I run a Q&A site, should I limit post questions to 64 characters?
-
I run a Q&A site (Recessionitis.com), should I limit posts (questions) to 64 characters for SEO purposes?
-
Yes, go ahead and ignore those warnings. There was another recent question about this and the help desk said they could be ignored.
The help desk generally doesn't just browse Q&A, as they keep busy enough with the help forums and the tickets submitted to them. If there is a problem that might be affecting a large number of users, then I'll flag a Q&A question and ask them to come and take a look at things.
-
I'm guessing you want to limit the question length because you want to create an appropriate title tag. Why not have unlimited space for the question, but start off with a box saying, "Please summarize your question." and use that for the title?
-
Thanks! We do have an additional details field.
One more question, in SEOmoz diagnostics, I'm getting warnings for "Title Element Too Long" because the crawler is rendering apostrophes as "'" adding 5 characters per apostrophe. Should I be ignoring those warnings?
-
Do the users have a chance for an expanded question beyond the 64 characters, or is that the proposed entire question limit? If that's the entire question limit, I would certainly say to not limit it so much.
The question at http://recessionitis.com/what-is-the-lowest-fare-roundtrip-to-atlanta-from-oakland-california/ is "What is the lowest round trip fare to Atlanta from Oakland, CA?", which is 63 characters. There's a response asking what dates, yet the OP never responded.
My gut says that by limiting the question so much you're going to limit the amount of information the person is able to give, and thus limit the amount of answer a person can give without knowing more detail, and you may never be able to get that detail out of the OP in time. Or, you'll have someone answer, only to have the OP come back and say "oh, but I don't want any layovers" or "I refuse to travel on airline xyz". You're still likely to get people who don't make complete questions, but I would say don't hamstring those who did want to give more information just because you don't want to trigger the "..." in the SERP.
-
That will improve user experience in the SERP and site may see more visits. Only very lengthy or short title will send wrong signals.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Should I spend time going back and optimizing old blog posts for SEO or just write new posts?
The site I manage (Boutique Estate Law Firm) has at least 350 old blog post archived that were not well optimized for SEO. Would it be valuable to go through and optimize those old posts or just write new optimized posts even though they are on the same subjects? My boss loves to churn out 300 word posts.
On-Page Optimization | | SEO4leagalPA0 -
Multiple Organization Schema on the same site
I creating a preferred supplier list on my site and wanted to use the Organization Schema for the company details. Is there a issue with having more than one org schema on the same site? or should I just use the one for my company. Thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | gregdicksonuk1 -
Keywords & ranking
I am working for a social networking site called Yookos. Much our content is user-generated. How can i add keywords onto the site to make sure our site appears in the SERPS? Also what techniques can i use to make our social site rank highly? Do the other SEO techniques apply here?
On-Page Optimization | | seoworx1230 -
2 sites made - almost same day question
So i made 2 sites within 24 hours of each other:
On-Page Optimization | | mweidner2782
babysitters-nyc.com
and
http://nanny-nyc.com/ nanny has 530 pages index and babysitters only 10. Any idea why that would happen and what the problem would be? Thanks and happy holidays!0 -
Meta Description Question
Is it ok to put your domain name in the meta description if that is the name of your company? so if my company name is BlaBla.com and I want to have a meta description like Shop for your next Widget at BlaBla.com. We have Widget in 30 colors. Free shipping for orders over $50. and I am obviosuly promoting the widget page is this ok. I am concerned that Google will not like the domain name in the meta description. After Peguin I am paranoid about my shadow.....LOL
On-Page Optimization | | freestone0 -
Remove internal site SERPS from Google Index?
1. Internal Serp pages did not have a robots meta tag 2. As a result, client site has thousands (~4,400) of internal site SERP pages in the Google index. 3. We added the NoIndex, Follow attribute to all internal SERPS 4. We Disallowed: domain.com/internal-search-operator in Robots.txt 5. No new SERP pages are being indexed, but the other 4000 something that were already there are still in the index weeks later. 6. The pages are dynamically created and still work, so I can't use the Remove Content tool from google, because the pages don't 404. Is there any way to get these pages out of the index besides just waiting and hoping google eventuall drops them? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | delegator.com0 -
Numbers above actual site content
Most pages on my website contain many numbers above the actual text on the page. This is useful for users and looks good on an actual view of the page. However, when a bot reads the page it appears as rows of numbers with a few sentences at the bottom of the page. Does having these number have a negative SEO effect? If so, should I change them to something such as an image so they aren't readable by search engines?
On-Page Optimization | | theLotter0 -
URL question
Hi guys, the pro campaign thing you got going is wicked, love it. I'm recieving good results with my keywords and have noticed that categories that go beyond sub/sub/sub don't do to well. So I wanna move those that do one step up which makes it go from: http://spytunes.com/practice-guitar/advanced-routine/scales/aeolian to here http://spytunes.com/practice-guitar/advanced-routine/aeolian The existing menu system that follow all these categories across the site will soon go so it won't be a user friendly problem, I will have other type of menus. But, and here is the question: Would I greatly benefit from taking the non existent menu away and just go for: http://spytunes.com/practice-guitar/aeolian while i'm at it? Or do I stick with my current structure? I guess my real question is; how much is there to flat URLs? Cheers -dan lundholm spytunes.com
On-Page Optimization | | spytunes0