The <title> is one of the first things a screen reader user hears on your page, and one of the first things anyone sees in a tab or search result. Many landing pages leave it as the product name on every page, or "Home".
The check
View the page source and find <title>. Read it aloud. Then open a second page on your site and compare.
<title>Pricing - Acme</title>
Ask: does it say what this page is, and is it different from your other pages?
What the standards say
The W3C's Understanding page for WCAG 2.4.2, Page Titled, says web pages have titles that describe topic or purpose, and that titles identify the current location without requiring users to read the page content.
MDN's page on the title element has an Accessibility section. It says a common navigation technique for assistive technology users is to read the page title and infer what the page contains. It recommends titles that are unique to every page, with the primary purpose first and the site name after, so a screen reader announces the purpose first instead of the site name on every page. MDN also notes that dynamically updating the title is not automatically announced by screen readers, so an ARIA live region may be needed if you change it to reflect a state change.
- W3C, Understanding 2.4.2: https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG22/Understanding/page-titled
- MDN, the title element: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/Elements/title
Quick test
- Open three pages of your site and read each
<title>aloud. - If two are identical, or the first words are the site name, rewrite them: purpose first, then the name.
- Keep each one short enough to read in a breath.
- If you change the title in JavaScript (for a single-page app), check whether the change is announced. It may not be.
Duplicate or near-duplicate titles are also a search problem, since MDN says they can contribute to inaccurate search results. The same one-line fix helps both.
What do the first three words of your pricing page title say?
Top comments (0)