Page Title (Meta descriptions) length... how strict are you?
-
I have just had a conversation with a client... the gist was this...
Is it more important to stay under the 55-60 characters OR go over a bit and have the page title make sense and include the clients company name.
The same argument for meta description. I have a client insisting on 55-60 length but the keywords are long and if we use the primary keyword phrase the length is 44 if we use the keyword phrase and add the company name it becomes 64. This is with us trimming it a bit.
Anyone else discussed this before?
-
I'd tend to agree. It won't harm you to go over, but since no one's going to see it, what's the point, generally. Now, if you feel thinks are being cut off arbitrarily (like the name of a product) and those keywords should be included somehow, fine - go over the limit. You can potentially rank for those terms and they may show up in other places. Some directories, social networks, etc. read the title tags, too.
If it's just ego, though, like a long brand name, I'd suggest letting it go. Unless you're a really big brand, it's not going to matter that much, and you're likely to rank for your brand anyway. If the brand is getting cut off, then name recognition won't help your CTR anyway.
Usability research definitely shows that people pay much more attention to the front of a headline, and even just the first two words, so even if a longer title "makes sense", people may not care or even see it. So, sometimes, I think we obsess over getting something just right that may not end up mattering that much, practically.
Personally, I'd pick a different battle with the client, and maybe just keep a few long that are critically important.
-
FWIW, Google indexes title tags way beyond what it displays, possibly up to 164 characters. I've always considered that a valuable bit of intel to consider. (The post I linked to is ancient by SEO standards but I'd imagine it's still relevant, some nice work from Hugo Guzman.)
-
We discuss it all the time, good topic. The new WMT's search console has been enlightening. We have enough data to show that professional Titles, extended to or close to the maximum 512 pixels - has a better CTR on mobile than short or truncated versions. The Meta description is more important for desktop.
In short it it best to professionalize both. The Title can extend to 512 pixels before it truncates. There are a number of free tools where this can be measured prior to implementation. The meta description is not clear but up to 156 characters google seems comfortable in not truncating - however the meta description is more loosely used by google. Sometimes google insert a date .. and that undoes all the hard work.
In summary they are serious business and not to be taken lightly given the combined impact on seo and clickability. So in my view if the target client is mobile based stay within the 512 pixels. If desktop roll the dice...
Hope that assists.
-
To be honest, it does not make a huge difference. The reason for staying within the 55-60 character limit is so that your title does not get truncated in the SERPs. While it is not necessarily detrimental, it could impact click-through rates. Keep in mind - this limit is still not perfect. Depending on the pixel width of the letters used, you could still end up losing some of your title. Keep your keywords near the front, keep it natural, and you will be fine.
Tool for checking SERP titles: https://mza.bundledseo.com/blog/new-title-tag-guidelines-preview-tool
As for company name, it really only helps if the company has strong brand recognition. If no one is performing searches based on or including their name...inserting it into every page will not help the cause. Generally speaking, a search for a company name will yield results including their website regardless of company name placement in their title/description tags. Stick it on the homepage, contact page, about us, etc. - otherwise focus on describing the intent of the page and let Google do its thing.
-
Title tags - put your main keywords for the page first, or near the beginning. That helps google know what the page is about. The number of characters varies as Google does not look at characters per se, but pixel width. Good article by Dr P.
https://mza.bundledseo.com/blog/new-title-tag-guidelines-preview-tool
You just have to watch what gets cut off at a certain point. Beyond that length the title is getting too long for readability anyway and if you need a longer title to explain a page, just put the longer one in the H1, but try and be sensible. If the client insists on putting the company name and you are not trying to rank for the company name just do something like
Keyword and keyword is really key here because it ranks good! | Company Name
The company name is at the end and will get hidden in the serps anyway, and you have your key word(s) or phrase in at the start.
Meta description is about conversion and click through rate vs ranking. Focus on getting the best call to action with a keyword somewhere in there first. I would say, this could be a good place to sneak in the company name, after you get your call to action right. Your limit is larger there (about 150-160) so you have more room before the cutoff. I tend to worry less about keywords and think about searcher intent and see if I can match that to get them to select my page among others in the search result. Another good article by Dr P
https://mza.bundledseo.com/blog/i-cant-drive-155-meta-descriptions-in-2015
Cheers!
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
-
Reducing multi-page website to one page & SEO ramifications?
Hello there! I just want to check in before I do this. I am reducing a multi-page website to one page (temporarily, but for at least 4-6 months). I will be 301 redirecting all old pages to the one, new home page. The new home page has a lot more content, long and short keyword phrases. Aside from losing the benefit of internal links, will reducing the number of website pages hurt a ranking? Does having associated keywords on other website pages provide benefit to another (in this case Home) page? Thanks so much for your invaluable advice!
On-Page Optimization | | lulu710 -
Include Site Name in Page Titles or not
i would like to ask if it is a good practice or not to Include Site Name in Page Titles. My page is not selling products it is about plagiarism checker tool. i will give one example in one page we are writing about the plagiarism types so the page title is plagiarism types and then is the site name. what is the better practice? Keep it or not? thanks in advance
On-Page Optimization | | anavasis3 -
Does having landing page text beneath the products at the base of the page hinder SEO?
I have a site that is capable of hosting the landing page description either above the products under the H1 or below them at the bottom of the page before the footer. I have always chosen to keep the text "above the fold" as presumably this would be crawled sooner in relation to the rest of the page content than had it been at the bottom. However, this means that I can only really write just a few sentences for each landing page - otherwise the products would shift further down the page - and I don't think this is good from a UX POV. Question: If I move the bulk of my landing page descriptions to the text snippet located underneath the products, could this negatively affect my SEO? Text at the bottom of the page is obviously not significant for users, so is there a chance this could be seen as spam?
On-Page Optimization | | Silkstream0 -
Regarding Google Title 'Width' and changing Meta Titles w/o Penalty?
A vast majority of pages on my site are now too wide (the character count was fine prior to the March update). I want to go through and update them so they display properly and are not too wide.However, I am concerned, as my understanding was that changing Meta Titles is dangerous and can have a negative effect on your rankings and can cause real issues. Is this an opportunity to change my Titles all-together without any kind of penalty? Or can I only trim the end part? In summary: 1. Can I edit all of my Meta Titles without affecting my rankings? 2. If no, how do I edit them properly to fit within the proper width and not cause any issues? 3. If yes, I can go through and change all my Meta Titles to whatever extent and optimize them to reflect latest best practices? There are changes I wanted to make to all my meta titles but I've been afraid to... due to fear of rankings drops etc Any help with this would be greatly appreciated
On-Page Optimization | | lawfirm0 -
Form Only Pages Considered No Content/Duplicate Pages
We have a lot of WordPress sites with pages that contain only a form. The header, sidebar and footer content is the same as what's one other pages throughout the site. Each form page has a unique page title, meta description, form title and questions but the form title, description and questions add up to probably less than 100 words. Are these form pages negatively affecting the rankings of our landing pages or being viewed as duplicate or no content pages?
On-Page Optimization | | projectassistant0 -
Wordpress Post as Slideshow - One long page vs many short pages?
We are working on implementing a slideshow format for some of the posts on a website, and it appears that using this format breaks a long post into several shorter pages. That's what we want from a user experience standpoint, but are wondering if there are negative SEO implications from having the content broken up in this way, and whether search engines will view it as one longer page or several very short pages? Here is an example: http://www.forthebestrate.com/10-cheap-ideas-for-summer-fun/ Thanks for the help!
On-Page Optimization | | ILM_Marketing0 -
Is Google indexing something I can't see on my page title?
When I do a search for my businesses website (colourpages.com) it returns a listing which is great but the title tag includes Hull Colour Pages which is our old brand name - we changed to colourpages.com 2 years ago yet Hull Colour Pages is still pulling through on the title tag. I have checked the source and it's as follows: <title>Plumbers in Hull - Reviews - colourpages.com</title> I have attached a photo which shows the issue - http://imgur.com/Cva3001 Is Google indexing it from old history that is no longer visible or am I missing something? Cva3001
On-Page Optimization | | colourpages0 -
How do I avoid duplicate content and page title errors when using a single CMS for a website
I am currently hosting a client site on a CMS with both a Canadian and USA version of the website. We have the .com as the primary domain and the .ca is re-directed from the registrar to the Canadian home page. The problem I am having is that my campaign produces errors for duplicate page content and duplicate page titles. Is there a way to setup the two versions on the CMS so that these errors do not get produced? My concern is getting penalized from search engines. Appreciate any help. Mark Palmer
On-Page Optimization | | kpreneur0