Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Why SEOmoz says to keep title tag not more than 65 character?
-
Why SEOmoz says to keep title tag not more than 65 characters?
I have this question that what is the disadvantage if my meta title is 150 character? Why everyone focus in keeping it short ?
If i put all my important keywords in starting of title tag say in first 65 characters and keep the title 100-150 character how can it hurt my website? Google will consider 65 character, right but it won’t penalize me for having 110 character then please explain Why we focus so much…
I know i used too many why
just to tell i am nt a lawyer
just trying to act like one
, just kidding.
-
I have heard that Google does indeed use characters after the 65 character display limit in its ranking algorithms. Is this true and does it therefore make sense to have title tags longer than 65 characters, so long as the first 65 characters (or 60 in many cases) are a complete thought on their own?
Here is a page describing this strategy:
-
The Title tag will help you rank but it's also very important for direct users as with a "spamy" look with a very long staffed title tag user will / can wander.
Related with the SEO factor, with many words within the title tag the keyword power will be diluted.
Personally I keep everything as short as possible but in some cases when the title is dynamic (post name or whatever) if it looks right then you can let it slide (see thetitle of this page - is 70+ but it looks right.. right ? :))
I am curious about what other people feel about this ...
-
I'm no expert but my tuppeny's worth:
Re: the meta "description" tag, it's because if it's ridiculously long it gets truncated on a Google Serps page with ellipsis (...) There is one school of thought that actually favours this on the grounds that it supposedly encourages "curiousity value" click through, eg "This website shows you how to make $1million just by...[ABRUPT STOP]
Re: Title tag, a similar argument applies, although (& I stand to be corrected) the rule of thumb is anything over about 80 chars begins to look spammy, as does repeating any one word in the title tag more than twice.
-
Simple, Google will only display 65 characters in the SERPs pages and you need to craft your titles for the maximum benefit which includes getting click throughs.
Also If you have 100 - 150 characters then each word is diluted in strength (to a degree) and if it needs to be that long then your page isn't as focused as it could be, you may be better off with 2 pages targeting different aspects of the keywords.
Keywords at the beginning of a title tag are currently thought to be useful - http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors#ranking-factors
However correlation data shows keywords in title may actually have a negative correlation to ranking - http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-vs-bing-correlation-analysis-of-ranking-elements - (On Page Keyword Usage section)
You won't really be penalized for it, but it's certainly not best practise.
-
Shashank,
Google and most other search engines only display a max of between 65/70 characters in the SERP. You've got that much space to get your keyword in there and maybe a call to action (although you can further target this in your description where you get a max of 155 charcters before the cut off).
You've also got to ask yourself if you put a 150 character title tag how it will benefit your site, if at all
Also, don't forget that the title/description are used to improve CTR too (and not just for rankings) so having a spammy looking Title with 3 keywords put in the displayed character length with no consideration for human readability will have a negative affect on your CTR.
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
-
Company Name in Home Page Title? If and Where?
My guess is you want to do the {title} | {company name} format as I would suspect Google gives slightly more weight to the words at the beginning of the title? (This is assuming your company name isn't a generic word or you are specifically trying to rank your home page for your company name when it isn't ranking well already) But what about cases where you have like 5 or 6 keywords that are really important and used in the title gives you like 50 characters and your company name pushed it up to like 65 increasing the chance Google will use some other source to list the name of your home page in the search results? Obviously one can experiment, but wondering what the general consensus is - long keyword title, or longer title with company name? The company name can be included in the meta description and the domain name of the url displayed also gives the indication to the company. But maybe the algo "respects" long itles that have company name more than ones without as then it looks more like a keyword stuffing title? So many factors to consider. Yes - on page SEO isn't just about the title, but for this thread I'm just talking home page title.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Wizkids9641 -
Why is our noindex tag not working?
Hi, I have the following page where we've implemented a no index tag. But when we run this page in screaming frog or this tool here to verify the noidex is present and functioning, it shows that it's not. But if you view the source of the page, the code is present in the head tag. And unfortunately we've seen instances where Google is indexing pages we've noindexed. Any thoughts on the example above or why this is happening in Google? Eddy
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | eddys_kap0 -
Competitor Title, can I use the same???
there are some pages, my competitor is ranking well and also, we have done page optimization it is 100% for page title keywords as im going to use the same title of the competitor? Will this affect me? Pls suggest wht should I do..
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rahim1190 -
Best Practices for Homepage Title Tag
Hi, I would like to know if there is any update about the best practices for the homepage title tag. I mean, a couple of years ago, it was still working placing main keywords in the homepage title tag. But since the last google SERP update, the number of characters that are being shown were reduced, and now we try to work with 55 and 56 characters. That has reduced our capacity of including many keywords on the title tag. Besides, search engines are smarter now to choose the correct inner page to show in SERP. But I am wondering if the Homepage Title should have a branded orientation or should include main keywords, cause it is still working that strategy. I would appreciatte any update in this issue. Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | teconsite0 -
Canonical tag + HREFLANG vs NOINDEX: Redundant?
Hi, We launched our new site back in Sept 2013 and to control indexation and traffic, etc we only allowed the search engines to index single dimension pages such as just category, brand or collection but never both like category + brand, brand + collection or collection + catergory We are now opening indexing to double faceted page like category + brand and the new tag structure would be: For any other facet we're including a "noindex, follow" meta tag. 1. My question is if we're including a "noindex, follow" tag to select pages do we need to include a canonical or hreflang tag afterall? Should we include it either way for when we want to remove the "noindex"? 2. Is the x-default redundant? Thanks for any input. Cheers WMCA
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WMCA0 -
Duplicate Titles caused by multiple variations of same URL
Hi. Can you please advise how I can overcome this issue. Moz.com crawle is indicating I have 100's of Duplicate Title tag errors. However this is caused because many URL's have been indexed multiple times in Google. For example. www.abc.com
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | adhunna
www.abc.com/?b=123 www.abc.com/ www.abc.com/?b=654 www.abc.com/?b=875 www.abc.com/index.html What can I do to stop this issue being reported as duplictae Titles, as well as content? I was thinking maybe I can use Robots.txt to block various query string parameters. I'm Open to ideas and examples.0 -
How Many Characters in an H1?
Hi, How long can the text within an H1 tag area be? Should it ideally be 1-2 words or can it be a full sentence? Or more?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mindflash0 -
Any penalty for having rel=canonical tags on every page?
For some reason every webpage of our website (www.nathosp.com) has a rel=canonical tag. I'm not sure why the previous SEO manager did this, but we don't have any duplicate content that would require a canonical tag. Should I remove these tags? And if so, what's the advantage - or disadvantage of leaving them in place? Thank you in advance for your help. -Josh Fulfer
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mhans1