How many words in title?

SEOS recommend 5 to 7

[silverbytes]

I have seen programs recommending 5 or more words in title. I have seen many #1 using 2 and 3 too as well as others with 8 or more words.

What do you say? How many words in title?

[WebEqualizer]

4 - 5 words would be enough.

[mona]

I just don't know, silverbytes. I've thought about this and tried testing it and I swear I don't have an answer. My guess is that the length of your title does have some effect - that "blue widgets" in the title by itself scores higher than "blue widgets at great prices" would. I base this on knowing that having KWs at the beginning of the title scores higher. But there are so many factors to consider.

 1) Which search engine? It seems like G, Yahoo, and MSN all weigh the length of title differently.

 2) Which page of your site? I tend to use longer titles for the home page because it seems like I get more bang for the buck there. And then for the main navigation pages I shorten it up. And so on. But then there comes a point on the deeper pages where it makes sense to make the title longer again. Why not get in as many as you can because if they do get less weight - it won't matter because these phrases aren't very competitive?

3) Then there's the 'clickability' issue. How important is it to have a title that will encourage people to click on it?

And I'm sure there are other factors I'm forgetting. I wish I had a definitive answer for you, but no such luck.

[Liane]

My pages seem to do pretty well across all search engines. For titles, I never use more than 7 words and rarely fewer than three.

To be honest, from an SEO point of view, I have no clue what the best formula might be ... I just go with the topic at hand and try to describe it as best I can in 7 words or less. It has always worked for me!

All I ever do is consider that every other webmaster/writer is doing the best they can to describe the exact same thing as I am trying to describe to the best of their ability.

He who is the best and most concise writer wins the "title war"!

For me, it all comes down to writing the best and shortest synopsis of the page content. If you have to use 7 words to explain the page ... so does everyone else! Think before you put that page up! A good title is easily the most important factor of your page on MSN these days. That may change ... but I always consider a good title to be critical to the success of any page.

"Blue, purple, green & fuzzy widgets - discount prices!"

[edited by: Liane at 4:28 am (utc) on April 28, 2005]

[jimbeetle]

Yeah, as Liane says, I just keep it to what I have to use. But I also like getting my brand in there.

Left-Handed Red Widgets for Sale and Rent - MyBrand Widget Guide

Sprockets, A Replacement for Red Widgets? - MyBrand Widget Guide

Red Widgets: Proper Use and Installation - MyBrand Widget Guide

However you want to turn the words around, you shouldn't need much more.

But, the most important point: Would you click on the title if you saw it in a SERP?

[silverbytes]

About clicks: I rarely skip a result due to it's title, in most cases if *description* sounds too spammy or non related I'd skip it, but I tend to think that google knows what is doing and other search engines too.

So I'm most interested in keyword density on titles. I did great repeating main key in different places of title, but still having a serious title, informative.

The competitor #1 in a single keyword is a 2 words title (50% keyword density). I think the longer title the lower density. So any experiences about variations would be considered to find this out...