Title Analysis: Expressing Web Page Content in Few Words
Is the Title the most important part of a Web page? Is it more important than the content the Web page holds? The best answer to these questions is; it depends. The title of any Web page is important, that is a fact, but how important depends primarily on the intentions, a Web site owner has for the Web page.
If the intention is to attract visitors to a Web page and then provide them with information of value then the Title is equally important as the content responsible for delivering that value. The Title is responsible for expressing to the outside world a short description of what the content holds. The Title of a Web page is a text message, often associated with a link once referred outside of the Web page, and potentially seen by millions of potential visitors. This is a huge responsibility and therefore webmasters should construct the Title carefully and cleverly.
How long a Title should be is a question frequently asked around the Web. Another popular topic is how the Title should relate to other parts of a Web page. The data below shows the Title tag in numbers from two samples of business blogs compared with a large sample of general Web sites having favorable search engine positions.
| Title Words Relationship: Percentage | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Observed Element | Business Blogs | Business Blogs SE | Prominent SE Position |
| Title Words in Alt | 4.5% | 6.9% | 16.7% |
| Title Words in Text | 96.6% | 97.1% | 94.5% |
| Title Words in Meta description | 40.3% | 57.7% | 71.8% |
| Title Words in Keywords | 38.1% | 49.7% | 68.0% |
| Title Words in Links | 92.6% | 95.4% | 76.6% |
| Title Words in Title Tag Attribute | 85.2% | 89.1% | 45.3% |
| Title Words in H1 | 34.1% | 40.6% | 23.7% |
| Title Words in H2 | 27.8% | 38.3% | 21.0% |
| Title Words in H3 | 13.6% | 21.1% | 13.5% |
| Title Words in H4 | 5.1% | 4.0% | 6.1% |
| Title Words in H5 | 1.1% | 1.1% | 2.2% |
| Title Words in H6 | 1.7% | 0.6% | 1.0% |
| Title Length/Words: Average | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Observed Element | Business Blogs | Business Blogs SE | Prominent SE Position |
| Title Length | 40.8 | 48.7 | 60.6 |
| Title Number of Words | 6.1 | 7.3 | 8.6 |
| Title Number of Meaningful Words | 4.5 | 5.7 | 6.5 |
| Complex Words in Title | 2.3 | 2.5 | 2.8 |
| Unique Words in Title | 5.0 | 5.6 | 6.9 |
| Meaningless Words in Title | 2.5 | 2.4 | 2.7 |
The data shows a relationship between the Title tag and other parts likely to be a part of optimization efforts. General Web sites having favorable search engine positions are more likely to use the Alt tag for Title words while business blogs are more likely to use the Title attribute for links and images. These results show different focus points for blogs versus general Web sites i.e. where blogs use H1-3 a lot while general Web sites use them more modestly in addition to the aforementioned Alt/title usage.
Related links:
- Titles, META Tags, LINK tags...
- 7 Tips to Optimize your HTML Title Tags
- 3 Best Tips in Modifying Your Blog's Page Title Tags
Related video:
HTML Title Tag and SEO Fitness - Get SEO Fit
