If someone adds your web page to their Favourites or Bookmarks then the title is what goes in by default. It’s also what they see when they call up their list of Favorites next week or next month and it no longer has any context.
When you surf around every page you visit has a Title. It’s up there in the Title Bar. For Windows users that means the blue stripe at the top of the screen just above the Menu bar. For Mac users it’s the grey stripe at the top of the window and below the Menu bar.
If someone adds your page to their Favourites or Bookmarks then the title is what goes in by default. It’s also what they see when they call up their list of Favorites next week or next month and it no longer has any context.
When Google or another search engine visits your page then the title carries a lot of “weight” or importance in how your site is ranked. 13.5 million hits on Google are what you get if you search for “Untitled”, the default page title which appears when web designers don’t know enough to put in their own title.
By choosing a good title you can instantly get a better ranking than 13.5 million other websites.
A good title summarises your page in about six to ten key words.
Some References
- Writing Better Web Page Titles
- Dive Into Accessibility: 30 days to a more accessible web site
- Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox for September 6, 1998
Written for and reproduced from CommunityNet Aotearoa Panui, June 2004.
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