Google’s Not So Secret Rewrites of Title Tags

News surrounding Google’s replacing of title tags in SERPS with other relevant content from a webpage - including H1s - started making the rounds mid-August.

While it’s been known that Google makes small tweaks to titles in results pages, this overriding of title tags with different copy from a website can spell trouble for site owners if they don’t have relevant text on their pages.

Not sure what this means for your company’s website? Let our digital marketing agency break it down for you.

Quick Overview of Title Tags & Their Importance

Title tags. They’re short, strong, and to the point.

While the inexperienced may not recognize the value of title tags, the reality is that they pack quite the punch and are critical to how Google gets your website on the first results page.

So what exactly is a title tag? Well, to keep things simple, they are HTML tags that help identify the content of a web page. While they act like titles in many ways, the truth is that they can pack a meaningful amount of information necessary to both real people and search engines.

In Google’s search engine results page, title tags appear as blue text that users click on to navigate to your site. These little guys summarize your page’s content, providing the proper context to users, and when done correctly, are both eye-catching AND informative.

And if you didn’t know, title tags play a critical role in Google’s algorithm, providing purpose and relevance to crawlers.

By optimizing your title tag, you can best attract real people to your page, helping to boost your click-through rate and improving traffic. What does that mean to you as a business owner? More potential customers!

Why & What This Google Update Means for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO specialists around the globe recognize that Google works in mysterious ways, oftentimes making unexpected changes to their algorithms and ranking systems. And while the official reasoning has yet to be uncovered, industry speculation suggests that Google’s newest TF-Ranking platform has led to a faster development and deployment of models, algorithms, and improvement to older algorithms — leading Google to understand that title tags could hamper relevant results and clicks during a search query.

Ultimately, this update, which has led to the rewriting of 77% of title tags, is focused on improving readability for users and ensuring the relevance of results. That means users will find content that is closer aligned to their query.

Google dropped HTML title tag usage by 77% & replaced those with H1s 75% of the time. Via @seroundtable @cobalt_digital #Google #updates #SEO

In terms of what this update means, well, that’s still to be determined. If this update remains permanent, there could be a potential upside if your website has quality content and copy that meets the needs of searchers. By having the ability to pull from a larger set of text, title tags can become more compelling to click on.

On the other hand, if your website copy is generic, doesn’t serve results well, and adds very little to user experience or need, then you could be losing out on visitors and rankings. That means less revenue generating potential.

Additionally, because it appears that these title tag overwrites are getting replaced with H1s, then it’s critical that you ensure the H1s throughout your website are quality, well written, and informative. In fact, your best bet is to do a general review of your website copy to ensure that it’s all up to par...just in case your title tag gets replaced.

And if you are unsure on how to do that, well, we have a solution for you.

Cobalt Digital Marketing: Your Google Search Engine Optimization Experts

At Cobalt Digital, we eat, breathe, sleep — and sometimes dream— Google.

As certified Google Partners, we recognize that keeping up to date on all Google updates and algorithmic changes is a necessity if our clients are going to stay on top of competitors on the first results page. That’s why a key component of our Cobalt Formula™ is analytics and gaining insights from the data we collect to update our SEO strategies as necessary for our clients, no matter where their particular corner of the online market is.

By keeping Google updates and changes top of mind, we are able to make adjustments immediately to ensure your website ranking doesn’t suffer. Plus, as content experts, you can rest assured that we deliver exceptional copy that will meet the needs of your clients—and Google as well.

So ready to take the pressures of SEO and content creation and management off your shoulders? Then don’t wait any longer and reach out to Cobalt Digital Marketing Agency.

Take your digital marketing to the next level

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