SEO friendly titles, a 359.5% degree perspective

As you might already know, titles and title tags are often seen carrying more weight than any other on site optimization factors be it on blogs or static webpages. And I bet, that it’s the one thing all of us tweak mostly to try and reposition yourself on the SERPs.

Well, the liking to the title tag may be due to various reasons.

• It is one of the most easily spotted onsite optimization factor.
• It is easy to tweak it.
• Lots of options are available, which makes it fun.
• It has almost a direct and immediate effect on the Google SERPs.

Apart from all these options, it is also true that it’s difficult to get the right combination of keywords, that will give you the maximum results on the SERPs. So the challenge for an SEO would be to find this right combination and the perfect title tag.

Before going into the perfect title tag, let’s see what are the “don’t do’s” with title tags?

Well, one word would be enough to explain it all – Spam. With all it’s flexibility and weightage, it’s very easy for SEO’s to get high with it and screw it all up. We’ve seen lot of examples in the near future that were “study materials” on how not to write a title. Just go Google down “SEO India” and you will find some really interesting ones.

Now, watching those sites rank high for a particular keyword using the so called “title spam” and “title keyword stemming”, would naturally throw this question across to you – “Why can’t I do a keyword spam on the title tag, when it will deliver the results? After all, that’s what my client is keen on.”

Very honest question and a dangerous one at the same time. My answer to that question would be another one?

“How long do you want your site to appear number one-ten on the SERPs ? ”

Choice 1 – A few months

Choice 2 – As long as the site exists

If it’s choice two…..yep you got it right man…you better not spam.

A spammy title tag would look something like “SEO India, SEO services India, SEO Indian, Indian SEO, The SEO India, SEO Indias”.

I must appreciate this webmasters English creative writing skills but seriously this is no better than a high school guy.

“I read it at Aaron’s E-book that you should include your keywords in the title tag so there you have it, all the ten versions of the keyword! ”

Rather than doing good, this kind of practice will give you bad reputation (if not immediately) in the long run.

So what is a good title tag? How does it look like?

A good title tag is

- A healthy one.
- A short and sweet one.
- Both visually and technically appealing.

Now, this is old school isn’t it? We all know that good title tags are supposed to be the short and sweet, non spammy and all that but, when our competition is tough (and they are spamming) how can I make sure that I reap my profits ?

Well, that’s the catch my friend. That’s what makes you unique.

1. Use your keywords “wisely” on the title.
   Just because you heard that you got to fix your keywords on the title, you don’t have to repeat it and make it look like spam.
   Let’s see it like this. Only you know what your keywords are, not your readers. Draft a title so that your readers can’t make out what your keyword are. It should be a carefully drafted copy that “includes” the keywords in a natural way.
   Ex: SEO India, SEO India Services,SEO India outsourcing, SEO from India – NOT good. It shows that your keyword is SEO India.
   Good Ex:- SEO outsourced services in India from – your company name -.
2. Use your competition to your advantage.
   Analyze all your competitors. See if they follow a pattern. If they’re all spammers, you have an opportunity to beat them. See what’s a better copy for you to break into all of their positions. *Food for thought*
3. Makes sure the title makes sense to a reader.
   Read out your title tag to your colleague or friend. See how he responds to it. Don’t just think of all that you can and plug it in.
4. Let there not be just keywords, but synonyms too.
   Synonyms are a great way to build traffic. Repeating the same keywords in combination with other words may get you the spam tag, but adding it with synonyms is a better alternative.
5. Special characters on the title tags.
   Let there not be any complicated characters in your title. I’ve seen people place funny symbols like tilde and ambersand to create a visual impact. In fact it does but reader’s  probably might like you to use, even that much space for some more information. .::[ So use it ]::.

Essentially, titles are like your visiting cards to a site. You can create and print them in whatever ways you like it. But if you really want a information seeker to read/access you, you better give them the information they are looking for and let that be in good, simple and understandable language.