August 11, 2008 at 1:43 pm · Filed under Uncategorized and tagged: title tags, usability
Lately I’ve been asked about the importance of title tags in web pages. Here are a few points to bear in mind when using title tags:
- They are one of the most important elements of site optimisation. One of the first elements that a crawler looks at when examining your site is the title tags
- Don’t use your company name in the title tag, use descriptive keywords that let the users know what’s on the page. Remember that the best title tags are the ones that contain targeted keywords, develop a brand for the site and are attention grabbing.
- Try to keep title tags less than 50 characters. Some search engines only index the first 50 characters. It will also help you to come up with concise keywords
- Don’t repeat keywords in your title tags
- Search engine spiders use the title tags to detemine what your page is about
- In search engine results, the title tag appears as the link on which users will click. If your title tags are inaccurate, or don’t contain keywords that describe the page, users won’t be clicking through on your site
July 9, 2008 at 10:32 am · Filed under usability and tagged: Web usability
According to usability guru Jakob Nielson, web users are becoming more impatient when browsing websites. According to Nielson, users are more accustomed to using the web, and when looking for information, they don’t want all the frilly bells and whistles that come with some websites. Most of the time they’re looking for specific information, and will often hit internal landing pages referred from search engines, rather than navigating from the homepage of a website. Users have little patience, and in true popular culture they want relevent information as quickly as possible. This again highlights the importance of search engines in driving qualified traffic to your site. Make sure your internal pages are well optimised to enable users to find the information they want when they’re entering search terms from search engines.
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