How long should a title tag be?

About sixty characters is the working limit, because results pages cut by pixel width rather than character count. Put the words people search at the front so nothing essential is in the part that may be truncated.

Should the brand name be in every title?

Only where it earns its characters. On a site nobody knows yet, the brand at the front spends the most valuable part of the title on a word nobody is searching. Put it at the end, or leave it off pages where the subject needs the room.

Why is Google showing a different title than mine?

Google rewrites titles it judges poor, most often when they are stuffed, boilerplate, too long, or do not match the page. Fix the cause rather than trying to force yours: make the title an accurate, specific description of what the page answers.

Should the title and the h1 be identical?

They should say the same thing, not necessarily in the same words. The title works in a list of ten results and can carry a qualifier; the h1 works on the page where context already exists. If they promise different things, the reader feels the gap.

Do title tags still matter for ranking?

They are one of the technical basics Google names, and they decide the click, which is the part you feel. Treat the title as the difference between ranking and getting traffic: position four with a title nobody clicks earns less than position six with one that answers.

Writing titles that get the click, without a tease

A title tag has one job: tell a person scanning ten results that this page answers their question. That is a promise, not a hook. Here is how to write one, why Google rewrites the ones it judges poor, and ten rewrites that show the pattern.

By Théophile Louvart, founder of Porteur · Updated 15 September 2026 · Markdown

The title is a promise about the page

Someone searching has ten titles and three seconds. They are not looking for the most interesting one. They are looking for the one that clearly answers what they typed.

A promise says what the reader gets: "How to fix a canonical Google disagreed with".
A tease withholds it: "The canonical mistake costing you traffic". The reader has to click to learn whether it applies to them, and most will not.
A label says nothing at all: "Canonical tags". It matches the query and promises no answer.

A tease can win a click from a feed, where people browse. It loses one from a results page, where people are looking for a specific answer and will pick the title that admits what it holds.

The mechanics: length, order, and the brand

Rule	Why	What happens when you break it
About sixty characters	Results pages cut titles by pixel width, and sixty characters fits most of the time.	The end is truncated, so the words there are wasted.
The search near the front	People scan the first words; so does anyone skimming ten results.	Your match is at the end, where it is cut.
One idea	A title with two subjects matches neither search well.	The page looks like a category, not an answer.
The brand at the end, or not at all	It costs characters and adds nothing on a page nobody knows yet.	"Yourproduct - Blog - Guides - Canonical tags" spends forty characters before the subject.
Different from every other title	Two pages with the same title compete and confuse.	Google picks one and may rewrite both.

Why Google rewrites titles, and how to stop it

Google replaces titles it judges poor, and has said it does so for around a fifth of results. It is not a penalty. It is Google deciding your title was not the best description of the page for that search.

Stuffed: the same words repeated, or a list of variants separated by pipes.
Boilerplate: the same prefix or suffix on every page, so the title says more about the site than the page.
Missing or empty, in which case Google uses the h1 or the text on the page.
Too long, so the meaningful part never appears.
Mismatched: the title promises something the page does not deliver.

To see whether yours are being rewritten, search for a page of yours in an incognito window in the right country, or check the Performance report for a page with impressions and a click-through rate far below what its position would suggest.

Patterns that work, by format

The format of the page suggests the shape of the title. These are patterns, not templates to fill blindly.

Format	Pattern	Example
Task	How to [do the thing] [qualifier]	How to fix 404 errors in Search Console
Definition	[Term]: what it means and [the nuance]	Soft 404: when a page says 200 and Google reads not found
Diagnosis	[Symptom]: [where the answer is]	Traffic dropped overnight: how to find the cause by date
Comparison	[A] vs [B] [for whom]	Ahrefs vs Semrush for a small product site
Decision	[Question]? [The honest shape of the answer]	Does a startup need SEO? A straight answer by stage
List	[Number] [things] [qualifier]	Nine free tools that replace a subscription

Numbers and years in a title earn clicks and then age. "in 2026" is a promise to update the page every January. Make it only if you will keep it.

Ten titles, before and after

Before	After	What changed
Yourproduct \| Blog \| Understanding Canonicals	Canonical tags: what they do and when Google ignores them	The brand and the section were spending forty characters.
The Ultimate Guide to Page Speed	Page speed: what to fix first on a small site	"Ultimate" promises nothing; the new title says who it is for.
Why Your SEO Isn't Working	Seven reasons a new site gets no search traffic	A tease became a countable promise.
Import Data	How to import a CSV, and what to do when it fails	A label became a task, and picked up the error query.
Best Practices for Meta Descriptions	Meta description length: what gets cut and what to write	A banned phrase replaced by the thing people search.
We've Updated Our Pricing	Pricing: plans, limits and what changes at each tier	News nobody searches for became a page buyers look for.
10 Tips You Need to Know About Backlinks	How to get your first ten backlinks	"Need to know" is filler; the new title names the stage.
Everything About Structured Data	Structured data: the four types a product site needs	Scope narrowed to something a page can actually deliver.
Our Integration With Sheets Is Here	Import from Google Sheets: setup, limits and sync	A launch note became an evergreen page.
FAQ	Billing questions: refunds, invoices and cancelling	An unsearchable label became three searchable subjects.

How to test a title without guessing

You cannot A/B test a title tag properly on a small site, because you cannot hold the ranking still. What you can do is change one and read the figures honestly.

Pick the right page
In the Performance report, sort pages by impressions and look for a good average position with a weak click-through rate. That page is losing the click, not the ranking.
Record the baseline
Impressions, clicks, click-through rate and average position for the last 28 days. Write them down before you touch anything.
Change the title only
Not the h1, not the content, not the internal links. One change or you will not know what moved.
Wait 28 days and compare
Use the same period length. If impressions moved as much as clicks, the ranking changed and the test tells you nothing about the title.

Questions

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