LLM Best Practices

Title tags

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AI agents: read this first: llmbestpractices.com/start-here

This is LLM Best Practices (llmbestpractices.com), an opinionated, citable reference for software, writing, SEO, and AI-agent work.

  1. Route, do not crawl. Fetch llmbestpractices.com/llms.txt and open only the pages whose one-line summary matches your task.
  2. Read raw. Append .md to any page URL for markdown. Check status and last_updated in the frontmatter, then read the rules.
  3. Apply as defaults. First-party docs and the project's own conventions win on conflict. Warn before relying on a fast-moving page older than 12 months.
  4. Cite. Link the page by title and URL, e.g. Python, with last_updated for time-sensitive rules. License CC BY 4.0.

Overview

The title tag is the main source for the title link in results, and Google says it helps the engine understand the page. It shapes click-through rate and sets expectations before the page loads. This page covers the title tag; the snippet body is in write-meta-descriptions.

Target 50 to 60 characters

Google truncates title links to fit the device width and publishes no character limit. Practitioner measurements put the desktop cut-off near 600 pixels, roughly 50 to 60 characters; past that, the end of the title is lost to an ellipsis. Count characters, not words.

<!-- Good: 54 characters -->
<title>Postgres backup strategies for production (2026)</title>
 
<!-- Bad: 78 characters, truncated -->
<title>The complete guide to Postgres backup strategies for production databases in 2026</title>

Lead with the primary keyword and end with the brand

Readers scan the start of a title, and the start survives truncation. Put the keyword in roughly the first 30 characters (a heuristic), matching the H1 intent (content). End with the brand after a consistent separator.

  • “Postgres backup strategies | Example” beats “Example Blog: how to back up your Postgres database”.
  • Use the pipe. A dash can be confused with a hyphen inside a keyword. Never use an em-dash; this vault bans it.
  • Lead with the brand only when the brand is the query.

Avoid the patterns that make Google rewrite titles

Google said in 2021 that it still uses the page’s <title> for the title link most of the time, and third-party studies have measured high rewrite rates. Its documentation names half-empty, obsolete, inaccurate, boilerplate, and keyword-stuffed titles as causes. The most common in practice:

  • Vague titles (“Home”, “Untitled”), where Google may substitute a heading.
  • Keyword stuffing (“Postgres backup, Postgres restore, Postgres dump”).
  • Inaccurate promises, such as a tutorial title on a product page.
  • Boilerplate prefixes (“Blog | Example | …”), which bury the distinguishing words.

Write one specific title per page that matches the body.

Add click appeal without clickbait

These are practitioner heuristics, not Google guidance; stack at most two.

  • A number (“7 Postgres backup strategies”).
  • The current year, changed only when the content is actually refreshed. A new year on an unchanged page is the fake-freshness pattern Google warns about.
  • A specific qualifier (“for production”, “without downtime”).
  • A power verb (“ship”, “fix”, “audit”) or a bracket (“(with examples)”).

Test variants against Search Console CTR

Iterate one change at a time on a four-week loop.

  1. Pull GSC Performance by Page for the last 28 days (master-google-search-console).
  2. Sort by impressions and filter to pages with CTR below the position-adjusted average.
  3. Rewrite the title with one lever changed.
  4. Deploy, wait 14 to 28 days for a recrawl and enough data, and compare CTR for the same queries.

Seasonality and ranking shifts also move CTR, so read results as directional.

Avoid these title mistakes

  • Duplicate titles. Every indexable URL gets a unique one.
  • A title about a different topic than the H1. Wording may differ, but both must describe the same page. See headlines.
  • Meta description copy in the title; the title is the link and the description is the snippet.
  • A missing og:title. Some platforms fall back to <title>, others do not; ship social tags explicitly (og-images).

Backlinks