Page Title Best Practices
Page titles (as specified in the HTML <title> tag) appear on printed web pages, display in the title bar of browser windows, appear in bookmark and navigation lists, and serve as captions for internal and external search engine results. They are also important in search engine rankings.
- Titles should be 60-80 characters. (W3C) . According to MarketPosition, anything more than 63 characters is superfluous because of Google.
- Titles should be stand on their own and make sense out of context.
- The first word should be important and information-carrying. Skip leading articles. (Alertbox)
- Include keywords, especially at the beginning. For example, "Web Design: Affordable, Low Cost Web Design from the Acme Web Design Company"
- Titles should be unique for each page.
- Do not include "Home Page" in the title.
- Include a period at the end of the title to indicate to a screen reader that it is the end of a phrase.
- Other than acronyms, titles should be in title case (This Is An Example Of Title Case), not all caps.
- Do not make all page titles start with the same word: they will be hard to differentiate when scanning a list. Move common markers toward the end of the line. (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/980906.html) Furthermore, it is unlikely that users will be searching for brand or company name. So use the beginning of the title for keywords instead.
