Page Titles for SEO
A Guide to Effective Meta Page Titles for Search Engine Optimization
Oct 13, 2008
Page titles are the text displayed along the top of a browser window. The first step towards increasing the SEO of a site is to make sure each page has a unique meta page title that uses keywords, is appropriate and relevant to the content of the page, and is well-written.
About Page Titles
Using specific and unique keywords in page titles help in making web pages more descriptive. Some have made the mistake of trying to stack page titles with keywords to the point that they become unreadable gibberish. This should never happen, because page titles need to be useful to a human reader first and foremost for three extremely important and distinct reasons:
- Search engines give page titles a great deal of weight in determining both relevance and rank.
- When someone bookmark a page, the meta page title is the title they will see in their bookmarks list--so if the title is not accurate or is missing, users will may have trouble getting back to the site.
- Page titles are frequently displayed in search results and users will judge whether or not to visit a page based on its title.
For instance, visiting the homepage of The New York Times reveals a page title that reads: The New York Times - Breaking News, World News & Multimedia. The designer of this site has done a great job. Keywords are used throughout the page title, the brand name is placed first, and additional keywords (breaking news, world news, multimedia) support the brand while indicating the type of content that can be found on the homepage. If someone used the search term "New York" but was seeking historical information about the state of New York, they should immediately understand this may not be the resource they want.
Guidelines on Meta Page Titles
When writing page titles, be sure to use the most important (primary) keyword phrase or phrases as the first words in the title tag. If this isn’t possible, the primary keyword phrase for a page should be placed as close to the beginning of the title tag as possible. Also, it's standard practice to place corporate names at the end of page titles, except on the home page. For example:
- Correct: Super Sprocket – Spacely Sprockets
- Incorrect: Spacely Sprockets – Super Sprocket
However, some brands, like Apple, reverse this. It's probably best to follow the example above (and not Apple's) because that way product names and and other more differentiating, unique, and specific keyword phrases are being placed as the first words in the title tag. Either way, the most important thing is to select an approach and then keep it consistent across all of a site's pages.
More tips on page titles:
- Be sure that the page title tag matches with the first paragraph of visible content found on the page
- Page titles should be between 5 to 9 words long (the entire title should be under 80 characters in length)
- Page titles should be different for each page, but consistent in style (this helps people find the exact page they want)
- Page titles should be descriptive, compelling, but should always avoid overt sales and marketing language (Correct: Support Services – Spacely Sprockets, Incorrect: Spacely Sprockets the Greatest Support Service Ever!)
While some of these things may seem obvious, page titles are an easy way to increase SEO, and a surprising number of site's have yet to make this easy fix.
