Does >70 character title tag affect a pages ranking in search?
-
We are a publication that puts out hundreds of articles a month. We have +5000 medium priority errors showing that our title element tags are too long. The title tag is structured like this: [Headine] | [Publication Name that is 23 characters] . However, since we are a publication, it's not practical for us to try to limit the length of our title tags to 70 characters or less because doing so would make the titles of our content seem very unnatural. We also don't want to remove the branding because we want it to go with the article when it's shared (and to appear when some titles are short enough to allow room in SERPs).
I understand the reasons for limiting characters to 70 or less with regard to SERP friendliness. We try to keep key phrases in the front. People are more likely to click on a page if they know what it's about etc etc. My question is, do the longer titles affect the ability for the page to rank in search? To put it a different way, if we altered all the +5000 of the title tags to fit within 70 characters, would the page authorities and our site's domain authority increase?
I'd like to avoid needed to clean up 5000 pages if the medium priority errors aren't really hurting us. Any input is appreciated. Thanks!
-
If your page titles are right for your readers then I really would not worry about this one too much. Users > search engines.
-
Best practice is to write titles for your audience keeping keywords in mind, but not obsessing over length. Although only the first 512 pixels (50-70 words) of the title tag will show, some believe longer titles are better for SEO purposes because they allow you to fit in more keywords. The first 512 pixels should be catchy with your keyword to help CTR, but anything after that doesn't show can still help in terms of SEO. Do not worry about changing the titles of those 5000 pages. It could even end up hurting your rankings in the SERPs.
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
-
Page not being ranked properly
Hi, Wondering if someone could possibly shed some light on why some of our pages are not being ranked properly on Google. For example this page https://www.mypetzilla.co.uk/dog-breeds Keyword "Dog Breeds" we can't be found on and we are absolutely baffled why? Could it be that we are listing all 100 and something dog breeds on one page? Should we introduce pagination or load more as user scrolls down. This page has been up for at least 4 years. Any suggestion or advice would be much appreciated. Many thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mypetzilla0 -
Blog page and homepage ranking next to each other for same keyword
Hello, I have my homepage that has been existing for 10 years that is ranked in 18 th position on google for the keyword luxury bike tours. This homepage doesn't have any external link or internal links saying luxury bike tours and nowhere in the title or on the page do I have the word luxury. I only have the words bike and tours. I created a blog page 24 hours ago that has the word luxury, bike and tours in the title and it is ranked in 19 th position just behind my homepage. I am wondering how it can be there and my homepage just be one spot above with all the history and linking it has ? Is it due to the fact that I have the word luxury in the title ? Is it just because my internal linking structure is correct and this blog page is brand new and will my homepage rank higher in the near future but see that I just redid the structure I need to wait a few months ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Can't understand our Ranking; DA, PA and On Page all better than Competiton; Ranking no where
Our rankings are up and down but our domain is clean, DA and PA good
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AlexSTUDIO18
and there is really in depth content which is all original. We are at a bit of a loss; The site is
http://www.fightstorepro.com I can use the phrase "Boxing Gloves" as an example
http://www.fightstorepro.com/gear/gloves/boxing-gloves.html PA 26 , DA29
Good original content; Video content, On page grade A
Not ranking in top 50 places?? The competitor in Pos4 is not matching our placing Anyone shed any light on this?0 -
Possible to Improve Domain Authority By Improving Content on Low Page Rank Pages?
My sites domain authority is only 23. The home page has a page authority of 32. My site consists of about 400 pages. The topic of the site is commercial real estate (I am a real estate broker). A number of the sites we compete against have a domain authority of 30-40. Would our overall domain authority improved if we re-wrote the content for several hundred of pages that had the lowest page authority (say 12-15)? Is the overall domain authority derived by an average of the page authority of each page on a domain? Alternatively could we increase domain authority by setting the pages with the lowest page authority to "no index". By the way our domain is www.nyc-officespace-leader.com Thanks, Alan
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan10 -
Page indexed but not showing up at all in search results
I am currently working on the SEO for a roofing company. I have developed GEO targeted pages for both commercial and residential roofing (as well as attic insulation and gutters) and have hundreds of 1st page placements for the GEO targeted keywords. What is baffling me is that they are performing EXTREMELY poorly on the bigger cities, to the point of not evening showing up in the first 5 pages. I also target a page specifically for roof repair in Phoenix and it is not coming up AT ALL. This is not typically the results I get when directly targeting keywords. I'm working on implementing keyword variations as well as adding about 10 or so information pages (@ 700 words) regarding different roofing systems which I plan to cross link on the site, etc. I'm just wondering if there is a simple answer as to why the pages I want to be showing up the most are performing so poorly and what I would need to do to improve their rankings.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | dogstarweb0 -
Why does my home page show up in search results instead of my target page for a specific keyword?
I am using Wordpress and am targeting a specific keyword..and am using Yoast SEO if that question comes up.. and I am at 100% as far as what they recommend for on page optimization. The target html page is a "POST" and not a "Page" using Wordpress definitions. Also, I am using this Pinterest style theme here http://pinclone.net/demo/ - which makes the post a sort of "pop-up" - but I started with a different theme and the results below were always the case..so I don't know if that is a factor or not. (I promise .. this is not a clever spammy attempt to promote their theme - in fact parts of it don't even work for me yet so I would not recommend it just yet...) I DO show up on the first page for my keyword.. however.. instead of Google showing the page www.mywebsite.com/this-is-my-targeted-keyword-page.htm Google shows www.mywebsite.com in the results instead. The problem being - if the traffic goes only to my home page.. they will be less likely to stay if they dont find what they want immediately and have to search for it.. Any suggestions would be appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chunkyvittles0 -
Meta Refresh tag on cache pages- GRRR!
Hi guys, All of our product pages originate in a URL with a unique number but it redirects to an SEO url for the user. These product pages have blocks on the page and these blocks are automatically populated with our database of content. Here's an example of the redirect in place: www.example.com/45643/xxxx.html redirects to www.example.com/seo-friendly-url.html The development team did this for 2 reasons. 1) our internal search needs the unique numbered urls for search and 2) it allows quick redirects as pages are cached. The problem I face is this, the redirects from the cached are being tagged with 'meta refresh', yup, they are 302. The development team said they could stop caching and respond dynamically with a 301 but this would bring in a delay. Speed wise, the cached pages load within 22ms and dynamically 530ms, so yeah half a second more. Currently cached pages just do a meta refresh tagged redirect and I want to move away from this. What would you guys recommend in such a situation? I feel like unless I place a 301, I'll be losing out on rank juice.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bio-RadAbs0 -
Why does this site rank on the 1st page
i dont mean to be calling any site out im just scratching my head on this one.- I can't see any signal that would make it worthy of ranking on the first page for keyword loose diamonds. page http://www.jewelryexchange.com/DiamondResults.aspx Am i missing something all tools seem to say the site isn't worthy- All help appreciated
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DavidKonigsberg0