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Re: Good page titles - friendly SEO

for

From: Steven Henderson
Date: Jan 21, 2010 4:57AM

Thanks for the link, Iza. I am interested in the comment about screen reader users relying on well-written page titles as opposed to breadcrumb-like titles. Can anyone confirm if this is true?

Steven






-----Original Message-----
From: <EMAIL REMOVED> [mailto: <EMAIL REMOVED> ] On Behalf Of Iza Bartosiewicz
Sent: 21 January 2010 01:00
To: 'WebAIM Discussion List'
Subject: Re: [WebAIM] Good page titles - friendly SEO

Hi Steven,

This topic is definitely worth revisiting. Recently, Dey Alexander
wrote an article: 'The trouble with page titles'
http://www.deyalexander.com.au/blog/2009/10/the-trouble-with-page-titles/,
which makes it clear why we still have so many poorly written titles.
There are many general guidelines that recommend writing meaningful and
descriptive titles; perhaps we also need is a list of recommended
formats for page titles that are SEO, bookmark, browser tabs and
assistive technologies-friendly.

My purely personal favourites are the ones that go from specific to
broad:

Page title – Department name – Organisation
Article title – Publication title – Publisher
Article title – Blog title

These are the ones that I found to be most usable in my bookmark lists
and in the browser tabs.

cheers
Iza


>>> On 20/01/10 at 20:55, "Steven Henderson"
< <EMAIL REMOVED> >
wrote:
> 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