WordPress SEO Tips - the Title Tag
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For anybody who cares about Search Engine Optimization (which you should if you own a web site) WordPress is a great tool that takes care of most SEO problems by itself, the only significant oversight when they put it together was the TITLE tag.
There are few common mistakes most web designers make with regards to the TITLE tag, but WordPress in particular does some things that we should avoid. Let’s take a look at a few common mistakes and how to fix them in your own WP blog.
Duplicate Titles
Each TITLE tag should be unique for your web site, with rich text describing the content of your blog. WordPress makes the mistake of repeating the blog title every time in the post, along with the category and then the title. For example:
thisismyurl.com | WordPress | WordPress SEO Tips - The Title Tag
That’s a surefire way to make Google think that you’re repeating the same content. What you should have for a page title is:
WordPress SEO Tips - The Title Tag
Except in the categories which should be:
thisismyurl.com | WordPress Archives
On the homepage, simply:
thisismyurl.com
If you want, you can include the site description if it’s short enough but remember to keep your site titles below 65 characters (including spaces).
What about your site name? If you really feel the need to include it in your page title, including it at the end (
WordPress SEO Tips - The Title Tag | thisismyurl.com
) is the best.
65 Characters
Google only reads the first 65 characters of your title for it’s index, if you’re going to post longer titles you risk having them cut off in the index.
Keywords in the Title
A few years ago, there was a trend among web developers to stuff as many keywords as possible into the title. For example:
WordPress SEO Tips - The Title Tag SEO WordPress Optimizing Search Engine Optimization
Frankly, Google hires some pretty smart people so if you honestly think stuffing your titles with keywords is a good idea, you should think again. More importantly, repeating the same word or words in your title doesn’t make a difference to search engines. On the other hand, if you really wanted to make an impact try using a useful title such as:
WordPress SEO Tips - The Title Tag for Search Engine Optimization
Fixing WordPress
So now that you know a few new (and hopefully interesting) facts about how Search Engines will index your WordPress web site, how do you fix it? The process is surprisingly simple, open your header.php file and change remove the existing title tag, to replace it with the code below:
<title><?php wp_title(”); ?> <?php if ( !(is_404()) && (is_single()) or (is_page()) or (is_archive()) ) { ?> | <?php } ?> <?php bloginfo(’name’); ?></title>
Other Posts of Interest
Posted on: Thursday, October 9th, 2008Tags: seo, WordPress
Posted in Web Site Advice, WordPress | | Read more
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<a http://www.thisismyurl.com/wordpress/wordpress-seo-tips-the-title-tag/" rel="bookmark" title="WordPress SEO Tips - the Title Tag">WordPress SEO Tips - the Title Tag</a>
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October 9th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Thanks for the great tip, I didn’t realise the title mattered so much.
October 22nd, 2008 at 10:43 pm
Thanks so much for this simple fix to the title tag problem. I have always thought that “Blog Archive” is redundant in a blog title!
Upon reading Aarron Walter’s book, “Building Findable Websites,” I wanted to easily apply the title fix. Thanks for such a simple solution.