This article deals only with one aspect of the search-engine-friendly title. This article deals with picking a title to appeal to the search-engine’s-indexing algorithm. It does not cover other important aspects such as how the title looks when it is nestled within a search engine results page, amongst other things.
There are many aspects to a good title. This article just covers some of the search engine only aspects which people often get wrong.
The unheard keyword
You must put at least one keyword in the title. Ideally the keyword will be one that is in your meta-keywords for the article/blog post. You can try to put more than one in there, but make sure it does not confuse the meaning or look/read silly or poorly.
Get stuffed
Do not stuff your title full of keywords. It will look dumb and the search engine will view it more as white noise. Worse still, the search engine may consider the page/post as being over optimized and penalize the page/post.
No nonsense geese feet
Make sure that whatever keyword you put in your title makes sense. Don’t just throw any old keyword in there. It must make perfect sense and fit it there perfectly--both grammatically and as part of a well-constructed title.
Keywords……prominence
There is an old rule about keyword prominence. This is all about putting keywords in a place where they are more prominent in order to show their significance. The rule for a title is that the keyword should be near the beginning of the title. This is an old rule and we cannot be sure of how useful it still is. Nevertheless, it cannot hurt to put your keyword near the front.
So wrong that is feels almost right
Make sure that whatever you have as your title--has something to do with your article/blog post. Stupid people will look up the most commonly searched-for search-terms and will make a title based on that because it will get more clicks. This tactic may fool the Google algorithm temporarily, but it will not fool the admins. Your entire domain could be red-flagged (even your IP address). Google has come down hard on the jerks that mislead people with their titles (and rightly so).
Annoying characters
The world is full of characters. Some people are jolly, others are fun, and others are sexy. The worst types of characters are ones who will tell you that a meta-title and a title should have a character limit. These people are so dumb that it gives smart people a nosebleed. There is not character limit for a title. You can make it 2000 characters if you like. A search engine can index a title of thousands of characters. However if you are looking for a comfortable guide, which a search engine prefers, then aim at around 70 characters. The only reason that search engines like this is because the title will fit on one uninterrupted line on a search engines results page (on the settings most people set their web browser to). In other words it means that some of your title is not chopped off on the search engine results.
Foggier than a Swedish sauna
Do not be too vague with your title. It should be intriguing for sure, but not too vague otherwise a Google admin may mistake it for misleading--and punish you accordingly. If you want to be intriguing, try posing the article/post as a question such as, “how many times must I tell my daughter to stop bullying her sister?” You could even risk, “how many times must I tell my daughter to stop?” but we are entering the realm of vague there a little bit.
Spelling it rong
Search engines are sensitive to spelling. The only time it works in your favor is when the user misspells something in the search box. So unless you are doing an article/blog post on swollen fingers, it is best to spell check your work.
Author’s bio: Sonia Jackson represents the UK web-site royal-essays.com. We’ll help you to solve all problems with writing different essays and research papers according to the rules in the UK.
