The <title> element

Every HTML document must have exactly one non-empty <title> element inside <head>. It is used by browsers, search engines, screen readers, social previews, and AI agents.

What it is

The <title> element is a required child of <head> that names the document. It is the only HTML element with no markup inside it — only text. There must be exactly one per page.

<title>Setting up CSP · The Website Specification</title>

Why it matters

Browsers show the title in the tab, the window, the bookmark, and the history entry.
Search engines use it as the default link text in results (Google may rewrite it, but a good <title> is rewritten less).
Screen readers announce the title when the page loads, so it is the first thing a non-sighted user hears.
Social platforms fall back to it when no <meta property="og:title"> is set.
AI agents use it as the canonical short description of the page.

Missing or empty titles are a WCAG 2.4.2 Level A failure — the lowest accessibility bar there is.

How to implement

Write the title for the page, not for the site:

Page-specific first, site name second, separated by a delimiter such as ·, —, or |.
Front-load the unique part. Truncation in search results and tabs hides the end of the string.
50–60 characters is a reasonable target. Google typically displays around 600 pixels of width.
One per page, unique per page. Two pages with the same title is a quality signal that they are duplicates.
No keyword stuffing. Write what the page is about.

The order matters when the tab is narrow:

<!-- Good: unique part first -->
<title>HSTS · Security · The Website Specification</title>

<!-- Worse: site name eats the tab -->
<title>The Website Specification — Security — HSTS</title>

For the homepage, the site name on its own is fine:

<title>The Website Specification</title>

Common mistakes

Empty <title></title>. Browsers show the URL; screen readers announce nothing useful.
Identical titles across many pages (often the site name only).
Titles set in JavaScript after first paint — search crawlers and social scrapers may not run JS.
Putting the title in <body> instead of <head>.

Verification

View source. <title> must be inside <head> and contain non-whitespace text.
Open the page in a narrow tab. Check the unique part is visible.
Run curl -s https://example.com | grep -i '<title' and confirm it is set without JavaScript.
Test with a screen reader (VoiceOver, NVDA). It should announce the title on load.