Can long <title> tag hurt ranking?

[Johan007]

Can long <title> tag hurt ranking?

[EBORG9]

Only if it is full of useless, or repetitive words.
Useless to your cause, and repetitive, like spamming.
Try and get a as direct as possible

[Jim Forester]

Your title tag should have between 50-80 characters long. This is different from a search engine to another, but as long as you don't use a greater numer of characters there sould be no problem.

Also, don't forget to do the title description for humans too, not only for search engines.

[charlesgan]

i try before with my hosting rebate site.
and its drop from first page to 4th onward.
changing it back and seo again.

the lesson is not to do that again

[tdd1984]

Originally Posted by Johan007

Can long <title> tag hurt ranking?

Long title can not hurt you keyword rankings, but it can lower the density just make a nice clean branded title, don't shove keywords in your title - brand your title

[coolguy27]

Possibly yes...

Title tag 10 - 60 characters, no special characters.

According to this link...
Google Ranking Factor

[dburr99]

Personally I just try to keep it as pertinent and simple as possible. Once you anger the Googarithm you will spend much more time trying to undo what you could have done in the first place. Lame I know... but much easier than wondering what you did to upset a search engine.

[dcristo]

Originally Posted by Johan007

Can long <title> tag hurt ranking?

Well the longer it is, the less weight each keyword has. I never use more then 7-8 words in the page title.

[Web Gazelle]

It can hurt if it is long and just keyword stuffed. Best to keep it short and with two or three targeted search terms.

[khaty]

yes it is best to make your title short.. and make it easy to search and remember.. direct title.

[Johan007]

Good information. I wanted the info to write an editorial guide for my writers... after all it is these people who are writing the content and not SEO specialists. Nothing to do with spam I am 100% white hat thanks!

After I did a few experiments I found that many of your sources are incorrect. A long title does not have any less of an effect, its just the the words further down are weighed much less than the first couple of words.

[Zombie]

Originally Posted by Web Gazelle

It can hurt if it is long and just keyword stuffed. Best to keep it short and with two or three targeted search terms.

Well said and to the point Gazelle.

The search engines use their algorithm to measure the weight of the keywords in the title according to the relevancy of the search query which is made by the surfers. The algorithm evaluates the effectiveness of the title by calculating the ratio of the keywords which are useful and are searched by users. Just stuffing of keywords won’t help but in fact will be disadvantageous for the title tag.

[maldives]

I would strongly suggest to keep your title short. Remember "title" is not the description of your product therfore let the details be in the "description tag.

Sample: <title>Minimal Keywords | No ands | Don't repeat.</title>

Hope that helps.

[Johan007]

Originally Posted by maldives

Sample: <title>Minimal Keywords | No ands | Don't repeat.</title>

I was thinking of pages out side the homePage to reflect the similar text to the <h1>.

Sample: <title>Article/Product Title | Website Name</title>