Search engines think page titles are important. You should, too.

Page titles are the text that appears in the very top bar of your browser when you visit a web page. It is not the same as the header you use at the top of the page’s contents.

On many poorly built sites, the page title will end up being a mirror of the name of the page in the navigation bar. So you see a lot of “ACME WIDGETS – About”, “TOP SERVICES – Home” and “BUYONLINE – Contact Us”.

Smart titles = quick SEO

Not only is this lazy but it’s also a missed opportunity from the point of view of optimisation.

For a start, if search engines are looking at your page titles so closely, you need to make sure each title describes the content of the page clearly. And what better way to do that than to use some of the keywords relevant to your product or service and used in the body of the page.

Remember, too, that the title often displays at the top of the browser long before the page loads. You should be reassuring visitors that they’ve come to the right site and convincing them to wait long enough to see what the page reveals when it’s loaded. Telling visitors they’ve reached the ‘home’ page is hardly going to set pulses racing.

Don’t be mean with the description

You may also feel you need to make your title short and punchy. Wrong. Make it as long as makes sense, while keeping it readable and meaningful. Not an essay, of course. Ten words is fine.

Want to see how it should be done? Unsurprisingly, 37Signals is a company that gets this right. Take a look at the home page title – “Simple small business software, collaboration, CRM: 37signals”. The company name is at the end because it’s a given that people searching for 37signals on the web are probably going to find it near the top without much trouble. It’s the first words that the search engines find most important. Here we have three keywords or keyword phrases: ’small business software’; ‘collaboration’; and ‘CRM’.

Click through from the 37Signals home page to one of the products and take a look at the page title now. Highrise, for instance, displays this:
“Highrise: Small Business CRM, Web-Based Contact Manager”.

Every one a winner

Which brings me to my final point in this brief look at page titles. Make sure every page has a different title. Different and descriptive. Each page on your site serves a distinct purpose (it does, doesn’t it?) so it will wear its own set of keywords. This is what you need to base your title on.

Simply being creative (but honest!) with your titles could start to work wonders for your search engine rankings.

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Are you getting in the way of your visitors when they come to your site? Do they have to wait to enter?

It’s not as common as it used to be, thank God, but I still see sites whose owners (or, more likely, their designers) think that having a Flash intro is a good thing. Well, let me tell you: it’s not – it’s a VERY BAD THING.

English Queue by http://www.flickr.com/photos/gagilas/

Your site has mere seconds to convince a visitor that they’ve made the right choice in following a link to your web address. That means, the visitor needs to know immediately whether the site has the information he or she needs. If you insist on holding things up by presenting a collage of product images or perhaps sweeping views across the fields and woods visible from your office window, chances are that the ‘back’ button will be pressed before the ‘loading’ bar reaches 50%.

Still unconvinced you’re losing customers with your Flash intro? Then ask yourself this: If it’s such a good thing, why do all these sites have a ‘Skip Intro’ button?

Picture this. We meet at a networking event. You approach, we shake hands, you ask me what I do. But instead of answering, I ask you to watch while I do a little dance and maybe hum a little tune for you. Now, if I was foolish enough to wear a ‘Skip Dance’ button on my nose, I’m sure you would be tempted to press it really hard. However, being polite and full of sympathy, you probably back away with a pitying smile.

Just because you have a web site does not mean you have permission to waste a potential client’s time by displaying some clunky graphics that have no purpose other than to tell visitors how clever your site designers are.

Got a Flash intro? Bin it.

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