What are Page Titles ?

A page title is a text that is visible on the title bar of the browser, which explains about the content of a page. You can view the page titles of a html page by viewing the source of the page. The text found in the <title> tag is the page title.

Why are titles important for search engine optimization ?

A page title is of great significance, as the search engines pay special attention to the page title while indexing a page. It is normally the title of the page that gets indexed and gets listed in a search engine result. Most of the visitors get attracted and tend to click a link by first seeing the title of a page. The visitor decides whether the site is worth visiting by looking at the title. A page title is an important component of search engine optimization. Companies dealing in search engine optimization services place high relevance to page titles.

What should be there in title?

A title should best describe the page content and may include one or two important keywords. To get top search engine rankings the keywords may be positioned earlier on in the sentence as search engines give high priority to words found earlier on in the sentence. Also note that a title of the page should be relevant to the context of the page. It is also a good practice to have the name of the web site in the beginning of the page title.

How to define a page title?

The title of a page should

• Include the most important and relevant keywords for the page
• Start with important keywords, followed by support words
• Be in lower case as lower case letters are found first in the search engine result.
• Use a judicious mix of keywords and adjectives users may use to search for the site

Example:

If a page from the website: pearls is describing about sales of qualitative pearls and diamonds, at very low prices, the title may be captioned as, "pearls - quality pearls and diamonds at unbelievably low prices". This title will surely ensure top search engine ranking for this web site if the user searches for 'low price diamonds' .

Present day relevance of Titles

Most of the search engines today give an average ranking to the page title of a web page. Major directories like Yahoo, DMOZ, and search engines like AltaVista etc. weigh a web page taking the title into consideration. A good title is important but does not automatically ensure top search engine rankings. A title has to be coupled with a lot of other search engine optimization techniques to yield effective results.