Far too often page titles that appear in the search results fail to identify what the searcher can do on the recommended webpages. To help searchers understand the purpose of the webpage, Google changes the page title. According to Google research, these altered titles increase click-thru rates and reduce bounce rates.

What Types of Page Titles Does Google Change?

According to Google’s article on “Better page titles in search results,” Google changes pages titles for search results under the following conditions:

• A single page title does not work proper for all queries for which the webpage may appear
• Absence of a page title
• Non-descript page titles
• Each webpage has the same page title
• Only minor variations exist within pages titles of the website
• Unnecessarily long page titles
• Hard-to-read page titles

Why Do Poor Page Titles Exist?

At some point, you probably noticed webpages appearing in search results with non-helpful page titles. These poor page titles exist for the following reasons:

• Keyword stuffing
• Over-SEO’d page titles
• Failure to include page titles
• Lack of creativity
• Product detail pages with minor differences between the products

Rules for Developing Quality Page Titles
You can easily create quality page titles by following these simple rules:

• Ensure each webpage has its own unique page title
• Use descriptive and concise text
• Never keyword stuff your page titles
• Never use the same title on multiple webpages
• Avoid using boilerplate segments within your page titles
• Start your page titles with action words
• Start your page titles with identifiers

Your Takeaway

Searchers use your webpage titles to determine if they want to visit your webpage. Google's research indicates quality page titles lead to increased click-thru rates.  Therefore, you should always use quality page titles to increase the level of visitor quality you receive. The more quality visitors you receive, the more you sell.