Optimised page titles are key to driving your SEO rankings, that will in turn improve your online visibility and attract potential customers.
This article will outline what a page title is, how to check your website titles and why they are important to search engines.
What is a website page title?
A websites page title is a piece of HTML code that search engines use to understand and rank your web page. Not only do the search engines use it to understand your website but also uses it as a main headline in the organic search results.
Why are page titles important for SEO
When assessing the relevancy of your website to a users search in a search engine, Google will assess 3 main areas –
Titles fit within the website content section of the review of your site, they are the second thing on your page that a search engine will encounter after your URL.
They are not seen by a user on your website. Instead search engines use them to show users in the search engine results page. The strength of your page title combined with your meta description will determine if a user will click through to your site.
Page titles also help search engines to understand what is on your page and how relevant it is to the term that the user has searched for.
Getting your titles right will increase the number of times your website shows up in search engines as well as increasing the likelihood of someone clicking through to your site.
How to check your page titles
There are a number of ways to check your titles. Here I have suggested a manual method for checking 1 or 2 pages or an automated method for when you need to check multiple pages.
Option 1 – Viewing page title in page source
If you only have a couple of titles to check you can check your pages source – it isn’t complicated.
Simply go the page you would like to review, right click and select “View page source” the easiest way to find the page title is to use the find control – ctrl plus the character f – <title>.
You can see my source code.
Option 2 – Crawl your website to see all of your page titles
If you want to check multiple pages I would suggest that you use a website crawling tool. There are several tools out there. I have used Screaming Frog for years and am happy with how it works. The tool will crawl up to 500 pages as part of their free package.
The tool will crawl your website and collate key information. Page title, meta description, H1, H2s. into a spreadsheet so that you can play with the data.
As I use Screaming Frog I will show you how to crawl your website using Screaming Frog.
Download the app to your desktop.
Once the app opens you will be presented with a home screen. In the URL bar add your website address and hit crawl.
Once the crawl has been completed the “Export” button will be clickable, download as an excel file
The data downloaded can appear as overwhelming at first glance but don’t panic. To make your life easier filter or sort by the content type field. Focus on any pieces of content that reference html as these are your pages.
Focus on “Title 1” which can be found column G.
| Title 1 | Title 1 Length | Title 1 Pixel Width |
| Green Opal Digital Consultancy – Green Opal | Digital Consultancy | 65 | 585 |
Once you have identified your titles we need to review them and see where you can improve them.
How to improve your page titles
There are a number of things that you can do to improve your titles.
- Populate missing titles
- Make sure all of your titles are below 65 characters
- Ensure all of your titles are unique
- Do they make sense and explain what will be on the page without having to visit the page
The benefits of improving your page titles
By improving your page titles search engines will have a better understanding of what is on website. This will enable them to rank you for the correct search terms, which in turn will improve your click through rate, engagement rate and conversion rate.
Improved customer interaction will in turn benefit your rankings as search engines will see you as relevant and show you more often.
If you would like to discuss anything in this article then do get in touch or find out more about SEO for beginners here.
NB. Screaming Frog hasn’t sponsored this post, I have referenced them as it is the tool I use.