SiteAud!tLint Support

Warning On-Page SEO

Multiple title tags

Severity
Warning
Impact
Medium
Effort to fix
Low
Issue code
title_multiple

Why it matters

More than one title tag makes it unclear which one search engines should use.

How to fix it

Keep a single title tag in the head.

What this means

The page's <head> contains more than one <title> element. The evidence shows how many.

Why it matters

Browsers and search engines use only one title, usually the first, and ignore the rest. That means the title you edited may not be the one that is shown. It is also a reliable sign that two systems are each adding their own head tags, which often duplicates other tags too, such as meta descriptions and canonicals.

Common causes

  • An SEO plugin plus the theme, both printing a title. Common on WordPress when a theme hard-codes <title> and also supports title-tag.
  • A JavaScript framework that adds a title alongside the one in the server HTML.
  • A tag manager or widget injecting head content.
  • Copied templates where a partial with its own title is included twice.

SVG images with their own <title> inside the page body are not counted, since those belong to the image, not the page.

How to fix it

  1. View the page source and find each <title>. The text around them usually shows which template or plugin printed it.
  2. Remove the duplicate at the source: disable the theme's title output when an SEO plugin manages titles, or remove the hard-coded tag from the layout.
  3. While you are in the head, check for duplicate meta descriptions, canonical tags and Open Graph tags from the same cause.

Verify the fix

Recrawl. The issue clears on every page that uses the fixed template. Then check the title shown for one page in the URL details is the one you intended.

How it affects your score

Finding this issue on any page costs the On-Page SEO score 3 points, plus up to 12 more depending on the share of crawled pages affected. Weakens rankings, crawling or measurement. Fix after critical issues.

Find the affected URLs

Open Crawl > Issues and pick Multiple title tags. Each affected URL is listed with its evidence, and Copy URLs or Export URLs hands the list to a developer. The issue also appears in the Action Plan, ranked by impact (medium) and effort (low), and in the issues CSV under the code title_multiple. After fixing, run a new audit and use Compare to confirm the URLs moved to fixed.