Why Google is not using your Title Tag? and what to do about it.

I cannot deny that I am very frustrated with the new Google title update. Also, because its still in its early days, we do not know everything and no one has the right answer yet! But here's what we know, and what you can do for now....

• The recommended HTML title tag is still the one used for ranking.
• The SERPS title, may impact the CTR, and this is why we need to make review it.
• Content from HTML title tags is still by far the most likely used, more than 80% of the time (or so they say).

Why is Google changing our html title tags?

It's important to understand why those changes are happening in the first place, Google have state that some of the reasons the title tag may not be used are:

• HTML title tags don't always describe a page well.
• The title tag is "stuffed" with keywords.
• The title tag is sometimes totally missing or contain repetitive language. For instance, home pages might simply be called "Home" and in some cases all pages in a site might be called "Untitled" or simply have the name of the site.
• The title tag is missing site names, where that is seen as helpful, so Google will add it.

What to do?

Here is a simple example on how you may want to approach doing on-page optimization for an existing page (will be updated as we learn more):

• Collect the info for the page. Use the "site:" operator to preview what title is displayed in SERPs. Find, the source of the SERPs title if it's different that the HTML title tag.

An example where you don't need to do anything would look like this:

But look at this example for this NYT article , that totally causes the page to lose meaning in SERPs:

In this case, you may want to shorten both the recommended title tag and h1 tags and make them clear and on point (and of course optimized for user intent and keywords). Something like:

• Parole Recommended for Robert F. Kennedy's Assassin (51 characters)

I guess for now, the recommendations will be on a case by case basis! But to make it a simple process for the time being, here's a decision flowchart to help:

What do you think? would you approach this differently? Let me know in the comments!