Does >70 character title tag affect a pages ranking in search?
-
We are a publication that puts out hundreds of articles a month. We have +5000 medium priority errors showing that our title element tags are too long. The title tag is structured like this: [Headine] | [Publication Name that is 23 characters] . However, since we are a publication, it's not practical for us to try to limit the length of our title tags to 70 characters or less because doing so would make the titles of our content seem very unnatural. We also don't want to remove the branding because we want it to go with the article when it's shared (and to appear when some titles are short enough to allow room in SERPs).
I understand the reasons for limiting characters to 70 or less with regard to SERP friendliness. We try to keep key phrases in the front. People are more likely to click on a page if they know what it's about etc etc. My question is, do the longer titles affect the ability for the page to rank in search? To put it a different way, if we altered all the +5000 of the title tags to fit within 70 characters, would the page authorities and our site's domain authority increase?
I'd like to avoid needed to clean up 5000 pages if the medium priority errors aren't really hurting us. Any input is appreciated. Thanks!
-
If your page titles are right for your readers then I really would not worry about this one too much. Users > search engines.
-
Best practice is to write titles for your audience keeping keywords in mind, but not obsessing over length. Although only the first 512 pixels (50-70 words) of the title tag will show, some believe longer titles are better for SEO purposes because they allow you to fit in more keywords. The first 512 pixels should be catchy with your keyword to help CTR, but anything after that doesn't show can still help in terms of SEO. Do not worry about changing the titles of those 5000 pages. It could even end up hurting your rankings in the SERPs.
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 to rank an ecommerce site for search terms starting with how where why
Hi guys, I just got a new SEO job for an e commerce store, the client is asking to rank the site for keywords like where to buy used phone, where to sell my used phone for for best rates and so, the question is how can i achieve that, can anyone help me with some concrete suggestion? Thanks in Advance,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mkhurramali0 -
How to stagger <h>tags?</h>
This might seem like a silly question, but It's one that I would like to get some responses from the SEO community. Do <h>tags need to be staggered according to the numbers? For example: A few of our clients have their h1 tag listed on a mid-way header that is halfway down their page, and there are both h2's and h3's listed before the h1 in the source code. Does this matter? Let me know!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TaylorRHawkins
Thanks! </h>2 -
Help me to understand why this page doesn't rank
Hello everyone. I am trying to understand why most of my website category pages don't show up in the in the first 50 organic results on Google, despite my high website DA and high PA of those pages. We used to rank high a few years ago, not clear why most of those pages have almost completely disappeared. So, just to take one as an example, please, help me to understand why this page doesn't shows up in the first 50 organic search results for the keyword "cello sheet music": http://www.virtualsheetmusic.com/downloads/Indici/Cello.html I really can't explain why, unless we are under some sort of "penalization" or similar (a curse?!)... I have analyzed any possible metric, and can't find a logical explanation. Looking forward for your thoughts guys! All the best, Fab.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
Optimal Page Titles to avoid cannibalization
Hi there Moz community I spent today researching optimal "page titles" to avoid cannibalization of keyword. Why? Because when i set up my site previously for another industry I obviously well and truly stuffed it up with page titles that were different, but still too similar ie field marketing project setup, field marketing saas, field marketing reporting. I never ranked once for that term. Consequently, we nearly went broke in the process. Hence my research, which led me to Rands video and other information about choosing the best page title. However, I came across two opposing name theories. So, before i make a colossal error again, could someone please clearly clarify which would be the best way for me to proceed. First option(according to Rand's video about the snowboard website) Main page title - Field reporting and mobile data collection (same keywords as site title?) Subsequent pages - titles - (p1) Field reporting for construction (2) field reporting for medical (p3) field reporting for retail (or is that cannibalizing "field reporting"?) Second option Main landing page - Field reporting Solutions for your business, for your industry Subsequent page titles - (p1) defect inspection & reporting for construction (p2) incident reporting for medical But my quandary is that I wanted to rank for mobile data collection and field reporting for these industries. So how do I write the page titles without firstly keyword stuffing, secondly avoid cannibalization and lastly, not too long? Any explanation that specifically says yes or no would be greatly appreciated Thanks in advance and happy friday. Sharon
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sharonrice0 -
Silo not ranking for main silo page - what can I do?
Hi everyone, I set up a silo for my page http://werkzeug-kasten.com/ . Unfortunately only the silos inner pages rank very good. These are for example http://werkzeug-kasten.com/suchmaschinenoptimierung-seo-freiburg/keyword-analyse/ for "Keywordanalyse SEO Freiburg" <a>http://werkzeug-kasten.com/suchmaschinenoptimierung-seo-freiburg/onpage-seo/</a> for "Onpage SEO Freiburg" ... but the silos main page <a>http://werkzeug-kasten.com/suchmaschinenoptimierung-seo-freiburg/</a> does not rank for "SEO Freiburg". Do you have any idea why that might be? Cheers, Marc
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RWW0 -
Should the Title Tag and the H1 Tag not be the same or not anymore and can that be classed as over optimization?
Hi All, I am just evaluating my title tags, H1,H2's etc and wondered in light of the google algorithm changes over the last 12 months , we should look at more diversity as opposed to things possibly looking over optimized... Originally (18 months ago) my Title tags considered of 2/3 keyword phrases , then I reduced this to my keyword phrase | Brand Name but a majority of my H1's and H2's had the same keyword phrases. Historically this has served us very well and rankings for good but over the last 12 months, we were hit by panda, hummingbird etc...and which we are trying to recover from and from what I have read, the rules have changed with regards to good seo./ over optimized SEO. We have been writting unique content , making more of our links branded etc to sort things out from that perspective but on the page stuff is just as important so I would like to get this right. I am now thinking , that I may be getting penalized if my H1 and title's , H2 are the same ? and that they should be obviously related but different. H2's again , need to be related but not the same as either of the above. Is that how things should be these days ? from what I have read about this, most of the articles are not that recent so I don't what to do what is now redundant advice Any advice greatly appreciated. Thanks Pete
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Getting a Home Page to Rank
Hi Mozzers, My question specifically has to do with optimizing a home page for specific keywords, but still keeping the design clean and not cluttered.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W
How do you guys prefer to go about it? Currently our home page only really gets traffic for branded keywords (though we do have some rankings for real keywords showing in GWT which I can't really explain). I know how to write content for specific long-tail keywords, but we want to keep our homepage very clean, not filled with gobs of text. Right now my main plan is to display content under a "Read More.." button.
What do you pros suggest? Thanks!0 -
What is the downside with having too long of a title tag?
With Google placing so much relevance on title tags, it seems to help if you mention local cities within your title tag. I'm wondering if the positive of having more keywords in a title tag outweighs the negative of having too long of one?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TLSNET0