I run a Q&A site, should I limit post questions to 64 characters?
-
I run a Q&A site (Recessionitis.com), should I limit posts (questions) to 64 characters for SEO purposes?
-
Yes, go ahead and ignore those warnings. There was another recent question about this and the help desk said they could be ignored.
The help desk generally doesn't just browse Q&A, as they keep busy enough with the help forums and the tickets submitted to them. If there is a problem that might be affecting a large number of users, then I'll flag a Q&A question and ask them to come and take a look at things.
-
I'm guessing you want to limit the question length because you want to create an appropriate title tag. Why not have unlimited space for the question, but start off with a box saying, "Please summarize your question." and use that for the title?
-
Thanks! We do have an additional details field.
One more question, in SEOmoz diagnostics, I'm getting warnings for "Title Element Too Long" because the crawler is rendering apostrophes as "'" adding 5 characters per apostrophe. Should I be ignoring those warnings?
-
Do the users have a chance for an expanded question beyond the 64 characters, or is that the proposed entire question limit? If that's the entire question limit, I would certainly say to not limit it so much.
The question at http://recessionitis.com/what-is-the-lowest-fare-roundtrip-to-atlanta-from-oakland-california/ is "What is the lowest round trip fare to Atlanta from Oakland, CA?", which is 63 characters. There's a response asking what dates, yet the OP never responded.
My gut says that by limiting the question so much you're going to limit the amount of information the person is able to give, and thus limit the amount of answer a person can give without knowing more detail, and you may never be able to get that detail out of the OP in time. Or, you'll have someone answer, only to have the OP come back and say "oh, but I don't want any layovers" or "I refuse to travel on airline xyz". You're still likely to get people who don't make complete questions, but I would say don't hamstring those who did want to give more information just because you don't want to trigger the "..." in the SERP.
-
That will improve user experience in the SERP and site may see more visits. Only very lengthy or short title will send wrong signals.
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
-
On-Page Optimization Question
My company sells Blue widgets and we are located in Denver, CO. Keyword research indicates that the the highest volume phrase is "blue widgets for sale in denver co". Should my meta title tag be: Blue Widgets for sale in Denver CO , and my h1 tag be the same? or should they be semantic phrases? Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | FicklingCompany0 -
Unsure about improvement of inner sites
Hi ! I want to improve the ranking of Home on my site. Now I did some on-page SEO on Home itself for the keyword "Webdesign Freiburg". How much does it make sense to put this keyword also into inner sites - although I primarily want to rank Home for this keyword? Does Home profit from putting the keyword into subpages? Cheers and thanks Marc
On-Page Optimization | | RWW0 -
2 Canonical questions
QUESTION 1
On-Page Optimization | | Marketing_Today
I'm working on a site where a canonical link is implemented as That's not the normal format that I am used to, as I would have written it as Is that a problem? QUESTION 2
Why do so many sites these days have a sitewide canonical tag which refers to itself as the canonical?
For example: http://www.site.co.uk/page has a canonical of0 -
Author snippet image in results, question!
Hi, Quick question really, I can see how a Google+ profile picture showing up in the results can increase CTR and even trust but would this be a no no for a normal website? I mean if you had a website which offered personal training, so a brand rather than an individual would you not use this snippet? I've seen some website, even ecommerce sites using this tag to just increase their CTR.
On-Page Optimization | | Bondara0 -
Question about Multi-national Websites
I am about to work on a multi-national site and need some more information about what I should consider regarding: content keyword research anything else My biggest question is regarding content. The company would like a UK version of the site with a different URL, but plan to keep the content essentially the same, with the exception of a few minor details. In this case, would duplicate content still be an issue? If so, any suggestions for working around this? Any strategy information on multi-national sites would be really helpful. Thank you! Erin
On-Page Optimization | | HiddenPeak0 -
Scripts question
My question is whether search engines will crawl the page before or after scripts run on the page. I have a H1 that will be replaced with a canvas by jquery script. Will search engines see the H1 or the canvas?
On-Page Optimization | | lojdqvist0 -
Site Speed Expert Referral Needed
We're looking for someone who can diagnose some site speed issues AND adjust the code, servers, etc. as needed. Does anyone know of an expert in this area?
On-Page Optimization | | BryanPhelps-BigLeapWeb0 -
Site-wide keyword density
A colleague of mine was saying that he has been able to get top ranking for a high traffic term by using variations of that head term on multiple pages that are associated with the main page. For example,he would optimize a landing page for the high traffic word "Construction." He would then build pages under this landing page that are optimized for variations of this word: "Construction facts," "Industrial Construction Companies," "Construction Resource Allocator" etc. His theory is that the subpages add credibility with spiders that the root page is the best for that root page. This doesn't seem like it would work, but I'm curious as to what other people think.
On-Page Optimization | | EricVallee340