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.
New (google) local SERPs has 40 character limit on title length
-
Should i change my all the page titles for pages that show up in local SERPs to reflect this new limit? Is there any benefit to leaving it at the old limit and having more keywords in there? Or would there be benefit to conforming to google's new standard and having shorter titles?
-
I think you misunderstood me on "staying true to the page title"
If your website is about selling blue widgets and you page title is "blue widgets - johns widget corp" then you are "staying true to the page title" You are letting people and search engines know that this page is about blue widgets. Also "blue widgets - johns widget corp" is under 40 characters so this would not be the best example.
Your question was if you should change all your page titles to under 40 characters so that your entire page title would show. My answer / advise to you is; if you need more then 40 characters to properly describe your page then you should not change just so that all characters in your page title show.
-
But then every title would look cropped in search results. This seems quite silly.
Also, i completely disagree with you on "being true" to the page titles. For example a local company that sells blue widgets that is named johns widget corp, would rank much better if their title was "blue widgets - johns widget corp" than if it was simply "johns widget corp". If people followed your advice they would rank much poorer.
-
I don't think you should change all the page titles on your site to 40 characters or less just to conform to Google's new local SERPs.
The 40 character limit is what Google will show not what you are limited to use. The best advice I can give you is to be "true" to your page titles. If you need more then 40 characters to properly let search engines and people know what your pages are about then you should. Just don't add (stuff) an extra list of keywords to the end of your page titles.
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
-
How long does Google takes to re-index title tags?
Hi, We have carried out changes in our website title tags. However, when I search for these pages on Google, I still see the old title tags in the search results. Is there any way to speed this process up? Thanks
Technical SEO | | Kilgray0 -
Google is shortening many of my title tags although they are already quite concise
Hi, Title tags of our website are being truncated by Google even though they can be very short (sometimes < 40 characters) and with very few capital letters. We would like to understand why. Example: Principal component analysis (pca) in abcde - OurBrand shows up as: Principal component analysis (pca) in abcd... - OurBrand where abcde is the name of a very common software (5 characters), and OurBrand is a 6 characters long string (could be used in either lower case or upper case). Even when removing the brackets around pca, truncation still occurs... Any clue why?
Technical SEO | | trigaudias1 -
Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions are not Indexing in Google
Hello Every one, I have a Wordpress website in which i installed All in SEO plugin and wrote meta titles and descriptions for each and every page and posts and submitted website to index. But after Google crawl the Meta Titles and Descriptions shown by Google are something different that are not found in Content. Even i verified the Cached version of the website and gone through Source code that crawled at that moment. the meta title which i have written is present there. Apart from this, the same URL's are displaying perfect meta titles and descriptions which i wrote in Yahoo and Bing Search Engines. Can anyone explain me how to resolve this issue. Website URL: thenewyou (dot) in Regards,
Technical SEO | | SatishSEOSiren0 -
Where did the "Location" go, on Google SERP?
In order to emulate different locations, I've always done a Google query, then used the "Location" button under "Search Tools" at the top of the SERP to define my preferred location. It seems to have disappeared in the past few days? Anyone know where it went, or if it's gone forever? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | measurableROI0 -
Migrating to new subdomain with new site and new content.
Our marketing department has decided that a new site with new content is needed to launch new products and support our existing ones. We cannot use the same subdomain(www = old subdomain and ww1 = new subdomain)as there is a technically clash between the windows server currently used, and the lamp stack required to run the new wordpress based CMS and site. We also have an aging piece of SAAS software on the www domain which is makes moving it to it's own subdomain far too risky. 301's have been floated as a way of managing the transition. I'm not too keen on that idea due to the double effect of new subdomain and content, and the SEO impact it might have. I've suggested uploading the new site to the new subdomain while leaving the old site in place. Then gradually migrating sections over before turning parts of the old site off and using a 301 at that point to finalise the move. The old site would inform user's there is a new version and it would then convert them to the new site(along with a cookie to auto redirect them in future.) while still leaving the old content in place for existing search traffic, bookmarks and visitors via static URLs. Before turning off sections on the old site we would create rel canonicals to redirect to the new pages based on a a mapped set of URLs(this in itself concerns me as the rel canonical is essentially linking to different content). Would be grateful for any advice on whether this strategy is flawed or whether another strategy might be more suitable?
Technical SEO | | Rezza0 -
How do I fix Title Element Too Long (> 70 Characters) errors?
I have read through other postings about this issue, but since I have over 400 of these errors I am interested in seeing how to fix this issue quickly. Does anyone have a ideas or suggetions? Thanks, Lisa
Technical SEO | | lisarein0 -
Why am I not showing up in the SERP's or Google Local?
I have been trying to optimise the following site for both Google SERP's and Google Local - Pixel Primate The URL has been around for around 3 years now but they just updated the website and launched it in December 2012. I did the on-page optimisation early in January 2013 and Google seems to have indexed the changes, for the home page at least. One major keyword I am targeting for the home page is 'Web Design Leicester'. I understand that the DA is fairly low (24) so this is something I need to improve. However, I've experienced positive results fairly quickly from just on-page optimisation for other sites I have worked on. The site just doesn't seem to be ranking at all for any keywords. Maybe the industry type is just extremely competitve but I find it very strange to not be visible anywhere in the SERPs. The site does not seem to have any penalties as it ranks for 'Pixel Primate' and all pages appear when doing a site: search. Also what's strange is that I set up the Google Local listing years ago but it doesn't appear anywhere in the local listing, not even when I search for it manually. Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Technical SEO | | CWseo0 -
De-indexed from Google
Hi Search Experts! We are just launching a new site for a client with a completely new URL. The client can not provide any access details for their existing site. Any ideas how can we get the existing site de-indexed from Google? Thanks guys!
Technical SEO | | rikmon0