There is often a tug of war going on in the battle between optimizing your SEO title tags and the need to craft a killer headline that gets massive numbers of clicks. This is a genuine concern, and often the answer lies in what your main purpose is for the page in the first place.
It's important to know that you need both title tags and headlines, right? While you would like it to rank well in search, you still need the headline to entice as many clicks as possible. Each is important, but is there a way to feed Google and still attract the hungry hordes?
Let's look at each, and find out if there's way to satisfy the needs of both sufficiently.
What makes a good SEO title tag?
With a title tag limited to around 64 characters, you are space-challenged right from the get-go. This is the amount of characters that will appear in the search results, so you need to make it count.
Remember, you want your primary page keyword in there, as close to the beginning as possible, and these days need to focus your wording on satisfying search intent.
If there is room, you can add additional keywords or LSI phrase, or modify the phrase in hope of ranking for related terms, for example “best blue widget for sale today”. There are around 5 possible keyword phrases in there, in addition to the main term. You get the idea. But your intent ought to be to make it make sense.
What constitutes a good page headline?
Conversely, your page headline needs to entice the reader to read on, to yearn for more information. A lot of great headlines will invoke curiosity, promise solutions, and inject emotions.
Satisfying the needs of the reader is your primary goal here, and if you can do that in a short, pithy way so much the better.
“How to write a novel in 30 days and stay married.” This is a title you might click through to read. It makes a promise, delivers urgency and hints at humor.
Finding the sweet spot
Often you'll be confronted with a choice, and you'll have to choose which is more important, the SEO or maximum clicks. The intersection where both come together is often quite small, and often the goal of the page comes into play, such as how you're going to be using it. Is it a landing page destined to get mostly paid traffic, or a foundation website page that needs to rank well? Therein often lies the choice.
If you need professional help with your seo titles and headlines (search rankings strategy), schedule an appointment today!
Glennette Goodbread, Owner
Premium Web Design and Hosting
