5 Rules for Title Tags

Title tag optimization is the most important task you can perform to improve your site’s ranking in search engines. Here are some general guidelines for title tags:

 

1. Google search results will display on average no more than 70 characters from your title tag.

 

2. Google does not consider (for ranking purposes) more than 12 words in the title tag.

 

3. Put more important keywords at the beginning of the title tag. Google gives more importance to words closer to the beginning of the tag. Users will also be more likely to click on your link if the keyword they are looking for is closer to the beginning of the page title.

 

4. Your brand name in the title is unnecessary. If you must, we recommend (in most cases) using the brand name at the end of a title tag. In making this decision, consider the strength of your brand. A well-known brand may receive higher click-through rates. If your brand is not dominant, place keywords first.

 

5.  70 characters and 12 words are good SEO guidelines, but consider also that additional words can have an indirect positive benefit on search engine rankings. Many sites “scrape” other pages and use Title tag content as the anchor text. Adding more words to a title tag could conceivably help scraper sites with some link importance (e.g., Google PageRank).