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Title tag outside of head
This means that the URL in question has a title tag that is not in the <head>.
Why is this important?
The title tag is considered important to help both users and search engines to quickly understand what content they can expect to find on the page.
The title tag is considered one of the most important on-page SEO factors, and fundamentally it should not be anywhere other than in the <head>. Since Google renders every indexable page, it may be the case that when they render the page, their headless browser actually fixes the HTML and puts the title tag back into the <head> before the HTML is parsed, but this certainly should not be relied upon.
The worst case scenario is that the title tag is ignored by search engines, which will likely lead to lower engagement or CTR from search results, and may also have an impact on search rankings.
What does the Hint check?
This Hint will trigger for any internal URL that has a title tag that is outside the <head>.
Examples that trigger this Hint
This Hint will trigger for any URL that has a title tag in the <body>:
<!doctype html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
...
</head>
<body>
<title>Oh what a page title</title>
...
</body>
</html>How do you resolve this issue?
This issue will most likely be caused by one of two things:
- A rogue plugin that inserts the title tag in the wrong place
- An issue with the underlying HTML page template that is rendering the DOM incorrectly
In either case, this will typically require a developer to resolve this issue, so it should be sufficient to point out that the issue is occurring and flag it for them to find the root cause and fix it.
Title tags are important SEO factors, and it is considered best practice to try and include the main target keywords for the page in the title, whilst also communicating 'what the page is about.'
Further Reading
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