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- Sep 9, 2006
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Just replied to a post on an seo forum, where some advice was being given for beginners, just thought I would post it here, as we all make this mistake from time to time.
Quote "One for the beginners,
Don't go over these maximums, but stay within 5 below if you cant make it exact.
60 character max for titles
160 max for descriptions"
60 char max for titles??? Hardly good advice for beginners as you say, but i do agree with around 55 chars for visibility!
Lets tell them what they really need to know.
Google has shortened the view of titles over the years, but there really is no need to limit your title to just 60.
As for obtaining the most relevant search terms within the viewable area of search results, that is completely different, as we all know, you may be on the 1st page of google, but if your title and desc look less related than others, the CTR will not justify your position.
When searching for loans for example, a monster keyword, position 4 has a title saying, Lowest bank Rate for 50 years, loans from 5.5% etc
Tesco below have 8.2%, and the ones above, just what you expect to see on any google search result.
While the general public are more rate conscious than ever, unless your user is very lazy and never really used a search engine before, they WILL scan at least the fisrt 6-8 results, most upto bottom of page 2 as you well know.
So you really should drop 10 from the old ways, and now focus on getting your best reason to click, within the first 62, and that includes spaces, as for going over, its not a problem.
Yes I agree that being up there so to speak, will give you masses of traffic, but for the professionals out there who need to pitch to clients already up there, focusing on the sales CTR element will appeal to them.
This may well be a sucking eggs post for some, but as the one i was commenting on was intended for beginners, I had to post
Quote "One for the beginners,
Don't go over these maximums, but stay within 5 below if you cant make it exact.
60 character max for titles
160 max for descriptions"
60 char max for titles??? Hardly good advice for beginners as you say, but i do agree with around 55 chars for visibility!
Lets tell them what they really need to know.
Google has shortened the view of titles over the years, but there really is no need to limit your title to just 60.
As for obtaining the most relevant search terms within the viewable area of search results, that is completely different, as we all know, you may be on the 1st page of google, but if your title and desc look less related than others, the CTR will not justify your position.
When searching for loans for example, a monster keyword, position 4 has a title saying, Lowest bank Rate for 50 years, loans from 5.5% etc
Tesco below have 8.2%, and the ones above, just what you expect to see on any google search result.
While the general public are more rate conscious than ever, unless your user is very lazy and never really used a search engine before, they WILL scan at least the fisrt 6-8 results, most upto bottom of page 2 as you well know.
So you really should drop 10 from the old ways, and now focus on getting your best reason to click, within the first 62, and that includes spaces, as for going over, its not a problem.
Yes I agree that being up there so to speak, will give you masses of traffic, but for the professionals out there who need to pitch to clients already up there, focusing on the sales CTR element will appeal to them.
This may well be a sucking eggs post for some, but as the one i was commenting on was intended for beginners, I had to post