Title tag; Shorter is better?

[abhishekkaushik]

Does anybody here feel that lesser lengthy pages Title weight more, For example if a person is searching for "sell monster widgets" and two pages that contains title as follows
1. <title>Sell Monster Widgets</title>
2. <title>Buy and Sell Monster Widgets<title>

The upper will get more preference on the basis that the pages is only focused on the query. I have seen this in SERPs......

[edited by: tedster at 5:23 am (utc) on July 12, 2007]
[edit reason] widgetize the search terms [/edit]

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

You are probably right but I think it's a case of swings and roundabouts. What you gain from "sell" you may lose on "buy".

[lakr]

It depends on you make it for Search engines or Visitors.

If for visitors, it should be short and descriptive.
if for Google, it should contain the keywords you are targeting for.

In my niche, Spammy title with repetitive keywords still rules. Google banned many sites on my niche for it, however, they seem to unlift the penalty recently, and spammers are coming back again. Congrats to Google.

[new_seo]

I think both are fine in terms of SERP.You are right, that short title is better. Actually we are guessing that, Google reads the first 65 characters of the title, so every one should include their main targeted keywords within the first 65 characters. But rightly said by BeeDeeDubbleU

it’s a case of swings and roundabouts

, these kind of slight changes will not affect so much.

That is what I feel.

[lakr]

Google reads the first 65 characters

Nope, I do not think so, one of the site I research with the title:

Widget 1, Widget 2, Widget 20,...Widget 20 (much longer than 65 characters)

it gets the top 10 for all of the keywords on title, even for the Widget 20.

So I think that Google counts all the keywords on title regardless of its length.

[new_seo]

If for visitors, it should be short and descriptive.
if for Google, it should contain the keywords you are targeting for.

Both for visitors and Search Engine Title should be short and descriptive.In the process of putting your targeted keywords in the title,if it becomes very long do you think that crawler will read the whole title?No,my friend.

In my niche, Spammy title with repetitive keywords still rules. Google banned many sites on my niche for it, however, they seem to unlift the penalty recently, and spammers are coming back again. Congrats to Google.

Ohhh really,thats interesting.
Best of luck!(If you are going with this)

[new_seo]

Nope, I do not think so, one of the site I research with the title:
Widget 1, Widget 2, Widget 20,...Widget 20 (much longer than 65 characters)it gets the top 10 for all of the keywords on title, even for the Widget 20.
So I think that Google counts all the keywords on title regardless of its length.

Do you think that title is the only factor of google ranking?There are n number of factors are working behind google ranking.
Google is now giving more importance on 1.quality and unique content 2.Quality back links 3.trust rank of a site.
That site might have any of these or all of these qualities.

[lakr]

Agreed, but do u mean that sites with trust rank can do what they want, even Spam, but still on top? so shame.! :)

[edited by: lakr at 8:42 am (utc) on July 12, 2007]

[pro_seo]

Does anybody here feel that lesser lengthy pages Title weight more, For example if a person is searching for "sell monster widgets" and two pages that contains title as follows
1. <title>Sell Monster Widgets</title>
2. <title>Buy and Sell Monster Widgets<title>

The upper will get more preference on the basis that the pages is only focused on the query. I have seen this in SERPs......

Titles should be what your page is all about.

If your page is about Selling Monster Widgets, then "Sell Monster Widgets" is the correct one.

If the page is both about buying and selling widgets, then "Buy and Sell Monster Widgets" is the one for you.

Title should be specific and without unnecessary words. Keep it within 65 characters and include keywords pertaining to the specific page.

The more non-related words you add in your title, the less weight will be given to each of your keywords by the search engines.

Spammy titles still works, especially for Yahoo and MSN but a strict NO NO for Google.

Remember, titles should also be enticing enough to produce clicks...otherwise all the efforts to be in the SERPs go in vain.

Good Luck!

[pro_seo]

So sites with trust rank can do what they want, even Spam, but still on top? so shame.! :)

A cop is there to protect the law - this however doesn't mean that he will be spared upon committing a crime.

Sites with high TR may face penalization or even be completely banned upon violating SEO guidelines.

[lakr]

but a strict NO NO for Google.

"it would happen in a Perfect World" - Simple Plan.

I agree with you all, but there are still some exceptions in my niche.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Google reads the first 65 characters

and

In the process of putting your targeted keywords in the title,if it becomes very long do you think that crawler will read the whole title?No,my friend.

There seems to be some confusion here. Google only displays 65 characters. There is no reason why it would not read them all.

[edited by: BeeDeeDubbleU at 9:18 am (utc) on July 12, 2007]

[abhishekkaushik]

people have slightly distracted from the original theme. The point is even if the title is less than 65 char the above phenomena is applied. In fact the smaller title much less than 65 char are better....

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

In fact the smaller title much less than 65 char are better....

Based on what evidence?

[abhishekkaushik]

Some authority site like wikipedia and w3schools use short title and they are up. It is reasonable to think that shorter title will be more focused on given topic rather than stuffing other heading along with I expect search engines already know it.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Bad example. I think it would be fair to say that the two that you mention are there for reasons other than their title.

[new_seo]

There seems to be some confusion here. Google only displays 65 characters. There is no reason why it would not read them all.

I want to say that google is giving more importance to the first 65 characters.If the title is very long,google might read the whole but will judge the first 65 to 80 characters.

[dudibob]

I'd say the shorter the title the better, but of course that means less keywords. It's finding the right balance between focus and keywords. There is no defining rule because it depends entirely on the page content, it could be about a product that has a 70+ character name but you can still rank ;)

I try and stay under 65 characters for the display purposes in the SERPs but it's not always possible

[tedster]

one of the site I research with the title: Widget 1, Widget 2, Widget 20,...Widget 20 (much longer than 65 characters) it gets the top 10 for all of the keywords on title, even for the Widget 20. So I think that Google counts all the keywords on title regardless of its length.

There seems to be some confusion here. Google only displays 65 characters. There is no reason why it would not read them all.

My data agrees with these two posts. In fact, I've been astonished at how well phrases that are buried deep in the title element -- and nowhere else on the page or in backlinks -- can still rank. Right now at least, the 65 character point is the truncation mark for display purposes in the SERP, but not for analysis purposes.

Now if you want to talk about effectiveness in drawing the click -- that's another angle on the discussion.

[Wlauzon]

Titles should be what your page is all about.

If your page is about Selling Monster Widgets, then "Sell Monster Widgets" is the correct one.

WOW! What a concept - actually describing the page :D

I have been fooling around looking at our competitors sites trying to figure out why we nearly always place way ahead of nearly all of them.

And one thing that struck me is how many pages either have no title, or have a bad or misleading title. For example, a page sellng green widgets would have a title of "super stupendous low price sale on green widgets".

Now, only two of those words pertain to green widgets, which seems to me would dilute the effect of the title considerably.

I'd say the shorter the title the better, but of course that means less keywords.

See above about dilution. How many of those words in the title really ARE keywords? If you are selling Monster Widgets, then there are only two keywords. "stupendous monster widgets at super low cut-rate prices" is still only two keywords, but they might be getting lost in the clutter (?)

[edited by: Wlauzon at 3:03 pm (utc) on July 13, 2007]

[Robert Charlton]

Here's an old discussion on the subject that I think still pertains....

Title Tags: A badly written title will sink your site
How to sabotage your web site without even knowing it
[webmasterworld.com...]