Title tags with >70 characters but most important words at start. Is this really a problem?
-
Is there in fact any kind of negative impact having title tags longer than 70 characters, as long as I place the most important keywords at the start and make sure that title still is compelling when cut somewhere around 70 characters?
Are the additional words after the 70 characters limit just ignored? May additional words dillute the strength of the first words or may they even be helpful ?
Any experience or any studies you know about impact of longer title tags? Or any statement from google about it?
-
thanks everybody for the feedback.
I actually also stumbled upon an excellent whiteboard friday from Cyrus related to the topic (also excellent comments at the bottom of the post)
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/title-tags-is-70-characters-the-best-practice-whiteboard-friday
-
Tim answered your question correctly and I'm going to give him a thumbs up for that buddy
-
Exactly what Tim said, its more about User Experience than anything else. I know top competitors with 70+ and rank well.
Having that ... at the end leaves me wondering most of the time
-
Look at it this way: You are telling the search engine what your page is about and why the page should be considered relevant. This is hard to do with a lot of title words. In a perfect SEO world you would have one title phase, have the H1 tag match that title phase, and try to mention the phase in the first part of the text. Use parts of the phrase throughout the text. All is lost if you are worried about writing for search rather than people. It is a myth that the search engines consider the first key word phase the most important, they look at all the title words and try and see how they are relevant to the text. So more key words the harder it will be to make all of them relevant in the text. Do the work create relevant pages for each key word or phrase.
<object id="plugin0" style="position: absolute; z-index: 1000;" type="application/x-dgnria" width="0" height="0"><param name="tabId" value="ff-tab-51"><param name="counter" value="1392"></object>
-
You like that sort of information SEOmoz beginners guide at search engine optimization Or
-
thanks Tim, thanks eyepaq
The point with the dilution is very interesting
Do you remember any sources where anybody tested whether dilution takes place or did you yourself see significant changes in ranking after shortening title tags? -
Tim covered this well.
As an addon comment:
May additional words dillute the strength of the first words or may they even be helpful ?
** Yes, more words - will dilute the strength of the keywords even if those are placed in front. Count it like - the strength is split between the number fo words in the Title Tag.
Cheers.
-
One area where it will have an indirect negative impact is in CTR from the SERPs. The Title gets a searcher's attention, while the Desc sells them on the click. Anything beyond 70 char is not there for the searcher or visitor's sake since they won't see it. This could lead to a negative impact in CTR which is a trust factor issue. If your CTR is less than surrounding sites in the SERPs on a consistent basis, you will likely start to see rank drops.
Here is a Matt Cutts video on Title that emphasizes this point: http://youtu.be/THYguer_JrM
Beyond the user experience concern, it comes down to whether the extra characters are being used for keyword stuffing or not. If not, it probably won't have a significant negative impact, but then you have to ask yourself why did I choose to use these extra characters...
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
-
Why isn't there a browser tab title AND meta title?
Personal opinion; as a user, it makes sense for me to want a full 50+ character meta title which displays in a search engine that helps me determine if I want to click that link AND a concise browser tab title that tells me which page and brand I have open. As a search engine, I would (possibly wrongly) suppose that having one more piece user-facing of information would be helpful in understanding a page and that page's relation to the rest of the website. Theoretical example Meta title: A great title for the website I've been dreaming of! | OurBrand Browser tab title: Home | OurBrand
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sb10300 -
Is there a problems with putting encoding into the subdomain of a URL?
We are looking at changing our URL structure for tracking various affiliates from: https://sub.domain.com/quote/?affiliate_id=xxx to https://aff_xxx_affname.domain.com/quote/ Both would allow us to track affiliates, but the second would allow us to use cookies to track. Does anyone know if this could possibly cause SEO concerns? Also, For the site we want to rank for, we will use a reverse proxy to change the URL from https://aff_xxx.maindomain.com/quote/ to https://www.maindomain.com/quote/ would that cause any SEO issues. Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RoxBrock0 -
Importing Keyword Planner Data into Excel?
What is the most efficient way to import search volume information into excel? We have 130K keywords that we need search volume information for.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | nicole.healthline0 -
Problem with SEO for my Image based website.
My website focuses on movie posters. I'm having a little debate on what is the best way to have images linked to. The current image location is stored like this: /movie-name/poster-1.jpg
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | thedevilseeker
/movie-name/poster-2.jpg Is it best to leave it like that or change it to : /movie-name/movie-name-poster-1.jpg
/movie-name/movie-name-poster-1.jpg The reason I ask, is that I read today that Google uses the image name to help detect what the image is about. At the same time, if the movie name is the in folder structure, along with the image name... wouldn't it start to look like keyword stuffing?0 -
Are pages with a canonical tag indexed?
Hello here, here are my questions for you related to the canonical tag: 1. If I put online a new webpage with a canonical tag pointing to a different page, will this new page be indexed by Google and will I be able to find it in the index? 2. If instead I apply the canonical tag to a page already in the index, will this page be removed from the index? Thank you in advance for any insights! Fabrizio
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
Title tags not displaying correctly?
If I have a title tag with 28 words (around 90 letters) with some repetition and Google has decided not to use this in the SERPS is this a bad thing (basically saying the title tag is not liked by Google).
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Should I use the canonical tag on all my mobile pages?
I've seen flavors of this question asked but did not see the exact response I was looking for. If I have a site at: www.site.com And I am creating a mobile version at: m.site.com (let's say a responsive design is not feasible at this time) And all the content on m.site.com is duplicative of the content on www.site.com What's the best way to handle that from an SEO perspective? Should I put a canonical tag on every mobile page pointing back to the www page? I assume that is better than a 'no index' tag on all pages of the mobile site?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | hbrown1080 -
Shortening Keywords in a title tag
in my title tag i want to have: 3D Renders of Office Refurbishment & Interior Design Kent | Complete Group which unfortunatly is longer than 70 characters, however, to make it fit in 70 characters i could put: 3D Renders of Office Refurb & Interior Design Kent | Complete Group Notice that refurbishment has been changed to refurb, would this be ok for SEO purposes?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CompleteOffice0