Structured Page Titles

The page title is arguably the most important element of your web page to optimise. The titles are one of the first elements that search engines look at when incorporating all the factors into their ranking equation.

Think of the internet as a library. All the books in the library are web pages, and the library assistant is the search engine. When a person walks into the library, they might ask the assistant one of two questions: find a book of a certain name, or a book(s) about a certain topic and/or a sub-topic.

A page with no title is like a book with no name, lost in the biggest library in existence. Perhaps that was a bit dramatic, but you get the point.

Depending on the nature of your site, and in most cases, it is probably best to assume that users (or library members) are going to query the latter of the two questions. Unless your site happens to be the BBC or Coca-Cola, or something big and bold that everyone knows, you won't need to worry about anything. However the large majority of the internet world is a bunch of nobody's trying to get noticed. For you guys, definately opt for the second of title structures - topic and sub-topic.

Order of Keywords in the Page Title

In this structure format, assume that people are going to be searching for a topic and/or sub-topic, perhaps a product, and not your company name. It is important to think about the order of your keywords in the page title, and to structure them so that they are relative to the order of keywords in a search string.

For example, a web page about contemporary fashion photography from the latest fashion photography event might have a page title something like the following...

Event | Fashion Photography | Contemporary Photography | FashionFotosRus.com

Search engines look at the order of keywords, and analyse the proximity between them. This is the basic priniciple behind keyword density. If keywords are too far apart, the search engines wont take them into account or relate them with one another.

Note also that the domain name is at the back, this is because nobody is going to know to search for FashionFotosRus.com, the information users want is all at the front.

Other Factors to Consider in a Page Title

Unique Titles - Try not to duplicate page titles. We're trying to optimise aren't we? Duplicate page titles just confuse dumb ass search engines, and create conflicts in the SERPs (search engine results page). Avoiding duplicate page titles is easy, just don't do it!

Character Max - In the SERPs, search engines have a limit on how many characters can appear for each result found. This can be between 150 and 160 characters, so it important that your title structure allows space for the occassional long word.

Seperators - Avoid using determiners such as "and" or "the". This is a handy method of saving space, and will allow for extra room in your 150-160 character max. Instead use seperators such as a hypen or a bar (see the use of bars in the above example).