[James Mitchell]

I just finished a post about the proper structure for page titles. Take a read and post your comments.

http://www.focusedtutorials.com/2006/12/08...-for-usability/

for quick reference this is what I propose:

Quote

{Page Title} < Section of Website < Name of Website

[marcamos]

That is a great tip James, it is certainly useful for search engine ranking, and it wouldn't take more than a second for a visitor to see the hierarchy and figure out exactly where they are.

It's like happy breadcrumbs with a dash of reverse-ness to appeal to both search engines and people the same.

[James Mitchell]

Likely most people didn't know it, but individual posts here on WR are set up with this hierarchy, making the most relevant content first in any Search result or History listing.

[Karl Buckland]

Well, we don't display the forum (section) title, but otherwise, indeed they are!

[James Mitchell]

You know that might not be a bad idea, so that the WR Title for this page would be:

Quote

Tip: Proper Page Titles - (X)HTML - WebRadiance

It might give the pages even more search engine relevance.

[TJSingleton]

Pimp your post Woot.

[James Mitchell]

Yes and admirably for all the right reasons

[marcamos]

Hmm that is not a bad idea. Hey Bramz and Sirkent, is this something that can be pulled off, and can we add it to our already-hefty list of mods?

[Ben Abrams]

i can take a look later on, sure..but is it *really* essential?

<ducks and hides...>

[marcamos]

Ha, no need to hide! It's certainly not essential, but it would be nice to implement it later in time. It adds the forum category to our page title, and I'm sure Google would smile because of it.

[James Mitchell]

I agree... it certainly isn't necessary and wouldn't hurt if things stayed the way they are. However I am just thinking of search engine results pages. I believe that 3 things will lead someone to clicking on your link over another.

• A relevant title
  
• A good snippet
  
• A top listing

I'd have to say in that order as well. Sure, search engines try their hardest to get the most relevant content to the top of the page. But as we all know, they fail from time to time. That is where the second line of defense comes in, the page title. If the page title is extremely descriptive and content relevant then you'll automatically start climbing in the results pages and your content, even if not #1 is likely to get more click thru's than poorly worded titles. Of course another overlooked aspect would be the "snippet" or the description that goes with it. That would be another whole topic, but I'd be curious to see a WR search engine result and what a post looks like on it.

(I searched for "karova shopping cart solution" this result was the bottom of the third page in google)
 result.jpg (52.4K)
Number of downloads: 18

That would be another area to explore for more text and less ... as it is hard to know exactly what the page is about.

Just my thoughts.

[marcamos]

JPMitchell, on Dec 12 2006, 10:15 AM, said:

I agree... it certainly isn't necessary and wouldn't hurt if things stayed the way they are. However I am just thinking of search engine results pages. I believe that 3 things will lead someone to clicking on your link over another.

• A relevant title
  
• A good snippet
  
• A top listing

I'd have to say in that order as well. Sure, search engines try their hardest to get the most relevant content to the top of the page. But as we all know, they fail from time to time. That is where the second line of defense comes in, the page title. If the page title is extremely descriptive and content relevant then you'll automatically start climbing in the results pages and your content, even if not #1 is likely to get more click thru's than poorly worded titles. Of course another overlooked aspect would be the "snippet" or the description that goes with it. That would be another whole topic, but I'd be curious to see a WR search engine result and what a post looks like on it.

(I searched for "karova shopping cart solution" this result was the bottom of the third page in google)
attachment

That would be another area to explore for more text and less ... as it is hard to know exactly what the page is about.

Just my thoughts.

I just revisited this thread and read it a bit more closely. I definitely agree with your first numbered bullet, but the page's title is directly taken from the title of the thread, and as we all know, that is in the hands of the thread starter.

Luckily, most people on this forum know that a good descriptive title, regardless of SEO benefits, is extremely helpful in many ways, so we can probably count on a large amount of threads here at having great and descriptive titles.

Side benefit: Google picks them up and we're sitting pretty.
Moral of this post: When you're creating threads here at , or anywhere for that matter, always use a descriptive title!