How long can your header be in number of characters?
-
hey all, have hear conflicting information on how many characters in the header you are allowed? i've heard 60, 65, and 70??
what are your thoughts?
thanks!!
-
thanks steve!
-
Just a little tip: If you're planning on playing around with differing titles and character lengths, rather than "change, wait for index, google, check, repeat", you could always use something like Photoshop to check:
Take a screenshot of a SERP with a truncated title, add a guide at the trunc point, match the font in Photoshop and type away until you hit the guide.
This way you can play around with a few titles before you go live with any of them.
-
Do you mean meta description or meta keywords?
If meta description, I think it does still have a small benefit to your SEO if optimisted properly, but more importantly the call to action function of it makes it very worth-while. I'd always put a custom one in, rather than let Google/Bing pull one in for me.
As for meta keywords, I think their time has past.
Google says they do not use the tag when deciding where to rank your site. We have to take what Google says with a pinch of salt, but I believe that this is true.
Bing and Yahoo are said to still take the tags into account - although even they admit it's a very small influence to their ranking.
I think why it has been abandoned by many, many sites is because it is a pretty clear give-away to a competitor over what keywords you're trying to target. All they have to do is look at your source code, look at your meta keywords and then they can see what keywords you might be trying to target.
For me, their time has passed and I don't use them at all when working with clients or on new sites. I believe I'm in the majority, but you certainly won't harm your site by using them, provided they are not over-optimised.
-
hey tom, one other question, do you think meta tags are a dinosaur these days?
i still think the search engines peek at them if they are relevant to your content?
thoughts?
-
No problem!
As always, testing things out for yourselves will give the best results, so if you know you have titles nearing the 65-70 length, Google them for yourself to make sure the title is showing up how you like.
-
thanks tom!!!
-
The general rule of thumb is 70 characters (with spaces).
The reason why there is discrepancy is that Google truncates titles on width, not actual character length. A 'W' is wider than a 'd' and so if you were to have 70 'W's, for some strange reason, the title would be shortened earlier.
If you're feel you're using certain "wide" characters in your titles, maybe they reoccur in your brand name (eg Wesley's Wheels), then 65 characters might be a better number to aim for. Other than that, 70 characters is usually fine.
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
-
How long you've seen it take to rank in small niche
Hello, How long do you see small niche sites taking to rank where they should be for their strength? Our last site took at least 6 months. Our current site's home page for our main term is stuck at around the 40th page and not moving. It's an exact match domain so it should be on at least page 2. We have one site in the industry already that carries similar products but it is much bigger with a much wider scope of products. It took a while to rank too. Our only backlinks I'm working on are Google & Youtube (and DMOZ), we have a facebook fan page. Our site is nicer than the site in position #1. Working on making as many pages as possible 10X content. Thank You, Bob
Algorithm Updates | | BobGW0 -
Can hreflang tags still work when the Alternate URL is 301 redirecting to a translated URL in Japanese Characters?
My organization has several international sites 4 of them of which have translated URLs in either Japanese, Traditional Chinese, German & Canadian French. The hreflang tags we have set up on our United States look something like this: But when you actually go to http://www.domain.co.jp/it-security/ you are 301 redirected to the translated URL version: www.domain.co.jp/it-セキュリティ/
Algorithm Updates | | brantmk
My question is, will Google still understand that the translated URL is the Alternate URL, or will this present errors? The hreflang tags are automated for each of our pages and would technically be hard to populate the hreflang with the translated URL version. However we could potentially make the hreflang something customized on a page level basis.0 -
We are being penalized for one specific key word (and phrases it appears in), how can we figure out why?
Overall our SEO efforts have worked well, slow and steady increases in rankings across the board for all products and categories, EXCEPT for one particular brand name. Key words and phrases for that brand consistently under perform all other key words and phrases. Strategies etc. are the same, and we have not received any notifications about 'manual action' but I'm convinced there is something affecting our ranking on that brand. This has been going on for approximately two years, prior to that we ranked very well for this brand. What sorts of tests can I run to try and find the problem?
Algorithm Updates | | absoauto0 -
Can I use schema markup for my Trustpilot results?
Hi we have excellent Trustpilot reviews & want to know if we can include these in schema markup in order for the results to show in SERPs? The Trustpilot results show in PPC but not SERPs. A competitor looks to have no Trustpilot or other independent reviews but is showing 5 stars in SERPs, i also cant find any customer reviews on their site, it looks to be just coding that is driving the SERPs view? Their site is goldencharter.co.uk Any thoughts much appreciated Thanks Ash
Algorithm Updates | | AshShep11 -
How long does google take to re-ranking pages in results?
I mean when google dance, the pages in results go up and down frequency every minue, but finally your page will rank in any position in google, what is the time when you get another position in google
Algorithm Updates | | engtamous0 -
How can the same key term change positioning seasonally impacting some companies and not others?
The company I do SEO work for is a vacation rental company. Through research, reports, and crunching numbers I've discovered the seasonality of the buiness (when what we do is a popular search and when it is not). The problem I've encountered is that our average position for google seems to follow this exact same seasonality, but only for us. What I mean is, as the season for looking up vacation rentals in our area fades away we take a serious nose dive in our positioning, yet when the season comes back we once again are first page. The other interesting fact is this isn't happening to the other companies who are in the same area. How can the same key term change positioning seasonally like that and impact some companies and not others? Can you give me some insights into where to at least look or pursue? I should have started with you guys, but I had so far spent 4 months trying to get answers and so far I've come up with nothing more than guesses and frustration. Please help me.
Algorithm Updates | | SSRMarketing0 -
Can anyone explain these changes to our Titles in the SERPS?
Hi there, We've been doing well in the SERPS over the past few weeks. Our previous meta title was displayed as: "Hunter Original Tall - Buy Original Tall Online Here" However, recently we've seen the title in the SERP switch over to: "Hunter Original Tall - Cloggs.co.uk" This has occurred on several of our product pages which display a particular style of a certain brand. So for example: "Ugg Bailey Button - Cloggs.co.uk" Has anyone else experienced these changes or can explain why this may have happened?
Algorithm Updates | | NigelJ
There is not change to the source code and our Titles have proven to have good click through rates in the past. Any ideas mozzers?0 -
Anyone have stats on numbers of Google users searching while logged in?
In light of Google's recent "social search update", I am curious to know how many Google users perform searches while logged into their Google account thereby showing "social results".
Algorithm Updates | | Gyi0