The use of one simple little element in HTML is one that has been overlooked, underused and underrated when it comes to creating webpages. This element – the title element – as little as it seems – holds a lot of power over just about every other aspect of web design (Except content itself). For many, the use, the change, or the optimization of it can drive traffic in, or drive it to other sites instead of the one you want it to – yours.
When you pick up a book, normally the first thing ever noticed on a book is the Title. It summarizes what all of the bound material will be talking about. Whether it intrigues you, informs you or makes you curious to read more – the Title of a book is something we are all used to seeing. When books are put up on a bookshelf, you may not see the Author on the spine. You may not see the fancy pictures or the publisher of the book. One thing you will most always see is it’s title.
When you open up a book and look at the Table of Contents, you are seeing more Titles. You are reading the Titles of each chapter. Once again, the titles will summarize or identify what the printed material after it will be in each section.
Would you find much interest in a book that has no title? What if each of the chapters in the Table of Contents were titled "New Chapter 1", "New Chapter 2", "New Chapter 3", "New Chapter 4" and so on? What I find even more amusing is the idea of picking up a book and opening it to find the Table of contents has the name of each chapter – the same as the title of the book!
Ok, now this may sound far-fetched.. but how realistic is it? In a sense, a website is an online version of a book. It has a title, chapters, sub chapters, and content. If you use an HTML editor that produces page titles already formatted for you – such as the popular MS FrontPage (Up until Front Page 2003) that uses "New Page 1", "New Page 2", "New Page 3" etc for titles, if you forget to change that, that is exactly how your website will be indexed and then shown in the results on a search engine. Try it! Do a search in Google for "New Page 1" and see just how many people forgot to change the title of their webpages. Of course not every HTML editor does this thankfully, but it does stress the point I am making on titles. Other editors can leave the title of the page blank. How does a search engine index that if it cannot display the title of a page?
For a place to use keywords, bring attention to your website, and identify every page from all of the other pages, the title element can be used.
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<title>The Power of a Title (Element) >> Aleeya dotNet</title>
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In the next article in this series – Where the Title is Seen – I will discuss just where the title of the website – taken from the title element – is displayed.
Great tips. Thanks for sharing. I need to find the subscribe button
This is a great tutorial thanks!d