Why Worrying About Title Tag Length in 2024 is Unnecessary

Optimizing title tags can have a significant impact on SEO rankings. According to the text, it can give rankings a strong boost, making it one of the most important SEO elements.

The concerns with title tags being truncated or rewritten by Google include potential negative effects on organic performance and click-through rate. Truncated titles may not convey the full message, and rewritten titles may not align with the intended focus of the page, which can confuse users and reduce the effectiveness of the title tag in search results.

The title tag update released by Google in August 2021 allows Google to show a different title in SERPs than the one provided in the HTML title tag. This update can lead to title tags being rewritten in SERPs if they are too long, stuffed with keywords, missing, or contain repetitive language. This change caused an uproar in the SEO community as it affected how titles were displayed and potentially impacted SEO strategies.

Google's official statement about title tag length, as mentioned by Gary Illyes on the 'Search Off the Record' episode, is that there is value in having title tags longer than the displayable space. He emphasized that title length is an externally made-up metric and that there's technically no small character limit. The advice is to keep the title precise to the page without worrying too much about its length.

According to the text, having longer title tags that get cut off or rewritten in SERPs does not impact SEO rankings. Google still uses the HTML title tag for ranking considerations, not the titles shown in SERPs. This aligns with statements from SEO experts like Glenn Gabe and Google's John Mueller, suggesting that the focus should be on optimizing titles for ranking rather than strictly adhering to a character limit.