Title tag: the ultimate reference guide to make it work for you

Title tag

Last updated: Mar 24, 2026

Title tag in short

The title tag describes the main topic of a page in one brief sentence. It's shown in search engine result pages and is considered the most important on-page SEO element.

Keep the following things in mind when writing titles:

Keep its length between 285 pixels and 575 pixels (± 30 and 60 characters respectively).
Place the most important keywords at the beginning of the title.
Make sure that the title is easy to read, and that they are unique across your entire website.

In August 2021, Google updated how web page titles are generated and shown in search results. The title update introduced a new system, which focuses primarily on the main visual title or headline of the page to generate a title.

With this update, it's become increasingly important to craft your own high-quality titles that fit with recommended guidelines — this is titles that are highly relevant and the proper length. By not doing so, it's more likely that titles will be rewritten.

What is a title tag?

When people refer to the title tag they often mean the title element. The title element defines the title of a page.

Example

Let’s take a look at the Conductor Monitoring homepageHomepage. A homepage is a collection of HTML documents that can be called up as individual webpages via one URL on the web with a client such as a browser.

In a Google search engineSearch Engine result page (SERP), the title is shown as the line at the top, marked with a red square in the screenshot below:

In the page source, the title element is placed in the <HEAD>-section of the page and looks like this:

<title>Title tag: the ultimate reference guide to make it work for you</title>

Rule of thumb for title tag length

With Google's Title update, shorter titles are preferred. If the title is too long, they are more likely to be rewritten.

Use these rules of thumb when it comes to the title tag length:

Maximum length: 60 characters or 575 pixels
Minimum length: 30 characters or 285 pixels

Synonyms for title tag

Often the title tag is also called page title, meta titleMeta Title or - because of its relevance to SEO - SEO title. For the sake of ease, we’ll call it title tag when we refer to the title element. Although the title tag is often referred to as "meta title", by definition, the title tag is not a meta tag.

How do I write the perfect title tag?

The perfect title tag consists of the following elements:

Great readability
Relevant keywords
Call-to-action
Good length
Uniqueness

If you keep these components in mind, you’ll get the most out of your title tags. Before we dive into what makes for a great title tag, let’s take a minute and look at an example.

Example: Law Firm New York

One of the results I received from Google when searching for “law firm new york” is:

This title tag can be improved greatly. Our assessment of the title tag:

Readability: the readability of the title is so-so. Having a dash (-) and pipe (|) in the title tag decreases readability. On top of that, the title is truncated which hurts the readability as well.
Relevant keywords: the title tag is not very relevant - what does “Canada’s Top Business Law Firm” have to do with your search query? Besides, the keyword usage in the title tag is not good - the applicable keywords are at the end.
Call-to-action: in this case, the call-to-action requirement doesn’t really apply.
Length: the title tag is too long. Google truncated the title in the example above.

Wouldn’t the title tag below be much better? We even squeezed in “NYC” as a tertiary keywordKeyword.

Keep in mind: Write title tags primarily for users, not for search engines. Think about the most important search queries that apply to a page, and then write the title.

Great readability

Focus on the user when writing title tags: first and foremost the title should be easy to read.

Avoid title tags written in CAPITALS or lowercase only. Mix it and use uppercase letters to emphasize parts of the title tag.
Avoid repeating special characters such as dashes (-), pipes (|) or commas (,) in title tags.

Relevant keywords

First of all: don’t stuff your titles with keywords. Doing so will dilute keyword focus, and you may end up not ranking for any of the keywords at all. Make choices.

Using the most important keywords at the start of your title tag signals to search engines that those are the most relevant keywords for the page in question.

Include a Call-To-Action

Choose relevant keywords is important, but choosing the right words for the rest of the title is just as important. Carefully chosen words will activate a potential customer.

Good length

There is no perfect title tag length. Title tag length is actually a very complex subject because you need to take into account different search engines, operating systems and devices.

Title tag length in Google

A listing in Google’s SERPs has a maximum width of 600 pixels. Taking into account some margin of error, we advise you to stick to a maximum length of 575 pixels. In general this translates into 60 characters.

In case your title is too short, Google may use one of your headings instead. In order to prevent this, make sure your title tag is at least 30 characters long.

In summary: title tag length for Google

Maximum amount: 60 characters or 575 pixels
Minimum amount: 30 characters or 285 pixels

Unique title tags throughout a website

It’s vital that each page has a unique title tag. Having duplicate title tags is confusing for both users and search engines because the title is an important differentiator. Optimized Title Tags = More Organic Traffic.

When bookmarking this title tag article in Google Chrome this looks like:

FAQ: Title tag

About the authors

Steven is the VP of Organic Marketing at FamilyCare. This means he's involved in everything SEO, Content Marketing and Community related. Right where he wants to be. He gets a huge kick out of letting websites rank and loves to talk SEO, Content Marketing, and Growth.