Rookie Question about Title & Meta Tags

you may want to note that google trims the title tag far before most browsers (or search engines) do

 

It's not a total-rookie question: many experts have pondered it, albeit with different resultant ideas.

My own feeling is that we should consider the basic uses, rather than exact byte counts. A title tag puts a title in your visitors' browsers' title bars. Remembering that we can never know their screen size or resolution setting, I think it behooves us to make titles that would assuredly fit in any titlebar (remembering also that some browsers insert text of their own).

Likewise text in a "description" meta tag: imagine it found on a search-engine listing--how much of it would likely be quoted, and would it make sense to a searcher if truncated? Moderate description lengths that succinctly convey the page's content in a way that would encourage searchers to click on it is what's wanted.

 

er, so are you saying that google counts the title even beyond what's cut off?

if not you lost me.

 

Yes, this is what causes the confusion. Google & Yahoo will trim titles in their display, but although they are truncated in the browser, they are not truncated in the algo.

The Title plays two roles, that of a key SEO element, and the other as a display advertisement. Your title MUST shout out hey you! click on me NOW, as it is really the only thing that remains constant in many SERP's the snippet being variable depending on search term.

For this reason you should make sure that your title displays in the browser and gets your message across. The rest of the title can then be out of sight, but doing its SEO job.

 

I have been doing some research on just such a thing. I get advice from some articles, newsletters I subscribe to, as well as some online tools I have used.

I am in the process of building a tool based off of what I am learning. It is not completed yet. However, it does build the meta tags and mention the statistics that have been advised . . .

http://www.spiderweblogic.com/HTML-meta-tag-Generator.aspx

* It is in development, so it is not in my site map yet.
* It doesn't check the constraints yet, but it lists them.
* It does build meta tags . . .

Robert Fuess
Spiderweb Logic

 

This is what I would suggest:

Title: Recommend less than 60 characters. Put your keywords first, and your business name at the end. Some search engines take the first part as the most relevant.

Keyword HTML meta tags

• try to keep under 874 characters.
• Dont repeat words more than three times (avoiding spam filters)

I have recently read an article suggesting that for Yahoo, it is optimum to keep the keyword list down to 15 keyword phrases, comma deliminated. However though some tools I know have up to 30, as if to indicate that this would be fine.

Description Keep under 150 characters

 

Here is a free tool to help generate Meta tags. It gives text advice and gives warnings as you generate them if there are too many characters, too many repeats, etc.
HTML Meta Tag Generator

 

I'm more interested in why you are asking the question. There is the "rule of thumb" and then there is the real world.

Care to explain where you are going?

 

I read somewhere recently that for best SEO practice you should keep your title tag to less than 70 characters, and the meta description to less than 155.

...but whether that's really the case or not, I don't know. All the other stuff seemed to be pretty true to form so I've taken it as fairly authoritative.

 

If you're a newbie, use a meta tag generator.

They usually have instructions as to how many characters, keywords etc. to use as well as which tags are important and which are optional.