Page titles are one of the most important elements of site optimization. When a crawler examines your site, the first elements it looks at are the page titles; and when your site is ranked in search results, page titles are again one of the top elements considered. Therefore, when you create your web site, you need great page titles.
Consider several key factors when coming up with your page titles:
- Unless you’re Microsoft, don’t use your company name in the page title. A better choice is to use a descriptive keyword or phrase that tells users exactly what’s on the page. This helps to ensure that your search engine rankings are accurate.
- Try to limit page titles to less than 50 characters, including spaces. Some search engines index only up to 50 characters; others might index as many as 150. Regardless, maintaining shorter page titles forces you to be precise in the titles that you choose and ensures that your page title will never be cut off in the search results.
- Don’t repeat keywords in your title tags. Repetition can occasionally come across as spam when a crawler is examining your site, so avoid that in your title if possible, and never duplicate words just to gain a crawler’s attention. It could well get your site excluded from search engine listings.
- Consider adding special characters at the beginning and end of your title to improve noticeability. Parentheses (()), arrows (<<>>), asterisks (****), and special symbols such as ££££ can help draw a user’s attention to your page title. These special characters and symbols don’t usually add to or detract from your SEO efforts, but they do serve to call attention to your site title.
- Include a call to action in your title. There’s an adage that goes something like, ‘‘You’ll never sell a thing if you don’t ask for the sale.’’ That’s true on the Web too. If you want your users to do something, you have to ask them.
All of your page titles should be indicated with the title tag when you code your web site. The title tag isn’t difficult to use. Here’s an example of such a tag:
<title>A Descriptive Web Site Title</title>
If your page titles aren’t tagged properly, you may as well not be using them, so take the time to ensure that your page titles are short, descriptive, and tagged into your web site code. By using title tags, you increase the chances that your web site will be ranked high within search engine results.