With increasingly complex and guided search engine results pages, the displayed title of organic listings is one of the most crucial elements in helping rankings and driving click-through-rate. Search Engine Roundtable regularly covers industry chatter about various aspects of the Page Title’s importance, including recently and long ago about how titles can be adjusted by Google and other search engines.

A recent thread featured at Webmaster World Forums begins with a member asking most specifically about two nuances related to the page title: the ideal length and case sensitivity. Forum administrator Tedster leaped into the conversation, providing:

The comments veer off towards the use of synonyms in place of targeted keywords, and Robert Charlton provides interesting insight into that subject. A quite educational spinoff comes when pageoneresults describes the idea of testing page title’s likely effectiveness by using “phrase stacking.”

Another poster provides a good example of this methodology later on in the post. In short, Page Title are in my opinion one of the top priority elements for search engine performance. Not only can proper keyword use and positioning help you rank, but with so little time available to get the attention of a searcher these days – it better speak to what they want!

Please share your thoughts in the growing discussion at Webmaster World Forums or in the comments below. By the way, as of the time I am writing this no one has touched the “case Sensitivity” topic yet… the only thing I would recommend is to avoid ALL CAPS unless it is a brand name that is always displayed that way. What are your thoughts?