In my last post, I showed you how you could use heading tags to make your web pages easy to navigate – for humans and search engines alike.
If you missed it, you can read it on this page.
In a nutshell, the idea is to put the most important heading on your page in a <h1> tag, then put other headings in <h2> or <h3> tags, depending on their importance.
Easy enough. But as Adrian commented, it’s important not to get headings mixed up with page titles.
So here’s a bit about the difference between the two, plus some tips for page titles that will win you extra visitors.
What’\'” s the difference between web page headings and titles?
Quite simply, page headings (<h1>, <h2> tags etc) appear on your actual web page.
Page titles on the other hand appear in the top of your browser. If you look at the top of yours now, you’ll see something like this:
That text appears at the top of the browser because it has been put in a <title> tag. Like this:
<title>Business SEO Tip (2): Precision Page Titles | The Copywriting Agency</title>
So far so good.
Now I’m going to show you how to avoid making one of the biggest mistakes made by businesses on the web.
Never put your business name first in a page title
You may be – rightly – proud of your business name, but your customers are far more interested in what you have to offer.
Let’s invent a printing firm. Its name is Buchan and Stevenson Limited and it’s based in a factory somewhere in the Lincolnshire Fens. It offers digital and lithographic printing, and a huge number of products – like leaflets, flyers, posters, brochures, reports and so on.
It wants to use the web to sell to customers across the UK, so most of its prospects will never have heard the name ‘Buchan and Stevenson’ in their lives.
That’s why, on each website page, the company needs to first emphasise what’s on offer – and only then (if at all) mention who’s offering it.
This would be a wasted page title:
Buchan & Stevenson Limited, Lithographic and Digital Printers, Spillerby, Lincolnshire | Leaflet Printing
Why? Who’\'” s going to read a page title?
Your page title is important for these reasons:
- It appears in the search engine results pages
- It can help search engines rank your pages better
- Readers need to understand what you’re offering, and instantly spot what they’re looking for
Let’s return to our example. When you type ‘leaflet printing’ into Google, you get a results page that looks like this:
As you can see, each page has the relevant keywords ‘leaflet’ and ‘printing’ in the page title. Buchan and Stevenson wouldn’t stand a chance of being listed – and even if they did, the words ‘leaflet printing’ would have been missed off because their page title was too long.
So, if Buchan and Stevenson were still dead-set on including their company name on each page, a better title would have been:
Leaflet Printing | Leaflet Printers, Buchan & Stevenson
It’s clear to both readers and search engines that this is a page about leaflet printing. So, when you or your web company adds titles to your pages, it’s a good idea to remember this mantra.
Customers need to know what you offer, long before they care what you’re called.
The extra search engine traffic comes in handy too. Try it.
