Informative Writings
» Title Tags: Abused and Misused
One common misconception is that title tags are optional bits of code that you stick at the top of your webpage--you know, just so your website can have a fancy little customizable name on your top bar. This bugs me a lot, because most of the people who think this way are those who don't quite understand how important title tags really are to the technical presentation of webpages.
But before we get started on the importance of title tags, we should probably establish where title tags are actually supposed to be placed.
Page Setup
Every webpage in existence has--or is supposed to have--a skeleton. Now, keep in mind that the basic skeletons can vary and all be correct at the same time. However, most of the time, the only variation is in the DOCTYPE, which is the top bit of code above the HTML tags.
This is how my webpage's skeleton looks, and yours should be at least somewhat similar:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> <head> <title>Your Website Title</title> <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> Your CSS, as well as your meta tags, will go here </head> <body> <p>Your HTML and regular content go here</p> </body> </html>
Before I go on, I need to make sure that all of you know that document structure is incredibly important,
because there's no use in me explaining to you the importance of using the title tags correctly when you don't even know
where to put them. If you have no idea about what DOCTYPE to use, you can just copy and paste the above structure onto
your webpage. The specifications of the DOCTYPE you choose don't matter nearly as much as the fact that you actually have a DOCTYPE. Nevertheless, if you'd like more information on which DOCTYPE to use,
visit Sitepoint's DOCTYPE Guide.
Now that we know how your pages are supposed to be set up, let's examine the importance of title tags and common blunders in the area.
Title tags aren't supposed to be decorative
There's this awful trend that's been going around and that has been constantly bugging me. Quite often, I go to websites and find titles such as, "[ s i t e n a m e ] -- /** Hugs && Kisses *// :)" or something of the like. Remember: Your title tags are not supposed to be decorative, and they shouldn't include poetic lyrics, unnecessary spaces, or any of that stuff (and they certainly aren't supposed to be changed with every layout). The only thing that should be going between your <title> tags is your page's title. That's it!
According to this article on Title Tag Optimization,
"Title tags function much like the title of a book. Say for example, you need a book on 'Search Engine Optimization'. You walk into a library, search all the titles, see a book titled 'Search Engine Optimization Tips', and take that book. Interestingly, there were some other books in the library, which had more information on Search Engine Optimization than the book you took. But, their title didn't convey that. Search engines also do the same thing: they look at the title of a web page and decide what it is about. There is no doubt among the SEOs regarding the importance of Title tags in Search Engine Optimization."
That about sums it up. If you don't care about what you should put into your title tags, then it's less likely that search engines will understand what your webpage is about, therefore leading to a decrease in your ranking. That means that less people browsing Google will find your webpage, and unless you don't care about your hits at all, this should not be overlooked!
Remember that a good, solid title will help your website in the long run--search engines like good titles, and bad titles that have no real relevance to your website or that are solely there to look pretty will only hurt your webpage's ranking. If you want to unleash your creativity, do it where your creativity is meant to be unleashed--whether it be in the form of an article, a layout, or something else. But don't put your ranking in jeopardy just because you wanted your top bar to look nice; I doubt that anyone's going to ooh and ahh about how "cool" it looks anyway.