Page Titles

Hello and welcome back to module 2 of our accessibility training. This video focuses on understanding the importance of writing proper page titles and learning how to write proper page titles.

So, why are page titles so important?

There are three main reasons why page titles are important:

• Search Engine Optimization, or SEO: the words in your title play a big role in determining how high a search engine will rank your post.
• Accessibility and usability: if your title does not match the contents of your post, you have successfully misled, confused, and most likely frustrated the reader.
• Capturing attention: the title plays a key role in capturing the attention of readers and persuading them to open and read your article.

Overall, titles are important as they enable users to find your page via a search engine while saving them time and effort when they are using your website.

Now, let’s discuss some tips for writing proper titles.

• You should write pages and post titles that clearly describe their contents. Using keywords that are related to your page or post is also helpful.
• Make sure your page title is clear, succinct, and easy to understand. For example, the title, “Faculty and Staff List”, is a better title than the title, “A list of all the Faculty and Staff in our Departments”
• Make sure your title differentiates its content from other pages on your site. For example, “Faculty and Staff” might mean a list of faculty and staff, or it could be a list of resources for Faculty and Staff.
• Lastly, you should always try to grab the visitor’s attention with your title. The title is usually the first (and maybe even the only) thing a person will see when deciding whether they are going to continue reading your content. One strategy is to meet a need with your title – use your title to describe the contents as well as why the visitor should view them.

In this module, you learned some tips to writing proper page titles and the three main reasons behind the importance of knowing how to do so (search engine optimization, accessibility and usability, and capturing the audience’s attention).