Title Optimization

Your title is one of the most important elements about your page. This is the first thing a search engine looks at in determining the theme of your webpage. Each of your page titles should be concise and include the main keyword phrase that you are optimizing a particular page for.

Here is our growing list of recommended principles to follow for title optimization. All these rules come from extensive research and have been implemented in our Professional SEO Tool. Rather than optimizing your title tag manually, our tool will analyze your title tag and give you specific optimization suggestions to perform that are specific to a page. Signup Free for the easy way to optimize your title.

Length

An optimal title length forces you to properly describe your webpage without stuffing it with too much content.

As a basic guideline, your title should be between 10 and 70 characters long.

Find the length of your title with our Title Analyzer Tool.

Special Characters

Special characters such as "@ ^ * ; < > ~ =" should not be used in your title if you can help it. Generally, no one would include these characters in their search query. The less you dilute your content with unnecessary information, the more optimized your title will be.

Exact Match Prominence

Once again, your title is very important to your search engine rankings. Make sure that your keyword phrase is at the start of your title. If your webpage is about "classic cars", start your title with that followed by other related content.

If you want to convey more information about your page that will not be in a typical search query, then include it after your keyword phrase. For example, "Classic Cars - 1950 to 1970 Classics Restored by Jim's Auto". If you absolutely cannot put your phrase at the start of your title, make sure it is at least within the first 3 words.

Exact Match Occurrences

It is an absolute must for title optimization that your exact keyword phrase appears in your title tag. After all, your title is a brief outline on what your document is in reference to. So if you don't mention your keyword phrase there, then is your page really related to that particular topic?

Make sure your title does not repeat your keyword phrase too many times. This is called keyword spamming and is very bad. Try to limit your keyword phrase so that it only appears 1 to 2 times.


I've Optimized my Title, What's Next?

Proceed to the Body Optimization guide to continue optimizing your site. Or choose another optimization guide.