Screaming Cow

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Titles and descriptions

Pages with no title: what it means and how to fix it

In your audit this appears as Pages with missing title

The page has no <title> tag, or it is empty. This is the text that appears as the blue link in Google's results and as the name of the browser tab.

Why it matters

The title is the first — and sometimes the only — thing anyone reads of your page before deciding whether to visit. Without one, Google does not leave a blank: it makes one up from stray text on the page, the menu or the domain name. The result is usually a meaningless fragment that invites no clicks.

It is also one of the most direct signals a search engine has for understanding what the page is about. Leaving it empty wastes the most visible place you have to say so.

How to fix it

  • Write a unique title for every page, inside the <title> tag in the document's <head>.
  • Aim for about 50-60 characters. Longer and the engine truncates it.
  • Lead with what describes the page and follow with the brand: "Road running shoes | My Store", not the other way round.
  • Describe it the way you would to a person. Repeating the same keyword three times does not help.
Watch out for this

In WordPress and other content managers the title usually comes from the theme or the SEO plugin, not from the body of the post. If it shows up empty, look there before looking at the content.

How to check it

Open the page, choose "view source" and look for <title>. With many pages that is not practical by hand: an audit crawls the site and hands back the full list of the ones that are empty.

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