If you list all the pages of your site with a search engine, the mistake you are most likely to find is pages with no title, or many pages with the same title. Many webmasters still don't realize that HTML titles are the most important part of their pages. This isn't the name of the file. This isn't the name in big bold letters across the top. This is the HTML title -- part of the header of the document, which appears in the title bar of the browser window.

Many people use page-creation software that downplays the importance of the HTML title, burying in unlikely places the ability to assign a title, or, as a default, assigning titles automatically or not at all. And if you design Web pages by cutting and pasting material from one page to another, using existing pages as templates for new ones, you save time, but also increase the likelihood that you'll forget to assign a new HTML title for each new page.

At the very beginning the HTML title was a throw-away. Nobody paid much attention to it.

The HTML title is the link name of the page as it appears on lists of results. "No Title" doesn't really attract people to click to go to your page. And having multiple pages with the same title is confusing and looks unprofessional.

In the ranking rules that determine which pages will appear near the top of a list of matches, the HTML title is the most important element of the page.

When people search for your kind of information, they are most likely to use those words that belong in your HTML title. When you leave the title blank, use unimportant words, or use the same title on many different pages, you've just thrown away the best way to attract traffic to your site.