The title of a page as it is entered in the meta tag in the source code of your web page merits your most thoughtful consideration.  Regardless of whether you own a carefully designed small website or a slowly developed, mature authority site, the title for each page needs to be carefully decided upon for several important reasons.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization): The title of a page is a major piece of data that contemporary search engines use to identify the content of any web page.  In the earliest days of the Internet, search engines put an immense amount of faith in the honesty of webmasters to use keyword tags to accurately describe the content of any given page.  However, as the keyword meta tag became abused by cheating web authors, the importance of the title tag of a page grew.  Many businesses choose to spend money on this important topic by hiring keyword research consultants to help them choose page titles for their web pages.

I.D. at Top of Browser: The words used in the title tag are displayed in the uppermost region of the browser window.  Although some visitors do not even notice the word or words at that location, other visitors rely upon that as a short-hand reference to quickly identify the topic of that particular page.

Header for Search Listings: The title of the page appears at the top of any search engine result that returns your page.  That is what is hyperlinked to take anyone who clicks it to your page, which of course is your goal.  It is blue and underlined so that it is the most noticeable part of your coveted listing.

Bookmark Text: If the user chooses to bookmark the page in his or her browser, the title is the default text that is used in the bookmark.  Of course, the browser will allow the user to alter those words or, in some browsers, add tags for later reference, most users merely accept the default text of the webmaster assigned title.

I’ll summarize with some helpful tips in assigning your meta title data. 

1. Choose a title for your page that is simply your primary keyword or phrase  If you consider it important to do so, you may include multiple keywords in the title, but rank order those keywords and separate them by ” - ” or “|” marks.

2. Make sure the title you choose will stand out to someone who has executed a search when it shows up in the results of a query.

3. Make certain that the page title is brief by also a complete accurate description of the page.  Thus, it will be recognizable and useful to the user who sees it listed among the list of bookmarks in her or his browser.

4. Don’t use the word “home” as your complete title of your home page.  Unless the page is about the concept of home or a house, calling a page “home” provides no useful information to the search robots or to your site’s visitors knowledge of what your site or this page is really about.  You can, of course, use that word as part of a slightly longer title, such as “Home of Best Widgets.”

5. Periodically you may want to experiment with the title of a page to see if an variation of the title has a positive impact upon your SEO, just as you would experiment with any important variable related to your site.