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How Long a Title Tag?
This is a tough one. I have a habit of trying to fit as much into a title tag as possible. I try to keep it below 12 words as a general guideline, but I know there is a difference between a short 12-word title, such as “Dine in – fast food fair for people who eat on the go” (53 characters) and a long 12-word title, such as “California pipeline producers – environmentally sensitive petroleum infrastructure for transporting energy internationally” (OK, so it’s just 11 words, but it’s 122 characters).
In addition to being the most valuable real estate on a web page, the title tag is also used by many other websites to link to your page. So someone linking to the pipeline site, might use “California pipeline producers – environmentally sensitive petroleum infrastructure for transporting energy internationally” as the link text.
A new study suggests that Google reads only the first 55 characters of link text, which means that in the above example it would read only “California pipeline producers – environmentally sensiti”. If you had to target such ridiculously long words for your search market, that would totally suck. But it does speak to the importance of placing your most important keywords at the beginning of your title tag. This is where so many websites that put a corporate name of even their domain name at the beginning miss the mark. It also means trying to keep words like “the” and “and” out of those first 55 characters.
A couple caveats: Google could at any time change this to 50 characters. Or 60. Or 600. Or 10, for that matter. So don’t get stuck on the number 55, but focus on the principle. Yahoo and MSN will have their own limits, too, so don’t stop at 55 if you have something that might get picked up by someone else. And, of course, the title tag is not primarily about link text, is it?
Written by David Leonhardt
Grab The Bookmarketer For Your Site
October 31st, 2008 at 3:52 am
I think another important point you missed is, the title should also be appealing to the user to click on. It must describe the content of the page in an attractive way. I’m often changing my title tags around, sometimes having my location first then my service and then changing it around. The keywords are still in the title but what is more attractive for the user to click.
October 31st, 2008 at 1:53 pm
No matter how many words you use,the title should describe the web page completely. So that user can have a clear picture about website on reading it.
October 31st, 2008 at 3:01 pm
Just to be clear, there are many aspects to a title tag. This blog post is specifically about the effect of a title tag on the link text that some website owners will generate from it.
October 31st, 2008 at 11:42 pm
“Or 60. Or 600. Or 10, for that matter.”
I’ll keep an eye on it
November 1st, 2008 at 8:06 am
David, isn’t we’ve been told to keep the title tag as simple and descriptive as possible? By the way, I didn’t concern about the total character of title tag until now…
November 2nd, 2008 at 12:35 am
I think as long as it dosen’t becomes 2 lines then it’s fine.
November 4th, 2008 at 6:14 am
Best to keep it short, readable and keyword rich to keep all parties concerned happy! Link related and user related.
November 4th, 2008 at 9:37 am
Thanks for the info. Didn’t know about the “character number”.
November 15th, 2008 at 9:24 pm
I agree, keeping the title short and relevant to the page content is the way to go. I’ve seen titles as long as 69 characters appear in the Google results but 55 characters seems like a safe number.
November 20th, 2008 at 10:07 am
I’ve followed this standard with good success:
Primary words need to be within the first 3 word positions, secondary words can be in positions 4 – 6, anything else afterwards that SEs like is gravy. This usually takes me out to ~50 characters.
November 21st, 2008 at 6:31 am
In my opinion size of title tag doesn’t matter, but I do agree that words after 60th character will be given less importance.
November 29th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
don’t you just get dizzy with this or is it me?
try and get keywords to the front but if it makes no sense grammatically then don’t compromise the readibilty
November 29th, 2008 at 8:17 pm
@ Lyndon I am not sure “dizzy” is the word. Sometimes I opt for the main search phrase to be a little further in because otherwise it would make no sense. However, if the main search phrase is really a lot more important than all the others, you can always just plunk it up front…
Leather boots – find a leather cowboy boot in black or brown
Yes it has to read well as a title. But titles do not always follow full-sentence grammar.
December 30th, 2008 at 11:01 am
Solid post. I just dug through the rest of your blog there is some good stuff in here.
Right placement of keywords can make all the difference.
I just added this to my newsreader. You should check my blog out sometime too – we seem to have simliar interests.
-Freddie Laker
Digital Strategist / TakeMeToYourLeader.com
January 3rd, 2009 at 5:22 am
A lot of SEO enthusiasts forget, as central coast SEO mentioned above, that there is another part to the equation besides just the Google god and that's the human behind the click. I'm not going to preach good content like so many others before me but I'd like to second that the title tag *MUST* speak to the person reading as well as have good keywords that are relevant to the search.
January 13th, 2009 at 4:50 am
Size of search tag do matters. Search tag should be short but sufficient. It is about, how well you describe your search within limit. It's kind off art.
October 5th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
Yeah as long as I it dosen't becomes 2 lines then it's fine.