Title tags (sometimes referred to as meta titles) are one of the most important elements for SEO. Don't let anybody tell you otherwise. We've seen some discourse online that these aren't as important for SEO in the modern day, but it's a hard disagree from us. If you gave us just one element to change on a page (outside of the content) to drive stronger SEO performance, it'd be the title tag. If it hadn't already been optimised, of course.
Why? For years, across countless websites and countless industries, we've seen the impact it has first-hand. The best content in the entire world on a high authority domain will not perform if the title tag isn't up to scratch. We've seen visibility transform in a matter of days when a title tag is done correctly versus when it is neglected or just left for ChatGPT to do. If you know what a title tag is, skip ahead using the links below, but to really understand how to write a great title tag, it's important to understand what it actually is.
On this page
What is a title tag?
Put simply, the title tag is the big blue text that shows up on Google (or other search engines) when a webpage appears in a set of search results. Think about it for a second. The whole point of SEO is to get traffic onto your site organically from search engines. And the title tag is the main visual element a user will see when they are deciding which site to click on. Below we've included an example of a title tag so you are clear on exactly what this is before we proceed.
Is a title tag the same as an H1?
No, but they are easily confused. The title tag is the big text that shows on Google. The H1 is the main heading somebody sees when they are on your page.
Something called a 'title tag' sounds like it should be the main heading on the page if you aren't familiar with websites or the world of SEO. But that's not the case. They may be identical. A lot of websites will set the title tag the same as the H1 tag if you don't edit it specifically. They should really have some differences though. Think about it. Your title tag is fighting for a click against ten competitors. Your H1 has the whole page to itself to describe what is on it. The context is a little different. That said, keep them telling the same story. The same topic, same keyword and ultimately, the same promise.
Your title tag has a big job to do and there are two main goals you need to achieve. Let's get stuck in.
The goals of a great title tag
A title tag has two primary responsibilities in terms of SEO, and they are:
Ranking - making sure your page appears near the top of search results
Engagement - making sure users click onto your page when it appears on search results
What do we mean by this we hear you ask? By ranking, we mean that the title tag is a key ranking factor for search engine performance. If you want your page to appear high in the results for a specific phrase people search (better known as a keyword), you need to include that term in the title tag. But just putting the keyword there isn't enough. Your title tag has to engage. It has to captivate. It has to earn the click.
Unfortunately, you don't have infinite space, words or characters to achieve this. We'll go into this in more detail shortly, but you have around 60 characters of real estate which show up on the search results page before the title tag is cut off and a '...' is displayed. You'd have seen this hundreds of times before, even if you don't realise, and we have included an example below to illustrate this.
We call this truncation in the industry, but that is honestly just a fancy way of saying the full title tag is cut off. Why does this matter when we are talking about the goals of a great title tag? Because you have a finite amount of real estate and characters you can use and you've got to make the most of it. Pasting the same slightly rephrased keyword three times won't cut it, but neither will writing a beautiful sentence of prose that you think sounds great. It's a balancing act and a tough one at that.
Our 7 Tips For Writing a Great Title Tag
We are going to give you seven of our top tips for writing title tags that perform. More detail can be found on each one below.
Years, stats & numbers - a year signals freshness, a stat builds trust before anyone reaches your site
Call to actions - subtle intent signals that nudge a user to click and engage
Length - 50 to 60 characters is the sweet spot, and use all of it
Primary keyword at the start
Ultimately, if your page isn't ranking near the top of results, it doesn't matter how engaging the title tag itself is. That's why in 99% of situations, we'd start off by putting the primary keyword you are targeting on the page at the start of the title tag. It sounds trivial, but in our experience it makes all the difference.
One caveat before you go rewriting all your title tags. Don't guess at what people are searching. Make sure you know how many people search for that term each month in your target country or region before you decide to target it. Anybody can rank for a term that nobody is searching for, because there is no competition. And there's no competition because there's no traffic in it. Verify the volume first, then put the keyword at the front.
Context, context & context
This might come across as a bit of a cop out, but the context of what you are targeting matters above all else. So actually, it isn't a cop out, and you should take this advice with you above all else. Before you write a single character, go and search your target keyword and look at what the top-ranking pages are doing with their title tags. Not to copy them. To understand them.
If all of the top sites are using a common structure or theme in their title tags, that's not a coincidence. Google is rewarding it. And you don't necessarily want to go off the beaten track when Google is rewarding everyone who stays on it. A blog post ranking for an informational term will typically have a longer, more descriptive first part to its title tag. An ecommerce category page will usually run two keyword-led sections with maybe a CTA on the end. Different pages, different searches, different rules.
You may have noticed we deliberately haven't included a 'structure of your title tag' section in this article. That's because there isn't a hard and fast rule, and anyone giving you a one-size-fits-all formula is selling you a template, not a strategy. Look at what's ranking, work out why it's working, and then improve on it. Don't copy. Get inspired, then do it better.
Don't be scared to drop the brand name
This is very much depending on the size of your brand, but you don't always have to include your brand name in the title tag. On your homepage, about page, policy pages and contact pages, keep it. This isn't a recommendation you should universally apply. But on your most important service, product, category, or lead-generating pages, the brand name can be dropped. But why?
Yes, it looks nice aesthetically and yes, it is good for brand consistency. But you get around 60 characters to work with remember, and if your business name is 20 characters, you are losing over 30% of that equity before you even start. To say what? To tell somebody whose site they are clicking on? Google already does that anyway (shown below) and the brand name is often cut off by search engines even when it is included.
The exception is if you are a luxury brand, high-end name, or genuine household name. In that case, the brand is the draw, so keep it in there. Somebody searching for a premium product wants reassurance they're clicking on the real thing, and your name provides it. And whatever size you are, do not remove it from your homepage or other key brand pages. Ever.
But in most other scenarios, use those characters for something that will either help your page rank better, or make it more likely for users to click on once it does.
Keep to three sections max
Don't add more than three sections to your title tag. We've briefly illustrated what we mean by a section below:
Too often do we see brands add four or even five sections with keywords or single-word locations added between each separator. Don't do that. It looks bad, lowers click-through rate, and can be perceived as spam-like by search engines, which is not good. There's no hard rule on the exact number below three - that will often be dictated by the length of the keywords you are targeting and the type of page. For example, blogs and ecommerce have different needs here. But you know that already from the context section.
Years, stats & numbers
We shouldn't really be giving this one away, but the use of numbers in a title tag is a great way to increase engagement, and in some cases, rankings too.
Let's start with years. Adding the current year to a title tag (For example, 'Best Things To Do in [LOCATION] for 2026') signals freshness to both search engines and users. Nobody wants to click on advice that might be three years out of date, and a year in the title tag answers that doubt before it's even formed. Just make sure you actually update it each January. It's a bit of a chore, but it's necessary housekeeping and the payoff is more than worth it. A title tag proudly displaying last year is worse than no year at all.
Stats work differently but arguably even better when executed correctly. Success rates, years of experience, number of customers served - you get the idea? These visually break up the results page and build trust before anyone has even reached your site. A sea of similar title tags with one containing '98% Success Rate' in the middle of it? Or '96% Customer Satisfaction'? You know who is more likely to get the click.
And then there's our golden bullet for ecommerce. If you are price competitive, bring the cost into the title tag. '[PRIMARY KEYWORD] - From £4.99' does more for click-through rate than almost anything else you can write in that space, because price is the number one thing a shopping searcher wants to know. If you can't compete on price, don't do this. Use another stat or numerical value instead, but only if it's natural and actually a benefit. A number for the sake of a number convinces nobody.
Call to actions
Buy now, get a quote, free delivery, watch now, book your tickets, learn in X minutes. Sound familiar? Call-to-actions are overlooked by many SEOs in the title tag, but are a fantastic tool to reach for if you have a page that is ranking well and needs to convert more of that visibility into traffic. And reasons like this are why we say to drop the brand name in certain contexts. You tell us which of these title tags is more engaging:
If you said example 1, we don't believe you. You may not even realise it, but subtle intent signals like these help a user to subconsciously take an action and engage with your brand. We're almost into psychology territory now, which seems a bit deep for 60 characters on a results page, but it matters. The very best SEO agencies (ahem, Spyda Digital) understand this, and use that space to full effect.
Length
Bit of a boring one to finish on, but length is important when it comes to metadata. As a general rule, try and keep your title tags between 50 and 60 characters. Many popular auditing tools call a title tag below 30 characters an error, and above 60 characters an error.
Strictly speaking, neither of these are errors. Yes, if your title tag is 180 characters long you need to show it some love. And if it is 10 characters long, it's not really doing any work for you. But a title tag at 63 characters isn't broken, and sometimes going a few characters over is the right call if trimming it would mean losing the keyword or the thing that earns the click. Google measures truncation in pixels, not characters, so the exact cut-off point varies anyway. The 60-character mark 'is more what you'd call guidelines than actual rules', to quote Captain Barbossa from Pirates of the Caribbean.
The 50-character end matters just as much, and gets talked about far less. If your title tag is sitting at 35 characters, you are leaving free real estate on the table. And Google doesn't give much of it away, so use it. That's space for a CTA, a stat, or some context that could be earning you clicks. You've read this far, so you know by now how valuable that space is. Use all of it.
What happens if you get it wrong?
We said at the start that we've seen visibility transform in a matter of days off the back of a title tag. That does work both ways. A page with a weak title tag can sit on page two indefinitely while worse content ranks above it. This won't always be the case, and there is no single magic bullet for SEO, but getting the fundamentals right, like the title tag, makes it much easier for your content to perform as it deserves.
If you think you've written a killer article but don't see it ranking well on Google, go and have a look at the title tag. Especially if it could have been neglected. A few tweaks, taking on board everything in this article, might just earn you the page one spot you deserve. Providing your content is up to scratch, of course.
Really, the cost of a bad or unoptimised title tag is quiet. Nothing fundamentally breaks. You just lose, slowly, to competitors who bothered.
Google might rewrite your title tag
So, you've taken all of the advice in the article, you've written the perfect title tag and you're ranking well. But hang on a minute - why is your title tag showing up differently from how you wrote it? Google doesn't have to use your title tag, and sometimes it won't. In fact, often it won't use exactly what you input. A 2025 study from the guys at Search Engine Land found that Google changes title tags 76% of the time, though many of these changes are on the more minor side.
This happens to good title tags as well as bad ones, usually to match the exact phrase somebody searched, and no amount of optimisation makes you immune. Google will personalise the title tag to the searcher.
So why bother with any of the above? Because you control the odds. Keyword-stuffed, overlong, or duplicated title tags will get rewritten. Well-written, unique, honest ones get shown as intended the majority of the time. Don't just take our word for it. A separate study found that titles between 51 and 60 characters were rewritten the least, at 39-42%. That's the sweet spot we gave you in the length section. And even when Google does step in, it's building its replacement from your page. So a page with a good foundational title tag, strong headings and clear copy gets a decent rewrite. A mess gets a mess. You can't control Google. You can control what you give it to work with.
How to change your title tag
All this advice isn't much use if you don't know where the title tag lives or how to change it. In the code, it sits in the head section of the page and looks like this:
But you almost certainly won't need to touch the code. On WordPress, an SEO plugin like Yoast or Rank Math gives you a title field on every page and post. This normally sits underneath the content and gives you a handy preview as to how it might show up on a search results page. On Shopify, it's under the search engine listing section of each page or product. Most other platforms have an equivalent tucked away in the page settings. Squarespace, Wix, Webflow - they've all got one somewhere. And if your site is custom-built with no field in sight, it's a two-minute job for your developer. No excuses.
Title tags aren't just for Google
ChatGPT, AI Overviews, Perplexity, Claude, Copilot; the list goes on. We are all becoming increasingly familiar with AI tools by now, but when these tools cite a source, what do they often display? The title tag. So that little line of text you write is doing a lot more than just competing on a traditional search engine results page. It's what helps convince somebody to click through from an AI answer instead of accepting the summary and moving on. The fundamentals are the same, but the importance is higher than ever before.
How people research, access and absorb information online continues to change. Don't stress. Our AI search optimisation service has you covered if you are confused about where search is heading and want to be on top of it.
Making it count
A title tag is just sixty characters, yet now we are around 3,000 words deep talking about how to write a good one. That speaks volumes in itself about how much these things matter. If you've never even bothered looking at your title tags but have poured hours of love into your content, they are probably the fastest SEO win available to you right now, so chop chop. Not the easiest to get right, as you now know, but giving them the time and care they deserve can lift performance fast. Bonus tip for making it to the end. Use ampersands instead of 'and' to save yourself a couple of characters if space is tight. Don't say we don't do anything nice for you.
Not sure if title tags are the problem? Don't know how the rest of your website stacks up? Truth be told, most people don't, and you won't know until somebody looks at your setup properly. Our SEO audits take the guessing out of it. We'll tell you what's actually holding your rankings back - title tags included - and give you a clear plan to fix it. We can even deliver that plan for you if you'd like, with our ongoing SEO services covering everything from technical SEO and content strategy to local, ecommerce and AI search optimisation.
But first, go and look at those title tags. Your move.
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