I run a Q&A site, should I limit post questions to 64 characters?
-
I run a Q&A site (Recessionitis.com), should I limit posts (questions) to 64 characters for SEO purposes?
-
Yes, go ahead and ignore those warnings. There was another recent question about this and the help desk said they could be ignored.
The help desk generally doesn't just browse Q&A, as they keep busy enough with the help forums and the tickets submitted to them. If there is a problem that might be affecting a large number of users, then I'll flag a Q&A question and ask them to come and take a look at things.
-
I'm guessing you want to limit the question length because you want to create an appropriate title tag. Why not have unlimited space for the question, but start off with a box saying, "Please summarize your question." and use that for the title?
-
Thanks! We do have an additional details field.
One more question, in SEOmoz diagnostics, I'm getting warnings for "Title Element Too Long" because the crawler is rendering apostrophes as "'" adding 5 characters per apostrophe. Should I be ignoring those warnings?
-
Do the users have a chance for an expanded question beyond the 64 characters, or is that the proposed entire question limit? If that's the entire question limit, I would certainly say to not limit it so much.
The question at http://recessionitis.com/what-is-the-lowest-fare-roundtrip-to-atlanta-from-oakland-california/ is "What is the lowest round trip fare to Atlanta from Oakland, CA?", which is 63 characters. There's a response asking what dates, yet the OP never responded.
My gut says that by limiting the question so much you're going to limit the amount of information the person is able to give, and thus limit the amount of answer a person can give without knowing more detail, and you may never be able to get that detail out of the OP in time. Or, you'll have someone answer, only to have the OP come back and say "oh, but I don't want any layovers" or "I refuse to travel on airline xyz". You're still likely to get people who don't make complete questions, but I would say don't hamstring those who did want to give more information just because you don't want to trigger the "..." in the SERP.
-
That will improve user experience in the SERP and site may see more visits. Only very lengthy or short title will send wrong signals.
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
-
Wordpress: Why do the URLs of my posts keep changing to match the posts titles?
I'll try to keep this brief. The URLs of my posts keep snapping back to exactly match their post titles, no matter how often I try to change them. e.g. title: How to Tie Your Shoelaces desired URL: tie-shoelaces BUT actual URL: how-to-tie-your-shoelaces Anyone come across/ resolved this issue before?
On-Page Optimization | | GerardAdlum0 -
Keyword Cannibalization vs. Optimizing Site
I am in the process of optimizing our website and I am having a hard time reconciling two best practices I have found on Moz. 1. You should avoid having multiple pages focus on the same keyword because you will lose some control of which result will show. 2. You should identify your core keywords and weave these keywords multiple times (naturally) throughout your site. I have spent months identifying our top 7 keywords and am working through the site now. The first piece of advice keeps giving me pause. Can anyone weigh in with other considerations or advice on how I can reconcile these two strategies. Thank you
On-Page Optimization | | NikCall2 -
Woocommerce ULRs & SEO
My company is in the process of converting from a .net site to a wordpress site using Woocommerce. We are #1 in Google SEO ranking and have spent a lot of time getting to this point. My currents URL is /smithco.com/rotating-widgetsbecause of the way wordpress works - I'm going to have /product/ in the URL in the new siteThew new URL will be/smithco.com/product/rotating-widgetsShould I be worried about this ?thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | ThomasErb0 -
Improving the search function on my site...
Hi all, The search function on my site is pretty bad... it basically lists every single product for any search query. Has anyone got experience integrating a 3rd party tool such as Google Custom Search or Pardot and if so which would you recommend? Alternatively, any tips on improving/ creating rules for site search would be appreciated. https://www.boardwarehouse.co.uk/ Thanks, Alick
On-Page Optimization | | Alick3000 -
301 Redirect to external site
Hi guys, We have a client who is getting their website redesigned through us. They are discontinuing couple of their services which will not get featured in the new site. They are fairly well ranked for these services and my client wishes to 301 redirect these pages to an external site owned by his friend so that they benefit out of the ranking. The question is: Will my client's website's general ranking get affected due to 301 redirecting to an external site? The external site is not spammy or red-flagged by Google (at the moment, at least). Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | RameshNair
Ramesh Nair0 -
How important are internal pages to overall site rank?
This seems like it should be an easy question (and probably is), but it has stumped a few of us over the past few days. Here's the scenario: We have a site that we are trying to optimize to rank well for a set of keywords. We have a lot of internal pages that are important to users when they visit the site (case studies, for example), but they aren't the pages that we want people to find when they search for our primary keywords. Our question is, is it valuable to optimize those internal pages for our keywords? In other words, will having a lot of internal pages that mention our keywords affect how well our overall site ranks for those keywords? Or, is it only important to have one "hero" page for our important keywords? Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | omg_jlsa0 -
Suggestions on plans to optimize my site? (NOOB)
I am currently trying to plan how to optimize my site based on keywords. I read and I understand site architecture and usability http://www.seomoz.org/blog/site-architecture-for-seo , but I am still somewhat confused about how to target each keyword per page or when http://www.seomoz.org/img/upload/splitting-keyword-targeted-.gif Let me give you an example. We build databases for SME's using 3 different technologies. One of them is MS Access. Based on PPC campaigns and keyword research some of the possible keywords might be ms access programmer ms access consultants access database experts According to the link provided, should these be separate pages? I feel if they were, our site nativigation would be cluttered and clients would not be benefiting from them at all. It might even lead to some redundant data which I believe is bad right? My feeling is to make one page and target one keyword, but I'm not sure. For example, see one of our top ranking competitors http://www.justgetproductive.com/content/access-programmer/index.php Please, look at the footer? Is that actually how I should structure my links? I hope the answer is NO! Then again, if I do just have one page targeting one keyword, what do I do about the others? Do I just try to use blog posts/articles addressing those keywords? Do I not target them at all? Thanks for any advice, please keep in mind I am just getting started. My approach is to create a plan to outline everything before I put a lot of time into it.
On-Page Optimization | | emcacace1 -
Wordpress when to use posts or pages
Hi Guys, I have a network of EMD sites that currently use a homepage and then we have a blog page which has 5-6 posts on. Is this the best way to do it with sites under 10-20 pages? Or should we create say 3-4 new pages/categories and drop the posts relevant to each page/category in there? Thank you Jon
On-Page Optimization | | imrubbish0