-frequency, mid-range queries to improve rankings.</p> </blockquote><p>Key phrases like “headache, pressure” will have to be inclined and diluted for naturalness.</p><h3><span>Don't confuse title and H1 heading</span></h3><p>Keywords must be used in each heading. But they cannot be duplicated. They perform different functions.</p><p>Title is displayed in search engines when a user searches for something. For a search robot, it is a source of information that makes it clear whether a page is relevant to a request or not. And the text is visible on the site when a person has already gone to read the article.</p><p>Unlike the H1 header, the title should be:</p><ol><li>Clickable, original, arousing interest. For example, “A way to make money for the lazy,” “Secrets of losing weight,” “You make these mistakes in relationships.”</li><li>With additional keys.</li> </ol><blockquote><p>The H1 heading and the title should have similar features, but be different. If the title tag is “How to cook rice in a slow cooker,” and the H1 is “making fluffy rice,” you will confuse both the search engine and the reader.</p> </blockquote><h3><span>Brands and unique names</span></h3><p>The name of a brand, company, or website should be inserted at the beginning or end of the SEO title. You will be better remembered by the user and increase the return rate.</p><p><img src='https://i2.wp.com/iklife.ru/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/brendirovannye-seo-zagolovki.png' align="center" width="100%" loading=lazy loading=lazy></p><p>Popular examples from the Internet:</p><ul><li>“Site Promotion - Wikipedia”,</li><li>“How to learn to write - Odnako.ru”,</li><li>“Japanese courses - Life in Japan”,</li><li>“Psychology of relationships between men and women - Elle.”</li> </ul><blockquote><p>People often skim search results to find a familiar, trustworthy title.</p> </blockquote><h3>Uniqueness</h3><p>The title must be unique on the Internet and not overlap with the pages of your own site. Use each word once in the title, otherwise you will end up with a long, unreadable, spammy line that is of no use.</p><p><b>Wrong:</b>“Acer laptop - buy an Acer laptop with delivery throughout Russia.”</p><p><b>Right:</b>“Buy an Acer laptop with delivery throughout Russia.”</p><h3><span>Be careful with safe words</span></h3><p>The search engine simply does not notice stop words in the title. But you shouldn’t completely abandon them. Why:</p><ol><li>Stop words help make your title unique.</li><li>Stop words affect search results in different ways. For example, for the query “freight transportation and car rental in Moscow,” the rulimcars website is in 3rd place, and if you enter “freight transportation, car rental Moscow,” we will see the same page in 2nd position.</li> </ol><blockquote><p>Stop words are service parts of speech (prepositions, conjunctions, introductory constructions) without meaning. These include: and, and, before, after, however, on, let's say, probably, say, from, yet.</p> </blockquote><p>An overabundance of stop words will make the title unreadable and forced.</p><h3><span>Product page headers in the same style</span></h3><p>There is no need to bother with similar product/service pages. Create an SEO title using a template. It consists of:</p><ul><li>name of product/service;</li><li>thematic words - rent, order, buy;</li><li>region;</li><li>brand name, store name.</li> </ul><p>Example: “Floor-mounted clothes dryers - buy in Moscow at a low price.”</p><h2><span>Formulas for creating the perfect title</span></h2><p>I am for uniqueness and creativity. But when there is not enough time, a creative crisis sets in, and you have to use templates.</p><p>If you need to fit several keys into the title, use one of the formulas:</p><ol><li>[mod1key] + [mod2key] = [mod1keymod2]. For example, make a table of contents + a table of contents for a coursework in Word = make a table of contents for a coursework in Word.</li><li>[mod1key] + [mod2key] + [theme word] = [mod1key mod2theme word]. For example, what to feed a child + feed per year + menu = what to feed a child per year: menu.</li><li>[mod1key] + [mod2key] + [modiff3key] = [mod1modif2keymod3]. For example, how to compose a semantic core + compose correctly + semantic core of a site = how to correctly compose the semantic core of a site.</li> </ol><p>Universal templates:</p><ol><li>Request + region + additional information. For example, cargo transportation in Moscow up to 5 tons.</li><li>Request + region + additional information. For example, belly dancing in Krasnodar is a program for beginners.</li> </ol><p>Make sure that the length of the resulting title is optimal.</p><p>Running out of ideas? Have you read a lot of articles, but still can’t write better headlines? I invite you to visit us. Our graduates are experts who earn from 30,000 rubles as freelancers and do not depend on anyone. Don't believe me? Give up your penny income and come to us to study.</p><h2><span>Making a title from scratch</span></h2><p>We have the main key “sinusitis treatment”. We must complement it, make it interesting.</p><p>We look at Yandex search tips.</p><p><img src='https://i2.wp.com/iklife.ru/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/sozdaem-tajtl-s-podskazkami-poiska-yandeks.png' align="center" width="100%" loading=lazy loading=lazy></p><p>We choose what suits us. If this is not enough, we look at the metadata of sites from the TOP 10 upon request.</p><p><img src='https://i1.wp.com/iklife.ru/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/analiz-metadannyh-zaprosa.png' align="center" width="100%" loading=lazy loading=lazy></p><p>Suitable for us: “at home”, “at home”, “without puncture”.</p><p>We get several options for the title:</p><ul><li>quick treatment of sinusitis at home without piercing the nose,</li><li>treating sinusitis at home: avoiding punctures.</li> </ul><p>Don't forget to follow the 11 rules for a successful title.</p><h2><span>Is it possible to change the title after indexing?</span></h2><p>If, after indexing by a search engine, you do not get the desired result, you even need to remove the old title. Successful headlines are unlikely to be edited.</p><p><img src='https://i2.wp.com/iklife.ru/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/izmeneniya-tajtla-posle-indeksacii.jpg' align="center" width="100%" loading=lazy loading=lazy></p><p>Use different word forms, add new words, analyze competitors' titles. You will not know the result immediately; you will have to wait 1 - 5 months.</p><h2>Conclusion</h2><p>The title is the face of your page. Sometimes it takes longer to create than the entire article. And not in vain, because the user selects a site from search results based on the SEO title.</p><p>You cannot make a title for an article for life. Search engine algorithms are constantly changing, new trends appear, and something becomes outdated. It is necessary to regularly analyze and monitor the relevance of the title.</p><p>If you have any questions, if you want to talk about this topic, feel free to write comments. We'll discuss everything and decide.</p><p>Subscribe to be trendy! We have a lot of up-to-date information about the world of freelancing.</p> <p>Hello friends! It's time for useful theoretical posts again. And today I would like to talk about the most important tag - Title. What is a page title, what does it influence, how to correctly compose a title from an SEO point of view, what mistakes can be made and much more. Theory, practice, and mathematics - today there will be everything for everyone. As detailed as possible.</p><p>It was more difficult to find the site on Google; I had to search using a specified phrase of 6 words, and the site was only shown at the end - “rent country cottages, rent a country house” in Google. At the same time, the link title had completely different text, and phrases from the title were displayed in the text of the snippet. However, Google was able to find the site using the text from the super-long title.</p><p><b>From the examples above, we can say that within reasonable limits, the size of the Title tag is not limited in any way.</b></p><p>But here a much more important and necessary question arises: <b>Are the weights of words taken into account equally in a title of such a large size?</b> Most likely not. From our example, such a conclusion cannot be drawn unambiguously, because the site violates many search engine rules, and a filter can be imposed on it for anything. It is necessary to conduct a serious experiment to find out how much and when the relevance of a phrase decreases as you move away from the beginning of the title. But there are my own observations and experiences of colleagues in the shop - indeed, <b>There is such a dependence, beyond the 12th word there is a strong decrease in the importance of words in the Title</b>.</p> <h3>How many characters from Title are displayed in the link title in search results?</h3><p>In addition to the number of words involved in ranking, you will probably be interested in the question of the maximum displayed number of characters from the title in the search results.</p><p><b>Let's start with Yandex.</b> As you know, if the title text does not fit completely on the line, it will be replaced with an ellipsis (it can be at the end, at the beginning or in the middle of the title). It is very important that the visible part of the title on the search results reflects the essence of the document; it is best if your title completely fits into the allotted number of characters. Even if the title is cut off at the end, it looks acceptable, but if the beginning or middle is cut off, then most often the title loses its appearance and, therefore, its clickability.</p><p>Therefore, it is important to know how many characters you can expect. I scrolled through many Yandex search results pages for various queries and came to the conclusion that <b>the maximum length depends on several factors</b>. The maximum title I found was 75 characters, not counting the ellipses (that's three more characters) at the end. A small discovery was that <b>the length and occurrence of the keyword affects the displayed title</b>. When the search engine finds a keyword, it highlights it in bold. And here's the catch:</p><table width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0"><tbody><tr><td width="50%"><br><img src='https://i2.wp.com/alaev.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/title-length-yandex-1.png' width="100%" loading=lazy loading=lazy></td><td width="50%"><br><img src='https://i0.wp.com/alaev.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/title-length-yandex-2.png' width="100%" loading=lazy loading=lazy></td> </tr></tbody></table><p>As you can see, the text in bold takes up more space and, as a result, part of the title has been “crowded out”. Therefore, the length of the title visible in the results may be different for the same site, for the same title, but for different requests. Therefore, it is simply pointless to talk about the permissible length, but if you can fit all the most important things into 65-70 characters, you will get the optimal result. This is for Yandex!</p><p><b>What about Google?</b> Things are even more complicated here when it comes to the number of visible characters in link headers. On average, the length of the displayed title in Google is much less than in Yandex - 50-57 characters.</p><p>For example, let’s look at the same search page in different browsers at the same magnification of 125% (the magnification is related to the system settings of the computer, otherwise without it everything looks unacceptably small).</p><table width="100%" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0"><tbody><tr><td width="50%"><br><img src='https://i2.wp.com/alaev.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/title-length-google-firefox.png' width="100%" loading=lazy loading=lazy></td><td width="50%"><br><img src='https://i0.wp.com/alaev.info/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/title-length-google-chrome.png' width="100%" loading=lazy loading=lazy></td> </tr></tbody></table><p>I marked the different displays with arrows. In the examples, the difference is only 1 character per line. In the same browser, changing zoom, you can achieve similar differences.</p><p>It’s even more interesting to look into the page’s source code inspector and see what’s there:</p><p>Here you can see that in fact the entire title is present, but not all of it is displayed due to my zoom settings, my system fonts and screen resolution. The visible title is 8 characters shorter than the actual title. The fact is that the block width for each result in Google is strictly limited and is 512 pixels. A container <a>with the link and title in the specific example is 560 pixels (this is in Chrome, and in FireFox this same example is 550 pixels).</p><p>Purely theoretically, with certain settings you can see the entire title. For example, from a mobile phone. Although there is a different layout, but nevertheless:</p><p>All this mathematics is too tedious and should not occupy your head when you are preparing your next article for publication. <b>Just remember, for Google it is desirable to fit all the most important things into the Title in the first 50 characters.</b></p><p>Phew, we're done with the biggest theoretical section! Let's move on.</p> <h2>Stop words and stop characters in Title</h2><p>As for stop characters, we can assume that among them there may be the following characters: () - = / \ ! ? | + _ . : ; <br>In our case <b>Stop characters must mean those punctuation marks that break up passages</b>.</p><p><b>What is a passage?</b> A passage is a sequence of words on a page. Passages are separated from each other by punctuation marks or html tags. We humans perceive text as a sequence of words in sentences. And the search engine perceives the text as a sequence of words in passages. In theory, these perceptions should coincide, but often this is not the case.</p><p><b>Let's find out what symbols or punctuation marks break up passages.</b> From the listed list of characters, passages are separated only by a period, exclamation and question marks. ! ? . In this case, after the punctuation mark there must be a new sentence (passage), always with a capital letter and only after a space. “Vasya went for a walk. To the street" - two passages. “Where did Vasya go for a walk? To the street" - two passages. “Vasya is walking! On the street” - one passage, because there is no space between the exclamation mark and the next word.</p><p>Thus, we come to the conclusion that <b>The period and question marks and exclamation marks are stop characters and should not be used in Title</b>. As for other special characters, they don’t “hit” passages, but I wouldn’t use them anyway. There are always enough commas and dashes to make a good title; colons and parentheses are much less often used. By the way, if necessary, you can use herringbone quotes, they will also not break anything in our design.</p><p><b>About html tags</b> within the framework of the conversation about Title, it would be possible not to mention it, since they should not appear in titles, but, predictably, the “hitters” are: line break <br />, paragraph , block <div></div>. This is just an FYI.</p> <p><b>Let's talk about safe words.</b> Let's turn directly to Yandex on this issue. Here's this link:</p><blockquote><p>In any language there are words that occur much more often than others. Words that occur too often to be meaningful for a search are called stop words. As a rule, these are pronouns, prepositions and particles. Search engines usually ignore stop words, even if they appear in the query text.</p> </blockquote><p>There is no point in listing safe words, but if you really need it, then, for example, ask Wikipedia what a preposition is. Yandex says that stop words are not searched by default, however, the results for a request containing a preposition and the results for the same request, but without a preposition, are different.</p><p>These are all formalities; in fact, you shouldn’t even think about it. <b>Who said that safe words in headlines spoil anything? It is a myth!</b> Well, you can’t just throw out a preposition or particle from a query if it should be there, just like you can’t add some completely “left-handed” pronoun to a query. Just forget about the existence of stop words when composing the Title.</p> <h2>Is it bad if the Title and H1 heading are the same?</h2><p>I didn’t know where I could add the answer to this question, but since the word Title already appears there, it wouldn’t hurt to talk. I am often asked the question of how bad it is for promotion when the Title and H1 headings are the same, and whether search engines consider this a sign of spam.</p><p><b>Who said it was bad anyway?</b> It seems to me that this is another misconception. I have not seen any experimental confirmation or refutation of this. But let's think logically. H1 is the title of the page that the user sees. Title is the title that the search robot sees. Why, in fact, cannot they be identical? No reason, this is a completely normal phenomenon.</p><p>But since we are talking about effective SEO, then <b>I have some recommendations for you</b>. The H1 heading on the page visible to every visitor should be as human-focused as possible, it should be concise and reflect the main essence of the article, and should not resemble a bunch of keywords. And in the Title you can “play out” a little - you can optimize it a little more, make it longer, and don’t miss the opportunity to use several keywords at once. But we always keep in mind the fact that this title will be seen by real people in search results and it should attract them to your page, and not vice versa.</p><p><b>I usually follow this rule if I'm promoting a large group of queries onto one page:</b> in the Title I mention the main keyword query and several of the most significant additional keywords; in H1 I also mention the main query and 1-2 less significant keywords that are not included in the title. Thus, it turns out that in the two “strongest” elements of the document I can use the maximum number of keywords I need. Take it for yourself!</p> <h2>What to focus on to get maximum effect</h2><p>Since we touched on the issues of effective construction of headings and distribution of keywords above, let’s talk about where to get key queries and how to work with them.</p><h3>Where to get keywords</h3><p>When I first publish an article on the site, or, for example, write a post on this blog, I only make an assumption about what my most important keywords are and what title to write. On what basis should we make assumptions? Yes, the simplest answer is wordstat.yandex.ru. <br><b>The accuracy and completeness of Wordstat, of course, is not the best, but it is good for making assumptions.</b> Before writing this post, I made a selection based on the keyword “title” that interested me, weeded out everything unnecessary and divided it into groups.</p><p>Looking at this table, I immediately identified the reference points that at least need to be written about. This approach takes a lot of time and I don't use it often, only for very serious posts like this one.</p><p><b>The second option from where you can get the necessary keywords is spying on your competitors.</b> This is a whole complex of events, to which I dedicated a separate post -. It is not always possible to spy effectively, but it gives excellent results. Read the post, experiment.</p><p><b>And the third best and favorite option is to analyze real website traffic statistics in Google Analytics.</b> This option has one drawback - it can only be applied after the fact, i.e. when several months have already passed since the publication of the article, and statistics have accumulated. This method gives excellent results. To view conversion keywords for a specific page: log into your GA account, select the site, the “Behavior” block, the “Site Content” list, the “Login Pages” section. Next, click on the desired URL from the list and go to the “Keyword” tab. I noted all this in the screenshot below:</p><p>Now all you have to do is analyze the keywords from the list and edit the Title where necessary.</p><h3>How to Use Keywords in Title</h3><p>The list of keywords is ready, all that remains is to use them wisely!</p><p>The most difficult point that I have to explain to people when it comes to Title is <b>grouping of keywords</b>.</p><p>I recommend using the most important keyword phrase for the page in the exact entry, without breaking up the words from this phrase with other words. For example, “buy plastic windows” will be more preferable options than “buy good plastic windows” when promoting the request “buy plastic windows.”</p><p>The introduction of additional words inside the main key phrase is justified in the case when as a result of this, the occurrence of another key phrase is formed, the frequency (popularity) of which is commensurate with the frequency of the main one. In this case, a possible decrease in the main request is compensated by an excellent increase in the additional request or even a whole group of them.</p><p>For example, when searching for the query “how to write a resume,” we can use it in the title and expect 5,935 impressions, but there is a query “how to write a resume” that has 6,420 impressions. In this case, using the entry of the second query in the title, we can count on the total number of impressions for both queries (12355), and by indicating the text of the first query in the title, we can only count on its number of impressions (5935). The example has been specially simplified so that you correctly understand its essence, and over time you yourself will learn to understand all the nuances.</p><p>The main thing is not to overdo it with optimization and remember that we create Title for people too. It is very important for us to show a beautiful, speaking headline on the search results so that people click on it.</p> <h2>Basic mistakes in Title that should not be made</h2><p>Below I have listed the main mistakes that occur in my practice. Please don't allow them:</p><ul><li>It is important to avoid duplicating title headings within the site. You can track this from the Google webmaster panel (Go to the GWMT panel, select the site, section “Search View” -> “HTML Optimization”). <br>Very often, title duplication indicates duplication of pages with the same content at different addresses, and this is a very serious violation.</li><li>You should not use the same keyword in the title more than once. As a last resort, you can use its word forms (cases, singular and plural, etc.). When writing headlines, I always adhere to this rule, with rare exceptions.</li><li>If the title contains elements that repeat from page to page (often the name of a company, organization, or simply the name of a website), it is necessary that they be at the end, not at the beginning, and should not be longer than a few words. You can do without these consoles altogether if your company is not so well known that the user will immediately come to you and buy after seeing only your brand. In this case, you can leave the title for the home page or contact page so that people who are intentionally looking for you can see your site in the first place.</li><li>Of course, title should not be a set of key phrases separated by commas. It’s strange, but not everyone realizes this and continues to use this technique. This no longer works for search engines or users. Try to use your keywords to create a meaningful phrase or sentence, it is not as difficult as it seems.</li><li>There are also the opposite cases when the headline is too “sluggish” and users do not click on it because it is not appealing, it is not informative and does not describe the benefits. This is no less evil than over-optimization.</li><li>Have you noticed cases where Google ignores your title tag and uses other text as the title in the search results? This may also indicate a bad title. This happens in the following situations. If the title is too long, Google doesn't like it and shortens it or replaces it entirely. If the title does not describe the page well or does not correspond to its content. If the document itself is relevant to the user’s request, and there is no search query in the title, Google can generate the Title itself to increase CTR. To generate headlines, internal link anchors or text from the landing page are most often used.</li> </ul><p>If you have something to add, write in the comments, perhaps your example will become indicative, and I will want to analyze it and add it to this section.</p> <h2>Important conclusions and a brief summary for the lazy</h2><p>This section is intended for the laziest people who did not dare to read my mega-post in full. <b>By reading the few points below, you will gain valuable information that you can use immediately.</b>, but I still strongly recommend studying the post to understand the basis on which these conclusions were made.</p><p>And for those who completed my post, <b>let this be a checklist</b>, which highlights the most important points to remember.</p><ul><li>The part of the headline that is significant for promotion should be no more than 12 words to get maximum effect.</li><li>The most popular keywords should come at the very beginning of the title and fit into the first 50 characters to maintain an attractive appearance in the search results.</li><li>Avoid using the following punctuation marks in your title: . ! ? – because they break up passages.</li><li>The most important key phrases, consisting of several words, should have a “clean occurrence” without other words falling inside the phrase.</li><li>Always write your titles manually and in a meaningful way so that it doesn't look like listing keywords, otherwise it can be a bad signal for both people and search robots.</li><li>The title should reflect the essence of the page to which it belongs as informatively as possible. By meeting the user's expectations in the search results, your site will only benefit from .</li><li>Study Google Analytics statistics and rework the headlines on your site for amazing results. As an example .</li> </ul><p>I finally finished this endless post!</p><p>Now you know everything you can and need to know about Title headings - how to compose and optimize them correctly, how long they should be, and what mistakes it is important to avoid! All my experience is here!</p><p>Ask questions, write comments, share the link on social networks!</p><p>Good luck in your promotion, friends! And see you later.</p> <p>Browser window title Title is one of the most important elements of page SEO optimization. What is Title and what should I write in it? What should its length be? Rules and examples of writing a good Title.</p> <h2>What is Title?</h2><p>The Title tag is the title of the browser window and one of the most important elements of page SEO optimization. The Title heading is the title of the search snippet by default, and not only the relevance of the document to search queries, but also the CTR (click-through rate) of the snippet will depend on the quality of its composition. In each browser tab you can see the Title of a specific page.</p><p>Along with a correctly composed Title, it can attract the attention of users who are thinking about which tab in the search results they should open. A poorly written Title may not reveal the content of the page, and then the user will go to your competitors.</p><p><img src='https://i1.wp.com/naked-seo.ru/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/title-2.png' width="100%" loading=lazy loading=lazy></p><p>The snippet title, unlike the meta description, is displayed in a larger font and is highlighted in blue in both Yandex and Google. Title is the main link in attracting user attention, which is why so much attention is paid to its optimization.</p><h3>What is the difference between title and h1?</h3><p>It has similar features to title, however, these are two completely different tags. The H1 header is displayed directly on the page, reflects its general content for users and summarizes all the semantics of the document into a single keyword. Title, in turn, is the title of the browser window; it is not displayed directly on the page, and is a source of information for search engines, which, based on the content of this tag, partly get an idea of ​​​​the relevance of the page to certain queries. If the user sees h1 after going to the site, then he sees the title before.</p><p>Unlike the h1 title header:</p><ul><li><i> </i> It must be original, be of interest to users, and increase the CTR of the snippet;</li><li><i> </i> May include additional keywords.</li> </ul><p><i> </i> What title and H1 have in common is that both tags must contain common keywords. These tags can be the same for categories and navigation sections of the site, this will help search engines correctly generate quick links to the site. In other cases, you need to focus on your goals: you can make the title and h1 unique to expand the semantics of the document, or leave them the same if the document only answers a specific key query.</p><h2>Title Tag Syntax</h2><p>Title is a paired tag (not to be confused with the title attribute) and is located within the tag <head>with other service and meta information. The tag itself has no attributes and contains only textual information that is displayed in the browser tab and does not appear on the page directly. The HTML code of the document looks like this:</p><p> <head> <title>Browser window title

To look at the title and description of someone else's site, follow these steps:

What is the title for?

Title is one of the most important tags of any page. It performs the following functions:

  • Is of semantic importance to search engines. Along with meta tags, title transmits information about the content of a web page to search engines. Title is one of the . Filling it out correctly can increase the relevance of your document for the key queries for which you are optimizing this document. Filling out the title incorrectly will most likely have a negative impact on your site’s performance in searches.
  • By default, this is the title of the page in search results.. Title, first of all, informs visitors about the content of the page they are about to go to. If you, before the user goes to the site, tell him that the web page contains relevant information that matches his request, with a high degree of probability he will visit your site. Title also greatly affects the CTR of the snippet. The more attractive and clickable the title you create, the higher your click-through rate will be.
  • Makes it easier for users to navigate the browser. Title, as mentioned earlier, is displayed in browser tabs, and allows the user to navigate among the many open tabs. Also, the default title is the name of the bookmarks in the browser. If the user decides to save your site as a bookmark, the title will automatically be substituted in its name.
  • By default, this is the title of the post when sharing on social networks.. If you share a link to your website on any social network, it will automatically generate a block with information about this page. The title of this block is taken from the title tag. If you actively use social networks, make sure that the title of your pages is presentable and conveys to readers not a bunch of words, but an attractive semantic message about the content of the page.

What to write in the title?

Let's take a closer look at what you need to write in the title to get to the TOP, what are the main mistakes when writing a page title, as well as specific examples from search results.

How to optimize the page title?

The optimal length of the page title title is 50-70 characters. If the title exceeds the specified length, it will be cut off by search engines. Therefore, in the process of composing the title, imagine how it will be displayed in the search engines from which you plan to attract traffic, whether its meaning will be violated, whether it will be informative if it does not fit into a limited range of characters. The maximum displayed title in Yandex is up to 60 characters(usually no more than 55), Google up to 70 characters(usually no more than 65). However, search engines can cut off the title at 45 or even 40 characters if they consider the subsequent content to be inconsistent or not relevant to the query. More often, this situation occurs when punctuation marks and stop words are used in the page title: conjunctions, commas, colons, dashes, etc.

The maximum size of a displayed title is determined not so much by the number of characters as by the limitation on the width of snippet blocks. In Yandex, the maximum block width is 536 pixels, in Google it is 600 pixels. Accordingly, the number of characters is primarily affected by the width of the characters themselves, the number of Latin letters, the number of spaces and capital letters. For example, many more “i” characters will fit into a block of the same width than “I”.

Title should be a short, meaningful and understandable page title that matches its content. Try to place the keyword as close to the beginning of the tag as possible. Firstly, you will thereby increase the relevance of snippets in the eyes of users. Secondly, Yandex, for example, highlights key queries in the snippet in bold. The presence of bold text in a snippet can seriously increase its CTR. Place less significant words at the end of the title tag.

10 title writing mistakes

  1. Title too long. A title that is too long is a bad practice and will negatively impact your site's search performance. First, you run the risk of compromising the semantic integrity of the page title after search engines cut it off. Secondly, the CTR of snippets may decrease. Thirdly, search engines use technology for dynamically generating snippets, and therefore any sense of using as many words as possible in your title is lost.
  2. Title too short. Don't make page titles of 1-3 words unless they are navigation sections. Using minimal words in your title reduces the variety of queries your page can answer.
  3. Repeated words. You should not use the same keywords to “strengthen” the title. This way you only risk earning sanctions from search engines. Also, do not duplicate Russian and English words that have the same meaning, for example, “title” and “title”. Search engines have long learned to recognize and take them into account.
  4. Unwanted characters. Try to avoid excessive punctuation in your page titles. Try to use the following characters as little as possible (, . / = ! ? * :< > | + _).
  5. Request not matched. The title should reflect the content of the page. Don't try to fool users and search engines. You will not be able to drive traffic for queries that are not relevant to the content of the landing page.
  6. Reoptimization. There is no need to list queries separated by commas in the title. Consider whether users will understand the content on your page. In addition, excessive use of keywords in tags and page text is perceived by search engines as spam, which is subject to sanctions.
  7. Language discrepancy. Fill out the title in the same language as the content of your page. The use of foreign or allegorical phrases may negatively affect the presentation of your website pages in search results.
  8. Not using keywords. The title not only can, but should contain the main high-frequency keyword that is most relevant to the content of the page. The absence of keywords in the title is a negative ranking factor for the site.
  9. Semantic garbage. Try not to use phrases like “Welcome to our site”, “Welcome” in the title of the page.
  10. Duplicate title. There is no need to duplicate the title on different pages of your site, this will make it difficult for the search engine to determine the relevance of pages to common key queries. You should also not duplicate or copy the title from your competitors. Search engines try to make the results as diverse and representative as possible, so the same content is unlikely to receive high rankings. Again, common sense should not be forgotten; in certain niches, pages can only answer one specific key query, which is already used by other sites in the title. In this case, there is nothing criminal in duplicating the title.

Examples: good title vs bad title

Let's look at some examples of good and bad titles.

Example #1. Request "buy women's jeans"

A good example of a title is from the Lamoda online store. The keyword is located at the beginning of the title, the minimum price is displayed in the title, which makes it more noticeable. Using price also allows the target audience to understand the price range of the goods of interest. The trimmed title does not violate the semantic meaning.

The page is optimized for 2 high-frequency key queries: jeans and trousers. For such broad keywords, you need to create 2 separate landing pages. The length of the page title is 125 characters. The title lists keywords separated by commas - an obvious over-optimization; the snippet title is cut off at 39 characters. The main keyword is not at the beginning of the title.

Example #2. Request "water delivery to home in Moscow"

Short and clear page title. Occupies maximum space in the snippet title. The keyword is located at the beginning of the tag. To uniqueize the title, the company name is indicated, which also contains the keyword “Water”; this significantly distinguishes the title from competitors.

The snippet contains an automatic title, since the title tag contains blatant spam. Listing keywords separated by commas is an obvious over-optimization. Such tag content will never become a snippet title.

Title: about complex things in simple words

Let's look at more complex issues that may arise when filling out the title and analyzing search snippets.

Title and HTML5

With widespread support for HTML5, it has become possible to use emoji in meta tags and website titles. How does this affect SEO? The question remains open. There is no objective data that can give an unambiguous answer to this question yet. On the one hand, the use of special characters can significantly increase the CTR of a snippet, on the other hand, there is no understanding of how the search robot perceives special characters.

Several examples of using icons in title and description:

Website bonprix.ru. Request "buy women's jeans"

Website charmante.ru. Request "buy a women's swimsuit in an online store"

Website consowear.ru. Request "buy down jacket WL170501"

All 3 sites for the presented key queries are in the TOP 10 of Yandex search results. In Google, the situation is much worse - none of the sites are presented on the 1st page of results, with the exception of the 3rd vital query. However, Google does not display icons in snippets at all. Could this mean that HTML5-supported icons cannot harm the site’s presentation in the Yandex search engine, but at the same time negatively affect the site’s presentation in Google? Probably, much more data is needed to be able to draw any conclusions. And, in principle, assessing the quality of search results based on one single factor is, to put it mildly, wrong. Share your opinion on this issue in the comments.

You can use special symbols without any fear for vital needs. For example, on product pages, as shown in example 3. In other cases, carefully monitor traffic, page positions and snippet CTR.

Does the title always end up in the snippet?

Title can be used to form the title of a snippet, but this does not always happen. Firstly, the search engine can independently generate a snippet title based on the text data that is present on the page. This happens most often when the titlte contains blatant spam - this is not our case.

However, even a correctly composed title may not make it into the headline. Example:

Why is this happening? Firstly, the search robot itself determines the relevance of the title based on the main keyword, and can use, for example, h1 as in the presented example. A similar situation can occur with other text elements on the page. The technology for dynamically generating snippets has long been widely used. It allows the search engine to present different titles and descriptions for different search queries on the same web documents.

The snippet title can also include, for example, a second-level heading h2. This is why the correct structuring of an article with a logical distribution of keywords is so important today, and the excessive use of keywords in the title is meaningless.

For example, when searching for “name day on September 7th” in Yandex, we see in the search results a site with the following snippet title:

When you change the query to “Men’s name day on September 7,” the snippet title for the same page changes to “Men’s name day on September 7” - this text is the second-level heading in the page content. For 2 different requests, Yandex dynamically generated 2 different headlines and snippet descriptions for us on the same page.

Ideally, when optimizing a landing page, you should work through all possible queries that may come to you from a search. The most frequent of them should be included in the title and h1. The least frequent ones should be used in the document structure with appropriate heading markup.

Where are the optimization frameworks?

How do you know when to include a key query in the structure of an article, and when to create a separate document? How to determine the number of keywords that can be used in the title? It is impossible to give a clear answer to these questions. First of all, you should focus on the logic, semantic component of the page and the tasks that users set for themselves when they get to your page.

Each page must solve these problems, and it is impossible to do this in all areas at the same time. If you take the commercial request “buy sneakers,” then it is logical that users will be interested in the product range, but if you take the request “sneakers size chart,” then the availability of products on the landing page fades into the background. One request is commercial, the second is informational. People set different goals for themselves: in the first case, purchasing a product, in the second, determining the required size. These goals cannot be fit on one page, both from the point of view of content structuring and from the point of view of SEO optimization. It is logical that you need to create separate pages for these keywords.

If you have doubts about combining content to optimize it for different user requests, refer to the search results, and it will give you a clear answer. It will be enough to look at the first page of the search engine and the content that search engines consider relevant. If you find the same pages in a given topic for different queries, then optimizing the page for them is possible. If among the results for the first request you do not find a single site in the results of the second request, then it is not worth optimizing the page for different keywords.

As for keywords, the structure of headings that can participate in the formation of dynamic snippets should be logical and consistent. You shouldn’t put keywords in headlines for the sake of keywords, especially when it comes to low-frequency keywords. For low-frequency queries, it is often not necessary to have the entire query text on the page for the site to be in the TOP. For h2-h6, use the most frequent words that can serve as semantic headings for your page. If there is no semantic unity, then you cannot use them; you will only violate the relevance of the document and spoil user factors.

Is it possible to change the title after indexing?

After the page has appeared in the search results and has managed to accumulate data on user and other ranking factors, it is necessary to evaluate its positions and the traffic it attracts. If the page is in the TOP and attracts a lot of traffic, there is no need to make any changes. If the page does not receive the right place in the search results, then changes need to be made!

However, you need to remember that low page rankings for a specific key query can be not only the result of an incorrect title or description. There are hundreds of other factors that affect search results, and your changes to specific tags may ultimately lead to nothing.