Corporate Web Standards

Page titles

  • The page title is the text that appears in the title bar (top left) of a browser.  It is an important navigation aid, especially for screen readers
  • Every page must have a unique title that is meaningful to the visitor when taken out of context. Using the same title for different pages causes problems when looking for pages in history lists or bookmarking/favourites menus
  • Page titles are important for navigation since it is normally the default way to refer to pages in bookmark and history lists and listing retrieved pages in search engines. Use short and meaningful page titles wherever possible to let users know what content can be found on the page.
  • Optimise titles for quick scanning. do not use 'Welcome to Mypage/Homepage' and do not use 'The', 'A' or 'An' from the beginning of the title as some title listings are alphabetized by search engines and can impede your pages being found.

The HTML page title is different to the heading displayed within the web page. Every page must have a unique html page title that is meaningful when taken out of context. HTML page titles are used in various methods of navigation, such as bookmark lists, history lists, search engine results, back and forward lists. The HTML page title must therefore be meaningful even when viewed in isolation.

The HTML page title also influences how search engines list your pages and what a user will see when a match is made to their search. Meaningless or blank html page titles may result in users not finding your pages.

The HTML page title is the first thing read out to visitors using screen readers. If every page within a collection has the same HTML page title then it is very difficult for the visitor to know which page they are on and which ones they have or have not visited.


Influences on this standard

Jakob Neilsen, web usability expert

Jakob Nielsen's alertbox

"As part of the HTML standard, every web page should have a <TITLE> defined in its header. Page titles are important for navigation support since they are normally the default way to refer to pages in various navigation support mechanisms..."