How to fix title too short on Next.js (Headless)

Steps for Next.js (Headless)

1. Identify every route that has a short title — check both the App Router (`app/*/page.tsx` → `generateMetadata`) and the Pages Router (`pages/*/*.tsx` → `next/head`) files.
2. For App Router routes: update (or add) the exported `generateMetadata` function so the returned `title` string is between 30 and 60 characters, including your brand name and primary keyword.
3. For Pages Router routes: update (or add) the `<title>` tag inside `<Head>` from `next/head`, applying the same 30–60 character rule.
4. Use a shared `buildTitle` utility (see snippet) to enforce the character-length contract in one place and warn at build/runtime when a title falls outside the 30–60 character range.
5. Run `console.log(buildTitle(...).length)` or add a Jest/Vitest unit test against `buildTitle` to confirm every title variant stays within the window before shipping.
6. Deploy and verify in Google Search Console's URL Inspection tool or a third-party SEO crawler that the rendered `<title>` is between 30 and 60 characters.

What is title too short?

Every page on your store has a title tag — a short line of text that appears as the blue clickable headline in Google search results and as the tab label in a browser. When that title is too short (under about 30 characters), it typically means it's vague, generic, or missing key details like your product name, brand, or category. A title like "Hats" or "Shop Now" is technically valid HTML, but it tells neither Google nor shoppers what makes your page worth clicking. The sweet spot is roughly 30–60 characters: long enough to be descriptive, short enough to display without being cut off.

Your page title is one of the strongest on-page signals Google uses to understand and rank a page — a weak title means you could rank lower for the very terms your customers are searching. In search results, the title is the first thing a shopper reads before clicking; a short, uninformative title gets skipped for a competitor's more compelling one, directly costing you organic traffic and sales. Google may also rewrite an unhelpfully short title with its own text pulled from your page, which you can't control and which may not represent your product accurately. Fixing thin titles is a quick, high-leverage change that can improve both your rankings and your click-through rate.

See the complete Title too short guide for every platform and the full background.