ITC 298: Title Tags in Workpress

Assignment 7: Title tags in WordPress

Leslie Strom

I’m taking a divergence from the usual assignment of reporting on articles I’ve read. Today in class there was some discussion on the importance of title tags in SEO. They can be

Company Name | Description with Keywords
Description with Keywords | Company Name
Description with Keywords

I built a custom site for a client, Pawsitive In Motion last week. She’s not well known so the second option, Description with Keywords | Company Name, seems best. Also, when people look for her, they usually look for her by name, not her business name.

WordPress pages and posts generate the title tag based on

the site name
the title of the article and
what page it’s on (it distinguishes main page from others).

I used the default title tag generator code from the WordPress default theme, TwentyTen. It’s useful to know what it does, and also how to change it. Here’s the title tag code:

        <title>

          <?php

          /* Print the <title> tag based on what is being viewed. */

          global $page, $paged;

          wp_title( '|', true, 'right' );
         // Add the blog name.

          bloginfo( 'name' );
         // Add the blog description for the home/front page.

          $site_description = get_bloginfo( 'description', 'display' );

          if ( $site_description && ( is_home() || is_front_page() ) )

          echo " | $site_description";
         // Add a page number if necessary:

          if ( $paged >= 2 || $page >= 2 )

          echo ' | ' . sprintf( __( 'Page %s', 'twentyten' ), max( $paged, $page ) );

          ?>

  </title>

What the Default Title Tag php does

It looks to see what page is being viewed.

On the interior pages, it prints the wp_title (the page title) followed by a | (pipe) followed by bloginfo (the site name).

This page http://www.pawsitiveinmotion.com/links-pets/
Links for Pets and Animals | Pawsitive Positive in Motion

for the home/front page it prints (as defined in the WP settings)
name of the site | bloginfo (slugline)
Pawsitive Positive in Motion | Martha Jordan Bodywork.

What I’d Change and Very Well Might

The site name is very long and takes up title tag space that could be better used some other way. I’d craft the page titles to include more keywords like Seattle Area and Pet Training, and replace the automatically-generated site name with hard-coded text saying something more relevant like Martha Jordan | Bodywork | Seattle.