What is a page title and how long should it be?
The title tag is the blue headline of your listing in Google and the name on the browser tab. It is the single most important line of text on the page for search. Between 10 and 60 characters shows in full; longer titles are cut off with an ellipsis. A good title says what the page is and where you are, and every page should have a different one.
Why it matters
Search engines weigh the title more heavily than any other text on the page when deciding what it is about, and searchers read it first when deciding what to click. "Home" or "Welcome" or the bare business name wastes the most valuable words on the page. "Emergency plumber in Canterbury | Smith & Sons" tells Google the service and the place, and tells a searcher they have found what they wanted.
Writing a good one
- Lead with what the page offers, in the words a customer would use.
- Include the town or area if you serve a local market.
- Put the business name at the end, after a separator.
- Keep it under 60 characters so it is not cut off.
- Make each page's title different; the same title everywhere tells Google the pages are the same.
How to check
Our check reads the title of your home page and reports its length. Search for your business on Google and look at the blue headline; that is your title tag as Google chose to show it.
How to fix it
On WordPress, an SEO plugin such as Yoast or Rank Math adds a title field to every page with a preview of how it will look in search. Without a plugin, the site title and tagline in Settings, General form the home page title. On other platforms the title is usually a field in the page settings. Write the home page and the main service pages first; those are the ones that bring enquiries.
Not sure how your own site does on this? Run the free check: it takes about twenty seconds and reports on this and thirty other things.