Since different algorithms look for different things, there is no such thing as a perfect title, but there are signs of a good one. We saw how to do it wrong, so how do you do it right? Well, your title should have your keywords in it, it should be readable to prospects, and should evoke an emotional response. Your target keyword phrase should be near the beginning of your page title. Let’s pretend this e-book is a page and we need to title the document. Using the keyword suggestion tools above I would look up some relevant terms.
Page Title Tag Done Right
Remember that search volume alone does not tell you whether or not the term would bring in targeted traffic. Seo, for example, is a generic term also inflated by rank checkers and is a common Japanese name, so the number of targeted and potentially profitable seo searchers is not as high as the number indicates.
Some SEO experts frequently compare the page title to the title of a book. All major search algorithms place more weight on the page title than on other page content. Adding unique page titles to a trusted site that did not have them can easily double search traffic.
Page Title
Length Google shows the first 65 to 70 characters from your page title in their search results. You should be able to get your entire page title or almost your entire page title in 70 characters. If you run slightly past that you are fine, but the words near the start of your page title get more weighting placed on them than keywords at the end of the page title.
Chose Multiple Keywords
I was not in much of a rush with my website to achieve top rankings, as I already had other well ranking sites. I was going to think big with the title. Eventually I wanted to rank well for search engine optimization and SEO. I knew that would take a while though (a year or a few years). I should have been able to almost immediately rank well for SEO book. (By the time I was done writing this book, I already did.)
A Good Title for This Page
A good page title for this book would then be “Search Engine Optimization Tutorial e-book: SEOBook.com.” This e-book page itself will never rank well in search results, since I do not want search engines to spider it. If Google gave you a free link to my e-book, then you probably would not want to pay for it. I used a robots exclusion tag on it, and move it anytime anyone links to it. SEOBook.com covers news topics daily, too. The page title of my home page initially was “SEOBook.com - SEO e-book, Search Engine Optimization Tips, & Search Engine Marketing News Blog.” In this title I am actually trying to do a good bit of branding. Since the domain name matched exactly what I wanted to .
Branding Title
Update After about a year with the above title, I started getting more search queries for my name and my site name. I eventually changed the home page title to “Aaron Wall’s SEOBook.com” to make the site seem more official and for personal branding purposes. The original title may have also been a bit longer than necessary. Usually it is best to keep them at or under about ten words. Keep in mind that the home page of a strong site can be more brand oriented, but as you get deeper into a site it makes sense to place more emphasis on matching keywords than on branding in the page titles.
Chose Terms of Different Difficulty Levels
My general rule for the page title is to include at least one competitive and one noncompetitive term. In less than a month, the home page of SEOBook.com was listed #1 on Yahoo! (Inktomi back then) and #1 on Google for seo book. Ranking for Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a much harder task, but I was ranking for SEO within nine months and it took about 3 years to get in the top 20 in Google for search engine optimization. Another good trick for the title might be to use two similar overlaying ideas. If it’s hard to list well for either of the components of the whole, you typically can still get top rankings for the searches that mix the terms together. Eventually, as you build your linking campaign, you can hope to pick up one or both of the original terms.
Writing Titles to Spread Ideas
If you write an editorial website with many readers you may want to forgo placing too much emphasis on keywords in the title and instead write a catchy or controversial title that makes the story more appealing to read and easier to link. Search engines follow people. If enough people link to your documents and give signs that the document is important, then search engines will still rank it even if the page title does not match the target keywords.
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