Titles

Your page title should reflect what the user wants to do.

Use short titles

Titles should be less than 65 characters, as search results cut off longer titles.

Be specific

Remember, your title becomes the URL of your page. You will want to be very specific and let your users know what the content is about. Normally we’d be at the short, direct title. But instead, there’s several huge problems with one department claiming a page title that other departments might need too.

Sentence case

Titles should be in sentence case, so only the 1st letter is capitalized. This makes the title easier and faster to read.

Your title must explain to the user what they will get by clicking on your page. You will also need to be able to find your own pages again in the CMS, so you should get specific.

Don’t use puns, jokes or idiomatic expressions in titles. They don’t translate well into other cultures or languages.

SEO

More than half of people on SF.gov come from a search engine. So your title and description need to work together to tell users what they will get when they visit your page. Use keywords people will search for in your title to boost your SEO ranking. If they won’t fit in the title, you can include them in the description.

All acronyms should be spelled out on first mention.