How serious an issue is Title Element Too Long (> 70 Characters)?

[Benj25]

Hi,

We have about 3000 of these, how serious an issue is this considered?

Is it simply the fact that Google won't index the keywords if they are over 70 characters?

Could we strip out common words here:

50 Worship Ideas for Small Groups by Stuart Townend | World of Books.com

Like 'for', 'by' and probably the '.com'?

[Matt-Williamson]

Hi Benjamin - it looks like you have a real challenge - you could drop your branding to help cut the size down as Irving suggested, however you are still going to have an issue with books that have long titles, as I am sure you have numerous that surpass 70 characters. In this situation I think you will just have to exceed it as this has to be the case for your competition as well - anyone selling books is likely to have long page titles. Have you checked your competitions tactics? I would have a look at Amazon if I were you...

[irvingw]

I would take out your branding to trim this a bit - it will hardly ever show in the SERPS anyways. You can use your meta description tag for the branding.

[Benj25]

Yeah definitely. It's just hard with book titles, as most of the title is relevant - even when long.

Eg:

A Book of Cuttings: Stories of Gardens and Gardeners in Berkshire by Alison Haymonds | World of Books.com

If we drop the .com and change it to:

Book of Cuttings: Stories Gardens, Gardeners in Berkshire by Alison Haymonds | World of Books

We are still at 93 characters and it makes much less sense.

[Matt-Williamson]

I would say that it is important to make sure you have title tags that stick to the 70 characters or less rule - here is some findings in relation to this by SEOMoz which I think you will find very interesting and current (only published a couple of weeks ago) - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/long-title-tags

Hope this helps - I think you could look at stripping the common words out as long as your page title is still clear, makes sense and an appropriate label for your page.