Hi, We all know a title tag shouldnt be spammed with keywords, nor should it be too long. But can a title tag be too short? How I think about it; <title>free web hosting | domain names | websitename</title> You will rank on all those keywords a little bit, but if you would just do; <title>domain names</title> You will rank on that specific keyword a lot better. Now, would you suggest a new site to compete on all those keywords (first example) or just that one keywords and later on adding more? And, can a title-tag be to short?
This is good reading and still applicable. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/best-practices-for-title-tags hope that helps, Nigel
In Google Webmaster tools you will see a report of your pages that have short titles and descriptions. Why would Google give us this info if there wasn't some reason for it?
The suitable character limit for title tag is 69 characters. Your title should always be in a sentence and in a call to action phrase. Like, if you are optimizing a site of web design company from UK. Your title can be: Web Design Services with affordable packages by UK Web Design Company. Also, make unique/different titles for every web page relevant to the content of the page. Hope this helps.
This is terrible advice IMO. You should optimize your meta description 1) so it shows in the SERPs at Google often and 2) so that the meta description (NOT the freakin <title>) is a sentence or two with a call to action. Since each page on your site should be targeting a siingle keyword phrases (maybe two or three if they are all almost identical... slight variations of the primary keyword phrase), the <title> element should be optimized for a single keyword phrases (maybe two or three). I am not sure where 69 comes in as the "suitable" title length. There IS no maximum length. A 69 character title is going to get truncated back to 66 or 67... But JUST because Google only displays the first 66-67 characters of the title in the SERPs, don't get fooled into thinking that Google does not look at the entire title. I and others have proven that Google is still looking at the entire title... even if it's 200-300 characters in length. Want to test it yourself? Create a page on your site... only link to it once from your home page in a discreet place (near bottom of page) with link text of "test".... then give it a title like "Testing abd199d9 - Now Testing 2999d3kk - Test Keyword 109294aei - Testing Keyword 919199e98 - Test 9812diuu3u - My Test 2asdk3988dk - The test 299ie1ii1 - My big test akl2kk3kdk"... Do not mention ANY of the keywords from the title in the content of the page. Do NOT tell anyone you're conducting the test so NO ONE will link to the page. Once you get the page indexed, search Google for akl2kk3kdk (the last phrase in the 178 character title tag). Your page will be the only result shown. Title is THE MOST influential on page ranking factor. Filling it with a bunch of fluff words to make it a sentence only reduces the keyword density within the title element of the phrase(s) you REALLY want the page to rank for... And keyword density within HTML elements like <title>, <h1>, <h2>s that are themselves individual ranking factors is VERY important... Keyword density withing the body/main content of the page has very little to do with rankings. In otherwords, making sentences in your title only makes it HARDER to rank for your targeted keywords and more times than not, it's your snippet that is going to convince people to click through, not your title. Title should be kept short and to the point... only containing the primary (possibly a secondary/tertiary) keyword phrase(s) you want to rank for.
I do not think its a terrible advice. Notice that that advice does not suggest using multiple sentences in title. I think its a very good title, since its short and contains all the important keywords and variations. PS. Decent keyword density in <body> still plays a role in ranking.
Keyword density in the body is still a factor, yes... but a VERY minor factor... It doesn't carry NEAR the weight of keyword density within <title>, <h1>, and <h2>s... And NOBODY but the unskilled use sentences in <title>.
Than I highly doubt your SEO skills mate. And as per your comments, I think you are just another newbie who recently got started with practical SEO. No offense mate, but when you reach to the advance level of SEO by your "experience", than let me know what you think about "unskilled". Good luck with learning advance SEO...
Well that's not very nice now is it. Problem is, he is entirely accurate so you may want to rethink your position on the subject. Guess nobody bothered to read the link I posted either. Rand knows his stuff Nigel
ANSWER: For your information, title tag is "also" for the visitors of your site to get the slight idea about what exactly the opening page contains. And description tag is in HTML coding and it DOES NOT have any weight in SERPs and it is neither for search engines, because Google can make a description tag itself. Wanna try, make a page and leave its description page blank, than when it gets crawled, WAALAA! there's the description. No comments on that! I am not sure where you got your SEO training but I think you just "learned it by yourself". I am surprised to see that you don't even know the basics and yet you are here in the discussion with your useless techniques... Anyway, use Google mate; and search "best title tag practices". Than let me know what you get. The suitable and reasonable limit is upto 69 characters and I don't think you would ever found any Pro SEO saying that it is 200+ characters (at least not for title tag). I mean come on, what does title mean, it does not mean to STUFF your keywords. It means to give your visitors a brief idea about the content of your page. Two things: 1. You mentioned H1 tag as a HTML element, but actually they are showed within body/content???? That's strange.... 2. Keyword density within body content has a little to do!!! And yet, people are focusing more on how to build, - SEO friendly navigation - SEO friendly site structure - good internal linking structure - optimized images - headings - text-based hyperlinks - And yes, CONTENT (which is supposed to be the KING) Yet you agreed with me... I wonder if using 200+ characters is brief enough for you. Mate, don't mind, but if I don't know about anything, I never, I never put my leg between it. Good luck (again)!
Mate, may I ask where I went inaccurate? I mean, I also shared my experiences and not my "thoughts" that are yet to be experimented. SEO is not a predictable field and that is why SEOs can not repeat "same" strategies for same niche/sites. Every strategy is yet to be made by exploring facts and figures of current scenario we are dealing with.
http://www.google.com/search?q=70+c...s=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a See link 5, its 70 characters Title tags are for steering google, description tags are for marketing related purposes and CTR for starters. You have it backwards. I also just picked 10 random search terms from website design to cute kittens. I didn't see any sentences for title attributes. It is certainly not a call to action. It is widely held that unless delineating items such as brand | focus , when brand is important ex. menu-cast | Digital Restaurant Menu Boards you should not use superfluous words or characters like and, the, etc... Nigel
Yes, it's 70 and I also mentioned 69 (I hope there's not a BIG difference!) And mate, I agree that title tag is the most important and considerable tag for Google but do you agree to STUFF keywords in this tag? All I intended was to make a brief title with a call to action phrase so as to entertain your visitors as the first thing that LOADS from any site is its title.
Your title tag is what google uses to place the site. Hence, you want this to be as targeted as possible(Since its what you are trying to rank). You can't do this with a bunch pronouns in the title unless for some odd reason your keyword or phrase you are trying to rank has pronouns in it. Can't exactly do that with a proper English sentence. Good= Blue Widgets Not so good= We got blue widgets on sale and nope, not a big difference between 69-70 just pointing out Google will return 70 without truncating it. Folks suggest 64-67 to play it safe. hope that helps, Nigel
It does tend to get a little testy around here, I've noticed. Personally, I like to use most of the 65 or so spaces, and while I have occasionally used more, I have come to believe that may dilute the power of the title tag. I do believe that a call to action in the title can be appropriate in many cases - or an appeal, at least , to what you believe your target visitor needs. Yes, there is more room to do that in the description meta, but your call to action may not make it into the snippet. If you can create a strong call with your targeted phrase in 65 characters, I say that's good marketing mixed with good SEO.
Thanks for all the replies guys. But back to the original question; A beginning website (that doesnt need branding or call to action) would you recommend ranking on 1 keyword and later adding more? Or the other way around?
You can keep it to 60-65 characters... For a new website you can work on as many keywords as you want, but the ranking will depend on how much work you have been doing on each keyword...