An HTML element that defines a webpage’s title and often appears as the clickable headline in search results.
A key on-page SEO element for communicating relevance to users and search engines.
Short and sweet:
An HTML element that defines a webpage’s title and often appears as the clickable headline in search results.
A key on-page SEO element for communicating relevance to users and search engines.
See also: Meta Description, On-Page SEO, Search Engine Results Page
A title tag is the HTML element that defines the clickable headline shown in a search engine results page and in a browser tab, distinct from any headline visible on the actual page itself. Search engines weigh the words used here heavily when deciding what a page is about, which makes it one of the more consequential on-page elements for ranking despite being invisible to someone simply reading the page content. Because it also functions as the first impression in search results, it’s typically written to balance including a target keyword with phrasing compelling enough to actually earn a click.
A recipe blog might write its title tag as “Easy Banana Bread Recipe – Ready in 1 Hour,” packing in the exact phrase people search for while still reading naturally as a headline.
Yoast SEO flags this element as too long if it runs past roughly 60 characters, since anything beyond that typically gets cut off with an ellipsis in Google’s results.
An e-commerce product page for running shoes might phrase it as “Men’s Trail Running Shoes | Waterproof & Lightweight,” blending the product name with useful descriptive keywords.
