How long should a title tag be in 2025?
How long should a title tag be in 2025? Optimizing title tags is very important to improving your visibility in Google’s SERPs – but no character limitation to fear. Here’s why. The title tag is among the most crucial SEO factors. It can potentially make a big difference in your rankings. In my experience, optimizing title tags can provide rankings with a big boost. There are numerous different methods to optimize a title tag. One is to ensure it is within the 55- to 60-character range (which I believe is somewhat dated today). Other SEOs advise that it is fine to have title tags of up to 70 characters (or more). There are also fears that having the title cut off in search results or reworded by Google can harm organic performance and click-through rate. This article discusses the grounds for such fears, Google’s official position regarding title length, and my observations after analyzing 10,000 title tags of Google’s SERPs. Example of title tag cut off in SERPs Technically, the character limit of a title tag Google can show in SERPs is in pixels. When your title tag is excessively long, Google can truncate it like so. The Title Tag Change and the Fallout In August of 2021, Google altered the process of generating titles in search result snippets. Google frequently displays searchers a title other than your HTML title tag. HTML title tags can be rewritten in SERPs when they are: Too long. Packed with keywords. Absent or duplicative “boilerplate” language (e.g., home pages could be labeled as “Home”). When the update was out, it brought a storm into the SEO world. Numerous SEOs reported instances where the title rewrite went “horribly wrong.” Some anecdotes received were about title tag being redirected to the URL slug. Chatter within the SEO industry also exposed a number of other incidents of Google replacing a site’s tags in the search results with other elements from the page, such as: H1 tags. Image alt texts, File names. Everything from the page from the source code of the page itslef. Their big takeaway from this update seems to be that “Google wants shorter titles in the SERPs.” That was a panic-inducing change for some folks in the SEO space leading even me to advocate for straight-up short titles instead of calls for rewrites. The Confusion Across the board, everyone understands that Google is looking for shorter titles in the SERPs. But does that mean they will use the titles that get shown in the SERPs rather than the HTML title for rankings? For this, many SEOs believe that longer titles will either be shortened or re-written by Google, and that they won’t be on the list for rankings, but rather the new title that appears in SERPs will be the one considered for rankings. What is Google’s official statement about title length? On a Search Off the Record video, John Mueller of Google requested Gary Illyes on the topic of length of title tags: “I had a question which is, perhaps, perhaps it’s a yes or no, Gary. Does there ever seem to be an advantage to having title tags which are greater in length than is displayable, and segments of it?” To which Illyes replied with a very definite and specific answer, “Yes.” He continued: “The title length, that’s an externally fabricated metrics… Technically, there’s a limit, like how long can it be anything in the page, but it’s not a small number. It’s not 160 characters or whatever– 100, 200, 20, or whatever.” And advised to: “Try to keep it accurate to the page, but I wouldn’t think too much about how long it is and whether it’s long enough or way too long. If it fills up your screen, then probably it’s too long, but if it just one sentence that fits on one line or two lines, you’re not going to get a manual action for it.” If we go back to Google’s documentation on SERPs titles (a.k.a., title links), no recommended length or character limit is mentioned for the title tag. Would longer titles affect rankings? If longer title tags can be truncated or rewritten in SERPs, wouldn’t that affect rankings? The answer is no, as per Mueller’s response during Google’s SEO Office Hours on Dec. 11, 2020. Whether your titles are truncated or rewritten in SERPs, Google still uses the HTML title tag for ranking purposes – not the visible version. I don’t think we should abbreviate titles unnecessarily. Title tag is one of the handful of ranking signals we can control outright, and I always try to utilize it to its full potential without resorting to spammy actions such as keyword stuffing. My analysis I would like to lay this argument to rest, so I proceeded and examined the titles for a randomly chosen set of 100 keywords that belong to a wide variety of categories as follows: Top of funnel (TOFU). Middle of funnel (MOFU). Bottom of funnel (BOFU). Local intent keywords. Navigational intent keywords. Niche-specific keywords. Seasonal/trending keywords. Long-tail keywords. Examples of the sorts of keywords that are: “How does solar energy work.” “What is machine learning.” “History of electric cars.” I did this for each of the 100 keywords and then checked the top 100 results for each keyword to see what their title lengths were. This is what the graph and data reveal: Position Range Average Title Length 1-10 42.2 11-20 42.9 21-30 44.2 31-40 44.4 41-50 44.1 51-60 44.3 61-70 44.5 71-80 44.4 81-90 44.8 91-100 45.8 Here’s what this data indicates, along with my experience Google appears to favor rendering shorter titles. The length of the average title in the complete sample (100 keywords × 100 URLs = 10,000 titles) is between
Must-Read eCommerce SEO Best Practices for 2025
Must-Read eCommerce SEO Best Practices for 2025 SEO marketing is a form of digital marketing that search-engine-optimizes websites so your target market can more easily find you. SEO, or search engine optimization, has come a long way from keyword stuffing and clickbait titles. In order to be listed very high on Google and other leading search engines, your site content needs to match the purpose of a prospective visitor and be an authority on the topic. Here, learn the different types of SEO marketing and how to improve organic search rankings for your website or online business. What is SEO marketing? Search engine optimization (SEO) is the act of optimizing your website to rank top in search engine result pages (SERPs) and hence bringing more traffic eventually to your website. The intent is to feature on the top page of Google results for phrases most appropriate for your target segment using organic methodologies like keyword optimization, content building, link construction, and speeding up site operation. How SEO differs from SEM SEO aims at organic efforts, such as publishing a blog entry to answer a question, to increase the visibility of a website in search results. SEM aims at paid advertising efforts such as pay-per-click advertisements. Money allocation. SEM needs a budget to buy advertisements on search engines, social media, and others. Although you don’t have to pay for ranking on search engines using SEO, you need to spend money on employing a writer to make content and perhaps keyword research software. Speed. SEO is slower than SEM in producing results. You can instantly see the results when you place an ad. SEO, however, may take months or even years to build domain authority, rank high on SERPs, and produce traffic. Keyword utilization. An SEO professional can identify relevant keywords and produce well-written, informative content that will rank on a search engine. Keyword research is utilized by an SEM specialist, yet they have to learn how to target the phrases for effective spending. Why is SEO marketing so crucial? Google accounts for 63.41% of US internet traffic, and 42% of online consumers go directly to search engines to find information on products. Since search engines guide people to brands, search plays a crucial role in the success of a website. It’s also cheaper to boost your visibility.Even though you may compensate writers to develop and refine content, you don’t have to pay for a prime position on a SERP. You may also track your SEO marketing by organic traffic, conversion, and rankings, which can help you gauge the effectiveness of your methods and provide you with more details about your visitors. Types of SEO marketing On-page SEO Off-page SEO Technical SEO SEO efforts can be divided into three broad categories: On-page SEO The biggest bucket of SEO marketing efforts, on-page SEO is optimizing your site’s content (text, images, and videos) so that your visitors and search engines can interpret and navigate through the information you are publishing. Writing deliberate content can assist you in establishing a connection with your audience. “I would have 200 visitors on my website who are engaging with content they do enjoy and maybe subscribe to my newsletter because they find this content valuable, rather than have 2,000 of them who just bounce after a blog post and won’t ever revisit my website again,” says Jeremiah Curvers, CEO of mattress brand Polysleep, on an episode of Shopify Masters. Search engines seek on-page considerations such as relevance of topic and metadata to decide the quality of your content and consequently where to place your site on results pages. Topic relevance Highly ranked web pages in search engines have content that best aligns with users’ search intent. That is, matching the intent of searchers when they use a query and then matching what information or services they are searching for. For instance, if the keyword “masks” yields returns on beauty sheet masks, it would not be your ideal keyword if you are selling Halloween masks. Some best practices for creating meaningful SEO content involve providing fresh information, frequently revising facts, and staying consistent with themes that fall under the expertise of your website. Metadata Metadata is not something that can be seen on your web pages and therefore won’t be noticeable by visitors to your site. However, meta data is stored within your HTML page code, flagging and labelling material so that search engine spiders easily get it. Keeping meta information comprehensive and updated can increase your chances of ranking. Metadata includes: Title tag. This is the SEO title of a webpage and sometimes the same as the headline. It should include your target keywords. Meta descriptions. Meta descriptions summarize the contents of a web page and show up on the SERP. Robot tags. These tags tell search engines whether to index pages and follow links. For instance, Polysleep makes use of the term “baby mattress” on the entire product page content. Off-page SEO Your website is not the only SEO marketing place; you can produce high-quality, original content, such as an interview with an authority in your niche, to make other sites refer to yours. When someone’s website links to you (a backlink), they are, in a way, recommending you. Such backlinks may enhance your domain authority, and that may improve your search engine rankings. Backlinks PageRank is a component of Google’s algorithm. It scans the relationship between websites and the pages that they link to. This system of ranking was one of Google’s first methods of determining search engine results and is still a significant component of SEO marketing strategy. By getting links from authoritative sites, you’ll be building your topic authority and ranking power. In essence, the more quality backlinks you possess, the more authoritative search engines will view your site. Domain authority As you build content, links, and organic search traffic, your website’s domain authority will rise. Domain