Building BobSmithPhotography.net has stopped expanding because I've been overwhelmed with spam on the comment forums. So, if you're here and have questions about web design come and visit Forums, Blogs, Wikis dot com. It has articles that I've written, some of which are also here, and a web design forum as well so you can ask any questions you may have. There is still a lot of good stuff here though, so poke around the links and take a look.

Home » The tutorial » The Title Tag

The Title Tag 

In our first posting we skimmed over the <title> tag.  But, it's such an important part of your site that we must go back and touch on it again.

The title tag tells the browser what to put in the title bar.  If you look up at your browser's title bar you will probably see something like 'Title Tag » Building BobSmithPhotography.net'.  If you view source on this page you will see the same text between the <title> and </title> tags.

So, why do we care
First - This is what shows up on your visitors' browser.  You do not want 'Untitled' on your site, it smacks of unprofessional.

Second - If a visitor bookmarks your site this is what the browser will default to as the bookmark title.  If you have a visitor bookmark your site, you certainly want them to be able to find your site in their bookmarks.

Third - Search engines usually use your title as the link text when you show up in results.

Fourth - Back to search engines, when visitors search for something the title tag is given a lot of weight.  

A little more on number 4
Having text that visitors are likely to search on in your title is very important.  Let's look at Bob's title from the first posting.  The title is 'Bob Smith Photography'.  Very few people are going to go out and search for 'Bob Smith Photography', much to the detriment of Bob's ego.  If a Cleveland bride is going to search for a photographer, they are more likely to search for 'Cleveland wedding photographer', so it would be beneficial to have that in your title - assuming, of course that you are in Cleveland.  

And Bob's site is changed again
Bob decided that 'Cleveland wedding photographer' needed to go into his title, so it is now there in version 4.


Changing Fonts « The tutorial » DOCTYPE

Content managed by the Etomite Content Management System.