Google has made several updates this year, starting with a few major updates, the number of link spam updates and then in August we got something known as the ‘Page Title Update’.

On 24^th August, 2021 Google Search Central confirm this but this update officially rolled out on August 17th, people started to notice changes in search results. Google still uses the HTML title tag in most cases.

They have been doing this before this isn’t something new but the way they are changing these title tags is new and it has changed quite substantially.

Now let’s take a look at some of these changes and what we can do about them.

Danny Sullivan who is the search liaison at Google said in a post that he wrote talking about this update that they introduced this new system for generating titles for web pages. So before that, Google may change the headers depending on the specific request being used.

They would look at this query and they would look at the page and they would highlight that query a little bit more or they would use that really to inform the changes. They don’t do it anymore.

The new system looks at a much deeper aspect of the text to better describe this page in search results, regardless of the specific query used. So the point here is that Google no longer bases queries on when it generates them and number two, they are looking to better describe a document to the users in search regardless of the query being used.

How Titles are Generated?

Google does a few different things. Let’s see what that job is. First, they look at the text of the document to help them decide on a title. They want to use text that people can see visually when they visit your page.

What do people see when they get there? What is the purpose of this content? What are the main points? Google is also considering the main visual titles or headlines on the page.

So, they are looking at things like your <H1> tags, your headings, the way you break up your content and understanding specific parts of that content and what is the main point. They also take this into account.

They are also crawling the page and looking at your page text and specifically, they mentioned in the anchor text. So there is text in the link that can explain some of the different aspects of the page in more detail. The key here is that machine-readable content is very important.

Google wants to really understand the content.

Why Do They Change Titles?

In fact, title tags don’t always describe the page well. There can be a lot of problems and you may have crawled your site and found a problem with the title tag. One of the important things is that it is too long. Maybe the title is not really descriptive enough or maybe it’s just too long, there’s too much in there. Filling in keywords is another matter.

Many SEO experts and people have realized the importance of keywords. Google hates it. It is not helpful to users. If a webmaster fills a page or title with too many keywords, the title can be rewritten.

Also, people often use boilerplate language or they’re using templates and your title maybe just like the home page or profile page. Again, that’s not very descriptive therefore the search engine in that case is going to try better describe what the title is.

The overall goal of this update is to make a more readable and accessible title for the page. Google may add a site name if they think it’s helpful.

There are many cases where Google is going to find opportunities to optimize their own search engines to give a better user experience and they’re using machine learning to make this happen.

How to Create Better Page Titles?

Google has their search docs which they get into how to create these good titles and it’s a great place to start with the information from Google because they are the largest search engine. As you know, titles are very important to users. This is one of the biggest things that users do when they decide to click on a particular page.

We need to make sure that our title tags are enticing that they are at the quality where people see those and read them. Here are some tips you can use to create the best title tags.

Titles should be Different

First, make sure each page has a unique title tag. Each page should have a specific purpose. The rules to follow are one page, one goal.

Different and unique titles will help you to get the better rankings for your page/blog/article. They should be engaging, so that the visitors take time to read your post.

Descriptive Titles

The next thing to do is to keep the title tag descriptive and concise. We know that this will be a little difficult to give some extra time.

But if you want your articles to look visitor-friendly take time and effort to write descriptive and concise title tags. Describe the content that the visitors are about to see in a way to provides them value.

Little less Words

Avoid keyword stuffing. Don’t force the keyword to be in that will make your content boring and lengthy. And frankly, nobody would like to read that big content.

No matter how interesting your content is they will not read that. If it’s not natural then don’t do that.

Promote your Brand

You can also use your brand. That too will help you to gain a greater number of visitors.

Don’t force brand related words and keyword stuffing but if you’ve worked really hard on promoting your brand then use your branding in your titles but also follow the other things.

Conclusion

As Google has started to change the title tags on his own if they don’t seem relative to the content, you need to focus on title tags a little more to make it exist as you want.

Follow the above-mentioned tips to get qualified traffic and serve them with your content. Headlines are a very important part of your search. Do your best to control what users see in search results.