Title tag - shorter = better?
-
Is it true that the shorter the Title tag is the more powerful the keywords in it are?
I know that the main keywords have to be at the beginning of the title but, having more words in your Title could dilute the effectiveness of your main keywords?Ex: Dallas limo service | Private car by SelectLimousine.
Could the fact that I have a second part of my title affect the first part by diluting its value? I would like to rank first for Dallas car service but also for Dallas car service and Dallas limousine service. Is this good practice?
-
Why would SeoMoz not wish to appear on Page 1 of serps as such a position a) would bring new subscribers and b) demonstrate they are not summed up by the idiom; Those who can,do; those who can't, teach
In the past I have met a number of SEO companies who make a play on the 'we're not about our results, we're about your results' Ahem, perhaps you can't match the SEO skills of your competitors?
Anyway back to the topic, I am interested in your understanding of how ranking importance is distributed,that each keyword in a title tag is given its share along the lines of; If the title is one word like "SEO" then that word is given 100 points. If the title is "Search Engine Optimization" then each term would be given about 33 points. As many have suggested the earlier the keyword appears in the tag, the more importance it received and therefore the share for this title might be 45,35,20?
Lets look at an example of a title tag for a eCommerce site
Toshiba 3D LCD TVs | Free Delivery | TH32TT | TH42TT | Tellys.com
As free delivery often help conversions (though of course title tags are not often read by humans) there is worthwhile search volume. Also the two most popular model numbers also receive search volume. (please ignore that this may cause competition with product pages and assume that this is a one page site and/or there will be no duplication or internal conflict). In this case just how much negative effect are these extra keywords inficting? Would it be better to strip back to Toshiba 3D LCD TVS ???
Thanks
-
Presently SEOmoz is not on the first page of Google for "SEO Software" nor "simple seo software". If they wanted to be, I am sure they could optimize pages for these terms and appear on the first page of Google SERPs.
Titles are not purely about ranking. There is the branding factors and how you wish people to think of your company. From a pure ranking perspective for "SEO software", you are correct the term "simplified" should be removed. I would bet Rand prioritized presenting his company slogan in the title above having the page rank well.
-
It would be interesting to see some answers from Seomoz; their Title says: SEO Software. Simplified. | SEOmoz. Why would they dilute the first part of their Title? I do not think that "simplified" is one of their key terms.
-
Is that the case even if [the title is] below 64 chars?
Yes. I think you may be confusing Google's title display limit (about 70 chars) with this question. How many characters Google will display is not related to the weighting for each word in the title.
I just went back and re-watched all the Matt Cutts videos where the title was discussed. It was never confirmed by Matt that adding extra keywords to title tags causes the dilution. Even so, I am still convinced that is the case and will act on that understanding.
I base my opinion on a few patents from Google that I have reviewed, other articles, and my logical understanding of how Google works.
The below video discusses titles and Matt describes how Google recognizes when Title tags or Meta description tags contain the same information throughout the site. I have to believe Google recognizes the site name appended to the end of a title tag as a common practice and adjusts accordingly.
In summary, I maintain my understanding the title tag itself is given a certain weight. Let's say 100 "points". If the title is one word like "SEO" then that word is given 100 points. If the title is "Search Engine Optimization" then each term would be given about 33 points. This is the way I see the weight of title tags being distributed, in a similar way to a page's PR is distributed to the links on a page. If anyone agrees or disagrees with this thinking I would enjoy hearing other opinions.
-
Is that the case even if below 64 chars? If so, there are very many of us who think anything up to 64 is fine and have added unnecessary keywords or other text. eg a very common approach is for a product page title Cheap Blue Widget | Widgetsrus.com Online. You are suggesting anything past the pipe is reducing power of title tag? As most domain names will already rank bvery well placing them in title tag would therefore be bad practice?
-
Is it true that the shorter the Title tag is the more powerful the keywords in it are?
Yes
If that wasn't the case, then it would encourage site owners to create longer titles with every possible key word and phrase. Title: Dallas Limo Service | Dallas Limousine Service | Dallas Limos | etc. etc.
As you ad additional key words to your title you are adding relevancy to your page for those search results, but less relevancy then any page which only targets one key phrase. A page which focuses a single topic is considered a more relevant result then a page who's focus is divided amongst multiple topics.
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
-
Is it important to have the brand name in all page title?
Hi Moz community, May be this is an obvious question but as i am not sure about the answer.... I prefer to ask you! If yes, is "keywords" - "BRAND NAME " the good option? If not, is there any rule? Thanks a lot, Amaury
On-Page Optimization | | adbds19730 -
Using Canonical Tags on Every Page
I'm doing competitive research and noticed that one of our competitors (who outranks us) uses canonical tags on every page on their site. The canonical tags reference the page they are on. For example. www.competitor.com/product has a canonical tag of www.competitor.com/product. Does anyone use this practice? It seems strange to me. Thank you, Kristen
On-Page Optimization | | Ksink0 -
Titles
Our site http://villasdini.com is offering beach villas on sunny Diani beach in Kenya. I have a category with beach villas in Diani beach which I want to be shown in serp if somebody search for Diani beach villas, or Diani beach hotels, Diani beach accommodation etc. I have also category with small boutique hotels, which I want to be shown in serp if somebody search for Diani beach villas, or Diani beach hotels, Diani beach accommodation etc. Should I also include Diani beach in titles? Will that not be too much of Diani bech in titles? I am afraid I have anyway already too much of "Diani beach" keyword and perhaps I am even punished for it as I can't rank for this keyword at all almost a year:-( I also want to rank on Diani beach itself and I have created Diani beach page which I want to be shown in serp when somebody search for Diani beach. I am kind of getting crazy of this:-( Any advice what I am doing wrong and what strategy I should rather do? Thank you very much, Iris
On-Page Optimization | | Rebeca10 -
Title Attribute Length + Use
Hi, Is there an optimum character limit for attribute titles like there is for meta titles? On my ecommerce site I am adding about 280 characters product category page headers to succinctly describe what the page is such as in the example below; MENS BRIEFS + TANGAS We stock a range of mens briefs from leading designer brands that offer popular cuts and fabrics such as mens cotton briefs. You will also discover styles that are a little more risqué for those looking for something more daring in sexy mens briefs and tangas. I have added the following [title attribute] to this header text (MENS BRIEFS + TANGAS)so it displays the following title attribute text when you hover over it. My intention behind this is so that it enables me to provide visitors with access (via assistive reading software or hovering their cursor over the header text) to a bit more information, which they my find useful [title attribute text] - Mens briefs and tangas. These are possibly the most common and long established style of mens underwear, yet they still come in a variety of cuts and styles. The common feature amongst all men’s briefs is that they have a full rear panel that partly or entirely covers the bottom. They will have cut away legs, a pouch at the front and are supported with an elasticated waistband. Briefs and tangas can vary in the amount coverage in the side panels around the hips and top of the legs and the rear. The more revealing and skimpier tanga style usually consists of only a pouch at the front that is supported with an elasticated waistband and a minimalist rear, with no side panels that exposes the hips.[title attribute text] Is this too much? Can search engines penalise me for it? Am I using/misusing title attributes? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | UnderMe0 -
Meta Title for Category Pages
I am trying to improve the SEO for a few key category pages on my blog. I have two ranking really well so I want to boost them and bring up some others. Can I put two keywords in the meta title? Example: Maternity Deals | Pregnancy Deals Or should I just stick with one? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | dealblogger0 -
Title Tag and Company Name
Hello everyone! The company I work for has an e-commerce site that needs to be optimized. I am starting from the title tags which are too long and need optimized for specific keywords. Thing is that each title tag contains the specific keywords for the page and the company name. My question is should I keep the company name within the title tags or should I just keep the keywords I target for those pages? How will it affect my rank? Cheers Oscar
On-Page Optimization | | PremioOscar0 -
Duplicate page titles
We have search results pages on our site. They share the same page title, there is no real differentiator between the result pages, other than page 1, page 2 etc. How do we de-dup the titles? just add page 1/2/3 etc to the end of them?
On-Page Optimization | | lilibooz0 -
Google seems upset that I took their advice. [Titles and alt tags for images.]
Hey all, I accidentally posted this as a private question and now want to post it publicly due to some updates (for the worse.) I'm a photographer and the site I'm talking about is my portfolio site. It is very image heavy and had basically no text. Those who have consistently beat me (positions 1,2, etc.) in SERPs for my key search phrases have a modest amount of text on their pages. I'd been doing OK in SERPs (top 3-5 for my key search phrases) over the past couple years and my site has decent age and domain authority (a good number of relevant inbound links from extremely reputable sources over the years, etc. etc.) [In case it matters, my root domain has a PageRank of 4 and I have a couple internal pages with PR5.] For years I resisted adding any text because I was trying to obey Google's rule to design "for people, not search engines." Over the past couple of months, though, I got some advice on the SEOMoz webinar about adding (relevant) alt text and body text, and also read Google's Webmaster Central article about giving images good titles and alt tags, so I decided to take the plunge about ten days ago. I went through the site and added modest amounts of relevant text to pages where it was appropriate and where it didn't detract (too much) from the design. I made sure my images had sensible human-readable alt tags that were descriptive and made sure not to do any keyword stuffing. Finally, I edited some of my page titles so that they were a little more descriptive. Again, nothing extreme or radical or spammy. (But overall, esp. from Google's perspective, there were some fairly significant changes in a short period of time.) Well.. you're all already guessing what's next. As soon as Google saw these changes, I tanked pretty badly. I went from position 3-5 on my key phrases to positions like 16-25 and spent a few days in those positions. Now I'm just gone & buried somewhere in Google's boneyard. My latest ranking report for today shows me "not in top 50" for any of my key phrases on Google. I'm #1 for many of those same terms/phrases on Bing and Yahoo. (Always have fared very well with them.) Google's webmaster tools says my sitemap is OK and most of the URLs submitted are in the index. Please tell me this is temporary, while Google deals with my changes? (Actually don't, just tell me what you really think.) 🙂 Thank you all...
On-Page Optimization | | vdms0