What Are SEO Title Tags? Why Do Title Tags Matter?

a magnifying glass with symbols of title tags in code around it: seo title tag

In the world of search engine optimization, title tags help you signal that your content is relevant to searchers. SEO title tags tell search engines what your page is about, and they make it easier to discover your web page. Learn how to write masterful SEO title tags that capture your audience’s attention and help you rank on the first page of search results.

✂️ Shortcuts

What is an SEO title tag?

Title tags are an HTML element used to demarcate a web page’s SEO title. You can view the title tag on any web page by right-clicking (control-click on Mac) and selecting Inspect. This will show you the HTML code for the page. The HTML title tag can be found in the <head> section. If you’re looking at the raw HTML, it should look something like this:

<head>

<title>12 Photos of Beautiful Orcas</title>

</head>

The text contained between the opening and closing title tags is the page’s SEO title or meta title. This is the title displayed on search engine results pages (SERPs) and browser tabs. 

SEO titles vs. headlines

SEO titles aren’t always the same as the headlines that appear on the page itself. Title tags must be around 60 characters or fewer to appear in full on a SERP. Headlines can be longer and more detailed. For example, you might choose “12 Photos of Beautiful Orcas” as your title tag and “12 Photos of Beautiful Orcas Taken by This Year’s Photographer of the Year” as your on-page headline. 

Title tags and headlines are written differently within a web page’s HTML markup; headlines are indicated by the tag <h1> and SEO titles have the <title> tag, hence the name. 

Why are title tags important for SEO?

Title tags are a way to tell search engines what your page is about. Search engines like Google and Bing are designed to help search users discover relevant, useful information online. To deliver the best match for a user’s query, search engines analyze SEO titles, meta descriptions, page copy, and other elements of on-page SEO. They display the most relevant sites on a search results page. Describing your content accurately and using relevant keywords in your SEO title will help search engines match your content with interested readers. 

Paul Shapiro, head of technical SEO and SEO product management at Shopify, suggests brands keep this tip in mind when they include title tags. “Writing title tags requires a gentle balance of including relevant keywords and crafting something clickable for the SERP,” he says. “On top of that, you want to be aware of ensuring the most important part of the title tag doesn’t get truncated on the SERP.” 

In addition to keywords, search engines also take click-through rate into account when ranking web content. Pages with higher click-through rates are seen as engaging and given algorithmic priority. Title tags are the most prominent copy displayed on search results pages, so it’s important for the copy to appeal to readers. A compelling title that appeals to the reader and gets them to click on your web page can help you achieve higher click-through rates, leading to a better search rank.

What makes a good SEO title tag? 

A good SEO title tag clearly describes a web page’s content. A perfect title tag does this while also intriguing the reader and inviting clicks. Here are some elements to keep in mind while creating title tags:

1. Represent the content accurately

Make sure your title includes your primary keyword, or the main term your audience searches for when looking for the content on your page. Keep the user experience in mind. If the content of your page doesn’t match the title, they’re likely to leave the page immediately. 

2. Give keywords prime real estate

Keyword placement matters. Keeping your target keyword toward the beginning of your SEO title will help catch the user’s eye. 

3. Stand out

A good title can capture the attention of a user scrolling through search page results, so make an effort to differentiate your content from others. Consider using action words or descriptive language that appeals to the reader. Evocative language can improve your title tag’s effectiveness. 

4. Write unique titles

Avoid using the same title for multiple pages on your site. Each page should have a unique title tag to describe its content.

How to write SEO title tags

Although SEO title tags are written in HTML, you don’t need to learn to code to create them. Most content management systems (CMS) include a title tag field for easy input. Just enter your title copy in the field and keep the following guidelines in mind:

1. Keep it short

Write concise titles. Too long title tags will appear truncated in search results. Google displays titles up to a maximum width of around 600 pixels, so keep titles between 50 and 60 characters to stay below this limit

2. Include your brand name

Including your brand name in your SEO title can help build authority and name recognition. If your brand is well-known, search visitors may trust your links more based on your brand’s reputation. 

3. Avoid keyword stuffing

Including multiple keywords in an SEO title can muddle the focus and make it difficult to read. Choose one target keyword or phrase to highlight instead.

4. Update your title when necessary

Using Google Search Console, review search analytics and optimize title tags that are underperforming. Google Search Console can show you which search terms your page is ranking for, helping you better identify how your customers find your site. After you identify relevant search queries, you may update your page to include additional focus keywords.

3 examples of SEO-friendly title tags

Writing a compelling SEO title that includes your target keyword and comes in under 60 characters can be challenging. When in doubt, keep it simple. Consider these hypothetical examples of SEO-friendly title tags for inspiration: 

Example 1: Temporary tattoo company

Designer temporary tattoo company Tat2 identifies a strong search demand for food tattoos. To capitalize on this opportunity, they curate a list of their most popular food-themed tattoos into a blog post. This is the title tag they chose:

16 Temporary Food Tattoos Perfect for Foodies | Tat2 

Example 2: Ecommerce floss retailer

Ecommerce floss retailer Tooth Threadz decided to build product collection pages to help customers sort their offerings by category. This is the title for a collection of flavored floss:

Exciting Flavored Floss for Kids and Adults | Tooth Threadz 

Example 3: Heirloom tomato company

Heirloom tomato company Mato has over 60 product pages on its site, including eight different types of dried tomatoes. Let’s say they create a template title that includes the product name, brand name, and one focus keyword. The titles look like this:

Beefsteak — Whole Dried Tomatoes | Mato 

Brandywine — Whole Dried Tomatoes | Mato 

SEO title tag FAQ

Do title tags affect SEO?

A great title tag can help boost your search ranking and increase your click-through rate. Title tags tell search engine algorithms what your content is about. A concise, accurate title tag will help your content appear for relevant searches.

Are title tags a Google ranking factor?

Yes. Title tags tell search engines like Google what your page is about. A title tag alone won’t guarantee reaching the top of Google search results for any given term, but a well-crafted title paired with informative copy can increase your click-through rate and search ranking.

Should I include my brand name in the title tag?

Including your brand’s name in web page title tags can help build brand recognition and make readers more likely to click.

How often should I update or change my title tags?

Rewrite your title tags if you make significant changes to the page content or if the title itself is no longer up to date. For example, you’d want to update the title “Best Faberge Eggs of 2023” if you update the page content in 2024. You can also monitor performance and perform a title tag refresh if a post is not performing as well as expected.

How can I make sure my title tag will appear in full on SERPs?

If you’re working in a Google doc, you can highlight the text of your title and hit Command + Shift + C to see if your character count is under 60. You can also copy and paste your title into a title tag preview tool like the one provided by Moz or the one by Pixel Width Checker.

Wrapping Up:

We at ShopShipShake have been working with businesses like yours with fulfilling experiences. We offer one-stop services, including an efficient supply chain, over 10 thousand of China’s suppliers, over 1,000,000 SKU and more. With a successful track record of over 100,000 clients, we are sure to deliver your orders requirements.

Let’s get in touch to build, sustain, and grow your businesses! If you would like to know more details about us, please contact us:  blog.shopshipshake.com. If you are interested in cooperating with us. Please register on: https://shop.shopshipshake.com/register/business

This article originates from: https://www.shopify.com/blog/seo-title-tag

12 SEO Tips to Rank on Google in 2023

Are you struggling to rank your business on Google?

Millions of Google searches are happening as you read this sentence. Of those, 40% click the top search result. SEO is constantly evolving, however, if you manage to stay on top of it, your business can bring in tremendous results!

Before we get into the tips: Remember this, Google wants to serve their clients the most relevant content and search results.

There is a lot going on in the Algorithm but one thing I’ve always used as a benchmark is. When someone clicks your link, does it satisfy their search intent? If google serves up your page to someone, they click and leave, it signals to the good that this page is not relevant. Conversely, if someone clicks your link on google,

then stays on your site or even uses your site to navigate further, this sends an excellent signal to good.

1) Speed up your site!

There is a 50% chance site visitors will bounce if your website takes longer than five seconds to load.

Pages that load slowly on mobile devices could also be downgraded due to Google’s speed update.

To Speed up Website USE:

  • Content Delivery Network (CDN)
  • Speed plug-in (like WP Rocket)

A couple of milliseconds aren’t going to make a huge difference, but if your site speed starts to impact user experience, they will leave, and you will be ranked poorly

2) Avoid pogo sticking- Keep Users Engaged

When a user clicks your website and then bounces back to another search result, it is called pogo-sticking. When this happens too often Google assumes your site doesn’t have the best answer and it will downrank you. How do you avoid this? By keeping users engaged for longer. How do you do this? Make content scannable and visually interesting.

Use Formatting to Improve readability!

· bullets

· headings

· subheadings

· break up the text blocks.

This way you master search intent to give readers exactly what they want.

3) Keyword placement

Not only is adding keywords to your content important but where you place them is equally, if not more, important.

Your target keywords, such as your page title, or H1, need to be in the URL, the first 100 words of your content, as well as your H2 headings.

4) Semantic Keywords

Google is getting smarter, so your keyword semantics needs to as well. You can’t just place random keywords on a page; if you want to rank on Google and have a robust article, then related keywords integrated into your page topic and page as a whole must be added to your content. This enables the algorithm to reward your content.

Surfer SEO is a useful tool to get this going.

5) Add text to your visual content

One area Google is not so smart (yet) is understanding traffic and backlinks from podcasts, videos, and infographics. By adding text to these you allow search engines to understand what your content is about. It’s all in the Metadata!

6) Rank your content in featured Snippets.

Here’s where a FAQ section in your content benefits you. By adding this you can rank in the featured Snippets of your search results pages and start appearing in the search results under your result as well as in some of the people who also ask similar questions.

7) Update old/low-traffic content

It’s important to keep blog posts updated to ensure high traffic and that they stay relevant and matched to your branding and messaging. This can be done by updating the design, changing the content or the text, getting a new title or meta description, updating your keyword targeting, adding external links, and organising content into sections so that it is easier to follow.

8) Delete dead pages

Pages that don’t bring any traffic anymore must be deleted to allow other pages to rank higher. By doing this you also ensure that internal links stay clean. Google will also thank you by preferring one stronger page over many smaller pages.

9) Blanket topics in your niche

High-quality content is important for SEO, but your niche may not be that exciting to read or write about. One way to get around this and still produce good regular content is by writing high-quality content around closely related topics. This blanks at your niche and gets you more traffic.

10) Long-Tail Keywords

Long-Tail Keywords can be extremely powerful, although they don’t always have the same volume as shorter keywords, it is much easier to determine search intent, and serve the searcher exactly what they are looking for, this will result in higher conversions!

11) Google search console

By using a Google search console, you are guaranteed to up your ranking. These performance reports hold invaluable information that will help you be more intentional in your strategy and ranking. Log in, go to performance reports, click pages, and have a look at the high-traffic ones. You will see all the keywords it ranks for and if you dig deeper, you can find much more information you might not have known before. You can then use these terms in different posts and Google will recognise them and likely increase your rankings.

12) Use X questions and answers

When someone’s searching for a high-level term, they usually want the definition. It’s therefore a good idea to rank for the definition keyword by making sure your content answers the question (What is X?). This will then be your first H2 heading.

There you go, 12 tips to getting your SEO started.

Wrapping Up:

We at ShopShipShake have been working with businesses like yours with fulfilling experiences. We offer one-stop services, including an efficient supply chain, over 10 thousand of China’s suppliers, over 1,000,000 SKU and more. With a successful track record of over 100,000 clients, we are sure to deliver your orders requirements.

Let’s get in touch to build, sustain, and grow your businesses! If you would like to know more details about us, please contact us:  blog.shopshipshake.com. If you are interested in cooperating with us. Please register on: https://shop.shopshipshake.com/shop/register/business

This article originates from: https://www.socomunity.com/post/seo-tips

Mobile SEO Guide: Essential Best Practices and Tools

As of 2022, nearly 60% of web traffic came from mobile devices, and it’s projected that by 2024, nearly half of all ecommerce purchases will be made on mobile. When it comes to ecommerce purchases, and internet use in general, people are turning to their mobile devices more than ever.

To capitalize on mobile traffic, your mobile website has to perform as well as—if not better than—your desktop site. Beyond that, you need a mobile site that’s optimized for discovery via search engine—a.k.a. “mobile SEO.” Here are key mobile SEO best practices and practical tools for improving your visibility in mobile users’ search results.

What is mobile SEO?

Mobile SEO stands for “mobile search engine optimization.” It describes a set of strategies that optimize mobile web pages for search engines like Google. Mobile SEO follows the same principles as regular SEO marketing: By making your site easier for search engines to “crawl” (or evaluate), your site’s visibility in search engine results increases. But, as its name implies, mobile SEO specifically targets your mobile site’s performance in search.

Keeping your domain in good SEO health is like a rising tide that lifts all boats—it can positively impact your ranking on both desktop and mobile. However, sites with good mobile SEO will likely perform better than those without it. That’s because search engines may prioritize ranking sites with a good mobile experience.

Prioritizing mobile-first indexing has been a Google policy since 2017. This means that as Google’s algorithm “decides” which websites make it onto the search engine results page (SERP), it “predominantly uses the mobile version of a site’s content, crawled with the smartphone agent, for indexing and ranking” indexes content and ranks based on the mobile version of a site. This makes a mobile SEO strategy crucial to boosting your overall search rankings.

6 mobile SEO best practices

Given the importance of mobile in overall search performance, businesses need to make sure mobile SEO is a part of their digital marketing strategy. These six principles can help set you up for success.

  1. Mobile-friendly design
  2. Reliable on-site links
  3. Short, pithy content
  4. Clean visuals
  5. Local and voice search optimization
  6. General on-page SEO principles

1. Mobile-friendly design

Mobile-friendly design is Google’s first guideline in its documentation on mobile-first indexing, and it should be your first step toward good mobile SEO. Google offers three approaches to mobile-friendly design, but recommends responsive design.

Mobile responsive design means your site “serves the same HTML code on the same URL regardless of the users’ device (for example, desktop, tablet, mobile, non-visual browser), but can display the content differently based on the screen size.” Shopify’s website builder offers responsive design, as a built-in feature. Other website builders produce dynamic serving sites, which serve different HTML, CSS, and media files to a device, depending on whether that device is a desktop computer, a mobile phone, or a tablet. In the end, responsive sites and dynamic serving sites produce the same product for website visitors.

If you already have a website, Google offers a free tool to tell you whether or not it’s mobile-friendly. The tool offers two verdicts: either the page is usable on mobile or it is not usable and needs a more mobile responsive design.

2. Reliable on-site links

When search engines “crawl” your website, they check your in-site navigation links to make sure they’re always pointing to the same active URL. For instance, if your site’s navigation menu has a link titled Pricing, Google confirms that the link is active, and that it always leads to the same “pricing” web page with the same URL.

3. Short, pithy content

When writing content for your website, keep a mobile user—and their small screen size—in mind. Keep paragraphs short and headlines pithy. Aim to keep sections limited to a few paragraphs, and break them up with imagery where possible. (No one wants to read a wall of text!)

4. Clean visuals

Make your mobile site easy on the eyes with clean visuals, including plenty of white space around photos and text. Mobile sites compress visual information, so err on the side of extra white space. What might look a little spare on desktop will look normal on mobile.

If you’re showcasing products on an ecommerce site, make sure the photos are high resolution and use dynamic sizing, which means they’ll load with correct proportions on any web browser, whether on mobile or desktop. Take care not to overload a product page with excess photos and videos. In addition to overwhelming a site visitor, these images can cause a page to load slower, which negatively impacts its mobile SEO.

5. Local and voice search optimization

As of 2022, 50% of consumers conduct some of their web searches using a voice search function. This is notably distinct from desktop searches, which are overwhelmingly done by old-fashioned typing. Google considers voice search in its mobile search results, and it favors websites with text that directly answers common search queries.

Voice search is often more conversational than typed search, especially when people use a digital assistant like Siri or Alexa. Your site might fare better for voice search results if it poses (and answers) conversational questions like “What is a good thread count for sheets?” or “Where do I buy organic toothpaste?”

It also helps to use long-tail keywords, which are specific search phrases. For instance, “gym” is a generic keyword, while “gym with climbing wall” is a more specific long-tail keyword.

6. General on-page SEO principles

The best practices for mobile SEO largely overlap with the best practices for all SEO. This applies to on-page SEO, which relates to your site’s content, load times, URLs, links, meta tags (HTML code that provides information about a web page to search engines and site visitors), and code cleanliness (an assessment of how the code is structured, organized, and written). Minding these elements will not only boost your mobile search ranking; it will help your overall SEO.

4 popular mobile SEO tools

SEO is a data-driven practice, so you’ll need a solid toolbox to get the insights you need for success. Here are five tools that can benefit your mobile SEO workflow.

  1. Google Search Console
  2. Semrush
  3. Ahrefs
  4. Screaming Frog

1. Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a free service direct from the web’s leading search engine that reports on your site’s performance on Google search. Its dashboard will tell you which pages are driving impressions and clicks from organic search, which queries you’re ranking for, and how your site performs on various SEO health metrics like page load time. You can then link GSC to your Google Analytics account to obtain free insights about how much mobile traffic you’re getting, and how to improve your site’s SEO.

2. Semrush

Semrush is a paid tool that helps you understand various aspects of a site’s SEO performance, including number of keywords ranked for, average ranking, and estimated traffic from organic search. You can filter by device to focus on mobile performance. You can also compare your domain’s mobile performance to that of competitors. Plans start at $120 per month.

3. Ahrefs

Ahrefs offers a mixture of free SEO tools and paid tools that come with monthly memberships (starting at $99 per month). Ahrefs offers a site audit that scans your website or online store and offers a prescription for improved search rankings. The platform’s site explorer tool runs a competitor keyword analysis and generates tips on productive keywords and backlinking.

4. Screaming Frog

UK-based Screaming Frog is a website crawler that can analyze your site and flag broken URLs, duplicate content, and redirect loops—all of which can lower your SEO if not addressed. It also includes features that overlap with SEMrush and Ahrefs, and includes some as part of a free tier. The paid version is also more affordable, with an annual membership priced at £239.

Mobile SEO FAQ

What is local SEO, and why is it important for mobile?

Local SEO is a type of search engine optimization that helps your site rank for search queries coming from your geographic area. This naturally integrates with mobile search because mobile devices (particularly phones) tend to give more accurate information about their physical location than a desktop computer does.

What is voice search, and how can I optimize for it on mobile?

Voice search describes the process of a person speaking their search query rather than typing it. People conduct voice searches on smart speakers, but they also use it on mobile devices, particularly when talking to a virtual assistant like Apple’s Siri. You can show up in more voice searches by populating your website with commonly searched questions and then providing clear, definitive answers directly below those questions.

How can I track and improve mobile SEO performance?

The best way to track and improve mobile SEO performance is to use a software tool like Google Search Console, Ahrefs, Semrush, or Screaming Frog. These applications are designed specifically to evaluate a site’s search engine performance and provide insights to help improve ranking. You’ll also want to ensure that your site follows Google’s mobile-friendly design guidelines, with responsive design, dynamic serving, and separate URLs.

Wrapping Up:

We at ShopShipShake have been working with businesses like yours with fulfilling experiences. We offer one-stop services, including an efficient supply chain, over 10 thousands China’s suppliers, over 1,000,000 SKU and more. With a successful track record of 100,000+ clients, we are sure to satisfy your orders requirements.

Let’s get in touch to build, sustain, and grow your businesses! If you’ d like to know more details about us, please contact us:  blog.shopshipshake.com. If you are interested in cooperating with us. Please register on: https://shop.shopshipshake.com/shop/register/business

The article reference: https://www.shopify.com/uk/blog/mobile-seo