Title element
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What is the title element?
The title element, sometimes referred to as the title tag, is the text that appears as anchor text for page links in search results. It's the default page name when users bookmark a page, and it appears when using the Back and Forward button, when a page is printed, in window title bars, and when users hover over tabs in tabbed browsers. The title element does not appear on the page itself, so it's often overlooked.
In the page source code, the title element appears in the <head> section of the document, between <title> and </title>. It's a mandatory element.
The title element and usability
The title element helps users navigate. When a user has visited several pages at the same site and then uses the Back button to return to one of those pages, the title element text should help that user find the target page. However, if all the pages at the site have the same title element text, it will be useless for navigation purposes. The same applies for users who have bookmarked more than one page at a site and left the default text in place for the bookmark text, or who are trying to find a particular page when they have numerous tabs open.
When a site appears in search results, the title element text can help users decide which links to click on. Title elements that have more useful information are more likely to be clicked on than those that don't provide users with information about the page. (However, good meta description tag content can help make up for poorly written title elements.) A good title element may help a search result get more traffic than results that appear above it.
To help with readability, title elements should have the main words and only the main words capitalized, as in a title.
Title elements cannot contain HTML, only text and keyboard symbols.
The title element and SEO
Search engines give considerable weight to title element content. Titles with only "About Us" or "Services" don't help in search engine optimization. Include keywords that will help with SEO as well as usability. Examples:
- About CompanyName, Professional Web Development, City, State/Province, Country
- CompanyName Services : cPanel Server Management | Plesk Server Management | Outsourced Support
- Affordable Web Hosting Services » Shared Web Hosting Plans » CompanyName
For both SEO and usability, be sure that keywords are related to the page content.
Each search engine truncates titles after a set number of characters. Because of this, the most important keywords and other information should be closer to the beginning of the title.
See also
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