Put a different title on every page

Jan 21, 2014

It might sounds like a very basic SEO tip but I still see an awful lot of websites using the same or very similar title tags on lots of pages and its easy to make the mistake.

The worst case was a site that had the title ‘Home’ on every page. It was a home made site and the designer had copied the HTML code from the home page to create every other page and had just forgotten to change the title tag.

I saw a shop a few years ago where every category page was called ‘Category’. The product pages were fine but categories had been overlooked.

For those who are not sure, the Title Tag is the bit of text that appears at the very top of the browser window and not the actual text title on the page – that can be different. Here’s the title of the BBC weather page.

BBC Weather Title

The title tag in the code of the page says ‘BBC Weather’ but the title of the page is just ‘Weather’.

You can read more about the technical aspects of the title tag on this page.

The basic rule of thumb is to make sure your title tag complies with the following points:

  • It’s unique to the page. A different title tag on every page.
  • It relates directly to what the page is about.
  • It’s below 70 55 characters. I’ve posted about the title length change.
  • It reads as a proper sentence and not a list of keywords.
  • Make it attractive or click-able. It may be presented to visitors on search results.

If you stick to the following rules you’ll have a decent, well formed title tag that people will want to click on and that will hopefully lead to more traffic and more business.

If you’d like to learn more about how to optimise your website then check out my Beginners SEO training available for individuals and companies.