How to come up with the best title tags?

[edward-may]

Hi Guys,

I know title tags is one of the most important things that google looks at, any tips or advice around how I can go about improving the ones I have currently?

I'm ranking pretty decent for all domains, slowly but surely, my main keywords are online psychics, online psychic readings, chat psychics, chat readings, tarot readings, and psychic readings.  Any advice would be much appreciated, or direct me to resources I can look into helping me get onto the right path.

my website is http://bit.ly/1KTbWg0

Thanks

[ClaytonJ]

Title tags are critical as you have pointed out. Like everything in SEO they have two competing features. The first is SEO - the words in the title are integral to tell google what you website is about. The second competing feature is clickability.  Often click ability and SEO do not "intertwine" neatly.

A basic and strong title tag would be

Important Keyword | Second most important Keyword | Brand name

Psychic Readings | Online Tarot or Chat Readings | Zenory (487 pixels)

The title should be no more than 512 pixels long, otherwise it usually truncates. So if you send through a couple of options as per the above. Happy to review and discuss with you.  When "deciding the title" you should always keep an eye on your H1 as they are related.

Ask away I love title tags and meta descriptions.

[edward-may]

Hi John,

Thanks for your advice.  Yes so there are a few important keywords.  The most important would be "psychic readings" I assume - as this has the most search volume but also the competition for this keyword is pretty high, would this be something I need to think about before choosing a title for that page?

My next keyword would online psychic readings - im wanting to eliminate "Free" although my competitors don't and i don't know why, but this usually brings in all the tyre kickers, and the frauds etc  However, one thing i want to question, can i use psychic readings and online psychic readings as a combination on one title tag?

Say for example: home page

Psychic Readings | Online Tarot, Astrology, Chat Readings | Zenory (487 pixels)

Online Psychic Readings | Live Psychic Readings | Zenory (487 pixels) - this is what I currently have it seems to be doing well, but should be doing better im not being found for psychic readings in US or AUS - but im on page 3 in NZ.

Psychic Readings | Online Tarot, Love Readings | Zenory (487 pixels)

Psychic Readings | Online Tarot Phone or Chat Readings | Zenory (487 pixels)

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Edward,

If you are looking to find supporting keywords, a nice little tool for Wordpress is SEOpressor. It costs just a few dollars a month and allows you to get suggestions for LSI keywords. A great and inexpensive way to enhance your keyword research.

-Andy

[ClaytonJ]

Edward

Your current title chases a more niche market - "online psychic readings" as compared to "psychic readings".  So any change to the title - ie deleting online - at the start could impact how you rank now for online psychic readings. It is actually a treacherous game playing with titles - especially if you rank well in key areas.

ie Big companies would do it, only whilst simultaneously running a massive above the line advertising campaign etc. Every click counts, cant afford to lose one.

Am trying to make the point a change to title is not to be done lightly. I built a tool so I can review titles, independently here is the link https://www.predikkta.com/products/free-serp-optimizer-tool.html - you can measure pixels and also see what your Ad looks like next to competitors.

All that said on your examples if you have created some strong backlinks I would jump to the latter one. But I am v concerned about your domain authority. Accordingly I would target niche until you have built up your DA a little more.  I am conservative though. ie the below title is 500 pixels. Then perhaps your H1 "psychic readings".

Online Psychic Readings | Tarot, Astrology & Chat | Zenory

Moving forward this way you keep your primary keyword insitu whilst keeping working on DA for the key pages.

It is a very difficult and nebulous business advising on titles. So you know your site best and what risks you are prepared to take.  The key focus for me looking at your site is DA, everything else looks reasonable...

Ask away though. Hope this is not too muddy.

[edward-may]

That is awesome Andy, thanks so much!!!!

[ClaytonJ]

Edward

You should have a read of this blog post - considering your international expansion. I am firm believer in the one domain if at all possible concept.

https://moz.com/blog/why-cctlds-should-not-be-an-automatic-choice-for-international-

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

Here are a couple of great resources to help with your title tags:
Title Tag Best Practices (Moz)
Title Tags & SEO: 3 Golden Rules (SEW)

Remember, what you put in the title tags comes down to what your users are searching for. If their intent is not met, they are not going to click. As long as the title is relevant and catches the eyes of the user (and search engines), you will be golden.

Also, don't forget that you could do all the research in the world and Google could change your title tag - just be mindful that that could potentially happen, so don't be discouraged. Same thing with your meta descriptions (here are some great tips on click through rates around meta tags).

Don't overuse keywords or cram as much as you can in. This can come across as spammy and hurt your chances of ranking. Be mindful of length, phrasing, and branding.

Hope this helps! Good luck to you!

[edward-may]

Hey John,

Thanks for the heads up, interesting read: i guess the only thing we are concerned about interms of moving them all to the one domain, .com is that 1 we will loose our current rankings for nz and au. and two there will be some major changes in our development, the site is custom build with payments, international currencies and timezones, internally built amongst all sort of other complicated issues we could possibly have.  I will speak to my developer about it and see what other ways this can be done, but in the past we have considered this a few times and it kinda cause complications with the way we have set up the development which is why we decided to keep the cctlds.  It was a question I posed here a while ago as running 3 sites almost triples the amount of time, and $ so it would be great to bring it down to one.  What is your take on this from that point?

[ClaytonJ]

Edward

The question you face is almost the classic SEO conundrum. Execute the consolidation poorly and you end up losing a lot of rankings and traffic. So it has risks and the first rule is do no harm.

I am what you call a hardliner however. I would consolidate. An eCommerce site doing well www.cottonon.com may be worth viewing. Same issue - global in different markets. One domain. Killing it.

Focusing on one domain long term will have significant benefits.

https://moz.com/blog/2-become-1-merging-two-domains-made-us-an-seo-killing

https://moz.com/blog/rebrand-or-redirect-my-site-consolidate-multiple-sites-whiteboard-friday

That said you have to consider it carefully - map out pro & cons etc. Move slowly and execute brilliantly. Certainly worth keeping on the radar. I would educate myself - talk to more people and then make a decision.

[edward-may]

Hey John

Thanks for the update! Yes our focus is the .com so we want to build that up. However what benefits would there be for merging the other two over to the .com?  I think the earlier we start the better perhaps... ?

It will definitely be something il keep on my radar!

[ClaytonJ]

Benefits are massive. You should be able to focus all your link buildings efforts to one domain - ultimately obtain a higher domain authority. Think of it this way you are now presently dividing your time between three sites. You may even feel guilty working on one site and forgetting the other two.

If you think of your websites like houses. Right now you need to maintain, clean and pay for three houses. Also travel between them. If you make one big house - sure you might have to change some rooms so the New Zealanders feel at home. But it is alot easier being in the same house...  Plus fix one room and it adds value to the whole house...

The big global brands - one big house... lots of great rooms accommodating different cultures.

Hopefully not too esoteric!  ps main benefit long term is Domain authority, time and cost..

[edward-may]

Hey John

Yes your right, the current title tags actually have done the site a world of good. We had to rebrand everything and this is the new site and brand as the site was content thin.  Basically now we are looking at how we can perform better and starting on building the quality of the DA as its quiet low.  But I wanted to focus my efforts on the .com my question for changing the titles would seem that maybe if we did we could do a little better however I think for now its more about creating better links and building up the authority.

My question is #1 Should the H1 be the "online psychic readings" as well

and also i have targeted online psychic readings bc yes its more niche driven but there seem to be really good traffic that come in with that keyword.  Also I have a category page that is directed to "psychic readings" without the online and perhaps I could focus that as the H1 tag instead of on the home page? I hope this makes sense?

[ClaytonJ]

I would have the H1 as you state - "online psychic readings".

And yes on the final paragraph do there later. make sure you use the URL  zenory.com/psychic-readings - has great SEO value.

Backlinks! Backlinks and more quality backlinks!

[edward-may]

Thanks John, you have offered some real value into what I have been considering! Would love to chat more if possible! Working on backlinks at the moment blogger outreach etc