The HTML <title> element provides vital information to many users about the purpose and identity of your pages. Page titles must be provided, unique, and useful.
The <title> element fails to describe the purpose of the page. You may have failed to add a title, used title text that is too generic to be useful, or used an excessively long title that obscures the page purpose.
- Everyone
When your page titles are inadequate:
- Screen reader users are unable to know what the point of a page is without scanning its entire contents
- All users are unable to easily find the correct tab if they temporarily change contexts
- All users who bookmark the page with their browser are given a poor default name for the bookmark
- Search engines may only display the first 50-60 characters of the title attribute, so information could be lost in SERPs
All page titles must clearly summarise the purpose of the page. Front-load the most important information about the page so that it appears first.
We do this:
<title>Career opportunities | Website.com </title>
<title>Contact us | Website.com </title>We don’t do this:
<title>Website.com</title>
<title>Website</title>
<title>Website.com sells vital products in very important markets to our many happy customers | Contact Us</title>The <title> attribute fails to differentiate the purpose of the page.
- Everyone
When your page titles are the same on every page:
- Screen reader users are unable to know what the point of a page is without scanning its entire contents
- All users are unable to easily find the correct tab if they temporarily change contexts
- All users who bookmark the page with their browser are given a poor default name for the bookmark
Where pages are unique, their titles must also be unique. The page title should usually match the main heading (h1) of the page.
We do this:
<title>Checkout | Billing information | My webpage </title>
<title>Checkout | Review Cart | My webpage </title>We don’t do this:
<title>Checkout | My webpage</title>