WebAIM - Web Accessibility In Mind

E-mail List Archives

Re: Good page titles - friendly SEO

for

From: Steven Henderson
Date: Jan 20, 2010 2:57AM

Hope people don't mind me bringing up a previous post, but I was interested
in what Geof Collis was saying about using search engines, particularly the
following:

"Personally long titles don't bother me as a screen reader, the more
descriptive the better and I really don't need any company names cluttering
up the beginning of it, its easy enough to find out the company's name from
the site if I need to."

"When I get to the page I start with my JAWS heading commands, if I cant
find it that way then I use the on screen find function, type in some words
that were relevant and go from there."

If a page title is giving a page most of it's SERP weight, as opposed to the
page content or external reference, then I can see how on many occasions the
SEO developer is going to have a tough job attracting click-through against
competitors who's titles can be more attractive thanks to the lower SERP
weight of the page title itself.

This is where I am getting frustrated with the page title. I use the page
title a lot for saving pages and bookmarks (I recall somebody else
mentioning this point too - apologies for not recalling who it was) so am
really annoyed at how in most cases, I will need to compromise the page
title because of client's expectations of the page title in SEO.

For example,

Searching for 'vintage wine' in Google returns vintagewinegifts.co.uk as the
first result. It happens to have a horrible page title: "Vintage wine gifts.
Fine & Rare wine gifts. vintage wine, port, champagne, cognac, Armagnac".

I myself wouldn't want to click on it personally, even if it is the highest
ranking SEO result. Great for SERP, but a monster of a page title in my
browser bookmarks or history. However, antique-wine.com is second in the
SERP and comes across considerably more appealing and makes me want to click
it, using the title: "The Antique Wine Company".

Surprise, the page title matches just one of the SEO keywords, likely due to
other on-page or external SEO weight, but something I can definitely
bookmark, and more likely candidate to persue.

Am I being too picky? Do I undervalue the SERP description because of a
badly received SERP title? Do I have to put up with it, because my client
website requires that god-awful SEO title?

I am very interested in people's comments on my ranting.

Steven










At 08:47 AM 10/14/2009, you wrote:
>Hi Geof,
>
>When you say you 'like the title to match the content heading' do you
>actually find that to be the case of most websites? As I don't recall that
>to be the case and am presently of the opinion that would be duplicate
>content (in so far as sifting through all the other content on a given
page,
>that also wants my attention).
>
>In your case, if I were to place the main heading (which is perhaps
>'similar' to the page title) at the top of the page, would it really be
>inconvenient that it differ from the title? And what if I place a few quick
>links above that too, one of which linked to the main content? In the case
>of a heading being identical to the page title, would you not prefer that
>there was no heading and could get straight to the main content directly
>(effectively treating the page title as your page heading)?
>
>
>Steven
>
>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: <EMAIL REMOVED>
>[mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Geof Collis
>Sent: 13 October 2009 16:25
>To: WebAIM Discussion List
>Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Good page titles - friendly SEO
>
>
>
>At 05:31 AM 10/13/2009, you wrote:
> >I'm interested in people's feedback on page titles and how when written
for
> >SEO rankings, affect usability ... my humble opinion is that high ranking
> >page titles are generally too long and unfriendly for me as a visual
user,
> >and wonder if this is even more of a problem for the visually impaired or
> >blind user.
>
>Hi Steven
>
>Personally long titles dont botehr me as a screen reader, the more
>descriptive the better and I really dont need any company names
>cluttering up the beginning of it, its easy enough to find out the
>company's name from the site if I need to.
>
>Perhaps its just me but when I search I like the title to
>match the content heading it speeds things up for me. When I find
>the search item that best describes what I searched for I want to go
>to the site and hit the heading tab until I get the corresponding text.
>
>cheers
>
>Geof
>
>
>Editor
>Accessibility News
>www.accessibilitynews.ca
>Accessibility News International
>www.accessibilitynewsinternational.com
>
>
>