Add emojis
In 2015, Google removed emoji characters from results pages.
But earlier this year, Google reversed their decision, meaning that emojis will appear in the SERPs on mobile and desktop devices once more.
That’s good news since emojis can add a sense of emotion to regular text or even replace text altogether.
You can even write out entire songs using emojis, like HubSpot’s Brittany Fleit did with Sublime’s “What I got "
But you can use emojis for more than just fun and games. They can also boost engagement
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Some companies, like Codeless, are taking advantage of emoticons by adding them to title tags.
You can add emojis to your title tags by copying and pasting them, using a WordPress plugin, or typing the code yourself.
If you’re using Yoast, you already have access to codes for each emoji that you can copy and paste.
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Once you’ve selected an emoji, added it in, and published your page, it should look something like this on SERPs.
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It’s important to note that, when you view the source code for your web pages, your code may look different depending on how you’ve built your page.
For example, the emoji images actually appear in the source code for Codeless’s home page:
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But source code for other web pages that include emojis, like this one from Search Engine Journal, might cause emoticons to appear as code instead of displaying them:
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Here’s a quick tip: to view the source code for any web page, press Ctrl + U on a PC or ⌥ Option + ⌘ Command + U on a Mac.
Emojis will take up character space within your title tag, so keep that in mind when considering length, which we will discuss later on.
You should also include numbers in your title tags.
Use numbers
It seems like listicles have been all the rage for a few years, and everyone seems to love them (except for some traditional journalists who think that they’re clickbait).
They work, too. Michael Dunlop gets over 100,000 blog visitors per month by creating list posts.
But have you ever wondered why listicles are so effective?
It’s because numbers attract our attention. That makes them great for growing search traffic. They’re specific, they stand out, and our brains can easily recognize them.
And marketers have been saying for years that pages with odd numbers in their titles will gain the most shares because odd numbers stick in your mind much better than even numbers
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So it might be better to conclude all of your lists once you reach an odd number, like 9, instead of 10, 20, or 25.
The length of your title tags matters, too.
Watch the length
As of July 2017, character limits for title tags on SERPs are 78 characters on mobile devices and 70 on desktops.
That’s why it’s important to make title tags long enough to explain your page, but short enough that they won’t get cut off on results pages.
Etsy recently did a study analyzing thousands of URLs, and they ended up shortening their title tags as a result of their findings.
They found that longer title tags don’t see as much of an increase in rankings as short tags do.
That’s why it’s best to keep your length as short as you can.
For example, the title tag of this post is perfect because the entire title easily fits on the results page. It’s only 40 characters.
You can make your title a bit longer than that, but try not to go over 55 characters or so.
Orbit Media recently found that the ideal length of a title tag is 55 characters for top optimization.
Keep in mind that you can (and should) always add more context in the meta tag and the description of your post when you share it on social media.
Include dates in the titles of your web pages and blog posts when you can, as well.
Include dates
You should add the year to your pages or blog posts as often as possible.
Here’s how I’ve been doing it with blog posts that are relevant to 2018:
Add the month to your title tag, too, if it applies to the content of your page.
You can easily do this by writing monthly roundups or seasonal content like Constant Contact has done with their November 2017 Marketing and Holiday Planning post:
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Update pages as often as possible so that the “published date” changes on your pages, too.
By doing this, you’ll keep your pages in the SERPs of people who search for results by using custom date ranges if they’re searching on a desktop.
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If you use the Yoast plugin, you can even make your title tags update automatically month-to-month or year-to-year when applicable.
Next, I’ll tell you about the importance of asking questions.
Ask questions
Do you ask questions in your title tags? You should.
Questions are an attention-grabber just like numbers.
They pique our curiosity. I’ve talked about the importance of using open-ended questions in your blog posts before. The same applies to title tags.
News sites like CNBC practice this tactic all of the time:
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You can even take a more creative approach and answer part of the question in your title as a teaser like Newsweek does:
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You might even increase your chances of landing one of Google’s featured snippets if you ask a question in your title and answer it on your web page. And that means a huge traffic boost.
Featured snippets usually include a summary of an answer that people might commonly search from a relevant web page.
For example, here’s the featured snippet that shows up if you search “Why is Seattle called the Emerald City?”
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Calls to action (CTAs) are just as important, if not more important, than questions.
The next post will be on adding call to action
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