Title tag length
-
Hi,
I am fairly new to SEO and have just noticed the end of my title text has been cut off by Google in the serps results.
Everything i have read tells me titles should be maximum of 70 characters, however, Google is only displaying 54. See below
Security systems | wireless | battery powered | Police...
Nobody else on the page is showing more than 54 characters.
Am i missing something obvious?
Any and all help gratefully appreciated.
Thanks
Si
-
Hi Jesse,
I will keep you appraised.
Thank you for your support.
Regards,
Si
-
Well I don't know anything about this "SEO College Tutor" but it sounds fishy to me.
You can have the "key info" in the title and still have it be readable. Also, at the very least you should take me up on my suggestions for capitalization. It currently looks like it was written by a 5th grader. No offense. But you capitalize the first few words, stop doing it, and then go back to capitalizing at the end. Looks amateurish and reads horribly. At the very least fix that.
I'd encourage you to grab some impartial observers (a mom, gramma, aunt, uncle, somebody not good with computers you happen to know) and ask them to look at the SERPs you are targeting and choose a site to visit. Or maybe even ask them to run some random searches and watch how they react to SERPs and what pages they choose to click on. I think that you will find the title tag to be the difference maker (beyond placement of course). What you are doing is stuffing keywords to encourage placement in the top of the SERPs. That's what the "SEO tutor" is having you do. That is not necessarily going to work. There are plenty of ways to rank well and still have an attractive title for your end-user.
I've seen it work both ways. I've seen a page sit at number 1 for the desired keyword results and get no clicks. Why? Only answer I have was a terrible Title.
I'm glad you are going to test both methods. That's a great way to approach things.
Keep in mind with your SEO Tutor.. You need to take every factor into account with SEO. There is no perfect way of doing things. My way isn't perfect, their way isn't perfect. You need to find your own truths somewhere in between. You seem to be working towards that so you should be alright.
But boy I have to say my gut tells me that this alleged Tutor has a few things mixed up...
-
Hi Jesse,
Thank you for your reply. I am getting real people like you telling me one thing and the SEO college tutor telling me another. Personally i can see benefits in both. I like to see the key information in the title like it is at the moment. My other side that refuses to use text speak and enjoys the written word likes a flowing title.
I am going to leave it until this time next week, collect the analytics and then change style and repeat for a week and see what works best.
Have a good weekend and i always appreciate advice.
Si
-
I know I've told you this before and I'm becoming the Title-Tag Police around here but you can do so much better with that. There are several things that drive me crazy from a users' perspective with your title:
1.) Keyword stuffed.. Seems like a robot wrote it; not human
2.) Capitalization. Sometimes you capitalize the first letters like a title would and sometimes you don't. This inconsistency makes your page look amateurish and drives my OCD grammar-police brain crazy!
Just trying to help... Good luck!
-
Dear William and Mike,
Excellent answer guys, thank you so much. Considering how much a truncated title could screw it up, i'm surprised this is not more widely known. Especially by the 'expert' tutor at SEO College.
Have a great weekend both.
Si
-
Dear William and Mike,
Excellent answer guys, thank you so much. Considering how much a truncated title could screw it up, i'm surprised this is not more widely known. Especially by the 'expert' tutor at SEO College.
Have a great weekend both.
Si
-
Your full title, Security systems | wireless | battery powered | Police Approved | CSS, winds up truncated because its 69 characters with spaces and features a few wide letters (like those W's) that make it too long pixel-wise (as William pointed out).
-
Title tags may vary. And could be anywhere from ~50 through ~70. It is measured by pixels.
http://www.highervisibility.com/blog/title-tags-are-measured-by-pixels-not-by-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
-
Canonical URL Tag Usage
I have a large website, almost 1500 pages that each market different keywords for the trucking logistics industry. I don't really understand the new Canonical URL Tag USAGE. They say to use it so the page is not a duplicate but the page that MOZ is call for to have the tag isn't a duplicate. It promotes 1 keyword that no other page directly promotes. Here is the page address, now what tag would I put up in the HEAD so google don't treat it as a duplicate page. http://www.freightetc.com/c/heavyhaul/heavyhaul.php 1. Number 1 the actual page address because I want it treated like its own page or do I have to use #2 below? 2. I don't know why I would use #2 as I want it to be its own page, and get credit and listed and ranked as its own page. Can anyone clarify this stuff to me as I guess i am just new to this whole tag usage.
On-Page Optimization | | dwebb0070 -
Website Titles in Google
I currently have a Wordpress platform website and previously I noticed that when I optimized my pages, if I indicated what I wanted my page names to be (through an application like SEO Yoast) that most times, the keyword would show up exactly how I had it typed in. Recently I have noticed that the title of my website is showing in my page titles too. So for example: Before: Shoe Stores Windsor - XYZ Company Now: XYZ Company | Shoe Stores Windsor - XYZ Company In SEO practices, I know it's most often best to have the keyword you would like as close to the front of your title tag, but now this recent search adds my website title first. Plus this also seems to be making my titles longer. I know Google ultimately has the 'final say' in a page title and I have ensured that I have the "rewrite titles/descriptions option" check in Wordpress to allow me to overwrite titles, but I am hoping someone can possibly provide me with a tip or trick to avoid this in search rankings. I think it's important to have the name of my site entered through Wordpress so that any pages that I have no optimized default to the page name and site name, but the ones I have optimized seem to be showing differently all of a sudden. Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | MainstreamMktg0 -
Would you consider this title to be keyword stuffing or bad?
A competitor uses the following format for all of their meta titles: [Store Name] Voucher Codes, Cashback & Discount Codes | [Website Name] They do vary their titles slightly, depending on which keywords are searched for, for the particular store. What do you think about this title? I'm torn between it looking a little 'stuffy' but them also getting across the point that their page offers all of that.
On-Page Optimization | | vickluque0 -
SVG image files causing multiple title tags on page - SEO issue?
Does anyone have any experience with SVG image files and on-page SEO? A client is using them and it seems they use the title tag in the same way a regular image (JPG/PNG) would use an image ALT tag. I'm concerned that search engines will see the multiple title tags on the page and that this will cause SEO issues. Regular crawlers like Moz flag it as a second title tag, however it's outside the header and in a SVG wrap so the crawlers really should understand that this is a SVG title rather than a second page title. But is this the case? If anyone has experience with this, I'd love to hear about it.
On-Page Optimization | | mrdavidingram2 -
Alt and title tags on images
For SEO, are alt and title tags still worth the effort? Or have they gone the way of meta keywords? I can see having alt tags for visually impaired reasons, but at this point is there any SEO reason to use them?
On-Page Optimization | | CompucastWeb0 -
Noindex, nofollow tags
Hi, I have changed my tags to noindex,nofollow with Yoast. But still, seomoz software showing me warnings and errors for those pages. Also did the same for archive pages example.com/page-2/ and facing the same problems. I need to clear as much errors as I can in the software so I can see the real remaining errors in the website. Help will be highly appreciated. Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | Xasir0 -
Which is better, have our location in the title or have a title that is 66 characters?
I was told by an SEO company that I need to put our name and location in every page title, however, an seomoz.org campaign gave me warnings for having a page title that is too long. Which is better, have our location in the title or have a title that is 66 characters? We have both a physical and online store, so it would still be nice to direct foot traffic to our physical store.
On-Page Optimization | | HockSports0 -
Title tag best practices when domain and brand are the same
I know the old standard for title tag optimization is to use your brand name in the title for a multitude of reasons, all of which are indisputable The most important reason being any strength and awareness can aid in click-thru. But does this hold true for exact match domains? Considering the way a search result is displayed, any awareness and strength derived from using the brand in the title is automatically included in the search result of an exact match domain without having to sacrifice valuable characters in the title. The organic value (or value beyond simply seeing the brand displayed and nothing else) can't have that much of an impact, can it? For Example, given the result attached, is it worth it to repeat dog.com in the title if it is already showing in the result? dog.png
On-Page Optimization | | NextGenEDU0