What makes a title -good for SERPs

[BigDen13]

Hi
How could i find that title of a page is good for SERPs?
What makes a good title for SERPs?

thanks

[stymiee]

A good title can mean anything depending on your site topic.

I'd say these are important for good title tags:
1. The title tag should be easy to read and designed to bring in traffic
2. Place your main keyword phrase toward the beginning of the tag
3. Titles should be five to ten words long, 70 to 80 characters
4. Make different title tags for each page of your site, do not repeat the same Title on all pages

[seo_expert]

I'd go with stymiee in that your most important keyword for that page should be in the very beginning of the Title.

[anandnadaar]

Just adding to the above suggestions:

Use the keyword that you want to rank for. In my experience if I would want to rank for a keyword, I would just create a title tag that targets that keyword only, instead of adding additional information to it which actually divides the attention of the search engine bots.
Ex: If I am targeting - "SEO Forum Online" first of all I will optimize the webpage content that should be having enough of that keyword and then make a title: "SEO Forum Online - discussion board" This gives enough weightage for my keyword to rank well.
I have seen people ranking well using spam methods on Title tags.. but that doesnt stay for long.
Keywrod Density is also very important factor while creating a Title for that webpage.

[etechsupport]

60-90 characters including space within the length are often recommended in title tag hence you have good chance to add most important keywords that can bring best result.

[Candy_ME]

I'm wondering if it makes a difference if the title of each pages is unique. right now on my site I have a title for most pages that is unique but a meta description that is sitewide.

On a side note... right now I have my header, with meta description as an include. How might I go about leaving the header as an include yet have a different description?

(It may take lots of work, but worth it if some of my articles can start to be noticed.)

[Dani]

I would definitely go with unique, descriptive titles for each page ... but don't keyword stuff them to the point of it being phony.

Candy, what language is your website coded in? Are you using a server-side language such as PHP or just using regular ole server side includes? If it's just SSI, you'll have to manually type out the description within each of your individual pages. If you're using a server side language, you could store all of the descriptions in the database or something like that.

[stymiee]

I'm wondering if it makes a difference if the title of each pages is unique.

It makes a huge difference.

1) The <title> tag is the most important on-page SEO factor. Not taking advantage of it really hurts.

2) Duplicate titles will most likely put your pages into the Google supplemental index which is almost as bad as being banned.

3) Your users would appreciate a good title to describe what the page is about.

4) The title tag is what is used when someone bookmarks your site. It doesn't help your users if your pages all have the same title.

[dammy2007]

Let the title have your keyword either in the first or second word. It should be written in such a way that would make visitors want to read.