» Short Display Names

I’m currently working on a rebuild project. We’re rebuilding a static HTML website into a Wordpress CMS and ran into an issue of trying to optimize the page but keep the page display names short and sweet.

By default, whatever you type into the title of a page or post, Wordpress automatically uses that as a display name and title tag. So if you have a page titled “Search Engine Friendly Website Design Tips”, this title is what would display under the pages section in your sidebar.

Obviously, from an SEO point of view using a title such as this makes perfect sense because this also becomes the title tag, and depending on you template code, your H1 or H2 tag. But the display name is very long and unruly. So here’s the work around.

Step 1: Download and install the SEO Title Tag Plugin by NetConcepts.

Step 2: In your template files replace the code for php the_title (wrapped in an h1 ) with the code used to pull in the SEO Title Tag if (function_exists(’seo_title_tag’)) { seo_title_tag(); } (wrapped in an h1).

When you create your page or post what happens here is your main headline is then pulled from the content you put in the optional title tag field below the content editor and the side bar link is pulled from your title field above the content editor.

So using my example of the Search friendly web design page mentioned above.. I could place SEO Web Design Tips which would print in the sidebar and place “Search Engine Friendly Website Design Tips” in the optional title tag field and would print as my H1 as well as my title tag.

This may seem a little unorthodox but it works. It leaves me with an optimized title tag and h1 but a shorter link text in the sidebar.