How to Write an SEO Title

Why the title tag matters most

Your title tag does two heavy jobs. It is one of the strongest on-page signals telling search engines what your page is about, and it is the blue headline a searcher reads before deciding whether to click. A weak or truncated title costs you on both fronts: worse relevance and fewer clicks. Of everything on the page, the title is the highest-leverage thing to get right.

Length: characters and pixels

The common advice is 50 to 60 characters, and that is a good rule of thumb, but Google actually truncates by pixel width, not character count, at around 600 pixels. That matters because wide letters like M and W take more room than thin ones like i and l. Two titles with the same character count can truncate differently. Checking pixel width, not just characters, is how you avoid a surprise cutoff.

Put the keyword near the front

Because titles get cut off, placement matters. Lead with your main keyword so it appears no matter where the title truncates, and so searchers see it first. Push your brand name to the end, where it is fine if it gets trimmed on longer titles. A title that opens with the keyword is clearer to both the searcher and the search engine.

Write for the click, not just the algorithm

Once your keyword and length are sorted, the title still has to earn the click. Specific, benefit-driven titles outperform vague ones. Numbers, the current year, and clear promises help. A well-chosen power word or two, like "complete," "proven," or "easy," can lift click-through without tipping into clickbait. The title is your one line of ad copy in the results.

Preview before you publish

Never guess at the cutoff. Type your title into a preview that renders it the way Google does and shows the pixel width, and adjust until nothing important falls past the line. The preview above does exactly this for length and truncation, so you can see instantly whether your keyword survives.

This preview shows length. The Pro tool checks the rest.

Length and cutoff are half the job. The SEO Keyword Density Analyzer also checks whether your focus keyword is in the title, flags click-worthy power words, previews the title and meta together, and ties it into a full on-page checklist. The preview here shows length and cutoff only. The Pro tool checks whether the title is actually optimized.