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How to Write a Better Web Page Titles


Web Page Titles are all over the place.  Some people are known by their titles, some people hate titles and many others enjoy giving titles. Why is this so? The answer is simple - With loads of information being processed by our minds every single day, we need an efficient way to classify all these large groups of corresponding data in a quick referencing way.

This is precisely the same approach a search engine applies when it “crawls” a page. When you give a page a title - you are telling the search engine exactly what the page is supposed to be about.  For example - We have all seen the one sentence summaries of television shows on the Television Guide in newspapers - It allows for quick referencing and helps us in decision making by telling us what the show is going to be about. 

This is a part of the reason why giving your page a good title is so crucial in getting your site ranked.  You would surely be aware of the number of websites online that have one of the following titles throughout the entire website:  "untitled" or "company name".

While we know that having the company name on all the pages of your website could be a potential branding strategy, chances are that more than half of the visitors to your website don’t even know your brand name yet.  The company name could well be incorporated into the title, but it should be places after the main message you want to convey about that particular page.

It is important that every single page should have a unique title. While there are particular subjects that need to be explained over a few pages, you can surely use the page title as a clear index of information for the reader. Websites that sell numerous products should also have a unique page title for each and every single product page. If you don’t have the time to make each page on your website stand out – why on earth would you expect that page to appear in a search engine?

If possible, you should try to place your keywords within the title itself. This will help the search engine to determine where your page should be ranked. Do keep in mind that search engines rank each page individually which is why it is so very essential to use proper naming methods.

After you decide on which keywords you want to use, you should go in for a 4 to 6 word title if possible. After 58 characters the title in the search engine page is usually truncated and will not be visible to the reader.  Besides, the longer the title, less weight is given to each word.

For the entire time you spend thinking about webpage titles, always keep the reader in mind first. While some phrases will rank extremely well in the search engines, a reader may never enter that website and you will lose that targeted traffic you were trying to reach. Sometimes however, the phrases will work out well with both the reader and the search engine and in those lucky cases success is usually quick to follow.