Ideal title and description length

[losangel27]

i read on an seo book that:

ideal length of title is 8-10 words
ideal length of description is no more than 250 characters? so ideally? 20 words?

would like to know if people think this is correct?

im mostly interested in being optimized for google... but i guess who isn't.

[cltwebs]

I've read some where that your title should be no more than 50 characters and description no more than 100. And that's the figure I have always tried to stick too.

and always but your most important keywords first.

[John Scott]

I try to keep it under the page title under 60 characters, because longer page titles get cut off in the SERPs.

[awall19]

the shorter your page title the more emphasis gets put on each word.

sometimes I use overlapping terms, like:

professional search engine marketing services

which helps for:
search engine marketing
professional search engine marketing
search engine marketing services

[MaK]

Originally Posted by JohnScott

I try to keep it under the page title under 60 characters, because longer page titles get cut off in the SERPs.

John I was wondering - when the page titles get cut off in the SERPs, do the cut off keywords/phrases still get taken into acount?

MaK

[I, Brian]

They are apparently taken into account - but let's face it, if your listing in the search engine results makes your site look poo and pointless, who's going to click on it?

For example, when searching for scottish property a few days ago, I most certainly did not click on anything that had a listing like:

Sottish property property in Scotland Scottish property for sale buy property in Scotland...
Sottish property property in Scotland Scottish property for sale buy property in Scotland Sottish property property in Scotland Scottish property for sale buy property in ScotlandSottish property property in Scotland Scottish property for sale buy property in Scotland...
www.scottish-property-for-sale-scotland-buy-property.biz/scottish-property-for-sale-buy-property.html
Similar results


Something John Scott and Aaron have been made a point of emphasising is that ultimately you are not optimising for search engines, but for human visitors. Sometimes that seems easily forgotten by people who field the sort of crap return as the above example.

[At the top]

I try to keep it under the page title under 60 characters, because longer page titles get cut off in the SERPs.

Being more specific toward one particular engine. Google can handle 65 characters before it cuts off.

do the cut off keywords/phrases still get taken into acount?

Mak, I agree with awall19 when he/she said "the shorter your page title the more emphasis gets put on each word". You can of course use a lot more but the more you use, the more diluted your keywords at the start of your title become.

Example:

If you use just one keyword in your title, the keyword on its own is at its absolute strongest, the more words you add after the single keyword, the weaker that one word becomes. The benefit is that you cram more words in to that all important title.

IMHO try to keep a title down to 30 - 40 characters but never go over 65 for Googles sake.

As for descriptions - well they will not help in Google anyway. Write them for humans only and just use it to weigh up the page. Keep it short, keep it snappy and include a keyword or two. This way, chances are Google will take a snippet and use it in serps as your description paragraph.

By the way Hi to y'all

[awall19]

hi at the top
welcome to the forums

I think you can use a longer description if you want...it does not hurt you, but if you write it correctly you can craft part of the search results for common queries and Yahoo! does weigh in the tag.

[Buskerdoo]

Make sure to check your description on Google. Once, Google used snipits that said my site had the "highest price on the web". Needless to say I didn't get much traffic.

[John Scott]

I've never noticed a "dilution" of weight when using more keywords in the title element. That is to say, a page title with just "Search Engine Optimization" places the same weight on those words as a page title with "Search Engine Optimization, Marketing, Positioning and SEO Consulting Services".

You'd think that it would divide the weight amongst the words equally, but I see no evidence of it whatsoever. If more words did indeed dilute the weight, you'd expect the search term "search engine optimization" to result in mostly pages that use just those three words in the title element in the top ten, but there is not even one such page in the top ten.

[awall19]

Originally Posted by JohnScott

I've never noticed a "dilution" of weight when using more keywords in the title element. That is to say, a page title with just "Search Engine Optimization" places the same weight on those words as a page title with "Search Engine Optimization, Marketing, Positioning and SEO Consulting Services".

You'd think that it would divide the weight amongst the words equally, but I see no evidence of it whatsoever. If more words did indeed dilute the weight, you'd expect the search term "search engine optimization" to result in mostly pages that use just those three words in the title element in the top ten, but there is not even one such page in the top ten.

I do not necissarily agree with that statement and think the given example was not the best...almost every site on the first page of Google for "search engine optimization" is there because of anchor text & linkage data. many of them could probably remove the page entirely and still rank there.

[John Scott]

Originally Posted by awall19

I do not necissarily agree with that statement and think the given example was not the best...almost every site on the first page of Google for "search engine optimization" is there because of anchor text & linkage data. many of them could probably remove the page entirely and still rank there.

Could be. I've just never seen anything overwhelmingly indicative of "dilution of weight".

[Stoned Phillips]

I use Dynamic Submission for optimizing, submissions, etc....

Check out this report of earthlink to see what they have to say about title length, description, etc...

I first tried msn and yahoo, but they don't even use description or keywords, do they really even have an effect anymore?

[auroinfo]

Yes for google precisely it can be max 65 for the title and 160 for the description