Title Element length too long?
-
My site automatically builds a title element basic by taking the forum thread title and adding the board description to it.
Let's use a fictional site as "Gaggle - Chevy Corvette Lovers forums" in this example.
A user makes a post titled "Transmission Problems" then the automatically created title would be:
Transmission Problems | Gaggle - Chevy Corvette Lovers forums
The process seems to be helpful. Overall thread ranking is good. The added words provide value to users searching for information as "Transmission Problems" is too vague, whereas by adding Chevy Corvette the search can be optimized better.
The only issue is a small percent of my pages are being flagged by reporting tools with "Title Element Too Long"
So I wish to ask, is there any real harm in this case? Google will simply truncate the title, right?
-
The key issue you wrote about, titles that are too long, relates to how well a page matches the topical focus within the title.
Too many words in a title can cause topical dilution if they're all keyword phrases.
In my experience, have the most important / most relevant content at the front of the title relative to the page topic. So from that regard you're doing it properly. Generally speaking, I teach clients to keep the individual page title to 70 characters. Not to prevent dilution specifically, but to ensure the entire title shows up in the Google search results although Google sometimes overrides your given title for one of their own if they think your title doesn't truly match the page focus.
When a title goes beyond 70 characters, if the extra text is brand focused, it's not a terrible thing. Google will still process the entire title, it's just the whole thing won't show up in the results pages.
Having all the titles appended after the unique forum topic with your forum brand is not 100% ideal in regard to matching the individual page topic, however it's perfectly acceptable from an overall branding perspective.
As for MagentoWebDeveloper and his concern with repetition, there is truth to that, to a certain degree, however it's not as major an impact because you do have each title prepended with the individual page's topical focus.
And the more you do to focus on across-the-board SEO, the less concern that becomes.
-
Using "Gaggle - Chevy Corvette Lovers forums" many times over and over again may seem a little spammy. If 100% of your threads/titles have "Gaggle - Chevy Corvette Lovers forums", I think you may run into problems. I saw a video 2 weeks ago of Matt Cutts talking about that. I thing it on YouTube under GoogleWebmasterHelp. I know you are not intentionally trying to spam, but 1000 if you have 1000 of those, I don't think anyone can argue it.
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
-
Questions in regard to putting 2-3 keywords in a title tag.
Hi all, Here is the situation. There are two services A and B in the page. B is more like a complement to A (they have something in common). C is the umbrella term over A and B. However, our company focuses more on A (70%) than B (30%). Questions: 1. Can I rank the keyword A for the page, while the page has B? (e.g. A | brand name) Will it hurt the seo, with B being in the page? 2. If I write the title tag this way: A | B | brand name . Will A and B dilute each other? 3. How about this: **A | C | brand name **(the idea behind this: We focus on A, but also include C because we have B in the page.) Does this make any sense? I am a newbie to SEO and I realize that could be confusing. Thank you for any support and explanation.
Web Design | | Raymondlee0 -
Is The HREF Link "Title" Tag Needed on Mobile Websites?
Hello To Those Who Are Wiser Than I, I am wondering if the href link "title" tag is needed, or serves any purpose, on mobile websites? Also, does it effect SEO in any way? I ask because generally the href link title tag provides more information to the user when they scroll their mouse over the link - but this action does not happen on mobile! Users have no mouse and thus no extra information would be displayed. I'm really wondering if it still matters for SEO purposes on mobile though. -The UnEnlightened
Web Design | | Stew2220 -
Redirects Not Working / Issue with Duplicate Page Titles
Hi all We are being penalised on Webmaster Tools and Crawl Diagnostics for duplicate page titles and I'm not sure how to fix it.We recently switched from HTTP to HTTPS, but when we first switched over, we accidentally set a permanent redirect from HTTPS to HTTP for a week or so(!).We now have a permanent redirect going the other way, HTTP to HTTPS, and we also have canonical tags in place to redirect to HTTPS.Unfortunately, it seems that because of this short time with the permanent redirect the wrong way round, Google is confused as sees our http and https sites as duplicate content.Is there any way to get Google to recognise this new (correct) permanent redirect and completely forget the old (incorrect) one?Any ideas welcome!
Web Design | | HireSpace0 -
Google result showing old Meta Title / Description even though page view source shows new info.
Hey guys! I'm struggling with why Google is ignoring my Meta Title / Description. I made a pretty drastic change to both about a week ago and on the results it hasn't changed. I'm on first page with several keywords and I think this weird caching is hurting me on where I'm at on the page. Thoughts / Ideas?
Web Design | | curtis_williams0 -
Spammy page titles and the consequences
Hiya Mozzers! A pal who works in SEO has suggested I add the following type <title>tag structure to my pages:<br /><br />Bars in New York - Bars New York [no brand name]</p> <p>Pizzas in New York - Pizzas New York [no brand name]</p> <p>Firstly, I think this looks spammy, secondly, can't understand the logic of both combinations, thirdly, my understanding is brand name lessens importance of keyphrases, but it's still important from a branding point of view.</p> <p>Fourthly, is this sustainable? I mean, Google could identify this as spammy in the future, with penalty, no? Any feedback on these points would be very useful.</p> <p>Also, he said that I should play around with title tags on an ongoing basis, but I haven't changed any single title tag more than once/6 months for fear of being flagged for manipulative SEO practice by Google. Guidance here would be great as well.</p> <p>Thanking you in advance, Luke</p></title>
Web Design | | McTaggart0 -
How will engines deal with duplicate head elements e.g. title or canonicals?
Obviously duplicate content is never a good thing...on separate URL's. Question is, how will the engines deal with duplicate meta tags on the same page. Example Head Tag: <title>Example Title - #1</title> <title>Example Title - #2</title> My assumption is that Google (and others) will take the first instance of the tag, such that "Example Title - #1" and canonical = "http://www.example.com" would be considered for ranking purposes while the others are disregarded. My assumption is based on how SE's deal with duplicate links on a page. Is this a correct assumption? We're building a CMS-like service that will allow our SEO team to change head tag content on the fly. The easiest solution, from a dev perspective, is to simply place new/updated content above the preexisting elements. I'm trying to validate/invalidate the approach. Thanks in advance.
Web Design | | PCampolo0 -
Meta Title and Description for click through optimization
I have a few years experience optimizing PPC text for click-through and conversion rates. I don't see many web sites that are using these methods for their organic listings generated from meta tags. Why is this? So many meta tags seem to be either keyword stuffed or auto generated. From my research, it seems that keywords in meta tags mean little to search engine optimization other than the fact that vertically aligning keywords from search phrase to listing to landing page is important. (Just like it is in PPC). Now that I am personally doing more than just PPC, I have begun rewriting meta text for increased conversions. The search results look to me like My web site is the only one doing this. Is everyone missing out on something, or am I missing something?
Web Design | | EugeneF0 -
SEOMoz crawl report shows a duplicate content and duplicate title for these two url's http://freightmonster.com/ and http://freightmonster.com/index.html. How do I fix this?
What page is attached to http://freightmonster.com/ if it is not the index.html ? Should I do a redirect from the index page to something more descriptive?
Web Design | | FreightBoy1