When we looked earlier at creating a new product, we pointed out the SEO, or Search Engine Optimization section that can be completed for each product in your store. These three fields: page title, page description and handle can be used to help control how your product appears in the search engines. In fact, with Shopify, you can not only do this for products, you can also easily optimize your collections, blog posts, pages and store homepage for the search engines.

So what exactly is a page title?

On the Safari web browser, you can see the page title in full at the top and shortened on the current tab.

Every page on the web can have a page title. It's the title of the page and it distinguishes the page from the billions of other pages on the web. You are probably already very familiar with page titles as you have seen them in your web browser. Different browsers (Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Safari, etc.) show the page titles in different ways. In general, you can see them at the top of the browser window or on the current tab.

The first line of this Google search result, the one in blue, is the page title for the Shopify homepage.

But you are also familiar with page titles as they appear in search engine results. Each web page listed in the search results includes the page title. On Google, the page title comes up as a blue link. In fact, it is the most prominent element in search results. If you are scanning through search results looking for something in particular, you are probably paying most attention to the individual page titles. Having great page titles will significantly help your products be chosen when they appear in search results.

The page title is probably the most important element when it comes to optimizing your pages (products, collections, blog posts, pages, etc.) for the search engines. They use it to understand what the page is about. For this reason, I highly recommend that you handcraft a page title for each product and indeed every page in your store.

Best practices for crafting page titles

The page title should include the product's name and your store's name; be an accurate and concise description of the product; and be written for people and search engines.

• Keep it short: The search engines display only the first 65-75 characters of a page title and show an ellipsis "..." to indicate that it has been shortened. See the Shopify homepage result above as an example. You can go longer if required but bear in mind that those using the search engine will not see it.

• Include the most important keywords: There can be many ways, or words used to describe a product. For example perhaps you sell footwear or shoes but did you know that each month twice as many people search on Google for shoes than footwear? To best reach your intended audience, your potential customers, you need to use the language they use. What are the key words, or keywords that your potential customers use to describe your product? The Google Adwords Keyword Planner is a good tool for research (you'll have to sign up for a Google Adwords account to access it). Make sure that those keywords are well represented in the product title and its description. Ensure you include the most important ones in the page title.

• Place more important keywords at the start: The words at the start of the page title are treated as more important by the search engines. They're also more likely to be seen in search engine results. So place the more important keywords at the start of the page title.
• Include your store name: In general it's a good idea to include your store name in your page title. That way those who know you will recognize your store in the search engine results. For the page title for a product, your store name may be less important than the product name. In this case put the product name at the start and the store name at the end.
• Make it compelling: The more compelling the page title, the more likely that people will click from the search engine results to see your product.

The page description and handle

As well as featuring the page title, each web page listed in search results includes a description and a website address. Based on these three elements, people choose which web pages best answer their query.

These three elements correspond broadly to the three fields in the SEO section: page title, page description and handle. We've already looked at the page title so let's look at the other two fields:

• The page description is what it says, a description of the page. It's not visible in your store but the search engines can see it. They will use it to better understand what the page is about. The description that they show in search results varies depending on the search query. In some cases, if it is appropriate the page description you complete will be shown in the search results.
  
  

  

  Using the URL & handle in the admin, you can control the address of the product on the web.

• The handle is part of the field called "URL & Handle". This is just a technical way to say the address of the product page on the web. In the settings, which we will look at later, you can choose a better address for your website overall. But we are concerned with the part we can change here - the handle. It's the last part of the address of the web page for the product. As you saw in the search query on the last page, the address of the webpage is very visible. On top of that, the search engines also use it to understand what the page is about. So it's also very important. Shopify will base the handle on the name of the product but you can change it if you like. Spaces in the handle will be changed to dashes "-".

Design how the product will appear in the search results

When you are preparing these three fields for a product, or any other web page, you can think about it in terms of designing how you want the product to appear in search results. How do you make it attractive so people will want to click it?

At the same time, bear in mind the most popular words, or keywords that people use to describe your product. If you emphasize particular keywords in the page title, you may want to emphasize different slightly different keywords in the page description and handle. In the example from earlier, "shoes" is a more popular keyword than "footwear" so it'd be best to use "shoes" in the page title and "footwear" in the page description or handle, say.

Make sure to save when you're finished

After you've made changes to your product, make sure to save the changes by clicking the Save button on the right at the top or the bottom of the page.