Another interesting question came up in a Google+ hangout from last week. Google’s John Mueller said the title tag on the page is not as critical for ranking than the content on the page. In short, he explained that Google can rank a page with a missing title tag, but missing content makes it much harder for Google to rank.

As most SEOs know, content is critical for Google to know what the page is about. But the title tag can often seal the deal for which keywords the page should rank for. All John is saying is that not having a title tag won’t prevent the page from ranking, but not having content on the page can.

John said this at the 57:30 mark into the video. Here is the transcript:

Here is the video embed at the start time:

Forum discussion at Google+.