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Avatar Went Hot: January 23, 2008 - 3:59 am
Posted By: tonyp 258 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://searchenginewatch.com)
Category: SEO
Excellent information about the use of title tags in SEO.
8 Comments     

Comments

from Sebastian 257 days ago #
Votes: 1 | Vote:
+ -

I wish folks wouldn't say "title tag" (a thing that doesn't exist anywhere, but can mean title element as well as title attribute, or even the 1st heading of a page).

from corey 257 days ago #
Votes: 0 | Vote:
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http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_title.asp

from Sebastian 257 days ago #
Votes: 3 | Vote:
+ -

Errornous + invalid reference, who cares?

Actually, my nitpicking comment wasn't meant to bash the post. That's solid advice, but old news for me, hence I wouldn't have read it knowing that it's about the title element's content and not the seldomly mentioned title attribute. I apoligize for my superficiality.

Judging from the story title's first four words, spotting the "SEO" context but truncating "strategy" I had expected to read something different (an attribute's value is often a tag). Of course that's just me skimming headlines expecting geek speech.

However, calling a spade a spade enhances every communication. When folks call elements, attributes, values and even list items a tag and then all of them are somewhat related to "title", that's confusing for many newbies who aren't capable to get the meaning from the context at first sight, and every once in a while jargon like that might even confuse more savvy folks guilty of skimming links lists in compiler mode.

from CarrieHill 257 days ago #
Votes: 1 | Vote:
+ -

Hi Sebastian,

I'm sorry if you were misled or confused by the title of my article.  Honestly I'm not a designer and when I send title "attributes" or "elements" to my designers for implementation I say "Make 'x' the title tag and they understand that"

Most of my readers understand basic coding terms, and in my experiece, calling the title "element" an "HTML title tag" seems to work best to get my meaning across.

Thanks for your feedback, and again sorry for the confusion.

~Carrie

from Sebastian 257 days ago #
Votes: 0 | Vote:
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No need to say sorry, Carrie! I could have invested more than one second to read the title before clicking the link, so it's my fault. Actually, I was referring to Corey's short reply and the negative vote on my initial comment. Of course I'm guilty of using not exactly precise jargon in tens of thousands of posts myself, but I've learned that it doesn't pay - at least not in Webmaster support communities and educational articles. "Most" is not enough to avoid irritated follow-up queries that cost much more time than the original statement that irritated the newbie. Not to speak of an unknown number of disappointed readers who surf away and don't return. Again, that's just my experience, and please take into account that english isn't my first language, thus I might prefer precise wording more than a native speaker.

from corey 256 days ago #
Votes: 1 | Vote:
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i didn't vote you down, sebastian

from bwelford 256 days ago #
Votes: 1 | Vote:
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I voted you up, Sebastian.  I think it's always valuable to try to get precise usage accepted and people at least thinking about this.  It won't stop the confusion but hopefully there will be a little less when the dust settles.

from Sebastian 255 days ago #
Votes: 0 | Vote:
+ -

Corey, I didn't say that - and even if you'd have voted my first comment down that would have been perfectly Ok, since it was off-topic.
Thanks, Barry.


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