Optimizing Web Page Titles

Posted by Mary Gammel on November 1, 2008 under Organic SEO | Be the First to Comment

One of the most overlooked aspects of web site quality is the proper use of page titles. It’s important to give each page on a web site a unique, meaningful title to enhance the user’s experience as well as to provide good data for search engines. A page’s title is defined in its HTML title tag.

Where do visitors see web page titles?

• In the title bar of the browser window and/or tab.
• As a link on the top line of search results in a search engine.
• As the default text when a page is bookmarked or marked as a favorite.
• As the header on a printout of the page.

What are the common mistakes in web page titles?

• Leaving all page titles set to the default title such as “Untitled Document.”
• Using the same title, such as the company name, for all pages on a web site.
• Using the web URL in the page title.
• Packing the page title full of too many keywords.
• Using misleading page titles that have nothing to do with the content of the page.

What are the best practices for web page titles?

• Give each web page on a site a unique, meaningful page title so that visitors know what page of the web site they are viewing. For example, a page title of “Quality Web Site Testing” just indicates the site being viewed. A better title would be ”Organic SEO Consulting | Quality Web Site Testing | Wheaton IL.”
• Use the title on the home page to give a short description or purpose of the business or web site. For example, “Quality Web Site Testing | Strategies to Improve your Web Site.”
• Use meaningful search engine keywords for the web site in the web page titles.
• If applicable for the site, include geographic location keywords in the page titles.
• Keep page titles short. Less than 10 words or 65 characters.
• Since page titles my be truncated when displayed or indexed by search engines, put the most important information first in the page title.

By following the best practices for page titles on a web site, not only will visitors be able to navigate and understand your site, but search engine robots and spiders will be able to index and list your pages according to their content.

Related Links

For more information on web page titles, please see the related links below:

Google Search Results Page Decoded

The title tag: the most important element of a quality Web page

All About Title Tags for Search Engine Optimization

Quick Tip:

Check the page titles on your own web site by viewing each page and noting the text that appears in the title bar of your web browser.

Did you know?

Quality Web Site Testing can use an automated tool to list the full title and URL for each page on your web site. When exported to an Excel spreadsheet, this list serves as a good starting point for optimizing your web page titles. This tool also generates XML site maps suitable for submission to search engines like Google. If you’d like help with optimizing your page titles to improve the search engine ranking of your pages, please contact us at Quality Web Site Testing for your free consultation and estimate.