Page Titles > The Worst Practices

February 28, 2008

An important part of marketing your site on the web is knowing what you should NOT do. You can sometimes do more harm than good if you dive in and start swinging your sword–and we all have–trying to fight your way to the top with reckless abandon.

Fortunately, with the issue of page titles you can make changes and have them corrected or improved fairly quickly. That’s no excuse not to get it right the first time though. Below are some items that you should combine with my previous summary about how to write great page titles.

Hopefully this information does not surprise you in the least but acts as a quick reminder as to what you should stay away from or where you need to make minor corrections in your past work.

Just say “no” to Untitled documents

The biggest mistake that virgin site owners make when building their first site is to skip the title tag all together. This is a HUGE mistake as the page will appear as an “Untitled document”. This will seriously devalue your site and content and should be avoided at all costs. I always find it interesting to do a search for “Untitled document” see how many people have made this mistake.

Never place your site name by itself or at the beginning of your title

I’ve seen many sites–heck, I used to do this myself for years–title every page on their site with the domain name alone. This does nothing to improve your rankings or anything on your site except for a search for your domain name. Focus on including words that encompass the meaning of your page first and then brand your page.

Also, if you’re going to brand your site with your company name or URL, list it last in your title. Something like this is a pretty good practice: “How to construct wickedly amazing page titles | QuickStartSEO.com”.

Always omit unnecessary words

A common mistake is being way too wordy in your titles. You should cut out unnecessary words that don’t further your mission. In our previous post about page title best practices, we mentioned how you can cut out “stop words” and replace them with symbols like the pipe bar. I believe you can find ways to go one step further and cut your title down to the bar minimum at times. The more words you have in your title, the less relevant each one will be. So as a best practice you should learn to simplify.

Do not use ‘a’, ‘an’, ‘the’

Again, without going into detail about this again, you should try to cut out unnecessary words whenever possible. If it makes sense, keep the words in. The last you want to do is break up a statement that requires a “stop word”. In general though I believe these words can be deleted. You can easily say “A primer on the subject of writing good title tags” or you could say “HTML Title tag primer”. Which one would be the best solution?

Never include the kitchen sink

When I first started out, I used to stuff my title tag with long descriptions, every keyword I could think of, and generally make a mess of the whole process. This is called a kitchen sink title. Try not to apply a long winded title to your page that includes many keywords and phrases. Decide on the best words that summarize what you’re trying to accomplish on the page by performing solid research and then decide on the ideal page title.

Do not spam with your title

This goes along with the previous statements about simplifying and reducing the number of words in your title. This one should be pointed out though because if you stuff your title with every combination of word and phase that applies to your subject you’ll get dinged as “spam”. Google is smart and their spiders know what’s legit content and what’s blatantly constructed to fool or artificially improve rankings. Don’t do it.

Do not use the same title for all your web pages.

When I first started designing web sites and I got past the huge mistake of skipping my title tag all together, I started including the URL of my site as the title tag along with a short summary. The problem is that I used the same title tag on every page. This is called “title cloning” and it will seriously decrease the relevancy of your pages. Don’t do it.

Do not SCREAM

When you use uppercase letters, it’s usually understood to mean that you’re screaming. Some people use uppercase to draw attention (as in the example shown here: “I HAVE SOMETHING IMPORTANT TO SAY!”), but this is a bad strategy. Page titles written in CAPS are hard to read and people can actually get irritated because they feel that they’re being yelled at.

Closing

If you’re interested in ranking well, you absolutely have to know how to write a proper, uniquely crafted page title for every page you create. It’s one of the best places to spend your time when you’re building your site. Speaking from experience–as someone who has made all the mistakes–it will take you a long way if you learn to do it right from the start.

Posted by Christopher Auman | Filed Under SEO Training

Comments

One Response to “Page Titles > The Worst Practices”

Steve on March 3rd, 2008 2:02 pm

I’m ashamed to see that a site from my old University is number 4 on the “Untitled document” search: http://www.dundee.ac.uk/epidemiology/

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