Max Title length to be worthwhile

What should be the maximum length of my Title tag for ranking purposes?

Also, is it worth putting a Description tag in or is that redundant nowadays in Google?

Thanks,

Jon

 

The title should be "keyword 1 keyword2 - company name"

The description tag is definately not redundant.

It may or may not do much for your ranking but it is usually what google uses to put the description next to your search results so make it good and attractive to searchers.

 

I want to target error messages in a particular programming language. These error messages can be up to 23 words in length. What would you recommend for the title tag in these circumstances?

 

You should put the error message in your description as well as in the body of the page.

The title should remain short, in your example; put the programming language and maybe a word or two that might be unique to the error, (error number?).

FFMG

 

It must be less than 66 characters so you need to look at each term end either cut it off at a set point or figure out what users are likely to be searching for and target that phrase.

You will need to make sure the full error message is used to create the meta description tag and a h1 tag for each page.

 

I believe the practical limit for titles is 60 characters - you can go beyond that but around that point your title will be truncated in SE listings anyway.

The description meta tag is used as the snippet for some queries on Google and other SEs and by some directories so it's definitely worth having.

 

Ok, so in a nutshell, with a long keyword phrase:

1. Put a shorter version for tittle less than 66 characters.

2. Put the long keyword phrase in the Description tag.

3. Put the long keyword phrases as an H1 tag.

Yes?

Is it worth repeating that keyword phrase in teh body text? Any limits to Description tag length? Does the Description tag have any ranking value or just for SERPS entry?

 

The "company name" part is helpful for branding but not necessary in many cases - just make sure it's at the end, after all the really important stuff.

 

The description tag probably has some maximum limit but the best thing is to see how many characters show up next to the search results in google and write yours to the same length.

 

I definitely would not make H1 text longer than 64 caracters since
a) it would not be user-friendly
b) starting to look like SE spam

 

The title should be atleast contain your comany name and a keyword, but I always like to put multiple verisons of the keyword and typos as well.

 

Why? That is in the vast majority of cases going to be the least important thing to include in your title...

The title tag is prime SE real estate. Make sure it conatins your most important search terms, with the most important among them first reading left to right. You can have your company name in there if you wish but make sure it comes at the very end of the title - that way, if it gets truncated by the SE, in most cases you haven't lost a significant search term.

 

Yes, I was wondering why bother putting your company name in the Title tag. Surely it is the search term that is most important and adding a company name would dilute it.

 

Putting your company name depends on whether you are an unknown company trying to get good rankings in the search engines or if you are an established household name wanting to put your brand on every page of your site.

If the answer is the second then I reckon having the name in the title is a must, otherwise minstrel is right - it uses up valuable keyword space.

 

Putting your company name is important because it is for branding and it it helps the visitor know he is on the right site. The rest of the title tag should probably contain keywords. Title tags are important for SEO but it seems they arent as imporant as they used to be many eyars ago.

 

Branding what? If nobody can find your site in the SEs, nobody is going to care about whether you're branded or not. As I said, go ahead and include it if you wish, but not at the expense of search terms that actually matter - slam it in at the very end.

I've seen page titles that include not only the site name but the URL - what is the point of that? If they already know who you are and the link to your site, they don't need a search engine to find you and they don't need a title tag to know who you arfe.

"Probably"?

I have no idea what you base this notion on but it is false.

 

Why not just stick your company name in the Title tag of the home page and leave the rest of your sites Title tags for keywords? That way they are likely to find your site with your company name and you don't dilute your keywords.

 

Because unless people already know who you are they are not going to be searching for the name of your company - and if they do know who you are, chances are they already know your URL and won't need a search engine to find you at all.

With the exception of large companies like Apple, Microsoft, HP, Soundblaster, etc., people don't search for companies. They search for things like "computers", "digital cameras", "used socks for sale or rent", etc. And it's those search terms that you need to have featured in the title tag.

 

I have to agree with Minstrel, he knows his stuff, just look at his rep. When I am creating a title tag I do the following...

1. I keep it to the 60 charater limit to avoid truncation.
2. I target two or three search terms at most.
3. I sometimes include the company name like on my homepage. It isn't needed though.

A well optimized title tag can have a good impact on a site's rankings.

 

I base it on the fact there is more competion these days for certain keywords and if title tags had the same importance as htey had years ago poeple would be able to spam the results by just stuffing thier tags.

I remember 7 years ago building a crappy 5 pae website about a corvette and I put 'corvette, paint, chevy, parts' in the title tags and I got in the top 10 for yahoo and google just with that. No backlinks or anything. Nowadays hat wouldnt work.

I've noticed on MSN I can get ok rankings by using lots of keywords tags but on Google and Yahoo it doesnt help as well.