What Causes Google To Rewrite Title Tags?

Website title SEO is a crucial part of any optimisation strategy, with many SEO professionals striving to create relevant and interesting title tags to get the best results. Because of this, it’s no surprise that many took issue with Google for rewriting their web pages’ original titles. However, people should keep in mind that Google always updates their algorithm systems to give the best user experience and push SEO agencies to improve their methods.

In May, Google announced the Keras-based TF-Ranking, an updated platform that creates new algorithms and updates old ones. It allows the rapid prototyping, testing, and launching of new algorithms and also helps BERT to become more efficient, which resulted in a new architecture called TFR-BERT. Moreover, it can rapidly develop and deploy Learning To Rank (LTR) models and improve existing algorithms.

Many SEOs noticed that ever since Google launched the Keras-based TF-Ranking, there have been multiple updates to search results within a short amount of time. For instance, Google launched the Title Tag update in August, and they also increased the People Also Ask (PAA) features in the search results.

When users interacted with the PAA features, Google gathered information about their behaviour from those interactions. The search engine company also studied the user intent when people search for certain queries, including the reason users do not click on relevant search queries in the search results. As a result, Google may have perceived that the title tags were not descriptive enough.

However, Google hasn’t discussed the technology they use behind their Title Tag update or the data they use to power it. Many SEO experts suspect that the TFR-BERT architecture has something to do with it since Google said that it significantly improves pre-trained language model performance, which results in state-of-the-art performance when ranking websites.

Despite the lack of information, the SEO community attempted to connect the dots by observing the different algorithm system updates that Google made this year. Here are some of them:

• An increase in PAA features
• The BERT algorithm updated to TFR-BERT
• The updated LTR platform, Keras-based TF-Ranking

The Possibility Of Poorly Written Title Tags

Many SEOs feel that Google rewrites their title tags poorly, but that isn’t always the case. While most in the community would probably assert that their original title tags were written flawlessly, it’s still good to keep an open mind since many different factors can come into play when making title tags.

The most common practice in SEO is to write a title tag that best describes the web page. SEOs may also place their targeted keywords in their title tags. It may seem simple, but one should strongly consider the content of the page. Most of the time, the interpretation of the page’s topic can be highly subjective.

For instance, let’s say that a site owner wrote a recipe for chicken salad. Marketers can go about writing the title tag in all sorts of ways. Listed below are some examples:

• Conventional SEO: Since the article is about chicken salad, the publisher should put “Chicken Salad” in the title tag.
• Common Sense: It is a recipe article, so the title tag should include “Chicken Salad Recipe”.
• Non-SEO Viewpoint: There are 800 words about the history of chicken salad and only 300 words about the recipe. Therefore, the content is clearly about The History of Chicken Salad.

Overall, choosing a title tag is not always as simple as some might say. SEOs should always try to keep an open mind and see if the words used in the title really are relevant to the page.

SEO Standard Practice For Title Tags

Many place target keywords in their title tags as part of their website title SEO strategy, but from Google’s viewpoint, titles should properly describe the web page content. SEO experts say that title tag articles should describe the page topic. However, placing too many keywords in the title tags may leave publishers with no space to describe what the content is all about.

Many articles from various SEO websites state tips on writing accurate and concise title tags for web page content. Some give a specific format, while others advise writers to put two key phrases when writing their title tags. However, most of these tips are outdated. Nowadays, Google is encouraging the SEO community to be more descriptive about a page’s content when they write title tags instead of just focusing on keywords.

Some of the tips below come from various popular articles, which represent the conventional view of how to optimise title tags.

SEMRush has five points for writing title tags:

1. Include target keywords.
2. Match the user’s search intent.
3. Make unique title tags that aren’t just duplicates.
4. Write tags that are descriptive yet concise.
5. Avoid keyword stuffing.

Sistrix has four tips, and three of them are related to using keywords:

1. Make sure that tags are relevant to the page’s content.
2. Include the page’s targeted keyword.
3. Include long-tail keywords. These can also be used in conjunction with the main keyword.
4. Place the keyword at the start of the title.

You’ll notice that most of these tips are focused primarily on keyword placement instead of describing the page’s topic. Some articles that give tips on creating title tags do mention that publishers should describe the web page content in their titles; however, they do not give enough emphasis on this piece of advice. They were mostly focused on keywords.

Google does not explicitly advise SEOs to add or stop using keywords in their title tags. However, Google does state that site owners should avoid stuffing title tags with unnecessary keywords.

There is a reason why many SEO agencies and publishers continue using targeted keywords in their title tags and meta descriptions. Google does not require any SEO to abandon their methods of optimising titles, but it is important to try writing tags that perfectly describe the web page content.

Optimise Your Website’s Meta Tags With Position1SEO

If you are looking for the best SEO agency to help you optimise your site’s title tags and meta descriptions, our team here at Position1SEO is more than happy to help. Our team can write relevant and unique title tags and meta descriptions that perfectly describe your web page content.

We are committed to complying with Google’s policies and guidelines to ensure that you do not receive any penalties from the search engine. We also use a no-stone-unturned approach, monitoring and analysing every part of your website and improving them to provide the best user experience possible.

For interested parties, we can set a time and date for a free phone consultation to discuss your business’s specific needs. Call us today on 0141 404 7515 or write to us at office@position1seo.co.uk.