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Title Element

The title element is one of the most important bits of your web site code.   Most notably it determines what most browsers will display in the title bar while on your site.  It is also what search engines typically display as a link to your site, and can be very important in a search engine's ranking of your site.

So what makes a good title element?

First, a few restrictions.  While some people advocate having multiple title elements, this is a form of spamming and can have negative impact on your search engine rankings.  You are also limited to 60 to 80 characters in your title element.  Yes, you can put more.  No, it will not make much of a difference.

You want phrases that visitors will use to find your page early in the title.  Look at the title for this page.  It is "Title Element."  The idea is that if people search for title element I want this page to be near the top.  Search engines weight the title element very heavily in their search results.

Many people also include their company name in the title element.  While I agree with this - I do it on pretty much all my sites - you generally do not want it to be the first part.  Again, look at the title to this page.  The site name is also included, but only after "Title Element".

On one of my sites I did an experiment between the site name coming before or after the page title.  Originally the site name was first followed by the page title.  After I switched the two (and waited about a month for the search engines to pick up the change) my search engine traffic almost doubled on many of my pages.