The Importance of a Good Web Page Title and Description

How to construct a good web page title and description for attracting more visitors to your website.

Every web page should have a good title and description since it is one of the most important ranking criteria for search engines. The page title and description will influence how often your website is visited and an effective title and description will help attract the visitors most interested in what you are selling.

The title and description that you give to each of your web pages will also appear in the search engine results.

For example, The title and description of this page appears in Google like this:

Guidelines for constructing a good page title

Every web page should have its own unique title and description.

Think of a title that would appeal to the consumers interested in your products and services.

Construct the title as a single sentence.

Establish a title that summarises the page content using the strongest keywords from the body of your text.

Use keywords that are likely to be used as a search term by visitors.

Place the strongest keywords at the beginning of the title.

Include keyword that discriminate what you have for sale from that of your competitors. For example, if you're a shirt manufacturer, and your keywords are 'long sleeve shirts', your web page will have a lot of competition in the search engine results. But if you produce 'extra long sleeve shirts made to measure', that title will seriously reduce your competition in the search engine results.

You can use 7 - 10 words in the page title, but anything after the 55th character is likely to be truncated, or cut-off.

Use upper case for each word. Do not use all upper case characters.

Be honest. The keywords used in the page title and description must match those used in the body of your text. Visitors and search engines do not like being misled.

Don't cram your title with just keywords in the hope that your web site will have more visitors. This and other spam techniques can have a negative effect on the popularity of your web site.

Browsers also use the page title
When we compile your website, the page title, description and keywords is also added above the HTML code of your web pages. This information is not seen by your visitors, but is used to communicate with browsers and search engines. For example, you will see that the title of this page also appears in the top bar of your browser.

If a visitor bookmarks your web page, the browser will use the page title for the bookmarked label. A memorable title will therefore help visitors to remember your web page if they want to visit it again in the future.

Even if a visitor does not bookmark your web page, the browser will record the page title in its history list. A descriptive title will further help towards repeat visits.

Page Description

Beneath the Page Title comes the Page Description. The page description is also seen in the search engine results and can be used to expand on the page title and content of the web page.

Guidelines for constructing a good page Description

Try to use your main keywords, including those from your Title.

Use the Description to describe more about your page content.

Think of a Description that would help attract, or draw visitors to your web page.

The Description can be one, or more sentences.

Use upper case only for the first word of each sentence.

A page description can have up to 30 words, but there is no guarantee that all of these words will appear in the search engine results. We suggest a single sentence of up to 22 words with the most important keywords at the beginning of the sentence. With this approach, your complete description is more likely to appear in the search engine results.

First Paragraph

Beneath the page description comes the first paragraph of your page content. This is also an important area for both visitors and search engines. Ideally, the first paragraph should provide a summary of the content of your web page, using all of your main keywords.

We all have our own writing styles, but you may find it easier to write the first paragraph of your web pages last; a technique often used when writing the executive summaries of business proposals.

When you've completed the text content of your web page, read through it and extract all of the key selling features for your first paragraph. These key selling features should naturally include the main keywords that you used in your Title and Description, as well as some more supporting keywords.

Once you've extracted the key features, compile your first paragraph into a condensed, reader friendly and informative summary.

Remaining Paragraphs
Before writing the rest of your web page, you may like to refer to the guidelines for writing good Page Content.