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  4. Does Google ACTUALLY ding you for having long Meta Titles? Or do studies just suggest a lower CTR?

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Does Google ACTUALLY ding you for having long Meta Titles? Or do studies just suggest a lower CTR?

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  • Bevelwise
    Bevelwise last edited by Sep 23, 2015, 3:56 PM

    I do SEO in an agency and have many clients. I always get the question, "Will that hurt my SEO?". When it comes to Meta Title and even Meta Description Length, I understand Google will truncate it which may result in a lower CTR, but does it actually hurt your ranking? I see in many cases Google will find keywords within a long meta description and display those and then in other cases it will simply truncate it. Is Google doing whatever they want willy-nilly or is there data behind this?

    Thank you!

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • ClaytonJ
      ClaytonJ last edited by Sep 24, 2015, 5:23 AM Sep 24, 2015, 5:23 AM

      I think meta descriptions are important.

      They are your first chance to display a call to action to a customer and to get them to click through to your site.  Hence a poorly written one, truncated etc. is probably not as enticing as one within the 160 characters - that does not truncate.

      We have acted for several clients where we have optimized the MD and improved the CTR by .08% (ie less than 1%) but that has amounted to over 20,000 additional clicks on their site a year.

      Also I loved Rand's WBF which indirectly addresses the issue, but correlates with my view, though probably not as strong that dwell time is a significant factor on ranking.

      https://moz.com/blog/impact-of-queries-and-clicks-on-googles-rankings-whiteboard-friday

      On your questions directly:-

      Will it hurt your SEO? - Yes, two possible reasons

      1/ you keyword stuff it.

      2/ no-one clicks through because you have a bad MD

      On truncation - there are exceptions, but google generally does not if you fit within there pixel/character limit.

      My view - draft and implement your MD's properly...

      Hope that assists.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 3
      • rjonesx. 0
        rjonesx. 0 last edited by Sep 24, 2015, 9:48 AM Sep 23, 2015, 6:22 PM

        Great question, and I certainly heard the "will this hurt my seo" thing all the time as a consultant. A couple of thoughts...

        • To my knowledge, there is no specific algorithmic feature that would lower a page's rank because of too long descriptions
        • Long meta descriptions, however, may be truncated (as you pointed out) or ignored and replaced altogether by Google if they find a more appropriate subsection of text on the page.
        • A succinct, well written meta description may help with CTR which itself may be a ranking factor
        • Google has stated that they want you to write good meta descriptions, for what it is worth.

        What I try and say to clients is "are you prepared to build a top 10 website in your industry". If they are sweating good meta descriptions, they aren't ready to compete in the big leagues.

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