The title tag is still one of the strongest on-page signals and, just as importantly, it is the clickable line in search. Get it right and everything downstream improves.
Length
Aim for about 50–60 characters (roughly 580 pixels). Longer titles are truncated in the SERP, cutting off the words that could have earned the click.
Front-load the keyword
Put the primary keyword near the start, phrased naturally. "Cheap Running Shoes — Free Shipping" beats "Shop for the Best Cheap Running Shoes Online".
Patterns that work
- Primary keyword — modifier ("Cron Jobs — Complete Guide")
- Keyword: benefit ("Email Marketing: Grow 3x Faster")
- Brand at the end ("Pricing")
- Year for fresh content ("Best SEO Tools 2026")
Common mistakes
- Keyword stuffing and dashes everywhere
- Identical titles across many pages
- Vague titles like "Home" or "Welcome"
- Duplicating the H1 word for word
Title vs H1
They can differ. The title serves the SERP; the H1 serves the on-page reader. Keep them close but optimise each for its job.
Try it
Use the free SEO title generator to create variants for a keyword and preview them in a Google-style snippet, and the meta description generator for the line beneath it.