Google Says It Is Okay To Use Keyword Heavy Titles
Google’s John Mueller clarified recently, that keyword-heavy titles and descriptions are a common practice, and it is not against webmaster guidelines.
We have seen that many small and medium businesses overuse commercial keywords in their titles and descriptions. Though it does not look good aesthetically, we do see these pages rank highly in search results.
Mueller says that overuse of keywords is not a thing that Google considers to be problematic. Google does not recommend it either as overuse of keywords will confuse users as to what the page is actually about, and if it serves their purpose or not.
Mueller recommends writing better meta tags to improve click-through rates (CTR) but, he never comments anything about that having an impact on improving rankings.
Mueller suggests a more engaged methodology; composing a title or description that gets a larger number of clicks is a higher priority than packing in a lot of keywords.
Here’s what he says:
“It’s not against our webmaster guidelines. It’s not something that we would say is problematic. I think, at most, it’s something where you could improve things if you had a better fitting title because we understand the relevance a little bit better.
And I suspect the biggest improvement with a title in that regard there is if you can create a title that matches what the user is actually looking for then it’s a little bit easier for them to actually click on a search result because they think “oh this really matches what I was looking for.”
Whereas if you were looking for “flower delivery Brighton” and as a title in the search results you see “flowers, green flowers, yellow flowers, Brighton…” and all of the cities nearby. You might look at that and say: well is this some SEO result? Or is this actually a business that will do a good job and create some nice flowers for me?”
So that’s something where I almost think it’s a matter of improving the click-through rate rather than improving the ranking. And if with the same ranking, you get a higher click-through rate because people recognize your site as being more relevant then that’s kind of a good thing.”
“It’s a really common tactic. We say as well that we use the keywords in titles as part of our ranking system and people say oh well I need to add all keywords to my titles, and then you end up with something like that. So just because they are used for ranking doesn’t mean you need to put everything in there.
And sometimes I suspect the bigger aspect is really the click-through rate from search rather than the ranking effect. Especially for small businesses, you don’t have a lot of chance to be visible in search results in lots of places, because you’re probably more focused on your regional area, and having a title that is really good, that matches your business, that’s a lot more important than having all of the keywords in it.”
Relevance of Search Engine Tools in Terms of Ranking
Following rankings isn’t as obvious as it used to be any longer. So are ranking tools still helpful for SEO?
Are rankings even important anymore?
This has been a seething discussion among people for decades. As the significant web indexes started giving outcomes that fluctuated dependent on what your identity is, SEO experts have contemplated whether the rankings you see are really the rankings you get. And afterward, there’s the ever-changing design of the SERPs.
When you take a gander at a SERP, what do you think about the top outcome?
Is it the Shopping results?
Is it the outcome in the maps?
Shouldn’t something be said about the Knowledge Panel?
The meaning of the top outcome isn’t obvious nowadays. Following rankings isn’t obvious, as a rule. The variety in the SERP design makes it difficult to know what the genuine top position is without investigation.
A significant number of the tools that track rankings have settings to comprehend the pieces of each SERP that show up under a particular question. Yet, that being said, following rankings isn’t as simple as taking a gander at a straightforward outline any longer. Rankings, be that as it may, are as yet critical to follow. Indeed, even with the multiplication of customized results, narratively I can say that the SERPs for most of questions seem static. That implies a great many people are seeing similar outcomes you see when they use a tool for a query. So you can follow rankings in most inquiries.
Rankings should seldom be a key execution pointer for SEO. However, really as often as possible, they are. Numerous clients come to us with stress on rankings. The overarching thought is, on the off chance that I could simply rank for [a keyword], the entirety of my SEO inconveniences will be finished.
But this is not the situation. Truth be told, much of the time, we’ve seen rankings for specific catchphrases acquire futile traffic that never brings results.
Keyword research is very important for tracking rankings. Before, rankings were something that SEO experts indicated their customers in light of the fact that, to be honest, it was simple for them to comprehend and demonstrated the advancement that was being made. Today, showing the importance of ranking a particular keyword is totally pointless without going further and breaking down the traffic that is created by the ranking. It’s hard to track consumer journeys that pour in from a particular keyword.
Nonetheless, by seeing how your organic traffic is pouring over, you can make to some degree exact assessments of how rankings are influencing the business. Ranking tools can’t precisely give information on the conversions that occur from explicit keyword searches.
Your most important SEO tool is your mind, your ability to think, to put yourself in the consumers’ shoes. You should be able to assess how changes in rankings on the SERPs influence your traffic and conversions.
So, going back to our original question, are SEO ranking tools relevant?
Well, to be honest the answer is, YES!
But any tool used without intelligence will not bring results. The most important tool is our brain and if we think logically the main magic happens on the website and not on the SERPs.