Web Publishing Tip: Write Clear Titles

September 10, 2005 | 20 Comments

I’ve mentioned this before, a few times actually, but I thought I’d mention it again. With emphasis.

One of the easiest & best things you can do when publishing on the Web is to write clear, meaningful titles for your posts, pages and articles. Then, once you’ve written that title, put it into your title tag.

If you want people to find, read and/or link to your work, you must start with a good title. I’m a big fan of del.icio.us and more recently populicio.us and I’m amazed at how bad some of the titles are. I miss good articles quite often because of a poor title.

A good title will help you with search relevancy, readability, linkability and findability. I can’t stress enough how much clear titles mean. It’s my #2 SEO tip, #1 being provide good content. The rest of this article is something I published back in ‘03, but I thought it might be helpful for some folks. Read on if you want more on titles!

What’s In A Title

One of the easier ways you can improve your Web pages is to write better titles for them. It’s surprising to me how little this is done, considering that it’s a usually fairly easy and the benefits are huge.

A title is simply that, a name for your page. It goes within the title tag of your HTML. This is what usually shows up in search results and often what people will use when linking to. Obviously it’s very important.

A Good Title Tag

I’ve found in general the best way to write a title tag is to keep it short and to the point. Use keywords and phrases that not only describe the page, but words that appear on it as well. Don’t try and get clever, just say what you mean, and call the page what it is.

A good title tag is:

Clean. Readers and searchers (those folks who are going to look at your title) are usually in a hurry looking for something. Strive to help them by using trigger words and plain language.
Short. Less then 10 words, and usually the shorter the better. There are times where you may want to include extra words, like I do on this page, but do your best to cut the title to the essence.
Meaningful. Keep your title to the point. Place the most important information first, this is what your readers and searchers will see, if you must add information
like a company name or tag line do it at the end of the title.

Think of your title as the super executive summary of your page. Just provide the most relevant words that say what your page is all about and you’ll be
fine.

The Benefits of a Good Title

By writing good titles for your pages you will help people find you in search engines as a good title tag is probably the most important thing you can do to optimize your site for search. It will not only increase your relevant results, but will give the searcher a better read on what your page is about.

There are also many usability benefits. By using a clear, short and meaningful title tag you provide your readers with the information they need to get an idea of what your page is about. When sending your page via e-mail or linking from another site, your title tag can be repurposed to title those links, again setting the reader up for a much more useful experience.

What a Title Tag Is Not.

There are so many poorly written title tags out there I feel like it might be a good idea to explain some common mistakes and point out big no-no’s of writing title tags. Here are a few thing you shouldn’t be doing with your title tags:

Using clever language. Unless there is a really good reason to do so, avoid tricky or clever titles. Keep it simple and straight forward. If your page is a listing of recipes for spaghetti use “Spaghetti Recipes” instead of “The yummy noodles” or something. Make your titles count. Always assume your readers won’t “get” it.
Keyword spamming. This is useless to a searcher. Sure they might see your keywords, but they won’t click as they have no clue what the page is about. It’s never a good idea to trick a user into clicking through. Sure you get a click, but in the end what you want is a reader or user. What’s worse, you could get blacklisted from some search engines for this.
Adding a description. This might sound like a good idea. It’s not. A title tag that is too long will dilute its relevancy and ultimately hurt more than help. When it shows up in the browser on as a search result only the first bit will be available anyway.
Putting your site name first. Again, unless your talking about a home page, this is not too helpful. You can have your site name on every page, but you usually want to start with the most relevant information first. This can be ok, if you page title is very, very short.

As always there could be exceptions to these, as these are just some general guidelines. If you take the time to think about your titles and try and understand what words benefit searchers and readers in your particular situation I’m sure you’ll see a whole lot more people finding your site and spending more time once they get there.

Some Examples

#1 - First off, Let’s take one that has a direct relation to this article. Jakob Nielsen’s:

Marginalia of Web Design (Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox November 1996) [link]

This is not too bad. But it’s not too good though either. What the heck does Marginalia mean?? A title is not the place to show off your vocabulary skills. Even if you know what that means, which I don’t, does it give you an idea that this page is about writing page titles, text size and color and better image thumbnails? Are people going to search with that term? The answer is probably not in both cases.

This one is a bit tricky, due to the varied nature of the content on this page. I’d title this page:

Web Design Recommendations for Page Titles, Images, and Fonts

Or something like that. Even just Web Design Recommendations would be better, if still vague.

#2 - Ok how about this one?

Net Standard : Promoting a better web | Usability Standards | Provide Page Titles. [link]

Pretty good, but a bit backwards. It would be better if it read:

Provide Page Titles | Usability Standards | Promoting a better web

Or something to that effect. You get the most relevant information towards the front and eliminate unneeded information helping to keep it fairly short.

#3 - This comes from a PDF that I had to re-title last week. The original title was:

What You Need To Know About Life Vests For Children.

You can see how that one might need some work. The phrase “what you need to know” is a qualifier, but otherwise not very useful. What I did was change it around a bit with:

Life Vests For Children - What You Need To Know

This way you still have the qualifier and you get the most important information up front.

For more, if you’ve not had enough, see the following:

Filed under: Web General
Keyword Tags: web+publishing titles usability

Comments

1. Joerg Petermann said:

Write good titles and you’ll track the attention of much more user to your site. There are a lot of benefits. Agree with you! Good posting. :)

Posted on September 11, 2005 02:42 AM | #

2. Jens Meiert said:

Well, also see the discussion in Mike Papageorge’s “Now That’s a Catchy Title!”.

Don’t want to add to many cents in here, but “What You Need To Know About Life Vests For Children” could even better be rephrased into “Foo and Bar necessary for Children Life Vests” or something like this - both former proposals don’t communicate what you actually need to know.

Posted on September 11, 2005 09:45 AM | #

3. Ray said:

Good post Keith. What especially caught my eye was the bit on the site name NOT being first.

“Putting your site name first. Again, unless your talking about a home page, this is not too helpful.”

Hadn’t thought about it before but it makes perfect sense. Thanks again Dude.

Posted on September 11, 2005 09:52 AM | #

4. Keith said:

Jens – Yeah Mike’s post is great. I find it strange that this has come up so many times. I mean, it’s kind of common sense, isn’t it? And yet there are so many poorly titled sites out there.

Posted on September 11, 2005 10:46 AM | #

5. Su said:

While I can see your point to an extent and in a certain context, I think you’re hurting your argument by objecting to #1 on the at least partial basis of not knowing the definition of a word in it. Marginalia are a particular thing, and there’s nothing wrong with using that word if it’s what you’re talking about. (Granted, I don’t think Nielsen’s use was quite appropriate.)

Moving beyond vocabulary, though, it’s important to remember that a title is not the same thing as a summary, description, or subtitle. Nielsen is less guilty of being sesquipedalian(*cough*) than of not explaining himself, ie: “Marginalia of Web Design: Recommendations for Page Titles, Images and Fonts,” with the part before the colon being the title, and the part after, the sub. Yes, the title was arguably bad, but I don’t think it necessarily needed to go altogether. Also, there’s actually a bit of contradiction between A title is simply that, a name for your page. and Think of your title as the super executive summary of your page. if you think about it.

There is a tendency in informational documents – and note your examples – to use the title as summary, and for easily-defendable reasons, but that still only makes this a technical writing tip at best. There’s lots of other kinds of publishing happening on the web, which leads me to find your own title at least a bit imprecise.

The generalization presented here reminds me of one of my favorite book titles. It was originally published as “The Queen’s Vernacular, A Gay Lexicon.” Title, subtitle; perfectly clear, but still possessing character. And keep in mind that this was not a novelty book. Beyond the fact that it was about camp, it was perfectly straight, with historical information and so on. Well, it was eventually reprinted years later as “Gay Talk,” which is wrong on so many levels.

Posted on September 11, 2005 10:48 AM | #

6. Su said:

Quick followup. My point about objecting to the word marginalia is that there are dictionaries in the world. Not using them is a choice.

Another thing I forgot to point out is that mentioning this is an SEO tip immediately makes me suspicious as SEO serves Google et al., not (necessarily) good writing.

Posted on September 11, 2005 11:11 AM | #

7. Henrik Lied said:

Just to be a bit picky: “A Good Title Tag” is extremely bad terminology. :/

Posted on September 11, 2005 01:55 PM | #

8. Keith said:

Su – Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m not sure what you’re trying to say. My point was that a word like Marginalia is much less accessible than some other obvious choices. In my experience watching people use the Web clever wording almost never works. As well, my other point, was to put the meaning up front…do you disagree with that? I can’t really tell.

As far as SEO, it’s a true SEO tip. Given away for free. It works. Be suspicious if you want, but…

Henrik – Why is that extremely bad terminology? It makes sense to me…I don’t know, maybe there is a better way to say it, and if you’ve got it, let me know! ;0)

Posted on September 11, 2005 02:11 PM | #

9. Greg Laycock said:

Thanks for the great article. I think the only thing you missed is to mention the important role that page titles play in browser bookmarks. I don’t know about you, but I have literally dozens of bookmarks, many of which I frequent. Since the page title is used as the default bookmark title (and since many folks don’t take the time to edit this default title), the page title the author has selected is key to those who might return to your site. I can’t even remember how many times I’ve tried to find a certain page in my list of bookmarks but was unable to because the page title didn’t match the content for which I was searching. And I’m sure I’m not the only one.

Posted on September 13, 2005 06:45 AM | #

10. Keith said:

Greg – Yes. Good point. It’s along the same lines as my comments with del.icio.us. Thanks for adding that.

Posted on September 13, 2005 08:58 AM | #

11. Henrik Lied said:

Keith, because the title tag refers to (and may be used to describe the end-tag of the element too). :)
I would simply use something like “A good title”, I think.

= tag
content = element

Posted on September 14, 2005 05:04 AM | #

12. Henrik Lied said:

Well, that didn’t work out too well, unfortunately. Let me try again, you could edit this into one comment if you want to, Keith:

Keith, because the title tag refers to [title](and may be used to describe the end-tag of the element too). :)
I would simply use something like “A good title”, I think.

[title] = tag
[title]content[/title] = element

Posted on September 14, 2005 05:07 AM | #

13. Keith said:

Henrik – I get that, but I think my way is easier to understand. Yours might be more “correct” I guess. But this isn’t about tags and elements. When I say Title Tag, I need to clarify that against simply the actualy title of the page which would probably be the element of an h1 tag as fars the markup goes.

I guess I could have said: A good element of a title tag. But, come on. ;0)

I get your point though.

Posted on September 14, 2005 11:31 AM | #

14. Jakob Nielsen said:

For the record, I agreee that my 1996 page title wasn’t too good. (The one about marginalia of Web design.)

The real problem with this article, however, was that it covered four completely different things in one article. That makes it hard to write a focused headline. The only commonality was that the article discussed four smaller things that were on the margins of Web design in 1996. (Today, page titles are very important; less so in 1996.)

My point at the time was that you need to pay attention to such smaller issues (that is, the marginalia of Web design impact usability) as well as the bigger topics (which at the time were mainly IA and visual design – I was fighting to add content to the list and the next year we did so through a major study).

For a better headline of mine on this topic, see Microcontent: How to Write Headlines, Page Titles, and Subject Lines from 1998 when the guidelines were much more settled than they were in 1996.

Posted on September 15, 2005 10:45 AM | #

15. Keith said:

Jakob – If that’s really you. ;0) Thanks for stopping by. You bring up some good points. Mainly that titles are hard to write. And, by the way, the example wasn’t really meant to pick on you, just to show a relevant example.

Posted on September 16, 2005 10:07 AM | #

16. Henrik Lied said:

Keith, I understand that you’re trying to appeal to both those with a great understanding of semantics and structure, and those who don’t have that much experience, but wouldn’t it be better to clarify the difference a tag and an element? :)

Clarification is the road to success, you know.

Posted on September 16, 2005 04:01 PM | #

17. Robert Hartl said:

Everyone thinks quite different in detail. So thanks for Your opinion! I guess titles with keywords are relevant for search engines, too.

Posted on January 20, 2006 04:00 AM | #

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