Browser bar titles
What is the browser title?
The browser title appears in the bar at the top of your browser window. This is the title used:
- when people bookmark your pages
- on tabs, when you have several tabs open within a browser
- in search results within Google and other search engines.
LTS guideline
Learning and Teaching Scotland has put the following guideline in place to ensure a consistent approach to browser titles across our sites.
The default browser title for pages on LTS websites is:
Site name + parent navigation title [last item in breadcrumb above your current page] + navigation title of current page
Example:
Scotland’s Culture - The Loch Ness Monster's Song - Lesson ideas
For websites created and managed by LTS and held within our content management system, the browser title will be automatically generated, as long as you supply a navigation title for each of your pages.
This guideline makes it important that navigation titles are always completed, even for pages which you do not want to appear in the left-hand navigation menu.
Navigation titles should also be completed for index pages on tabbed sections, even where the page redirects to the ‘Introduction’ page.
Browser titles for home pages
Home pages are the exception: please create your own browser title for the home page of your site. Titles should be 60 characters or under and should give the site name and provide an overview of the site's content. You may also want to include relevant keywords.
Words that should be avoided in home page browser titles:
- home
- home page
- welcome.
Examples of effective browser titles on LTS websites:
- Games-based learning: bringing computer games to the classroom
- Scotland's Culture: celebrating Scotland in Scottish schools.
Check how your browser title appears in search results
In order to optimise your search results, you can also check how the browser title for your home page (or other pages) displays in the search results of commonly used search engines such as Google. Does the full title display? Does the title give an indication of what the site/page is about? Would it make people want to read your website/page?