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It's Not a Newspaper.<br />
What's the difference? Well, if you're looking at it in a browser history view,<br />
the first one would probably read 'Why Web Titles...', while the second would<br />
read as 'Titles and Headlines...'. In effect, it's useful to have the first three or<br />
four words of your title stand alone as a title themselves, while elaborating in<br />
the title's second half. A colon or dash is especially useful for this, which is<br />
why they're so much more popular in web headlines than they are in print.<br />
Keywords.<br />
When it comes to preparing titles for search engines, don't underestimate<br />
the importance of the keywords in your title. Search engines consider the<br />
title to be one of the most important parts of your page, not to mention that<br />
it's often the only part of your content that someone doing a search will see<br />
entirely intact before they click-through. You want your titles to be relevant<br />
to what your users are likely to be searching for.<br />
What does that mean in practice? It doesn't mean that you should make your<br />
site's main keywords show up in every title, leading to string of titles all<br />
sharing the same two words: this is the hallmark of a site that is trying to do<br />
nothing more than game search engine rankings, and the search engines are<br />
wiser to it than you'd think. What you should do instead is simply describe<br />
clearly what the article is about as if you were searching for that specific<br />
article.<br />
If you've written a way of doing something, don't be afraid to put 'how to' in<br />
the title (although not first: 'How to Write Better Titles' is bad, 'Titles: How to<br />
Write them Better' is good). If you've interviewed someone, put the word<br />
'interview' up there. For product comparisons, don't shy away from the word<br />
'comparison'. This approach will get you search engine visitors who really<br />
want to read your articles, and are more likely to stay and read more instead<br />
of feeling conned into visiting your site.<br />
Chapter 32: All About Design: Principles and Elements.<br />
A truly shocking number of web designers are unfamiliar with the basic<br />
principles and elements of design. Having never been through any formal<br />
design education, many just go with what they think 'looks good', with very<br />
mixed results. If you're going to design a website, you'll do much better if<br />
The Web Design Guide for Newbies |116
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