Does >70 character title tag affect a pages ranking in search?
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We are a publication that puts out hundreds of articles a month. We have +5000 medium priority errors showing that our title element tags are too long. The title tag is structured like this: [Headine] | [Publication Name that is 23 characters] . However, since we are a publication, it's not practical for us to try to limit the length of our title tags to 70 characters or less because doing so would make the titles of our content seem very unnatural. We also don't want to remove the branding because we want it to go with the article when it's shared (and to appear when some titles are short enough to allow room in SERPs).
I understand the reasons for limiting characters to 70 or less with regard to SERP friendliness. We try to keep key phrases in the front. People are more likely to click on a page if they know what it's about etc etc. My question is, do the longer titles affect the ability for the page to rank in search? To put it a different way, if we altered all the +5000 of the title tags to fit within 70 characters, would the page authorities and our site's domain authority increase?
I'd like to avoid needed to clean up 5000 pages if the medium priority errors aren't really hurting us. Any input is appreciated. Thanks!
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If your page titles are right for your readers then I really would not worry about this one too much. Users > search engines.
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Best practice is to write titles for your audience keeping keywords in mind, but not obsessing over length. Although only the first 512 pixels (50-70 words) of the title tag will show, some believe longer titles are better for SEO purposes because they allow you to fit in more keywords. The first 512 pixels should be catchy with your keyword to help CTR, but anything after that doesn't show can still help in terms of SEO. Do not worry about changing the titles of those 5000 pages. It could even end up hurting your rankings in the SERPs.
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