Shortening titles to stop getting cut off

Shortening titles to stop getting cut off

Today's lesson: in the SERP layout — the way Google arranges titles, links, and text on the results page — a title that's too long gets chopped with "..." and looks broken.

Real example: a travel blog wrote 80-character titles. In search they ended mid-word like "Best Things to Do in Lisbo..." so people skipped them.

What they did:
1. Trimmed important titles to about 55 characters.
2. Put the key words first, before the cut-off point.
3. Dropped the long brand name to the end.

Think of it like a headline on a newspaper rack — it has to read fully in one glance.

Result: across 30 pages, click rate rose 8% on average just from titles that no longer got cut off.

Try this: search three of your pages and note any title ending in "...". 🎓