Title tags with >70 characters but most important words at start. Is this really a problem?
-
Is there in fact any kind of negative impact having title tags longer than 70 characters, as long as I place the most important keywords at the start and make sure that title still is compelling when cut somewhere around 70 characters?
Are the additional words after the 70 characters limit just ignored? May additional words dillute the strength of the first words or may they even be helpful ?
Any experience or any studies you know about impact of longer title tags? Or any statement from google about it?
-
thanks everybody for the feedback.
I actually also stumbled upon an excellent whiteboard friday from Cyrus related to the topic (also excellent comments at the bottom of the post)
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/title-tags-is-70-characters-the-best-practice-whiteboard-friday
-
Tim answered your question correctly and I'm going to give him a thumbs up for that buddy
-
Exactly what Tim said, its more about User Experience than anything else. I know top competitors with 70+ and rank well.
Having that ... at the end leaves me wondering most of the time
-
Look at it this way: You are telling the search engine what your page is about and why the page should be considered relevant. This is hard to do with a lot of title words. In a perfect SEO world you would have one title phase, have the H1 tag match that title phase, and try to mention the phase in the first part of the text. Use parts of the phrase throughout the text. All is lost if you are worried about writing for search rather than people. It is a myth that the search engines consider the first key word phase the most important, they look at all the title words and try and see how they are relevant to the text. So more key words the harder it will be to make all of them relevant in the text. Do the work create relevant pages for each key word or phrase.
<object id="plugin0" style="position: absolute; z-index: 1000;" type="application/x-dgnria" width="0" height="0"><param name="tabId" value="ff-tab-51"><param name="counter" value="1392"></object>
-
You like that sort of information SEOmoz beginners guide at search engine optimization Or
-
thanks Tim, thanks eyepaq
The point with the dilution is very interesting
Do you remember any sources where anybody tested whether dilution takes place or did you yourself see significant changes in ranking after shortening title tags? -
Tim covered this well.
As an addon comment:
May additional words dillute the strength of the first words or may they even be helpful ?
** Yes, more words - will dilute the strength of the keywords even if those are placed in front. Count it like - the strength is split between the number fo words in the Title Tag.
Cheers.
-
One area where it will have an indirect negative impact is in CTR from the SERPs. The Title gets a searcher's attention, while the Desc sells them on the click. Anything beyond 70 char is not there for the searcher or visitor's sake since they won't see it. This could lead to a negative impact in CTR which is a trust factor issue. If your CTR is less than surrounding sites in the SERPs on a consistent basis, you will likely start to see rank drops.
Here is a Matt Cutts video on Title that emphasizes this point: http://youtu.be/THYguer_JrM
Beyond the user experience concern, it comes down to whether the extra characters are being used for keyword stuffing or not. If not, it probably won't have a significant negative impact, but then you have to ask yourself why did I choose to use these extra 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
-
H Tags in Menu
Hi I am checking the H2 tags on this page https://www.key.co.uk/en/key/dollies-load-movers-door-skates I have noticed my dev team have implemented H2's on the categories in the menu. Will this completely confuse Google as to what that page is about? In my opinion those links shouldn't be heading tags at all
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
WordPress posts Title field inserts title into blog posts like a headline but doesn't ad H1 tag how to change?
I have a Wordpress website which is just using the Default theme, when I post in the blog, whatever I put in the "Title" field at the top of the editor is automatically is placed within the body of the blog post, like a headline, but it doesn't include any H1 tags that I can see. If I add my own headline within in the blog editor, it still inserts the Title like a headline. I am using the Yoast SEO Plugin and also write the meta title there, should I just leave the Wordpress title field blank so it doesn't insert into the blog post? Or is that inserted Title being recognized as an H1 even though I don't see h1 tags anywhere? Hope this isn't too confusing.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEO4leagalPA1 -
Bad SEO Practice: in title tag?
Greetings, I just discovered that some of our content was produced with
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Eric_Lifescript
tags in the title tag. Example: <title>Diabetes Symptoms <br> In Women Over 40</title> My gut says this is bad for SEO, but I couldn't find a definitive answer on the web, so I thought I would ask the community of gurus here at Moz. 🙂 Thanks in advance for any reply. Kind regards, Eric0 -
Pagination Tag and Canonical
Once and for all - I would really like to get a few opinions regarding what is the best method working for you. For most of the all timers in here there's no need to introduce the pagination tag. The big question for me is regarding the canonical tag in those case. There are 2 options, as far as I consider: Options 1 will be implementing canonical tag directing to the main category page: For instance: example.com/shoes example.com/shoes?page=2 example.com/shoes?page=3 In this case all the three URL's will direct to the main category which is example.com/shoes Option 2 - using self-referral canonical for every page. In this case - example.com/shoes?page=2 will direct its canonical tag to example.com/shoes?page=2 and so on. What's the logic behind this? To make sure there are no floating pages onsite. If I'll use canonical that directs to the main category (option 1) then these pages won't get indexed and techniclly there won't be any indexed links to these pages. Your opinion?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoperad0 -
SEO Title Versus Meta Description Tag
From an SEO perspective, is the title tag more important than the description tag? We use a set format for these tags on our real estate web site. The site contains 300 listings. Sample Title Tag:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Greenwich Village | Office Space Rental| 2300SF $9583/month Sample Description Tag:
Classic Greenwich Village office rental. Hardwood floors, 11' ceiling. 5 oversized windows. 24/7 attended lobby. Renovated common areas. Below market rent. Are we shooting ourselves in the foot by repeating the Square Footage and monthly rent amounts in the title tag? Should this tag be used for a short more descriptive terms so as to maximize the SEO benefit? Should these numbers be listed in the description tag? The listings are not heavily SEO optimized so I don't know whether this is really a non-issue.0 -
Page title inconsistency
Hi folks, Our agency rebranded from New Brand Vision to Decibel Digital a few weeks ago. Most things seem to be fine, 301 redirected the site and our site looks much better however there is one issue. When searching for our responsive site using my Iphone5, the page title appears as "New Brand Vision", even though "New Brand Vision" isn't within the source code. Our page title is <title></span><span data-mce-mark="1">Creative Digital Agency in London | Decibel Digital </span><span class="html-tag" data-mce-mark="1"></title> which is picked up on Desktop, but not through mobile search when sourcing our responsive site. Does anyone have any suggestions? Many thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tangent0 -
Wordpress Tag Pages - NoIndex?
Hi there. I am using Yoast Wordpress Plugin. I just wonder if any test have been done around the effects of Index vs Noindex for Tag Pages? ( like when tagging a word relevant to an article ) Thanks 🙂 Martin
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | s_EOgi_Bear0 -
Lowercase VS. Uppercase Canonical tags?
Hi MOZ, I was hoping that someone could help shed some light on an issue I'm having with URL structure and the canonical tag. The company I work for is a distributor of electrical products and our E-commerce site is structured so that our URL's (specifically, our product detail page URL's) include a portion (the part #) that is all uppercase (e.g: buy/OEL-Worldwide-Industries/AFW-PG-10-10). The issue is that we have just recently included a canonical tag in all of our product detail pages and the programmer that worked on this project has every canonical tag in lowercase instead of uppercase. Now, in GWT, I'm seeing over 20,000-25,000 "duplicate title tags" or "duplicate descriptions". Is this an issue? Could this issue be resolved by simply changing the canonical tag to reflect the uppercase URL's? I'm not too well versed in canonical tags and would love a little insight. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | GalcoIndustrial0