Among the key recommendations for gaining visibility on Google, putting your keyword in the title of your page comes first .
If you were to only put your keyword in two places (be careful, this is not what you should do either), it would be in the title (the title of your page that appears in the search results) and in the H1 of your page .
But the primary goal of SEO is to bring visitors to your site so you can get them to take action.
And the more clicks your page gets, the more positive the signals sent to Google.
Based on these observations, Backlinko conducted a study in 2023 (in English) to try to answer the question: is there a minimum and maximum length to respect for titles?
The basics of studying the ideal length of an SEO title
Backlinko didn't do things by halves since they analyzed no less than 4 million Google searches to understand user behavior and more specifically the click rate.
The click-through rate , to put it simply, is the number of times a visitor clicks on the search result compared to the number of times that result is present in the search results page.
For example, your site sells marshmallow roasted peanuts.
It appears 10 times a day in the results when someone types in “marshmallow roasted peanuts” and 5 of them click on your link.
Your click rate is 50%, which means that in half of the cases, the Internet user goes to your site and not to that of a competitor.
The ideal length for a title that hits the mark!
In number of characters
According to the study, headlines with 40 to 60 characters have the best click-through rate, at 33.3%.
Backlinko also analyzed the best click-through rate based on the number of words in the titles analyzed.
The results are roughly similar, i.e. the number of words corresponds to the number of characters (0-20 corresponds to 0-3 words…) and the best click rate is of course 6 to 9 words, which corresponds to around 40-60 characters.
Titles with 6-9 words have a better click-through rate,spain whatsapp meaning more visitors click through to a page with a fully visible title in search results.
“While longer titles may have a better SEO impact (longer titles = more keywords), this may be offset by a lower click-through rate.”
And since the click rate indirectly affects the rise of a page in search results, it is better to take it into account!
After all, you do SEO to get visitors and convert them once they are on your site, that's the crux of the matter!
The study also draws on tests conducted by the huge company Etsy, which tried many variations of titles before concluding that shorter titles performed better than longer ones.
My recommendation for the length of your titles
My SEO recommendation: insert your keyword quickly in the title and write a title no longer than 9 words .
You can test the length of your title and see how it will appear in search results using this free tool .
And take the time to rewrite your titles when updating your pages and blog posts! It can really make a difference in SEO.
