How to set an SEO title that differs from the post title in WordPress

Step by step

1. Decide what each title should do

Take a post headed "Everything We Learned Brewing 400 Cups of Pour-Over Coffee in One Month". As an H1 it is engaging. As a search title it would be truncated before the useful words. A search title for the same post might be "Pour-Over Coffee Guide: Ratios, Grind and Timing". Keep both about the same subject. A title tag that promises something the page does not deliver gets rewritten by Google and disappoints the visitor.

2. Type the SEO title in the editor

1. Open the post and open the SEO Settings sheet (⌘E, or Ctrl+E on Windows and Linux).
2. In SEO title, type the title for search. Whatever you enter replaces the template for this post only.
3. You can mix in variables: press @ to insert %separator% and %site_name% if you want the brand suffix kept, as in Pour-Over Coffee Guide %separator% %site_name%.
4. Watch the snippet preview for truncation, then update the post.

The post title field at the top of the editor is untouched, so the H1 does not change.

3. Or change it from the Posts list

On Posts → All Posts, hover the post and click Quick Edit. The Hydrogen SEO group has an SEO title field with a live character count graded against 30 to 60 characters. Edit it and click Update. This is the faster route when you are working through a list of posts whose titles are too long.

4. Check both in the page source

curl -s https://example.com/pour-over/ | grep -oE "<title>[^<]*</title>|<h1[^>]*>.*</h1>"

The <title> should show the SEO title and the <h1> the post title. If the title did not change, purge the page cache. If the H1 changed too, your theme is printing the document title as its heading, which is unusual and needs a theme fix.

5. Hand a post back to the template

Clear the SEO title field and save. The post then uses the template for its post type again, by default %title% %separator% %site_name%. In Quick Edit an empty field shows Empty: the template is used. Use this to undo one-off titles after you improve the post title itself.

6. Keep social titles in mind

The share card title is a third field. If you leave OG title empty, it follows the SEO title. For a post you expect to be shared, the social title can go back to the engaging version, without the brand suffix.

7. Without the plugin: a custom field and a filter

Core builds the title tag from parts, and the title part can be swapped:

add_filter( 'document_title_parts', function ( $parts ) {
    if ( is_singular() ) {
        $custom = get_post_meta( get_queried_object_id(), 'seo_title', true );
        if ( $custom ) {
            $parts['title'] = $custom;
        }
    }
    return $parts;
} );

Add a custom field named seo_title to a post and its value becomes the first part of the title tag, with the separator and site name still appended. The custom fields panel is hidden by default in the block editor and is switched on in the editor's preferences.

How far apart the two can be

Google compares the title tag with the page's main heading when it decides what to show, and its documentation on title links says a clear main heading helps it choose. When the two disagree strongly, the heading can appear in results instead of your title tag. Treat the SEO title as a tighter edit of the H1: same topic, same key words near the front, fewer extras.

When not to bother

If the post title is already short, specific and leads with the words people search for, a separate SEO title adds maintenance and nothing else. The template handles it. Write custom titles for long headings, for pages where the brand suffix pushes the title over the limit, and for pages whose search phrasing differs from how you would address a reader.