Pay Thought to the Page Title

The page title is entered into the meta tag of the code for your page.  It deserves your full and thoughtful attention.  Whether you have a new mini-site or a gradually developed, mature, professionally created large website, you must determine each page’s title carefully determined for several very important reasons.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization): If we look back to the early days of the short history of the Web, search engines seemed to look first to the self-identified keywords of a web page to determine its topic.  However, foolish webmasters misused their trust and started spamming the keyword tag area.  As the search algorithms evolved to become more sophisticated, the title tag became the most important of all the meta data.  Thus, in comtemporary times the title tag is one of the major determining factors in a search engine’s determination of the content of a web page.  This issue is important enough that many businesses decide to outsource the function of professional keyword research.

Browser Top Information: The word or words used in the title tag show up in the uppermost area of the browser window.  Although some visitors do not even notice the word or words used in the title, other visitors rely upon that as a short-hand reference to immediately determine the topic of that page.

Header for Search Listings: At the top of any individual listing in a search engine query is the page title, taken directly from the title tag.  That is what is hyperlinked to take anyone who clicks it to your page, which of course is your goal.  It stands out because it is underline and a different color (blue) from the description.

Text in the Browser Bookmark: Although any visitor always has the ability to change the text or even add tags in some browsers, the title tag provides the default wording for any bookmark that the user puts into the browser.

What follows are some suggestions that I hope will serve as a summary of things to consider in choosing the titles of your website pages. 

1. Choose a title for your page that is simply your primary keyword  If necessary, you can include two or three keywords or phrases within the title, however you should rank order those, putting the most important keywords first and separating each keyphrase with a space, punctuation such as a dash followed by another space.

2. Be certain the selected title stands out to anyone who has searched for your relevant keyword when your listing makes an appearance in the search engine’s results.

3. Make certain that the page title is brief by also a complete accurate description of the page.  Thus, it will be recognizable and useful to the user who sees it listed among the list of bookmarks in her or his browser.

4. Never assign the title “Home” to your home page (i.e. index.html or index.php, etc.).  That adds no value to your SEO or your users’ experience unless, of course, the page happens to be about the concept of “home.”  However you can use the word as part of a larger title in a descriptive way, such as “Home to the World’s Cheapest Plumber.”

5. You should experiment with changing your title every once in a while to see if you achieve improved search engine results, in the same way that you would run tests on all of the major variables on your website.