Page Titles & Heading Tags

The tag

The HTML page contains a title that should be used to fully describe the page. The file name itself should be as short as possible while still describing the file contents.

In the example above, the page title is "Contact Us - County of Sonoma" and it relates to the file name "contact.htm". Another example may be a page titled "Budget Approval Process" with a file name of "budget_approval.htm".

If you choose to list the department or division, the subject of the page ("Contact Us" or "Budget Approval") should come before the department/division and "County of Sonoma". For example, a page for the Emergency Services "About Us" page may be titled "About Us - Emergency Services: County of Sonoma".

The page title is the title that appears in search engine result pages. It is considered best practice to have a unique page title for every page. Otherwise, the visitor may be presented with a list of pages that all appear to be the same.

This page title is described in the

The and Other Heading Tags

The < h1 >, < h2>, etc. are heading tags. These tags are used to define the page structure and are very important to accessibility and usability.

The < h1 >, < h2>,  tag is required on all pages and should be the first heading tag listed on the page. The  tag should refer to the page title. If the style of the  tag is not what you desire, the CSS file should be modified accordingly. Please do not use a different tag (< h3 >, < h4 >), , etc.) simply to achieve the desired style.

 All other heading tags should be used in order, in an outline style. For example:

 < h1 >My Page Title< /h1>