Article
The Company Website Crash Course
How To Write Page Titles
Good page titles can increase traffic and qualify your visitors. A Web page's title has two main functions:
- To explain what the page contains, and
- To promote keywords or phrases and thus increase and qualify traffic.
A page's title is the most important part of what makes a user click a link in a list of search results. To demonstrate, imagine you're in search of a second hand car. Which of these links are you more likely to click?
- J.A. Hendersen & Sons A/S
- Affordable second hand cars
- Untitled document
- SALE!!! CARS!! DEALS ON WHEELS AT LAUGHING LARRY'S SHOWROOM!!!
It's clear that your first choice would be number two, but let's take a look at why.
Number 1 says absolutely nothing of any value to anyone, and for that reason alone it's less likely that you'll even come across this link in your search for a second hand car, let alone click on it. If you're searching through a directory like Yahoo! or Jubii then it will probably be there, but it'll be much easier to miss, as it's unmemorable and uninspiring.
Number 3 might as well say 'Don't buy anything from us, we're a bunch of clowns!'. This poor effort just spells incompetence and I personally think that it should be a punishable crime to publish such monstrosities. Similar crimes include 'page 1', 'Min nye hjemmeside' and 'Welcome to some shabby html editor!'.
Number 4 is clearly the work of someone who should be kept away from the rest of society.
So what's so good about number two?
Ideally page titles should either contain, or better still, be the phrase that your visitors search for. Many search engines award higher rankings to short, concise titles that contain the searcher's keywords.
Ideally you should keep your page titles less than 40-50 characters long and be as honestly descriptive of the page's contents as possible. You might get more hits by titling your pages 'Steamy sex, free porn!' but if you sell second hand cars, wouldn't you rather have visitors that, er... want to buy second hand cars?
Remember that not everyone that visits your site will enter via the front door. It's no good having the same title for every page, as all you'll end up doing is limiting the number of visitors you attract. If one of the pages in your 'second hand car' site deals with accident and repairs a good title might be 'Accident and Repair Service in Aarhus'. The reason I included the reference to Aahus (a large town in Denmark) is that people will travel to buy a car, but usually won't go too far to get repair work done. Thus this title further qualifies the visitors the link will generate.
In conclusion
Keep your titles short, honestly descriptive, and above all, relevant to your page's contents. Try to use the terms or phrases you expect your visitors to search for, and avoid the multiple exclamation mark and capital letter madness: overly promotional titles are a turn-off to most users.