One of the biggest hindrances for “on page” search engine optimization (SEO), or seo that takes place on your website, is the misuse of the title tag. Using a proper title tag can help search engines determine keyword relevancy for a certain page as well as increase your clickthrough rate from the search engine results pages (SERPS).

There are several common mistakes that both new and even established webmasters make when it comes to their title tag for their website’s pages. Here we’ll address some of the mistakes made as well as how to improve your title tag for search engine optimization purposes.

Missing title tags are a SEO no-no

Likely one of the worst things that you can do for your website is to leave the title tag blank. When search engines display results in their indexes from a search query, the hyperlinked text from the SERPS are words that are held within the title tag for the page that is ranked. If you fail to use a title tag on any page of your website, it is going to hinder your ability to gain ranking for any keyword or phrase that you might be targeting.

Keyword spamming with title tags

Title tags are meant to be concise descriptors of the corresponding page’s contents. It’s common to see websites that have strings of 5 or more keywords and keyword phrases crammed into the title tag thinking that it will help with search engine optimization. Excessive keyword repetition in the title tag may lead to some form of a penalty by search engines, while using multiple keyword phrases that are not relevant to the web page’s content will do you little good for search engine optimization purposes. For best results with title tags and keyword usage, keep the keywords and phrases related to the page’s content.

Same page title for multiple pages

A website page’s title tag is a descriptor for the page it represents; you should not have the exact same title on any page of your website because the focus of each individual page should be different. Using a different page title for each individual page of your website can help you create a specific focus for each page, which helps search engines to determine relevancy and is overall better for search engine optimization purposes.

How to improve your title tags for search engine optimization

It’s not all that difficult to improve the title tags on your website and its individual pages; small and simple changes can literally make or break your website in terms of its rankings in the SERPS for certain keywords and keyword phrases.

Title tag length

Every major and minor search engine has a general limit to the character usage for the web page title tag. The most widely recommended maximum length for the title tag is 80 characters, but there are search engines that will display 100 or more characters from the web page’s title tag in the SERPS. If you have a page title that is “too long”, the major search engines just crop off some words if the website is displayed in the SERPS.

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