How should I shorten my titles?

[dbuckles]

I've read that page titles can't/shouldn't be more than 70 characters long. Out of around 1,000 products we have about 150 that have legitimate titles that exceed this character limitation. We plan on automatically truncating these. Should I just cut the titles off at 70 characters or should I cut them off and add a "..."? Does it even matter?

[DougRoberts]

Thanks Alex, I had a feeling I'd read something about people trying to use multiple-snippets in a single meta-description to try and get relevant descriptions into the serps depending on the keywords used.

A bit too dependant on the whims of google for my liking, and if we're talking about an e-commerce site, then it's enough work generating a single quality description for each product let along multiple ones.

[Alex-Harford]

"If they are only going to be visible in the SERPS and you know they are going to be cut off then they will never see the words after the cut-off point."

That's not always true, but I see you question it later on - I have seen a few examples where people have used long meta descriptions with the intention of the SERPs displaying something different depending on the search made. Here's one I've just found: http://sharkseo.com/whitehat/meta-descriptions/ - though I've just done a search and I got the same meta description ("Dave is a freelance SEO consultant...") for both suggested searches.

If Google doesn't think your meta description is appropriate there's always a chance they'll replace it with something else on your page or the description from DMOZ.

You should definitely not add the ellipsis yourself, what if the length displayed is changed for example? I'd just ensure your first 155ish characters are well-written in a way that entices users to want to click through.

[DougRoberts]

When are the users likely to see the content of meta-descriptions?

If they are only going to be visible in the SERPS and you know they are going to be cut off then they will never see the words after the cut-off point.

Any effort writing these words is going to be wasted.

If these words are important in describing/selling the product then I'd reword the meta-description so that these were before the cut off point.

If you can make your description more concise without losing readability and avoid the cut-off altogether I'd go for that in preference.

I'm not sure if it's worth truncating the descriptions yourself and adding '...' or just letting the search engine do it. Would the search engine ever use a snippet from the middle/end of a meta-description? (perhaps someone else can answer that?)

Are these descriptions automatically generated from the page content?

What do you mean by a little long!?

[dbuckles]

Doug,

Thanks for the advice but that does not answer my question regarding truncating the description meta tag. Do you have any advice there?

Our descriptions are well written and are, of course, geared towards helping the end user. Some of them are a little long though which is why we are considering truncating them and adding a '...'.

Thanks, Alex

[DougRoberts]

Again, think about who's going to be reading the meta description and what you want it to do.

I like to think of the meta description (along with the title) as a classified-ad for your page when it is displayed in the SERPS. You want to use the description to help entice searchers to click on your page.

So, make it compelling, put keywords near the front so that they get highlighted, and try to reassure people that they are going to find what they're looking for by clicking on your page. If you can get some benefits in there, then that's even better.

[dbuckles]

Thanks very much for the replies. We'll avoid automatically truncating the title tag.

We are also automatically truncating the description meta tag, and adding '...' to the end if it is longer than 150 characters. Would you recommend not truncating this as well?

[Alex-Harford]

Definitely don't automatically truncate them. It doesn't matter if they're longer than 70 characters, it just means search engines will show an ellipsis after the 70th character on their results pages. Check out the 'SEO Best Practice' section here: http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo/title-tag

[DougRoberts]

If you want people to click on these snippets in the serps, also remember that you want to make the titles as appealing as possible. It's not just about ranking, but click though too!

I suspect that shorter, more straightforward titles, that closely match the search query, are going to perform better.

Take a look at what Amazon do for example (picked at random!):

Something like this in the H1:  "TeckNet NEW Kindle Leather Case / Cover With Magnetic Clasp for NEW Amazon Kindle / 6 inch / 2011 generation / Book Style - Black,TeckNet,MT-183-Black"

changes in the title tag to: "TeckNet NEW Kindle Leather Case: Amazon.co.uk: Electronics"

[YannickVeys]

I wouldn't do the simple "cut". You have to redo 850 titles? I say do em manually. Believe me, title tags are THE most important on page factor. Just truncating them won't give you any more SEO. Making them better and < 70 chars will.

Yes it sucks, yes it's a lot of manual shitty work, but it will bring you a lot more SEO wise, than just cutting them to 70 or so chars.

Do some proper research into what people are searching for, put your brand name at the end of the title, etc.