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.
Title tag length
-
Hi,
I am fairly new to SEO and have just noticed the end of my title text has been cut off by Google in the serps results.
Everything i have read tells me titles should be maximum of 70 characters, however, Google is only displaying 54. See below
Security systems | wireless | battery powered | Police...
Nobody else on the page is showing more than 54 characters.
Am i missing something obvious?
Any and all help gratefully appreciated.
Thanks
Si
-
Hi Jesse,
I will keep you appraised.
Thank you for your support.
Regards,
Si
-
Well I don't know anything about this "SEO College Tutor" but it sounds fishy to me.
You can have the "key info" in the title and still have it be readable. Also, at the very least you should take me up on my suggestions for capitalization. It currently looks like it was written by a 5th grader. No offense. But you capitalize the first few words, stop doing it, and then go back to capitalizing at the end. Looks amateurish and reads horribly. At the very least fix that.
I'd encourage you to grab some impartial observers (a mom, gramma, aunt, uncle, somebody not good with computers you happen to know) and ask them to look at the SERPs you are targeting and choose a site to visit. Or maybe even ask them to run some random searches and watch how they react to SERPs and what pages they choose to click on. I think that you will find the title tag to be the difference maker (beyond placement of course). What you are doing is stuffing keywords to encourage placement in the top of the SERPs. That's what the "SEO tutor" is having you do. That is not necessarily going to work. There are plenty of ways to rank well and still have an attractive title for your end-user.
I've seen it work both ways. I've seen a page sit at number 1 for the desired keyword results and get no clicks. Why? Only answer I have was a terrible Title.
I'm glad you are going to test both methods. That's a great way to approach things.
Keep in mind with your SEO Tutor.. You need to take every factor into account with SEO. There is no perfect way of doing things. My way isn't perfect, their way isn't perfect. You need to find your own truths somewhere in between. You seem to be working towards that so you should be alright.
But boy I have to say my gut tells me that this alleged Tutor has a few things mixed up...
-
Hi Jesse,
Thank you for your reply. I am getting real people like you telling me one thing and the SEO college tutor telling me another. Personally i can see benefits in both. I like to see the key information in the title like it is at the moment. My other side that refuses to use text speak and enjoys the written word likes a flowing title.
I am going to leave it until this time next week, collect the analytics and then change style and repeat for a week and see what works best.
Have a good weekend and i always appreciate advice.
Si
-
I know I've told you this before and I'm becoming the Title-Tag Police around here but you can do so much better with that. There are several things that drive me crazy from a users' perspective with your title:
1.) Keyword stuffed.. Seems like a robot wrote it; not human
2.) Capitalization. Sometimes you capitalize the first letters like a title would and sometimes you don't. This inconsistency makes your page look amateurish and drives my OCD grammar-police brain crazy!
Just trying to help... Good luck!
-
Dear William and Mike,
Excellent answer guys, thank you so much. Considering how much a truncated title could screw it up, i'm surprised this is not more widely known. Especially by the 'expert' tutor at SEO College.
Have a great weekend both.
Si
-
Dear William and Mike,
Excellent answer guys, thank you so much. Considering how much a truncated title could screw it up, i'm surprised this is not more widely known. Especially by the 'expert' tutor at SEO College.
Have a great weekend both.
Si
-
Your full title, Security systems | wireless | battery powered | Police Approved | CSS, winds up truncated because its 69 characters with spaces and features a few wide letters (like those W's) that make it too long pixel-wise (as William pointed out).
-
Title tags may vary. And could be anywhere from ~50 through ~70. It is measured by pixels.
http://www.highervisibility.com/blog/title-tags-are-measured-by-pixels-not-by-characters/
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
-
Meta title not showing up correctly on SERP
We have an issue with some clients on a Wordpress CMS where title tags implemented on a Yoast SEO plugin for the Homepage are not coming up as we'd implemented them. However, the source code shows we'd implemented them correctly according to what we'd wanted.**For example, this is the title tag we implemented in the CMS:Towing Services Alberta | Jack's TowingSource code shows:Towing Services Alberta | Jack's TowingHowever, SERP results shows:**Jack's Towing | Towing Services Alberta This is not an issue with the rest of the other pages and there isn't a global template for our client's sites. It's perplexing that it's only happening on the Homepage and this is across for 3 of our clients' sites.Even more perplexing, recently we've noticed that SERP is only showing the client's business name as the title tag and this is across for 2 out of the 3 clients we'd mentioned above. Nothing has changed in the back-end.Would appreciate some insight on this issue!
On-Page Optimization | | Gavo4 -
Duplicate content with tagging and categories
Hello, Moz is showing that a site has duplicate content - which appears to be because of tags and categories. It is a relatively new site, with only a few blog publications so far. This means that the same articles are displayed under a number of different tags and categories... Is this something I should worry about, or just wait until I have more content? The 'tag' and 'category' pages are not really pages I would expect or aim for anyone to find in google results anyway. Would be glad to here any advice / opinions on this Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | wearehappymedia1 -
SVG image files causing multiple title tags on page - SEO issue?
Does anyone have any experience with SVG image files and on-page SEO? A client is using them and it seems they use the title tag in the same way a regular image (JPG/PNG) would use an image ALT tag. I'm concerned that search engines will see the multiple title tags on the page and that this will cause SEO issues. Regular crawlers like Moz flag it as a second title tag, however it's outside the header and in a SVG wrap so the crawlers really should understand that this is a SVG title rather than a second page title. But is this the case? If anyone has experience with this, I'd love to hear about it.
On-Page Optimization | | mrdavidingram2 -
Duplicate Title and Meta Description Tags in Shopify with this App
Hello. I'm finding that by adding the Ultra SEO app in Shopify, I now have duplicates of the Title tags and Meta Descriptions. It looks like it's pulling title tags from the Shop info, the product or page titles as well as the Title tag I add in Ultra SEO. The website is 1bigcookie.com. The duplicate meta descriptions are from the text I entered in the meta description field in Ultra SEO. I entered the canonical url code shopify specifies to help with duplicate content, but what about duplicate title and meta description tags on the same page?
On-Page Optimization | | mymochamoney0 -
How bad is it going over 70 character for title tag length?
I know less than 70 is recommended. I am about to run a script to create some title tags and a few will be between 71-74. Is going just the few characters over ok until I can get in there and manually do them?
On-Page Optimization | | EcommerceSite0 -
Does a phone number in the title tag hurt your rankings in SERP?
Hi Mozzers, One of my client is a carpet cleaner and I was wondering if adding a phone number into the title tags would hurt our rankings . I am asking because the client has mentioned it and that we do have some space to add a phone number into the tag. Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
Should I let Google index tags?
Should I let Google index tags? Positive? Negative Right now Google index every page, including tags... looks like I am risking to get duplicate content errors? If thats true should I just block /tag in robots.txt Also is it better to have as many pages indexed by google or it's should be as lees as possible and specific to the content as much as possible. Cheers
On-Page Optimization | | DiamondJewelryEmpire0 -
Should I include location in title tag to rank higher in local search
I'm working on a site for a small guest house (http://www.tommysonthebeach.com). I have created a Google Place page (Bing and Yahoo Local) as well and I have the address in the footer on every page. I have the location (Indian Rocks Beach) at the beginning of most titles tags because that is how people tend to search, e.g. "Indian Rocks Beach vacation rental." In theory I would think that I don't need location in the title tag because Google knows the location, and I could use the real estate for other keywords suchs as "pet friendly" or "beach hotel," etc. But when I look at the SERPS, those ranking highly all seem to have the location at the beginning of the title tag. Thanks. P.S. The site is currently not showing up in Google local search apparently because Google thinks it's a vacation rental agency, which are not allowed in local search. I'm trying to get that fixed.
On-Page Optimization | | bvalentine0