Shortening Titles
-
Have a ecommerce site using woocommerce. Most product titles contain the information needed for the product. I have shorten the title as much as possible but;
Most of the titles are about 18-19 characters over 70 characters the recommended max. I have removed all possible characters from the title but I could remove the site name - this would get it down by about 18 characters - meaning most titles would then be just under the 70 characters recommended.
Would removing the site name from the title of all the products be a bigger problem than good?
-
What do your customers care about?
It's harsh, but take a deep breath and ask yourself if your site name/brand really matters.(Remember those loyal customers will probably be going directly to your site or via a branded search rather than a search for individual products)
What's more attractive - "Dave's Widgets" or "Fast, reliable delivery..."
The rules are obviously different if you're a big brand with a widely recognised USP.
If you include the site name in the meta descriptions are you going to be losing space that you could be using to sell the product/value proposition/benefits?
If you do feel the site name is important, is this something you can test before you go ahead and make a site-wide change? (Evidence is better than opinion!)
-
Thanks for the reply Doug. Yes, currently the site name is getting cut off anyway. I want the title to appear in the search engine without having this: "..." half way thru, as it makes the tittle looks a little messy.
The site name is in the domain name which is clear for people to see. I could always add the site name into the meta description.
What do you think about doing that?
-
If you've got a reputable brand then having the site name/brand appended to the titles can help get click-throughs from the search results.
If you're appending the site/brand name to the end of the titles then these are just being cut off anyway so you won't be getting this benefit.
Hacking away at a title to get it under the recommended limit, and get your brand/site name in there risks leaving searchers looking at a meaningless, overly abbreviated and confusing title - which I'd say is a bigger problem than not including your site name. (Your domain is displayed in the search results too.)
Your titles have got to give searchers confidence that they're going to find the information/products/services they're looking for if they were to click on your site. What can you do to make these as compelling as possible?
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
-
Duplicate 'meta title' issue (AMP & NON-AMP Pages)
how to fix duplicate meta title issue in amp and non-amp pages? example.com
On-Page Optimization | | 21centuryweb
example.com/amp We have set the 'meta title' in desktop version & we don't want to change the title for AMP page as we have more than 10K pages on the website. ----As per SEMRUSH Tool---- ABOUT THIS ISSUE It is a bad idea to duplicate your title tag content in your first-level header. If your page’s <title>and <h1> tags match, the latter may appear over-optimized to search engines. Also, using the same content in titles and headers means a lost opportunity to incorporate other relevant keywords for your page.</p> <p><strong>HOW TO FIX IT</strong></p> <p>Try to create different content for your <title> and <h1> tags.<br /><br />this is what they are recommending, for the above issue we have asked our team to create unique meta and post title for desktop version but what about AMP page?<br /><br />Please help!</p></title>0 -
Capitals & Lowercase Titles being seen as different in MOZ
Hi All, Hope you can help. For some reason Moz is pulling up different versions of the same URL as confilicting / duplicate page content. Whats the best way to rectify this or is it something that I should just ignore. /NSW-locations , /NSW-Locations, Nsw-locations Very weird but they are the same page ?!? Cheers Dave
On-Page Optimization | | CFCU0 -
Is Google indexing something I can't see on my page title?
When I do a search for my businesses website (colourpages.com) it returns a listing which is great but the title tag includes Hull Colour Pages which is our old brand name - we changed to colourpages.com 2 years ago yet Hull Colour Pages is still pulling through on the title tag. I have checked the source and it's as follows: <title>Plumbers in Hull - Reviews - colourpages.com</title> I have attached a photo which shows the issue - http://imgur.com/Cva3001 Is Google indexing it from old history that is no longer visible or am I missing something? Cva3001
On-Page Optimization | | colourpages0 -
Avoid Multiple Page Title Elements ?
Page titles"GamesChannal – Video Games Review" and "gmaeschannal"ExplanationWeb pages are meant to have a single title, and for both accessibility and search engine optimization reasons, we strongly recommend following this practice.RecommendationRemove all but a single page title element. what and gmaeschannal ???? Site Title "GameChannel - Video Games Review and Latest News Video Review Game" Homepage www.gameschannal.com Help Me !!! 😞
On-Page Optimization | | GamesChannal0 -
Local SEO Title-Tag Optimization
Hi Everyone! A bit of a greenhorn SEO here, and I'm trying to learn a bit more about some of the best practices in local SEO. I'm wondering if anyone can help me with the following scenario: Business: Dental Care & Surgery Location: Springfield IN Name: Springfield Dental Care Experts (example) Website: 18 content pages, pages dedicated to each service Since there are 18 pages to work with, there are plenty of places for us to mix-up the title tags. However, I am still unclear as to what the best way would be to do this. I understand that the Geo-modifiers should go at the front, and that the brand name is considered optional. Would tags such as this make sense? Springfield IN Dentist | Springfield Dental Care Experts Nearby town Mountainview IN Dental Care | Springfield Dental Care Experts Last question: The website has pages for each of the services offered by the dentist, ex: Dental Cleanings, Consultations, Fillings, Surgery, etc. Should each of the pages be included in the title tag? Springfield IN Dentist | Springfield Dental Care Experts - Dental Surgery My concern is that buy adding this, the title tag would be too long. Thank you for taking the time to read and respond!
On-Page Optimization | | kbaltzell0 -
Using product prices in title tags & other ways to improve CTR
I'm about to launch a new website and was just wondering if anyone had tried this before; On product pages i thought it may be a good idea to include prices, with a message to save more when the customer buys more. Something along the lines of this; [Product name] at/from [Brand name] - Only [Price] [Buy # to save] Etc. Does anyone have any experience with using this in title tags (along with some variation of offering a saving when bulk buying) etc? Any comments would be hugely appreciated! Thanks! [EDIT] Should also just note that we are very competitive on pricing - Looked at more than 70 competitors and we're offering better quality products (than the ones from [supposedly top] competitors we've sampled) for lower prices.
On-Page Optimization | | tea0 -
Thoughts on Results from Changing Title Tags
A number of the client's we represent have seen drops in rankings. The title tags on these sites are formatted old way of doing tilte: "Blue Widgets| Cheap Widgets | Metal Widgets". We are going to change them to the natural format: Acme Offers Blue, Metal Widgets for Any Budget." Just wondering if anyone has made similar changes post-penguin and if they've seen improved ranking from doing it.
On-Page Optimization | | TopFloor0 -
Related keywords in title/H1 tag
Hi, I am trying to improve our rankings for pages with photos/images. For the title is it benificial to include keywords that are almost identical in nature? For example: "Brad Pitt Photos and Images" In Google trends photos and images are both commonly used words so including both seems like it would help. When I search for each one separately in Google (Brad Pitt Photos vs Brad Pitt Images) different sites are returned (except for the ones that include both image and photos keywords). I had read that Google knows that Images and Photos mean the same thing, but the search results do vary. I know stuffing all related combinations isn't good, but selective phrases seem to make a difference. Just want to verify if this makes sense. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | NicB10