Contribute Tip: Give Every Web Page a Meaningful Title

The problem:  Every web page should have a title that describes the page accurately and concisely, but it's not immediately obvious how to set it in Contribute for existing pages on your website.

Why it matters:  Using a proper title will help to make your web pages more professional-looking, more accessible, and more recognizable in search engine results pages.  Web page titles show up in two fairly prominent places:

• At the top of the window when you view the page in a browser:
  
  
  
• And as the link title whenever the page appears in Google's search engine results:
  

The solution:  Check your web pages in a web browser first—does each one have an appropriate title?  Does it use correct spelling, punctuation, and capitalization?  (Remember, people can see this!)

If you're not happy with what you find, here's how to change it using Contribute:

1. Open the web page in Contribute and click "Edit Page."
2. Click the "Page Properties" button.  (A dialog window will pop up.)
   
   
3. Type the updated title in the "Title" box and click "OK":
   
   
   
4. Publish your page.

Writing an effective web page title:

• Be as obvious and straightforward as possible.
• Use language that closely matches the title that shows up in the body of the web page.
• Include the most important keywords near the beginning.
• Use proper spelling, punctuation, and capitalization.  (Remember, all-caps is harder to read and "sounds like yelling" online.)
• It is ok to include the name of your library/organization at the end.
• Specifying "Home" or "Homepage" in the homepage's title is optional.