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
-
Still Need to Write Title & Description Tag?
My SEO has advised me that Google has stopped using title and description tags for search results and as such, it is no longer necessary to write specific title and description tags. I see that Yoast seems to pull text to create these tags and sometimes it looks like it reflects the best elements of the content, sometimes it does not. Should I be asking our SEO team to write dedicated title and description tags or is it best practices to leave it to the Yoast plugin? My SEO is of the opinion that writing these tags is not a productive use of time as Google will serve results based on the user inquiry rather than the content on his tags. It sounds logical but it would be reassuring to receive further confirmation of this. Thoughts?"
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan1
Thanks, Alan0 -
Duplicate title tags due to ?_escaped_fragment_=
Duplicate title tags due to /?escaped_fragment= in the serps, it look like this http://www.site.com/25621/post-name/#! http://www.site.com/25621/post-name/ Does anyone know what the best fix is for this and does this affect the sites performance. Regards T
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Taiger0 -
Are iframes really an organic search problem?
I'm helping someone with a new site that will have pages for organic search that contain embedded video. Some will be youtube embeds and some will be wistia embeds. These pages will have several hundred words of transcript text and the embeds (iframes) iframes themselves will be rather small, but expandable and possibly more than one per page. The transcript text area is more like 80% of the page. Do you think this is an organic search problem? I use one site audit tool that calls this out as a serious warning. Currently, the embedded player(s) are a column down the left side, about 1/4th of the width of the page, and the transcripts are everything else, wrapping around it. The transcripts are fully readable and not hidden in some kind of expandable accordion or anything. Does layout matter in this issue? Thanks... Darcy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
How to add Geo Meta Tags, Dublin Core, Microformats in Word press website?
Please let me know how to add and what to include in Geo Meta Tags, Dublin Core, Microformats.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Dan_Brown10 -
Google Tag Manager
Has anyone used Google Tag Manager and do you feel it is worth it?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ChristinaRadisic0 -
Order of importance
Hi, From the screenshot below I have signed up to "Plan 1". I am not happy with the company and think I can do this better myself using SEOMoz. My questions are. Ignoring the one off tasks listed. Which of the Monthly tasks is the most important, which is the second most important etc? Is there any that can be ignored or are any now detrimental to SEO? Is there anything that is not on the list that maybe there should be? In summary I am trying to workout how hard and how much time and effort it will take to go it alone using SEOMoz for guidance? Inline images 1 In case the screenshot doesn't show, below is the Monthly tasks I get on my Plan. 5 x Themed Link Building (min PR2) 10 x Directory Submissions 4 x Blogs 250 words Content Copywriting 1 x Article syndicated 50 times Thanks Andrew
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Studio330 -
How Should I Start Using SEO For Wordpress
I want to ranked my all keywords on top 10 position but unforunately only few keywords are in top 10 position.. Now i already using some recommend plugins like Yoast, Easy WP SEO. So my main question is how should i start promoting my wordpress topic. I already submitting to social network but not getting enough traffic except Stumbleupon... I am using SEO software like SenukeX and Bookmarking Demon but still no luck.. i am not getting quality backlinks.... please help i am very frustrated... please someone give proper guideline.. every day is over by thinking the strategy...
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mamuti0 -
Tags, categories or both?
There is so much debate regarding duplicate content, horror stories, losing visitors, being penalized, yada yada... that I am wandering if it's wise to use tags/categories on a WordPress blog. I saw that all major blogs are using these structuring etiquettes and they are all dofollow and meta robots on index, follow. What do you say? It is wise to use tags, categories or both? Should I nofollow them, noindex or follow and index? Or noindex follow? Cheers and thx.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jasmin280