How to create the title element correctly
The title element gives an idea of what the page content is and helps to understand if this page is relevant to the search query. This element can also be used as the title for a page snippet. Additionally, the snippet title can be generated based on the page content. That's why users can see different titles depending on the search query.
The information in the title element mostly influences the user's decision whether the site is worth visiting. Therefore, you should pay extra attention to creating titles for your website pages.
The title length is restricted by the width of the screen on a user's device.
The title element is usually placed inside the head element:
<head>
<meta name="example" content="..."/>
<title>Alice in Wonderland</title>
</head>When creating a title element, follow these recommendations:
- Make sure that your title is meaningful. Avoid generic descriptions. Examples: “Home” for the home page or “Contacts” for the page with contacts.
- Try not to make the title element too long, because it may be shortened in search results.
- Make sure that your title does not contain many keywords. Use it for a few phrases that carry important information, and don't repeat them because repetitions do not add useful information. Besides, such a title may be considered spam by the search engine.
Try to minimize the use of template-like title elements. For example, if you have an online store and all your catalog pages share the “Catalog” title, visitors won't understand what the difference is between them. Also, do not use titles where only a part of a phrase is changed, for example, “<Product name> — description, prices, characteristics, photos, reviews”. Such titles aren't very informative.
The title can be more informative if it only includes the values that represent the content on the given page. For example, values like “reviews” or “photos” can be inserted with the content that appears on the page. In this case, the title only contains the most valuable information. Further information can be added using the description meta tag. If this information is relevant to the user's query, it's more likely that it will appear in the snippet along with the title.
- Add your brand to the title element. This helps users immediately understand that they are on the official website. It's best to insert your brand at the end or beginning of the title, separating it from the rest of the text with a colon, hyphen, or vertical bar. Additionally, you can complement the snippet with a website address and favicon.
To see if everything is fine with titles on your website, check the Titles and descriptions page in Yandex.Webmaster.
If the pages don't have a title element, you'll see a notification on the Troubleshooting page in Yandex.Webmaster. Yandex.Webmaster will also inform you if there are many duplicate titles on the website.
