An HTML title tag describes a specific web page, though it is not displayed on the page. A title tag with strategic keywords should be constructed. The title tag becomes the link to the page that shows up in search engine results. Search engines generally look closely at the title text when indexing pages.

The words contained between the <title> and </title> parts of your header are what shows up in the browser address bar when they see the website. For example, if your title tag reads “cool jewelry and accessories” then those words will  appear in the address bar of the browser when you go to your site instead of something like “cooljewelryandaccessories.com.”

Your title tag should contain key terms you want your page to be found for by search engines. That title will show up in bookmarks as well as address bars. Different search engines use different title lengths in your meta description. Google shows 69 characters (spaces included) for a title tag. Yahoo will show up to 72 characters (spaces included) for a page title, unless it’s a PDF, in which case it can be up to 75 characters. Bing shows 65 characters including spaces for page title tags. Ask.com shows 69 characters for a page title.

You can get the best mileage out of your title tags in meta data by including keyword phrases in a short page title of 65 or fewer characters, even though some search engines show more than 65 characters.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 19th, 2010 at 6:16 am and is filed under Best Practices, SEO, Site Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.