How to write a title tag for every page on your site
A good title tag names the one thing the page offers, in the words a searcher would use, then the site name. Write a different one for every page, put the distinctive part first, and keep it short enough that the important words survive when results are cut off on a phone.
What the title tag is for
The <title> element sits in the page's <head>. Browsers show it on the tab, screen readers announce it first when a page opens, bookmarks save it, and search engines use it as the main source for the blue link in results. It is not the same as the h1, the visible heading on the page, though the two should agree. A page has exactly one title, and the text is plain: any markup inside it is shown literally.
A pattern for each page type
| Page | Pattern | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Home | Business name: what you do, where | Reid's Barbers: walk-in and booked cuts in Hove |
| Service | Service in place, with a qualifier | Name | Beard trims and hot-towel shaves in Hove | Reid's |
| Product | Product name, key variant | Name | Single-origin Ethiopia, 250g whole bean | Ember Roasters |
| About | About Name: one fact that matters | About Reid's Barbers: three chairs on Church Road since 2014 |
| Contact | Contact Name, with how | Contact Reid's Barbers: phone, email and directions |
| Article | The question or claim, not the site name first | How often should you trim a beard? | Reid's |
The pattern puts the part that differs between pages at the front. Search results and browser tabs both cut text from the end, so a title starting with your brand on every page leaves a row of identical tabs and results that all begin the same way. The home page is the exception: people search for your name there.
Write one, step by step
Here is how to write a title tag for a single page. Repeat it for each page, so no two titles match.
- Write down the search. What would someone type to need this page? "Hot-towel shave Hove" is a real search; "Our grooming philosophy" is not.
- Lead with that phrase, in natural word order. Use the term your customers use, even if your trade uses another.
- Add one qualifier that sets you apart: a place, a price model, a format, an audience. "Same-day", "for beginners", "vegan".
- End with a separator and the site name. A pipe, hyphen or colon all work; pick one and use it everywhere.
- Read the first 50 or so characters on their own. If they still say what the page is, it'll survive truncation. Google sets no fixed limit and cuts titles to fit the screen, so aim to keep the meaning early rather than counting characters exactly.
- Check it against the page. The
h1and the opening paragraph should deliver what the title promises. A title that oversells is one of the reasons Google rewrites them.
Matching the intent behind the search
Titles work best when they mirror what kind of answer the searcher wants. Someone ready to buy responds to the product and a concrete detail. Someone researching responds to a question or a promise of comparison. Someone looking for you responds to your name. The same service can need different titles on different pages: "Boiler servicing in Bristol | Kent Heating" for the service page, and "How often does a boiler need servicing?" for an article that answers the question and links to it.
Why Google rewrites titles, and how to avoid it
Google builds the link text from several sources, including the <title>, the main heading, og:title, prominent text and the text of links pointing at the page. According to Google's title link documentation, it substitutes its own when titles are half-empty, out of date, inaccurate, nearly identical across many pages, or written in a different language from the page. Most rewrites trace back to one of those, so fixing the cause usually brings your own title back after the page is recrawled, which can take days or weeks.
Common mistakes
- The same title on every page, often just the business name. It wastes the most visible line in search and confuses screen reader users moving between tabs.
- A keyword list: "Barber, Barbers Hove, Best Barber, Haircut Hove". It reads as spam and is likely to be rewritten.
- Leftover defaults such as "Home", "Untitled" or "React App".
- Dates that go stale, like "2024 guide" on a page you no longer update.
- Clickbait. If the page doesn't deliver, people return to the results and the title has cost you trust.
Checking your titles
View the page source and search for <title>. For the whole site, a crawler such as Screaming Frog's free tier lists every title and flags duplicates; Search Console's Performance report shows which queries bring impressions, which tells you whether the words in your titles match what people actually search. Pair each title with a meta description written for the same search.
What Anticode checks, and what it leaves to you
Anticode's design gate refuses to publish a page that has no <title>, so a page can't go live untitled. It doesn't judge whether the title is any good: the wording, the order and the match with what people search are still the parts you write and check yourself.
Questions people ask
How many characters should a title tag be?
There's no official limit. Around 50 to 60 characters usually shows in full on desktop; what matters more is that the first few words carry the meaning.
Should the title and the h1 be identical?
They should agree, not necessarily match. The title can add the site name and a qualifier; the h1 can be more conversational.
Does changing a title hurt rankings?
Not by itself. A clearer title that matches the page is usually an improvement. Change titles deliberately, though, and watch the Performance report for a few weeks afterwards.