What Google Says About Optimizing Search Results' Titles

Google recently updated the page on title tags in Google Search Central to provide new guidelines for website developers on how to influence the display of title tags. But what exactly are title tags, and why is it important to follow Google’s guidelines for them?

In the world of search engine optimization (SEO), the title of your webpage or blog post can make a big difference in how well it ranks in search results. Google, the world’s largest search engine, has provided guidance on how to optimize your titles to improve your website’s search rankings.

First and foremost, Google recommends that titles should accurately describe the content of the page or post. Misleading titles can result in a poor user experience, which Google seeks to avoid. Additionally, Google may penalize websites that use deceptive or spammy titles.

Title tags, also known as meta titles, page titles, meta title tags, or title links, are the text displayed on search engine results pages (SERPs) and browser tags. Their purpose is to tell internet users and search engines like Google what a page is about and whether it is relevant to a particular search query.

For website owners and SEO specialists, optimizing all elements of a page, including the meta title, is essential to getting the page to appear on the first Google search results page. Additionally, meta titles play a critical role in influencing online users’ decision to click on a page when they see it on a Google search results page or social share.

To optimize your titles for search, Google recommends using descriptive and specific keywords that accurately reflect the content of your page or post. This can help your page appear in search results for relevant queries. However, it’s important to avoid “keyword stuffing,” or excessively using keywords in an attempt to manipulate search rankings. This can result in penalties from Google.

Meta titles not only serve as a means for website owners to incorporate keywords and company names into page titles, but also offer branding opportunities to establish an online presence and enhance SEO efforts. Nevertheless, meta titles should be precise, pertinent, readable, accessible, and attention-grabbing to boost click-through rates (CTR).

The process of creating title tags demands careful consideration and exertion, particularly for websites with multiple pages. However, despite the hard work put in by website owners and SEO specialists to optimize title tags, Google’s bots may still modify them, which can be disheartening.

In addition, Google advises keeping titles brief and straightforward since excessively long titles may be truncated in search results, reducing their effectiveness. Google also warns against using all caps or excessive punctuation in titles, which may be perceived as spammy.

To make titles more appealing and engaging, Google recommends using action-oriented language, posing questions, or creating a sense of urgency. Finding the right balance between accuracy, specificity, and engagement is critical when optimizing titles for search engines. By adhering to Google’s guidelines, website owners can enhance their search rankings and attract more traffic to their pages.

What Is A Meta Title For, And Why Is It Important?

The purpose of a meta title is to inform both internet users and search engines about the content of a webpage and its relevance to a specific search query. For website owners and SEO specialists, meta titles serve multiple purposes, such as optimizing web page elements to improve its ranking on search results pages, attracting user attention to click on the webpage link, and creating branding opportunities by incorporating keywords and company names. Therefore, it is crucial to craft meta titles that are accurate, relevant, readable, accessible, and attention-grabbing. Although it can be tedious work, SEO specialists and website owners typically invest a lot of effort in creating effective meta titles. However, it can be disappointing to find that Google’s bots have rewritten their meta titles.

How Does Google Rewrite Page Titles?

Google unveiled a new automated system in August 2021 that allows for the rewriting or editing of Google title tags for web pages. While Google has been refining title tags since 2012, the methods used to generate them have evolved. The new system considers a page’s content and references to it online to craft a title link that accurately describes each search result on a Google search results page. The goal is to enhance user experience and provide more informative search results.

Previously, Google relied solely on HTML text to generate title tags, but it now includes the text visible to humans when visiting a web page, including header tags (<H1> and <H2>), visually prominent text, content in <title> elements, the page’s primary visual title, anchor texts, and text within links that point to the page.
Thanks to Google’s new system, title tags that are excessively long, contain repetitive language, are keyword-stuffed, blank, or feature boilerplate text like “Home,” “Services,” and “Contact,” may be revised or shortened more frequently.

What To Do After Updating Your Titles?

If you have updated your website’s title tags to comply with Google’s best practices, you may need to wait a few weeks for the search engine to recrawl and process your pages. However, there are faster options available, such as using the URL Inspection tool to request that Google index specific URLs or submitting a sitemap for multiple URLs. Alternatively, you can save time and ensure prompt reinspection of URLs by hiring a technical SEO services provider to manage this process for you.

Although changing Google title tags may seem like a straightforward task, it can be challenging to create creative, catchy, and unique titles, especially if you have many pages on your website. Additionally, it’s essential to monitor your titles because Google may automatically rewrite or truncate them despite your best efforts. If this happens, you will need to revise your previously written tags and either wait for Google to recrawl the pages or request a reindexing.

At EXR Consultancy Services, a reliable digital marketing agency, we offer on-page SEO services to businesses of all sizes and niches. Our team of technical SEO experts and content writers can create and monitor your title links and other SEO processes. As part of our on-page SEO services, we conduct a technical SEO audit to identify areas for improvement in your website’s SEO and ensure compliance with Google’s guidelines. Furthermore, we analyze and optimize your title tags, keywords, alt attributes, meta descriptions, and robots tags to boost your SEO performance. Finally, we also provide SEO content writing services that produce compelling, high-converting content with title tags and metadata that align with Google’s policies.