Given the fine responses to the question, both vis a vis SEO and without considering SEO, do limits exist to the length of the H1 tag similar to the Title tag, which many say to should be between the max 65 and 70 characters to display in the SERPS?

Finding different ways to describe the same subject in a succinct way can be difficult and time-consuming, so I wonder how much time to spend on different H1 and Title text -- not to mention FB and other metadata for that page.

Tangentially, I have noticed that shorter Titles often have the site name appended, and I am not sure that is always a good thing -- especially when words can be duplicated. For example: "Why Live in London" can have the site name "- London Accommodations" auto-appended.

Thank you

Thank you for the link, which is useful, but I was surprised to find many very code-heavy sites (14%) ranking at the top as well, even in the era of the "thin page" penalty. The factors and changes in algorithms used are simply overwhelming, so I guess my answer simply lies in making the best site possible and giving up on SEO considerations almost entirely.

Thank you.

You are likely right that there are other off-page issues Google may be taking into account to penalize our white hat site, though they are a mystery to me, as our link profile is very strong according to SEOMOZ, especially compared to much larger competitors. We even have pages which once ranked in the top 5, and which SEOMOZ claims have a very high authority, which have disappeared completely from the Google index (for all intents and purposes, except for precise search of the title).

I suppose that limiting links to other content on the page which use the keywords may be the next step, and largely ignoring the words I am trying to convey. Unlearning everything that worked for 10 years in SEO and still works with Bing (which is providing me personally with better answers to general questions, by the way).

Thank you. I agree, but have certainly seen sites (other my own) which go right to the top of the SERPS due to keyword density, as they have little content and no backlinks, so it does still seem to me to be a matter of some concern. If you don't mention keywords, how is an algorithm supposed to know what the page is about or is emphasizing on a site with thousands of pages?

Thank you again for your response.

I have several pages on one site which have gone down during the past few months. They keyword density on those pages, which is not unnatural, pleased Google for many years. it still pleases Bing. But Google now seems very picky.

Based upon your experience, what is the ideal % keyword density for 2 and 3 word phrases, and should they be left out of alt tags even when proper to put them there?

While Google dominates, we do not wish to alienate BIng/Yahoo.

It is a huge mystery, and experimentation with more non-keyword-related text has so far not born any fruit.

Thank you,

GH