How to Write a Perfect SEO Title to Boost Your Organic Traffic?

Last Updated on November 30, 2022 by Arif Chowdhury

You may wonder how does SEO increase organic traffic for your business blog? You can attract a potential audience to your blog by using SEO-friendly titles to increase traffic.

First of all, what is a “title” on your blog post? It is the first gate visitors will see before entering your article. They will leave if the title is not attractive enough to your visitors.

It doesn’t matter how excellent your article is. Or, how unique and in-depth is your content? But, if the title is not good enough, everything else will fail.

But what about search engines like Google or Yahoo? These are not human in the first place. Do we also need to create attractive titles for them as well?

You must craft an attractive title to catch your visitors’ eye and technically create the title for SEO. Thus search engines will give you more priority.

So, in this guide, we will teach you how to write an SEO title, an SEO description, and practical examples so you can implement it immediately on your site.

What is an SEO title?

Like your ordinary newspaper headlines, the primary purpose is to attract readers. So though it is a newspaper, it is still one of the best SEO title examples.

Things haven’t changed much since our technology advanced to the digital era. We still leverage the power of headlines or titles to attract our visitors as our ancestors did.

Now because of technological advancement, we no longer read the newspaper. Instead, we use our laptops or mobile device to search using Google to read news from the web.

The title or headlines haven’t changed a bit. It is exactly as before, and its primary purpose is to encourage readers to read further.

Take a look at the Facebook post example here. Whenever a user writes a website/article URL, the system automatically extracts the title, meta description, and featured image from the original page.

So, no matter where we visit newspapers, magazines, search engines, social media, etc., titles or headlines always exist.

The entry point of content describes the entire content in a few words.

Now, let’s look at how digital technology sees a title. First, it is coded under HTML format just like this.

<title>how to write a title tag for SEO</title>

Quick Note: Use your primary keyword on your title, meta description, headings, and paragraphs. There are many ranking factors; however, creating SEO-optimized content and high-quality link-building is the most important. Also, avoid keyword stuffing at all costs, as it will harm your site more than do any good.

How can an SEO title be beneficial for your site?

In simple terms, it will increase your click-through rate (CTR). Like I said before, maybe your content is a masterpiece, yet, if its title is not descriptive and attractive enough, no one will click to read it.

A great title can easily encourage readers to click. Thus it increases CTR.

Let me give you an example. When I search in Google “how to increase sales.” I found these two valuable results.

Both are useful, yet, I clicked on the second result. Do you know why? Because of the title.

The first one says five ways to increase sales, and the second one says 25 ways to increase sales. The first one may be better than the second one. However, most visitors will click on the second one because it seems more promising and likely to have more information than the first one.

So, as you can see, with just a title, you can win over your competitors. But, of course, you must provide equally valued content in your article body to maintain the overall performance.

Another benefit is – branding your titles. Look at the above example; at the end of this title, they used their brand name, “SEMrush.”

Therefore, most visitors will likely click on this link only because this content belongs to a well-known brand.

Besides, your main keyword must have to be present in your title. It’s a typical search engine optimization practice.

What is the difference between a title tag and an H1 tag?

Most of my visitors will say there is no difference between h1 and the title tag; both are the same. I also thought this way a long time ago.

But, technically, they are different.

The title tag will appear in SERP (Search engine result page), it will show whenever you publish an article link on social media, and it will also appear in your browser tab.

However, the h1 tag will only appear in your article headline.

Don’t believe me? Just take a look above. What do you see here? Are both the same?

Look again. The headline text is – “The Difference between title tags and h1 tags.”

But in the browser, it only shows “Difference between…” there is no “The.”

Take a look at the search results page. Again, “The” is missing.

So, now you understand the h1 tag is your article headlines which will not appear anywhere else, while your title tag will appear everywhere else.

I guess we are done discussing the basic idea of title tags. Now, let’s dig deeper to learn how to craft a perfect SEO title for our blog post.

Quick Note: Focus on the target keyword when doing page SEO for your site. Also, always give the highest priority to user experience, as ultimately, your audience is the key to success, not search engines.

Seven steps to write a perfect SEO title for your blog post.

Before discussing this subject, I want to advise you about title tags.

Do you see three dots at the end of this title? It is called title tag truncation. It mainly happened because of limitations in pixels.

And that’s why it is always advisable to use 50-60 characters for your title tag. Otherwise, your last characters may not appear in SERP.

Also, do not use all capital letters. Instead, it is best to use a sentence case or capital letter for the first character of each word.

So, let’s get practical.

1. Make the title unique for every post your write.

I know what you are thinking. You thought this was not a big deal, and besides, why do you even bother to write silly advice like this?

No, here you are wrong. It is not advice but rather a practical, real-life experience.

Do you know that in my blogging career, I have faced this problem not once but several times?

In your early blogging career, it may not happen; however, as soon as you are about to cross 70 blog posts, you will start to face this problem.

You may be about to write a new article that you already covered before or at least 60-70% covered on that topic in your previous article.

For example, “How to write a blog post that will convert raw visitors to paid customers” is similar to “How to convert your regular visitors with highly engaging content.”

Do you see it now? It’s not about word-by-word similarity, but the topic has to be unique.

Recommended Reading: 11 Content Creation Hacks that Convert Visitors to Paid Customers

2. Make it short and informative for your audience.

My second piece of advice is – to make it short and informative. As I already said, you have a limitation for your SEO title length, that is, 50-60 characters; thus, you have to come up with something descriptive and informative.

Both, at the same time, are important. An attractive but not informative title won’t do any good for you. But, again, an informative yet not attractive one will lose visitors’ attention.

So, how are you supposed to do it?

No worries, here is your solution.

Let’s say you want to write an article about “How to build web pages using WordPress?” So the question is – how to make it informative and attractive simultaneously?

Add some number at the beginning like this:

“13 simple steps to build a web page using WordPress”. It’s descriptive as well as attractive.

Here are some attractive sample headlines for you to try out:

• Apply These [7] Secret Techniques to [Improve Online Sales]
• Believing These [7] Myths about [Online Business] Keep You from Growing
• Don’t Waste Time! [7] Facts Until You Get Success in [Online Business]
• How [7] Things Will Change the Way You Approach [Online Business]
• [Online Business]: [7] Reasons Why They Don’t Work and What You Can Do About It?

These are samples to give you some idea of combining both elements within your page title to make it work.

3. Beware of caps-lock before you write a page title.

Though this rule is not absolute, you should be aware of it. The best practice is – don’t use capital letters for your title tags.

Why am I advising you not to use capital letters? Because I have never seen anyone using it before. Some people may do, but it’s not a best practice, and that’s why it’s rare to see.

So, my question is – why do you need to capitalize your title tag? Well, to catch the eye of your visitors.

Well, in that case, I want you to capitalize the first character of each word. But, again, it’s a common SEO practice, and nothing wrong here.

4. Smartly inject your focused keyword in the title and headers.

Until now, you have learned how to use your title to get the most out of it from your visitors. But now I will teach you how to use it for search engines.

No matter how smart Google gets, it can never reach human-level intelligence. Thus, all those coding tricks to rank higher in Google will always exist.

You may write your article and title tag for humans, yet if you do not optimize it for search engine results, you will lose all of it, both search engines and visitors.

Yes, this is the reality. And this is why you need to learn some SEO tricks as well.

You should analyze your topic very carefully and then choose a focus keyword.

For example, I had to develop a title tag or headline before writing this article. My topic was “How to write an SEO title.” So, I decided to use “SEO title” as my focused keyword.

I have added it on the title tag and in my significant headers, h2 and h3.

And, of course, remember to use focused keywords in your meta description.

Recommended Reading: Why Content Marketing is the Best Way to Boost Business Growth?

5. Feel free to target low-volume keywords.

Google has changed a lot since hummingbird updates. No matter how you target a keyword, Google will rank you for the overall topic.

If you haven’t taught about it already, then do so. In this article, I won’t elaborate much about it.

For example, I have focused on the keyword “SEO title” in this article’s title tag, headers, and paragraphs. However, it will only help me rank higher if I use LSI keywords.

Here, LSI means latent semantic index. Though Google denied this yet, almost all webmasters know this truth.

So, what is it? Well, Google is not only looking for a single keyword but also keywords that are semantically related to it.

For example, “SEO title” related keywords are – search engines, Google, rank, article, visitors, click-through rate, blog, website, etc.

As you can see, those keywords are highly related to my focused keyword, and you need those keywords to write an article well.

And this is what Google always looks for to identify a topic by scanning it for LSI keywords.

I suggest you target low-volume keywords as well. You have to add related keywords in your article anyway. So why be afraid of adding some low-volume keywords? Besides, always remember that low volume means low-competitive.

How to find low-competitive keywords for free?

I will not tell you to spend $199 per month on some simple keyword research. Instead, I will show you some free ways to do your keyword research.

Try this free tool: Keyword Surfer.

Then, hit the search button using your keyword to show your search volume.

You can find relevant keywords and their search volume as well. So, for example, if you want to target low-competitive keywords, target low-volume.

And for LSI keywords, click on the content editor. It will provide you with ample semantic keywords. Then, add these keywords to your article naturally.

Recommended Reading: 9 Best and Cheapest SEO Tools for Beginners? (Tested and Reviewed)

6. Try to answer all the possible questions in your article.

If you want to succeed in content marketing, writing an eye-catching and optimized title won’t do any good. You need more than that.

Have you ever heard about Topical Authority? It is the new future of search engines.

Maybe nowadays, backlinks are still dominating search engines, but soon, they won’t. Instead, the new governing factors will be LSI keywords and topical authority.

So, what is topical authority?

I won’t talk much about it either in this article. So, let’s make it short.

For example, blogs x and y both have 100 articles published, and both have the same DA and PA. However, blog x has only 10 SEO-related articles, while blog y has 30.

Based on this scenario, blog y has more topic authority than blog x because it covers more SEO topics and answers more SEO questions.

Do you get it now?

I strongly recommend you use Google’s “people also ask” section to get an idea about subtopics.

Try to answer as many questions as possible in your articles. It will increase your topical authority and help you rank higher without backlinks.

Quick Note: Also, remember to insert images where applicable. Remember, without an image; your content will be like an old black-and-white movie from the 1970s.

7. Title is your first gate, so make it count.

It will fail if you have done everything in the correct order yet forgot to mention it in your page title.

My advice is – to make your title a gate so the visitor will understand just by reading it.

“Step-by-step guide/Definitive guide/Ultimate guide”

Modern search engines prioritize in-depth content. A simple short 500 words article can no longer climb the ranking ladder unless the topic demands a short article.

So, make your article as in-depth as possible. For example, if you are writing an article about blogging, try to complete it, just like a guide, so your visitors won’t have to find another article to learn more.

And use keywords like “Ultimate Guide/Definitive Guide” at the beginning of your title tag. Then, search engines and visitors will both be attracted to your content.

“15 SEO tools/17 Content writing services”

If you are making a list, then try to make it complete. If it takes time, it’s okay but make it a complete list. And add the number at the beginning of your title tag.

“How to write a blog post in 2021.”

Search engines, as well as visitors, both want fresh content. Nobody wants to read a backdated article from 2010.

So, write fresh content and add the current year at the end of your title tag.

Conclusion.

Hope you realize how to write a perfect SEO title. However, knowing is only the first step. I suggest you practice a lot before you expect to see positive results.

Google has changed a lot since panda, penguin, and especially from hummingbird updates, and we are expecting more changes within the next few years.

Do you know when the panda and penguin update launched, a disaster that happened for many websites? Their organic traffic has fallen from millions to a few thousand because they used tricks to gain ranking.

After that event, we realized that with clever tricks, we might get millions of organic traffic from search engines and rank at the top, but how long will it last? As search engines continually develop, they will find out soon, and we will lose everything.

Therefore, it is best practice to refrain from using fancy tricks to gain the upper hand. Instead, be honest and write for your audience. Your site growth may be slow, but you will never get a penalty from search engines.