One of the toughest battles in our time is the one for web traffic shares (otherwise known as page views) among website owners in each industry. That’s because, given the dawn of the web culture, web traffic is now considered the kernel of marketing success across boards.
Every website is meant to be visited, and a website title is where a page view or web content consumption all starts.
Thus, titles are useful for both the search engines while serving web pages to users as well as for human visitors who are going to click through a link on the SERP or on social media pages based on how relevant the title is to them.
So, quite unsurprisingly, one of the principal ways in which the battle for web traffic is executed is by implementing the site title tag correctly based on the prevailing effective practices at the moment.
The question then is, “what should your site title be according to the demands of the moment?”.
In other words, how do you write your title to attract the most relevant page views or for the success of your website generally?
Again, what are the current examples of these titles that you can bank on? Even more important – especially if you are a beginner in the practice – is the question “what is a website title or title tag?”
We are here to attend to these questions as thoroughly as we can. And we are beginning from the last due to a certain confusion that some users have with it.
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What Is A Website Title or Title Tag?
Whether you refer to it as a website title or a title tag depends on whom you are or whom you are addressing. Among the HTML practitioners, it is referred to as a ‘title tag’ (marked in HTML or XHTML as <title></title>).
The rest of the people (such as those who work on WordPress) may save themselves much trouble by just referring to it simply as a website title. Now, what is a website title precisely?
A Hubspot article defines a website title, or title tag, as “an HTML element that specifies the content of a web page.”
BigCommerce defines a website title as one that “identifies what the web page is about for both web users and search engines.” So, contrary to what some people may think, in digital marketing (such as SEO) for example, a website title is the title of a web page rather than the title of an entire website.
Based on this definition, below are more than 25 website title ideas to help you succeed with web traffic. Each title includes illustrative examples of it to make things concrete.
Also Read: Website Title Vs Article Title
25 Best Website Title Examples & Ideas
1. As Much As It Is Relevant, Use Your Targeted Keywords In Your Title
Almost every SEO practitioner knows about Google’s extraordinary emphasis, in recent years, on their search algorithms being ‘intuitive’.
Because of this, many of the so-called SEO experts are claiming that having your targeted keywords in your title is no longer important. How right are these ‘experts’?
Perhaps, the clearest proof that the ‘experts’ are missing is this Google official statement that still informs the world that “page titles are an important part of our search results.”
Google further describes titles as their “first line of each result and the actual links that searchers click to reach websites.”
For your title to be descriptive means that it tells your visitors what the content says. And it is unthinkable that you can do that without including your keywords – after all, as Yoast informs us, a keyword is nothing else than “a word (or group of words) that describes the content on your page or post best” (parenthesis ours).
The SEO giant Ahrefs agreed with us on this when they stated in a recent article that “Google (and other search engines) look at your title tag, amongst other things, to help make sense of your page.”
However, what Google’s intuitiveness forbids is for you to just throw around your keywords in a way that is not or is poorly relevant to your human audience just to get clicks or rank higher on search engines.
For example, consider the title of this article you are reading now. The title says, “25+ Website Title Examples And Ideas 2022”.
There are two keywords here: ‘website title examples 2022’ and ‘website ideas 2022’. We have targeted them because our analytic tools show that people want to know about them.
However, instead of writing the two keywords fully out, the way the analytic tools rendered them, we have combined them into one intelligible sentence. Thus, instead of writing the title out as “25+ Website Title Examples 2022 And Website Ideas 2022” which would have sounded terrible, we have it the way it is.
Also Read: SEMrush Review
2. Make The Title Enticing To Human Prospects
There is a saying that is now gaining traction among content creators that “we work for humans, not for machines”.
Although the web crawlers, search, and other algorithms are there to work on the pieces of content being pushed into the web daily, it should never be forgotten that those pieces of content are meant for human, not machine, consumption.
So, since the title is the first point of encounter between our prospects and our content – both on the search engines and on social media – it should be enticing enough to make a good first impression and compel the prospects to click through.
For example, we typed in the keyword “how to find cheap flights” into the Google search field and the following search results showed up at the top of the organic ranking on the SERP:
In case you are pressed for time and can only read one of these search results, which one are you likely to click on? Eventually, it may boil down to individual tastes. But, out of the 20 opinions we sampled, 17 chose to click on the last search result in such a situation.
3. Let Your Title Promise A Listicle
Listicles (or articles that are presented as a list of items) have become very popular in recent times. Although CopyPress traces the popularity of ‘listed content’ to as early as the 11th century, it may seem that the web world just discovered it a few years ago.
This title is considered one of the most favorite article forms for a lot of reasons, but one of the most prominent reasons is that it provides readers with many options.
4. Prefer Odd To Even Numbers In Your Listicle
Mrs. Digital says they made a finding showing that odd number listicles fare better than their even number counterparts.
They went further to explain the reason why it is so: even numbers make it sound like the content was merely made up, contrary to an odd number that gives an impression of information created out of real, available data.
The title of this article you are reading and the second search result on item two above, are standing examples to this effect.
5. Sound Current
Although the world wide web is so filled with information that some people claim that it is experiencing a deluge, most of the information may be outdated.
Many times, what people are looking for is fresh information and if they see a title that promises them the freshness of facts and figures, they immediately go for it.
Again, as an example, it seems quite obvious that the inclusion of the figure ‘2022’ is one of the elements that endeared it to most of the people sampled.
That’s because it portrays the content as fresh compared to the rest. And, yes, we may have shared our secret with you: the title of this article is another example of this.
6. Keep It Short
The SEO authority Ahrefs advises that content creators should keep the length of their titles between 50 and 60 characters to prevent a situation where Google or any other search engine cuts off a part of the title to make it look ugly.
According to them, the length of the title that shows up on the SERP is measured not by the number of characters but by pixels whereas the pixels usually correspond to the approximation given above.
For an example of this, refer to the first search result on the SERP whose screenshot is displayed on item two above.
The title goes as follows: Cheap Flights, Airline Tickets & Airfares – Find Deals on Flight at…”. Whatever other information the writer intended to put after the word ‘at’ has been locked out, thereby preventing understanding and discouraging click-through.
7. Exceed The Pixel Length In A Way To Create Curiosity
“Whatever has a disadvantage also has an advantage” is an old saying that may not always be true. But here, it happens to hold uncannily.
We stumbled on this discovery when we searched for “how to make cheese at home” on Google. Here is a section of the SERP that displayed:
The first search result goes, “The Easiest Way to Make Quick Cheese at Home (Using Only 3…). Since humans are naturally curious, they would naturally want to ask what comes after 3.
Although that page comes from as far back as 2015, and while the writer may not have thought about the psychological effects created, this could define practice for the Next Generation content creators.
All you need is to measure your title in such a way that you seem about to say something very important around the point where your title clocks 55 to 60 characters.
8. Use Your Brand Name On Your Title
Many SEO experts advise that you use your brand name on your titles. This is especially beneficial if you have established a great reputation in your industry. It encourages click-through. Here is an example with DHL Express:
9. Use Emojis Responsibly
Google now supports emojis in page titles. According to Cognitive SEO, there are a couple of reasons why every content creator should consider using emojis in page titles, including the fact that 36% of millennials were found to prefer emojis to words.
However, according to them, Google says emojis can only impact SEO if it is relevant to the title. Here is a clear example of the relevant use of an emoji by Search Engine Journal…
10. Use Power Words But…
Power words are great in hooking attention to your title. However, you should be careful with this because many so-called powerful words have become so clichéd that they now sound spammy and deceptive.
Some examples of power words that are still effective are ‘actionable’, ‘life-changing’, ‘untapped’, ‘strategic’, ‘exclusive’. Words like ‘amazing’, ‘terrific’, and ‘extraordinary’ may have been too clichéd to still be considered as power words.
11. Use Action Words
Grammatically speaking, all verbs are action words of course. But here, we mean more than just verbs. Instead, we mean those verbs that really tend to compel a reader to do something. Some examples of action words are ‘download’, ‘listen’, ‘watch’, ‘learn’, ‘look at’, and more.
12. Prefer Pipes As Separators
In the execution of the page title, content creators now prefer pipes (|) to other separators such as commas, semicolons, and more. The reason is that pipes are said to take the least amount of pixels.
Titles are so important that experts advise that space economy should be strictly observed in its execution. This is where pipes have an edge over other separators:
13. Minimize The Use of Stop Words
Stop words are the most commonly used words in writing. In English, they include: a, an, the, but, or, is, was, so, to, etc. This should be minimized because stop words hardly count in search algorithms.
So, they tend to take up space unnecessarily. Remember, you need every space that you can utilize to register your message when writing your titles since the space is highly limited.
14. Use Questions
Findings have shown that questions have a way of eliciting the curiosity of searchers. So, while this may not make any difference to the search engines, it does to the human users.
Compare these two search results and you are likely to relate to this:
15. Think Answer
When you are not stating your title as a question, think of it as a concise answer to someone’s question. That means you should first think of a question to which your title is an answer. This way, the title will have a similar effect as the ones stated as plain questions.
To do this more effectively, it may be helpful to place two sections of the Google SERP side by side:
The newly added ‘people also search for’ box:
16. Avoid Keyword Stuffing
You should target no more than two related keywords at a time. Anything more than this amounts to keyword stuffing and the search engine algorithms certainly penalize you for it. Consider the search result below:
17. Place Your Primary Keyword Close to the Beginning of Your Title
You can see here that ‘buy bitcoin’ (the primary keyword) comes before ‘with credit card’ (the long-tail).
‘With Credit Card, Buy Bitcoin’ would have been a bad idea.
18. Make Your Title As Memorable As It Can Get
Yes, people forget easily. So, to make yourself stand out in their consciousness, you’ve got to be as memorable as you can get.
Example 1: These Three Banks Are Going Bankrupt In 365 Days
Compare this with…
Example 2: Three Banks To Fold Up In A Year
19. Avoid Using All-caps Titles
Findings have revealed that the search engine bots ignore any title that is written in all-caps. For example, this article was published way back in 2018, but, even if you type in the entire title into the Google search field, it will still not show up on the SERP.
If you go ahead to add the name of the site, it would show up down the page but the title wouldn’t be recognized as a title.
Thus, it is not rendered in the clickable blue color in which titles are rendered. Instead, the name of the site itself is used to replace the title.
20. Occasionally Capitalize Some Words
While it is not encouraged to capitalize the entire title, capitalizing one or two words from time to time can make for emphasis and thereby, increase your CTR.
21. Use Indicatives
Indicatives are words that point out something as being immediate. Examples are ‘this’, ‘these’, and ‘here’. Here are example titles from CNN:
22. Reference An Authority
People are more likely to click through if you tell them it is not your view you’re sharing but an authoritative source.
Example: What 15 Studies Said About How To Monetize YouTube Successfully.
But, make sure that the content eventually agrees with the title, or else, this strategy will turn out to be counterproductive.
23. Include Parenthesis
Ahrefs reports about an experiment by Sean Falconer of Proven.com where the inclusion of parenthesis to the title of an article increased the organic traffic by 128%.
Example: 11 Steps To An Influencer Status (Plus 9 Ways To Monetize It)
24. Include A Plus Sign To Your Listicle Number
A plus sign gives the impression of a developing topic which, in turn, gives the impression that you are working out your ideas and mean to be exhaustive with them. But then, it shouldn’t be just a mere gimmick.
For example, our title here says “25+ Website Title Examples And Ideas 2022”. We mean to add more of these title examples and ideas as we discover them.
25. Use ‘Full List’ For Publicly Available Information
Another way to give the impression that you are being exhaustive with your content (if you are) is to use the phrase ‘full list’ in your title. For example, we googled “who has won the most English league titles?” and this is what we got:
It’s no wonder that the search result is ranking at the top because most people would want to click on that first, thereby ballooning its CTR far above other results.
26. Be As Clear As Possible With Your Title
As long as what you want is more visits to your web pages, you need to be as clear as possible on your title. That’s because not everyone is highly educated and cerebral enough to digest difficult titles.
So, instead of saying “don’t be ambiguous”, you should say, “be as clear as possible”. Haha! Yes, that’s the example.
But then, consider these search results we got when we googled “how to cope with the loss of a pet”.
You can see the first two results ranking higher than the third, not minding that the third result comes from a more popular site with a supposedly higher site authority.
The first two results are getting higher click-throughs which is why Google ranked them higher.
Tom Clayton
Tom loves to write on technology, e-commerce & internet marketing.
Tom has been a full-time internet marketer for two decades now, earning millions of dollars while living life on his own terms. Along the way, he’s also coached thousands of other people to success.
