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Thread: Good page titles - friendly SEO
Number of posts in this thread: 11 (In chronological order)
From: Steven Henderson
Date: Tue, Oct 13 2009 3:35AM
Subject: Good page titles - friendly SEO
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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.
In the spirit of providing clients good SEO rankings whilst also keeping my
passion for usability for visual and non-visual users, I am looking to see
people's view on what makes a good page title.
Personally, I take the view that a company name should only prelude a title
if it is a internationally-recognized entity such as Adobe or Disney, and
that it should generally summarise the given page's content, using
associated keyword or sequence of words. For example, this email would
perhaps be 'Good page titles - friendly SEO'.
Really looking forward to people's thoughts.
Steven
From: Simius Puer
Date: Tue, Oct 13 2009 3:55AM
Subject: Re: Good page titles - friendly SEO
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Where a long page title has been created in order to improve SEO this is
normally done by some poor mis-led individual or a black-hat SEO.
Page titles are important for SEO but the value of each word diminishes the
further towards the end of the title it is. Thus the last words in a long
title will carry little or no value.
In terms of using the company name this is a tricky one. I normally advise
putting the company name first only on homepages as this is where people
will generally want to "land" if they have searched for the company. On all
other pages I would suggest pushing the company name to the end as this
allows you to focus on getting the keywords right up front.
Don't forget all the major search engine's results pages have a limit to how
many characters they display in a page title...a very good guideline as to
the max length of your text!
SEO and accessibility meet very nicely here as it is in both the user and
the search engines best interest if your title is succinct, focused around
your keywords and generally well written.
From: Oliver Secluna
Date: Tue, Oct 13 2009 4:00AM
Subject: Re: Good page titles - friendly SEO
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I would also agree with putting the most important keywords (e.g. the
main h1 of the page) first in the title. Any lesser keywords would come
later, with the company name last.
>
From: Steven Henderson
Date: Tue, Oct 13 2009 4:10AM
Subject: Re: Good page titles - friendly SEO
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I like your reasoning for putting the company name first on the home page
... I've never thought of approaching it that way exactly, I must admit.
Again, the max length is something else I like to adhere to also, although I
think how the title is written is really a usability issue - so long as
there is one, and it is applied correctly, I think it is fair to say it will
be as accessible as any other - but agree a good friendly title is
beneficial to both users and search engines. That is where I get frustrated
with the plethora of high ranking pages that are what I deem spam-titles
that I just naturally skim past ... perhaps I am more of a cautious user,
but if they are getting high rankings, isn't it then the fault of users that
they're ranking well? Or am I possibly missing something?
From: Geof Collis
Date: Tue, Oct 13 2009 9:25AM
Subject: Re: Good page titles - friendly SEO
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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
From: Simius Puer
Date: Tue, Oct 13 2009 9:30AM
Subject: Re: Good page titles - friendly SEO
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Users (I presume you are referring to site visitors) have nothing to search
rankings, at least not according to spokespeople from within Google et al.
It never could be a factor as it would be all too easily abused.
Black-hat and spammy techniques can work short-term but the leading search
engines keep watch on the latest practices and soon crack down on them.
I've witnessed sites being removed from Google's index entirely because of
this...it does happen!
A lot of it depends on what you are looking for and what terms you use to
carry out your search. Can't say I've ever suffered seeing spammy search
results unless I was searching for something like song lyrics - there the
MP3 download/ring-tone crowd clog up the results badly.
From: Steven Henderson
Date: Wed, Oct 14 2009 6:50AM
Subject: Re: Good page titles - friendly SEO
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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
From: Geof Collis
Date: Wed, Oct 14 2009 7:15AM
Subject: Re: Good page titles - friendly SEO
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Hi Steven
Perhaps it is the kind of searching I do, but I prefer that the title
and main content be at least similar to my search string. Lately I
have found too many websites burying the main content heading 5 or 6
deep, especially newspapers, I find this very annoying. It wouldn't
bother me if you put anything ahead of the main content, I dont
backgtrack unless I'm looking for something else regarding my search.
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.
I prefer my pages to be set up with navigation ahead of the main
content rather than making it the first thing I encounter because
that is what I am used to, in designing and surfing.
cheers
Geof
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
>
>
>
>
>
From: Keith Parks
Date: Wed, Oct 14 2009 12:15PM
Subject: Re: Good page titles - friendly SEO
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On Oct 13, 2009, at 2:51 AM, Simius Puer wrote:
> In terms of using the company name this is a tricky one. I normally
> advise
> putting the company name first only on homepages as this is where
> people
> will generally want to "land" if they have searched for the
> company. On all
> other pages I would suggest pushing the company name to the end as
> this
> allows you to focus on getting the keywords right up front.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the Page Title is what shows up
on the bookmark list, and in the browser History. I find *not* having
the company name (or other major identifier) can be a hinderance if
I'm trying to find a recently visited page or a bookmark.
******************************
Keith Parks
Graphic Designer/Web Designer
Student Affairs Communications Services
San Diego State University
San Diego, CA 92182-7444
(619) 594-1046
mailto: = EMAIL ADDRESS REMOVED =
http://www.sa.sdsu.edu/communications
http://kparks.deviantart.com/gallery
----------------------------------------------------------
World Peace through Cascading Style Sheets.
From: Simius Puer
Date: Wed, Oct 14 2009 2:10PM
Subject: Re: Good page titles - friendly SEO
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True enough if you only want to bookmark their homepage, but no so useful if
you have multiple bookmarks for a site as you see even less of the page
title.
Besides, a good clear favicon <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Favicon>; (for
those who actually know how to use them...still amazed at the number of
designers that don't) is normally more than sufficient as a domain level
identifier - certainly better than text (although the text is still useful
for bookmark searches) for sighted users.
From: Steven Henderson
Date: Thu, Oct 15 2009 2:15AM
Subject: Re: Good page titles - friendly SEO
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Interesting, Keith. Another example of how web developers are forced to do
something, because the browser dictates how it interprets it's use of web
standards. In this instance I would once have been inclined to rely on the
favicon, but now I can't be doing that ... hmmm, something else to be
thinking of. Just like how saving a page uses the title (only if it is
proceeded by a .html - not sure which browsers, but I recall it being the
majority a few years ago) ... bloomin browsers.
Steven