Writers tend to put some real ideas into their titles. For online content, titles are important to both readers and search engines. This makes them even more important! If you use WordPress and our Yoast SEO plug-in, you can insert the post title in the post title input field. Your title will appear as the H1 title at the top of your post. But Yoast SEO also provides the possibility to edit and improve your SEO title separately. Why is this? Any difference? How can you edit it? I will explain in this article.
Two input fields
For some of you, this is obvious, but let's see where we can find input fields for two headings. The entry field for your post title - the same as your H1 title - can be found at the top of the page or in the WordPress post editor.
You can find the input field of the SEO title in the Yoast SEO meta box displayed below the post input field. To edit this title, you need to click the Edit Clip button. Google Preview will then open. Google Preview gives you three input fields. The first is to edit the input field of your SEO title. Below the input field, you will (hopefully) see a green bar. In other words, if the title is well optimized, it will be green. If it is orange or red, you should try to improve it. As you can see, the input field shows various variables (purple) that will be used to create the final title that will be displayed in the search engine.
Purpose of post title and SEO title
It is important to realize that the purpose of your SEO title is different from that of your post or page title (your H1 title). Your post title is applicable to people who are already on your website. It tells them what your post or page is about. On the other hand, your SEO title applies to people who have not yet visited your website. It will be displayed to people in search engines. This will be the title of your snippet in Google -- that's why it appears in the snippet preview. The goal is to allow people to click on fragments, visit your website and read your posts or buy your products.
What will Yoast SEO do automatically?
Without doing anything, Yoast SEO will generate an SEO title based on your post title (H1 title). It also places the name of your website in this title. If you don't (or our plug-in doesn't), Google will perform this operation for you. Yoast SEO will ensure that your title is not too long - if your title is too long, you will be notified. In Yoast, we use small bullets to separate the post title from the website name, but you can also use dashes, such as.
At Yoast, we use bullets to separate the title from the site name.
You can set the way to generate SEO titles in the Search Appearance section of Yoast SEO. If you do this, all your post titles will be generated in exactly the same way. However, as mentioned above, you can also edit this title separately for the post. In the next paragraph, we will explain under what circumstances you would like to do so.
Should you edit the SEO title?
Personally, I never edit the SEO title of individual posts. I write an article and choose a title that is suitable for people who have already seen this segment on our website and in search engines. The setting of automatically generating titles in our own Yoast SEO installation - of course - is perfectly fine.
If I want to change my title, it may be because I forgot to use the focus keyword in the title of my post. I always change the title of my post. The SEO title will change accordingly. This is very useful for such posts. However, if you sell a product, the post or page title may not be the best title to use. Maybe you want to mention the price of the product in your SEO title, rather than in H1 of your page. In these cases, you need to edit the title.
How do you edit the SEO title?
Title Template
As mentioned above, Yoast SEO will automatically generate an SEO title for you. It uses the fragment variable (purple) to do this. You can adjust this title template according to your preference in the "Search Appearance" section of Yoast SEO. Go to the Content Types tab and scroll to the content type for which you want to change the title template, such as a post. You can use the plus sign on the right to select the variable to use:
You can find all the information about setting these fragment variables in Edwin's post. For an overview of all fragment variables, you can view our knowledge base.
For separate posts
If you are working on a post and want to change the SEO title, just click it in the Yoast SEO meta box below the post. You can choose to write proprietary text for it, use some fragment variables, or a combination of both. For example, if you only want to modify the first part of the title, but keep the separator and site name, you can create a title, such as "[Custom Post Title] Separator Site Title".
conclusion
Your SEO title and post title have different purposes. However, in many cases, you can use the post title as the basis for the SEO title. Yoast SEO will generate a good title based on your post title. In some cases, it is best to customize the SEO title. You can use the fragment variable to create a great title that will appear in the search engine.
