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
-
Stong Tags still useful in 2016
Hello, Are strong tags still beneficial in 2016? A few co-workers feel they look spammy on our site and that they are no longer really used by the search engines. However, we can't find any real significant info for no longer implementing them or saying they're outdated. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | STP_SEO0 -
Canonical tag?
I have an e-commerce website and the query strings of the URL's are causing duplicate content/titles. I'm thinking of adding a site-wide canonical tag which should fix them all. Any other ideas of making it neater or better?
On-Page Optimization | | KarlBantleman0 -
Regarding the META KEYWORDS tag
Two questions regarding the META KEYWORDS tag: Does Google actually penalize you for using the KEYWORD META tag, or does it just ignore it? On a related matter, I've noticed that when I use the On-Page Optimization Tool, it indicates that my header includes the KEYWORD tag, although I've taken great pains to remove keywords from pages that had been optimized by a previous SEO. I'm using Magento - Could it be a legacy issue? Would that make a difference?
On-Page Optimization | | RScime250 -
Canonical URL Tag
Hi, I have two pages that are identical on my site: http://www.absolutepower.nl/creatine-monohydraat and http://www.absolutepower.nl/CREATINE/creatine-monohydraat Should I use the canonical URL tag in this case? Thanks, Jasper
On-Page Optimization | | Japking0 -
H1 tag in the footer?
Quick question: I have been scouring SEOMoz.org along with webmaster forums looking for an answer, but we have a person who insists that the H1 tag be located in the Footer. I feel that is is fundamentally wrong because it is not the intent of the H1 tag, and I do not believe it is a best practice. That being said would we see what little value the H1 tag has disappear if we put it in the footer, would we be penalized, or am I being too vanilla by wanting to keep it in the Title position?
On-Page Optimization | | travelclickseo0 -
Title tag - shorter = better?
Is it true that the shorter the Title tag is the more powerful the keywords in it are?
On-Page Optimization | | echo1
I know that the main keywords have to be at the beginning of the title but, having more words in your Title could dilute the effectiveness of your main keywords? Ex: Dallas limo service | Private car by SelectLimousine. Could the fact that I have a second part of my title affect the first part by diluting its value? I would like to rank first for Dallas car service but also for Dallas car service and Dallas limousine service. Is this good practice?0 -
Page title = h1, or slight variation of it?
I recently found a new SEO tool http://www.screamingfrog.co.uk/search-engine-optimisation/ It is fast, and has found some site tweaks I need to make. There is a free demo version that crawls up to 500 URIs. I recommend you check it out (I'm not affiliated). One of the conditions it checks for is if your page <title>is exactly equal to your <h1> tag. The fact that they flag it makes me wonder if that's something I should avoid (?).</p> <p>When I googled it I found a variety of opinions. When I looked at Rand's excellent piece on the perfectly optimized page http://www.seomoz.org/blog/perfecting-keyword-targeting-on-page-optimization I notice that the example Page Title and H1 are slightly different. By design, or a happy coincidence?</p> <p>Any opinions on whether I should make my Page Titles slightly different than my H1 tags to avoid the appearance of over optimization, or some other penalty?</p></title>
On-Page Optimization | | scanlin0 -
Opinions on Alt tags
Reading around the web, there are many sources that suggest all images should have an Alt tag attributed to them. This is good for accessibility etc, however there appears to be conflicting interests between this and what works for SEO. Hence many other sources suggest that you include a keyphrase or two in 1 image Alt tag, and then leave the rest blank so as not to dilute the alts on the page. In my experience, the latter appears to be true. However this seems wrong when the Alt attribute really should be used for accessibility reasons and not for SEO - why would the search engines encourage us to provide poorer quality information by harming our rankings if we try to make a website accessible? Interested to hear your opinions and experiences on this subject. Thanks.
On-Page Optimization | | RiceMedia0