How To Write Title Tags That Google Won't Change

Key Takeaways

in august 2021 google rolled out an update to change the way that some web page titles are generated within the search results this change has been confirmed to affect around 13 of web pages that either have no page titles or what google considers to be a poor web page title google used to generate titles for these pages based on the user's search query however the new system seems to apply a static web page title to the overall page that's a move from being dynamically driven by the user search query to being static based on the content of the page whether you think that's good or bad the best way to avoid google controlling your web page titles altogether is to get them right the first time so firstly what are web page titles in the world of seo whether you refer to them as web page titles title tags or now known as title links these are the blue clickable links you'll see within google search results pages these titles are one of the primary signals people use to determine the relevance of a web page to their search query as well as this they're also used for navigational purposes for when you want to click on them and visit that webpage so why should you have good web page title links page titles are very important for seo they're key for helping users decide which web page to visit when looking through the search results an engaging page title helps the website stand out from others ranking in the search results which means they're vital for encouraging more click-throughs it's commonly debated where the click-through rate is in fact a primary ranking factor but what we do know is that a high click-through rate signals a positive user experience and user experience is certainly a ranking factor alongside click-through rate bounce rate and dwell time are all used by google's rank brain a component of google's core algorithm to rank websites in the search results if your title accurately summarizes the content then your users are more likely to stick around which again supports a positive user experience with this new update google wants to make page titles more accurate to the user which better reflects the page content instead of the search query the best thing about this update is that google has now given us guidance on the common issues with web page title links and the reasons why google might change them google tells us that before the update they've changed around 20 of page titles but now only 13 will be affected this is because they're taking a more targeted approach to changing title links looking to change only those where the title element might not describe the content as well as it could google lists these as the reasons why the title link in the search results might differ from the title element firstly the titles are incomplete meaning they're either half empty or completely missing any kind of descriptive text the title hasn't been updated to reflect an update to the main content this discrepancy could exist on something like a black friday sale page that uses the same url year on year the title doesn't accurately reflect the main content or there's repeated boilerplate text in the title elements for a subset of pages within a site this means that the text is repeated for a number of titles the example used by google is a forum with separate pages for different seasons of the same tv show where the unique identifier in this case the season number is omitted from the title element google can detect the correct season number as included on the web page and alter the title accordingly if your page title contains any of these issues then google will generate new text for the page title link so how does google generate alternative page title links it'll create title links using the visible information available on that web page so it'll search for the text that users can actually see that best represents that content it's likely to get that information from the content in the title element of course heading elements such as h1 and h2 tags content that's large and prominent through the use of style treatments other elements that might be considered include other text contained in the page and finally any anchor text used on the page so now you understand what this update is and how it works you're probably wondering what this means for your overall seo strategy you'll be pleased to hear that this update may not directly impact your rankings in the short term this is because google still crawls the page title as written directly on the web page for indexing meaning the text within the title element however if google does choose to change your title links this can cause fluctuations in click-through rate which has the ability to impact your rankings over time this is why it's vital to optimize titles directly on the web page rather than just letting google changes for you optimize page titles are also a signal to google that the content is of good quality and of course quality content is a primary ranking factor and remember titles will only be changed by google if they don't meet this new criteria so the better you can optimize them the more control you have over how your brand appears in the search results but how do you know which page titles are being changed by google well if you use a tool like ahrefs there is a feature within their site audit report which highlights where the page title in the title elements doesn't match the title shown in the search results this will help you quickly identify the web page titles that may need your attention with this in mind let's have a look at how to write good optimized page title links that are less likely to be altered by google the accompanying documentation to this update tells seos exactly how to optimize page title links and what to avoid this is more than google usually gives us when announcing an update so we can thank them for that in the advanced seo section of google search central they advise the seos make sure every page on a site has its own unique title specified in the title elements create distinctive descriptive titles for each page and avoid overused phrases this helps users to differentiate between the pages in the search results the descriptions need to be specific enough that it explains exactly what's on the page this means avoiding standard descriptions such as facho blog instead we use agency academy free seo and link building guides which much better explains the content on that page but you'll want to avoid titles being truncated or cut off by google by keeping titles concise and under 65 characters brand the titles when appropriate by adding the name of the site either at the start or the end of the title separated from the rest of the text by a hyphen colon or pipe avoid vague text such as home for the home page and as with all seo avoid keyword stuffing google favors titles that are supporting their users in answering their search queries and overstuffed over optimized titles aren't doing that while following these best practices won't guarantee that google doesn't change how your page titles appear in the search results it will limit the possibility and ensure that you control as much of the user experience as possible a fun side note there are a few teething problems soon after the launch with google picking up vice president in the text of the official whitehouse.gov page and changing the title which of course twitter had some great fun with so while they iron out the update if you do spot any abnormalities you can report any feedback to google's dedicated forum which i'll leave a link to in the description below [Music]