The title tag is the single most important line of text on a page for search. It is the clickable headline in the results, it tells the search engine what the page is about, and it is the first thing a person judges before deciding to click.
It is also the most commonly broken. Missing, duplicated, stuffed with keywords or cut off mid-word: all of these are easy to fix and easy to miss.
What a good title tag does
A good title does three jobs at once:
- Says what the page is in the first few words, using the words a searcher would use.
- Is different from every other page on your site. Two pages with the same title compete with each other and confuse people reading the results.
- Gives a reason to click, such as a number, a year, a clear benefit or the format of the page (guide, checklist, tool).
Write it for a person first. A title like Plumber Delhi | Plumbers in Delhi | Best Plumber Delhi reads as spam and tends to be rewritten.
How long should it be?
There is no official character limit. Google truncates titles by pixel width, not by character count, and the desktop limit is roughly 600 pixels. Wide letters like W and M use more room than i or l.
In practice, 50 to 60 characters usually fits. Put the important words first so a cut-off at the end costs nothing. A title that is too long is not penalised: the extra words are still read, they are just not shown.
SEO Loop's audit flags titles outside 10 to 60 characters. Treat that as a sensible rule of thumb, not a Google rule.
Why Google shows a different title
Google decides which title to show for each query. It uses your title tag most of the time, but it will swap in something else when the tag looks like a poor description of the page. Common triggers:
- The title is too long or stuffed with repeated keywords.
- It is the same on many pages (for example, the site name only).
- It is empty or generic, such as "Home" or "Untitled".
- The page's main heading (
<h1>) or visible text describes the page better.
If your title keeps getting rewritten, do not fight it with tricks. Make the tag a short, accurate description that matches the page's main heading, and it is far more likely to be used as written.
A simple pattern that works
Primary topic: specific angle | BrandFor example: Core Web Vitals: what counts as good in 2026 | SEO Loop. Keep the brand at the end and short.
Check yours in ten seconds
You can read a page's title and length from the terminal:
curl seoloop.in/title/example.com
curl seoloop.in/meta/example.comThe second command also shows the meta description, canonical URL and headings, so you can see whether the title and <h1> agree.
Checklist
- One title per page, unique across the site
- Main topic in the first words
- Roughly 50 to 60 characters
- Matches what the page really covers
- No keyword repetition, no all-caps