Title tags have been considered the most important SEO element on a page since the early days of search engines
Posted: Sun Feb 09, 2025 8:08 am
Since your title tag gives people and search engines an overview of the overall topic of your page, the words that appear in your title tag should have a significant impact on rankings.
In fact, Google’s own SEO Getting Started guide recommends writing title tags that describe what the page is aboutoogle support – Choosing titles
Sure enough, we found that most of the title tags on page one of Google contained all or part of the keyword they ranked for.Most titles contain 65 to 85 percent of the keyword
While most pages that rank for a keyword have that keyword in their title tag, keyword-optimized title tags do not seem to correlate with higher first page rankings.Keyword optimized title tags don't correlate with higher first page Google rankings
In fact, our linear model predicts very little relationship georgia mobile database between title tag match and ranking only 1% difference between the 1 and 10 results.
A keyword-rich title tag seems to be a “ticket” that helps you get to the first page.
However, once you get to the first page, using the exact keyword in the title doesn’t seem to help you rank higher. This is where other factors like backlinks, UX signals, and domain authority seem to play an important role.
Key Takeaway: Pages in the top 10 results on Google contain between 65% and 85% of the keywords they rank for in their title tags. Yet, we found little if any correlation between keyword-optimized title tags and higher rankings on page one.
Keyword-optimized H1 tags are not associated with higher homepage rankings
Similar to our title tag findings, the majority of pages in the Google results have a matching keyword in the page’s H1 tag.Most H1 tags contain 60 to 80 percent of the keyword.
In fact, Google’s own SEO Getting Started guide recommends writing title tags that describe what the page is aboutoogle support – Choosing titles
Sure enough, we found that most of the title tags on page one of Google contained all or part of the keyword they ranked for.Most titles contain 65 to 85 percent of the keyword
While most pages that rank for a keyword have that keyword in their title tag, keyword-optimized title tags do not seem to correlate with higher first page rankings.Keyword optimized title tags don't correlate with higher first page Google rankings
In fact, our linear model predicts very little relationship georgia mobile database between title tag match and ranking only 1% difference between the 1 and 10 results.
A keyword-rich title tag seems to be a “ticket” that helps you get to the first page.
However, once you get to the first page, using the exact keyword in the title doesn’t seem to help you rank higher. This is where other factors like backlinks, UX signals, and domain authority seem to play an important role.
Key Takeaway: Pages in the top 10 results on Google contain between 65% and 85% of the keywords they rank for in their title tags. Yet, we found little if any correlation between keyword-optimized title tags and higher rankings on page one.
Keyword-optimized H1 tags are not associated with higher homepage rankings
Similar to our title tag findings, the majority of pages in the Google results have a matching keyword in the page’s H1 tag.Most H1 tags contain 60 to 80 percent of the keyword.