The Josh.biz Blog

Apologies for the rather geeky title for this post but that’s exactly what we’re going to be discussing here – the importance of ensuring that every page within your website has a well composed title and description tag.

Anyone who runs a website and wants more visitors should be aware of their importance. This is one of the most effective (and free) techniques you can employ to gain higher listings on search engines and to encourage users to visit your web pages.

In this article we’ll be focusing on the way in which Google indexes web pages (due to it’s overriding popularity). But these guidelines apply equally to most other search engines.

First, some basics about how Google indexes web pages

Google indexes the individual web pages in your website and will present a listing for any particular page on the search engine results pages (the list of results produced after you press ‘search’). Typically, the appearance of a page listing is similar to the screenshot shown below.

Note that every page in your website is individually indexed. Google is not an index of websites, but rather individual web pages. If you only have one web page in your website, you’ll only have one listing. Therefore it’s important to consider each page within your website individually and to ensure the titles and descriptions accurately reflect the content of each page.

You can often spot an amateur website when the title and descriptions are set the same for every page (often the name of the website and a generalised description). This is a big faux pas in the world of web design.

Targeting your keywords – it’s not rocket science

By customising the titles and descriptions for each page individually, it is possible to design pages which target specific keywords (which you would like to be found under on search engines). Naturally, these keywords should also appear prominently and frequently in your page content. This is the perfect recipe for favourable search engine listings.

And of course, when a user sees your listing on a results page, if your title and description are carefully composed, your listing will stand out from others.

Well that’s enough on why you should be attending to this but don’t forget there are many other good reasons. I just don’t have time to list them all here!

How do I view web page titles and descriptions?

Anybody with a web browser can view page titles and descriptions. And, yes, you can view this information for any web page, not just your own. Viewing the titles and description tags for pages other than your own can inspire you and help you to understand how others approach things.

• Internet Explorer 8: Page menu (on the command bar), View Source
• Firefox 3.6: View menu, Page Source
• Safari 4: Click the page menu (look for the button in the top right corner with an icon of a dog eared page), Page Source

Look for the following code:

<title>Your page title</title>
<meta content=”Your page description” />

Some simple guidelines

Titles (64 characters maximum, including spaces)

A brief title explaining the content of the page and possibly navigation information.

This is shown as the first line of your page listing on Google, is underlined and coloured blue or purple. It forms a clickable link for the user to visit your page. Within your web browser, titles are usually displayed in the title bar and as the ‘tab’ title. If a user bookmarks your page (adding it to favourites in Internet Explorer), the title is used as the default bookmark/favourite name.

Descriptions (150 characters maximum, including spaces)

A brief and concise summary of your page’s content. This appears under your title on Google page results.

If you exceed the recommended maximum number of characters, your title or description is likely to be truncated (with … added at the end). If no title or description is set, Google will often use information extracted from the page content. Under these circumstances, the results can be unpredictable (and undesirable).

How do I change my page titles and descriptions?

If you have basic web design skills (and maintain your own website), titles and descriptions can be easily set or adjusted using your favourite web page editor (e.g. Adobe Dreamweaver). Titles and descriptions are always included in the HEAD part of the code.

Otherwise, contact your web designer who should be happy to discuss your proposed changes and update these for you. If you compose your own titles and descriptions for each page, your web designer should be able to update these very quickly and easily for you.

The task of updating the code is simple. The time consuming part is actually composing them so why not do this yourself and just ask your web designer to check them for you?

If you run a database driven website (such as a content managed website) you’ll need to discuss the matter in more depth with your web designer. Depending on the software used, titles and descriptions are often set automatically. But there is usually room for different levels of customisation.

If you Google this subject, you’ll find no shortage of further information.

Comments and questions are welcome.