The title tag is one of the strongest on-page ranking signals and the single largest driver of organic click-through rate. Google may rewrite the displayed title if it decides yours does not match the query, but the underlying tag still influences relevance.
Best practices
- Keep under about 60 characters to avoid truncation in the SERP.
- Front-load the primary keyword.
- Include the brand name at the end for recognition.
- Match the query intent — a comparison query needs a comparison title.
Example
Rewriting a title from "Home Page | Brand" to "Rank Tracker for Agencies | Brand" lifts CTR from 2.1% to 5.8% at the same position.
How SEM Optimiser reports it
The audit flags titles that are missing, duplicated, over the pixel-width budget, or that Google is rewriting frequently.
Related terms
- On-page SEO
On-page SEO is the practice of optimising individual web pages so their content and HTML signals match what search engines expect for the queries they target.
- Meta Description
A meta description is an HTML attribute that provides a short summary of a page, often used as the snippet displayed beneath the title in search results.
- CTR (Click-Through Rate)
Click-through rate is the percentage of impressions that result in a click, calculated as clicks divided by impressions.
- H1
The H1 is the top-level heading of a web page, marked with an h1 element, and should describe the page's primary topic in a single, unique headline.