Meta Title Tags - Quick question!
-
Hi all,
Our category Meta Title Tags are a little woeful and so I'm in the process of rewriting them.
Let's say you have a product for sale.... some inkjet cartridges for a Canon BJ10V printer for example. In an effort to keep things concise I was thinking that for this category I should have the meta title set simply as:
'Canon BJ10V Inkjet Cartridges' and perhaps our company name after this text (and a pipe delimiter)
This takes us just under 50 characters which is ideal but doesn't include any real keyword variation and will result in the company name being duplicated at the tail of the title tag on 6,000 odd pages.
A large number of my competitors have title tags along the lines of:
'Canon BJ10V Cheap Inkjet Cartridges for Canon BJ-10V Ink Printers'
I understand the reasoning behind this but does the variation of keywords compensate for the fact that the title looks spammy (to both humans and Search Engines).
What would you do? Keep it clean and concise or stuff the title full of keywords. In the event of the former would you include the company name in each title in the knowledge they would be well under 50 characters without?
Thanks for your help.
-
Honestly, I like your example competitor's tag, and here's why:
- Canon BJ10V
- Canon BJ-10V
- Cheap Inkjet Cartridges
- Canon BJ-10V Ink
- Canon BJ-10V Ink Printers
- Cheap Inkjet Cartridges for Canon BJ-10V Ink Printers
Just look at all those beautiful keywords that look just like something someone would actually type into a search engine to find your product. It's descriptive and gets the job done pretty well. You could probably lose one of the printer names and add your brand, but I don't think it's so spammy as you think.
-
Chris
The title tag has significant impact on SEO. Concurrently we believe you should work on your H1's and meta descriptions as well. For us though go hand in hand. We spread excel sheet them out for large companies. Very important.
A basic rule of thumb is Keyword | Second Keyword | Brandname.
The title tends to truncate over 512 pixels hence the 50 Character rule you refer to however it is best to try and get close to 512 pixels. That could be 60 characters. If you go over 512 pixels google often flips the brand name to the front.
The most aesthetically pleasing separator generally is the pipe. Bob is correct on taking the brand name out if possible, but often google includes it, so you will have to monitor how google interprets your title and meta description when implemented. Then change accordingly.
Feel free to ask any questions and hope that helps. .
-
You're right to set your priority on keeping them under the limits. I normally use the keyword preview tool from Moz to check this since Google started using pixels instead of characters.
https://moz.com/blog/new-title-tag-guidelines-preview-tool
In your case, I would use one of your longer product names and make a good title with that so the majority of your pages won't cross the line. At least, that's what we do in this situation.
I don't know if a longer title will dilute the effectiveness of each keyword. Interesting question, sounds logical (especially if the title gets cut off) but I never read anything about it. Would love to hear someone else his view on this.
-
Hi Bob,
Thanks for your response. My main reason for wanting to keep things below 55 characters is because Moz is currently giving me several thousand warnings for going over this length!
'Google typically displays the first 50-60 characters of a title tag—or as many characters as will fit into a 512-pixel display. If you keep your titles under 55 characters, you can expect at least 95% of your titles to display properly. We recommend that you keep your title to 55 characters or less to ensure that customers see your full title—and to avoid replacement text that may not provide the same incentive to click as a custom-written tag.'
I also wasn't sure as to whether a longer title diluted the effectiveness of each keyword within the title.
-
Hi Chris,
I think limiting your title tag to 50 characters is a waste of visibility in the SERP’s. A good meta title (in my eyes) combines the essence of the page, keywords and a clear call to action. In this case I wouldn’t use your company name in the meta title unless you’re an well-known brand or advertising your way to it at the moment.
I think the meta title of your competitor is pretty ok, if you remove “cheap” it would be a good sentence in my eyes and it gives the searcher extra conformation that this cartridge fits it’s printer.
A few things I would keep in mind:
- What makes your websites stand out? That might be a good addition to the title.
- What is it people are looking for? Sometimes people want to see a price very quickly, if so, and you’re not the most expansive one you could add this.
I hope this helps!
Best regards,
Bob
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
-
Setting up hreflang tags
Hi everyone, A quick question about setting up your Hreflang tags. Here you can see 2 examples: As you can see, the order of the elements is different. Be aware, there is a tiny difference between the 2: the first Hreflang is written for a specific language in a specific country, the second one only contains a language code. Is this the reason why the order is different or is this just a coincidence and doesn't the order of the elements matter at all? Thanks,
Technical SEO | | WeAreDigital_BE
Jens0 -
Dup Title tags
I am frustrated....Google Webmaster tools shows this as dup title tags....I've fixed other oages with this issue, but can't figure this out?! here is the page itself... http://www.seadwellers.com/tag/padi-1/ I can't figure out where this freakin page even iS?! | 2 |
Technical SEO | | sdwellers
| <a id="zip_1-anchor" class="zippedsection_title"></a>padi Archives - Sea Dwellers Dive Center of Key Largo, Florida Keys/category/padi/
/tag/padi/
| Any help with this thing wold be greatly appreciated...
0 -
Can Title Tag be seen in the page source, but not seen by search engines?
This is a follow up question derived from a previous question I posted - http://moz.com/community/q/does-title-tag-location-in-a-page-s-source-code-matter There have been several reputable crawl tools used on our (including Moz) site that state we are missing title tags on may pages. One such page is http://www.paintball-online.com/Paintball-Guns-And-Markers-0Y.aspx I can see the title tag on line 238 of the page source. I find it unlikely that there is an issue with the crawl tools. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Nick
Technical SEO | | Istoresinc0 -
Duplicate Title tags vs. View All for search results
I run a directory and some search queries give almost 1000 unique results. My moz campaign tells me that I have around 1,300 duplicate title tags etc. I read online about canonical, rel=next/prev, also about having a 'view all' page just for google (page links, not search queries), but if I do this, wouldn't the slowness mean google won't index it? So the question is what is the best thing to do?
Technical SEO | | tguide0 -
Duplicate content or titles
Hello , I am working on a site, I am facing the duplicate title and content errors,
Technical SEO | | KLLC
there are following kind of errors : 1- A link with www and without www having same content. actually its a apartment management site, so it has different bedrooms apartments and booking pages , 2- my second issue is related to booking and details pages of bedrooms, because I am using 1 file for all booking and 1 file for all details page. these are the main errors which i am facing ,
can anyone give me suggestions regarding these issues ? Thnaks,0 -
A good META title for a front page....
Hi, We recently asked for some pointers to use on our site bit.ly/4Cogch as one of our SEOmoz private questions. One of the points that was picked up was that the title of the homepage looked quite spammy: Ink Cartridges | Toner Cartridges | Cheap Cartridges | Inkjet Ink | Laser Toner I completely see this however I've checked out our competition and no one seems to be doing things any better and the SEOmoz On Page SEO tool seems to like it so I'm not sure what changes to make. Does anybody have any inspiration that I could possibly use? It was suggested that Google is quite brand focused and so I should integrate the company name but how else would you change things, bearing in mind the ink and toner market that we're focusing on? Thanks for your help! Chris
Technical SEO | | ChrisHolgate0 -
Header Tags
Ok so I am writing different pages and the first heading is an H3 just because I wanted to it be a certain size. Then as you see the content, I have an H1 tag. Example page: http://www.oxfordmshomes.net/condos/acadia-court-Oxford-MS you can see that "Acadia First" is the first thing you see on the page and it uses an H3 element. Long story short, my hierarchy is wrong. Does this have any negative effect on my SEO efforts?
Technical SEO | | blake-766240 -
Optimum title and description meta tag length
Hi all, I have read that a title tag and description tag length of 69 and 156 characters respectively, should be used as this is all that Google will show in the search results, but that search engine robots will read longer titles and descriptions and additional characters will have an effect on ranking algorithms. However, is there any SEO benefit in making title and description tags longer to include more keywords to aid ranking, even though the latter part won't be visible in the results. I have read elsewhere on this forum that there may be concerns with regards to keyword dilution, but what about keyword reinforcement, i.e. by a repetition of the main keyword at the end of the title/description (I mean in a readable manner here, not 'stuffed')? Thanks in advance, Gareth
Technical SEO | | gdavies090319770