Building sites, we use several HTML tags, but usually there are three of them: title tag, meta description and meta keywords tags. But do you know what is the optimal length of these tags? Many reputable SEO guidelines figure the following length for tags:
60 max chars for title tag;
150 max chars for meta description;
800 max chars for meta keywords;
Why believe “reputable” sources, which general aim is to earn money selling copies to information-seeking webmasters? Let’s go places, where this information is for free and moreover, wherefrom this information comes. I mean that resources, which give such rules.
Let’s start with the W3C, which says that the title should be not longer than 64 chars. Thus you will prevent your title from getting broken or incorrectly displayed in the majority of viewing applications that have limited lines length for title tag. You can read it here: http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/TITLE.html
In case if your target is Google, keep your title tag not longer than 68 chars – the rest of your title will be lost, when your site will get displayed in SERPs. See the following phrase, which is longer than 68 chars:
This is a good phrase about title tag and how it will appear in Google
This is how such phrase will appear in serps:
This is a good phrase about title tag and how it will appear in… (Last word is cut due to 66 chars limit).
Using more than 66 chars can be only useful if you’d like to intrigue your visitors. For instance such title will look attractive even though it will appear broken in Google SERPs.
Cool freebies and discounts are available in our online shop till … (Looks attractive, huh?)
In other cases, you’d prefer to keep your title tag under 66 chars to inform potential visitor about your site’s content correctly and attractively.
Unlike Google, Yahoo! allows titles up to 120 chars long, but it will crop your title right at 120th tag regardless whether it was the end of word or not, thus the end of your title in Yahoo SERPs can look as follows: “the end of a cool phra…” instead of “the end of a cool phrase…” or, as Google cuts it “the end of a cool …”.
Thus targeting your title for both engines consider making it significant for both cropping cases. For instance take a look at this phrase:
Cool description of a title tag and how it will appear in Google and Yahoo search engines.
In Google it will look as follows
Cool description of a title tag and how it will appear in Google…
And in Yahoo it will be full, because total length of this phrase is 91 chars of 120 allowed by Yahoo:
Cool description of a title tag and how it will appear in Google and Yahoo search engines.
Due to meta keywords and meta description tags – they can be of any length you’d like to, but remember that they have become probably useless for SEO. But we still need meta description: site description is used when listing it in directories, thus keep your meta description precise and cute and not longer than 120 chars (usual description length in directories).
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