How to Write Winning Title Tags for SEO

It is an important part of technical SEO to have the most relevant and targeted title tags on your webpages. The title tag of each page on your site is the most important tag in your back-end optimization, as it is the very first item the search engine robots read when indexing each page on your site. The title tag is the “preface” of each webpage.

The words in the title tag tell the robots what the nature of the page is about, and so the title tag keywords must match up to what the body content words consist of (i.e. if the webpage is about “San Diego vacation packages” make sure those words are put within the title tag verbiage).

Also, the title tag is the underlined one-liner above each web-result on a search engine page, so it is an important piece of information for consumers because it tells them what the webpage is about.

An appealing title tag, with the most targeted phrases notably placed within the one-liner, will produce a higher click-through rate for web-browsers.

Here are a a few rules that you could use to create effective title tags: 

1. Title tag length should be limited up to 55 characters, including the spaces and punctuation.

2. All title tags should be typed in Title Case (or Proper Case). This aids in the ease of reading the tag and standing out amongst other search results.

3. Start the title tag for every page with the most important keyword phrase for that page. This will be based on the pre-planned strategy for the page, as well as the keyword research. But, note that most strategic words should come first in the title tag.

4. The hotel or company name does not need to be placed within too many title tags. Unless the company is NOT coming up on the first page of Google when searched, you can omit the hotel or company name from all but 1-2 of the website’s title tags.

5. Try not to repeat the same word in a title tag. Try variations: hotel, lodging, accommodation. However, if necessary, the word can be varied by making it plural or singular, but this should only be done for most relevant words (i.e. “hotel” and “hotels” in the same title tag, or the location name ex: “Orlando” repeated in the same title –this exception should not be overly used).

6. Utilize “&” when you want to say “and”. This will give you more space to put in various keywords in your title tag.

7. Use “-“ to break up your title tag if you want to include two different but related keyword phrases, but do not use more than ONE “-“ in each title tag.

8. Do NOT use a punctuation mark at the end of the title tag (i.e. period, exclamation mark, question mark).