Title Tags – Where you can go wrong?Let me tell you one little secret. Google can and is making changes to your title tag to make it relevant to the search query. Not always but can quite often.
For e.g.
Search Query – seo tools seomoz
Page URL- http://www.seomoz.org/seo-toolbar
Title – SEO Toolbar for Firefox & Chrome | Download the Free … – SEOmoz
No of characters displayed in SERP – 65 characters
Actual length of the title tag- 79 characters
Search Query – seo toolbar
Page URL- http://www.seomoz.org/seo-toolbar
Title – SEO Toolbar for Firefox & Chrome | Download the Free MozBar SEO …
No of characters displayed in SERP – 65 characters
Actual length of the title tag- 79 characters
Google can also make changes to your title tag to show different results to users in case your content is scrapped/shared across SERP. For e.g. See how the title tag of my blog post changed after being shared on a forum:
If you search for more examples, you can find them easily. Not only Google can change your title tag to suit the search query but it can also change its visible length (no of characters it displays in SERP) and can truncate characters from anywhere (in between the title tag, end of the title tag). I have noticed these changes happening esp. to those web pages which exceed the 70 characters title tag limit, web pages with duplicate title tags or missing title tags. So this is a strong reason to stay within the title tag length limit and follow best practices. Here is what Google has to say about changing your title tags:
“Google’s creation of sites’ titles and descriptions (or “snippets”) is completely automated and takes into account both the content of a page as well as references to it that appear on the web………..Make sure that each page on your site has a useful and descriptive page title (contained within the title tags. If a title tag is missing, or if the same title tag is used for many different pages, Google may use other text we find on the page. “
Source: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35624
Why this is not an experiment?
Check this video from Matt Cutts in which he has clearly said that “if you use a really really long title, Google may still use it in its scoring but when they are ready to show it to the user they may find a better title“. He has also confirmed that the title itself can change like meta description.
How to keep a control on your title tags
- Keep the length of your title tags less than 68 characters. Shorter the better.
- Make sure that the title tag is relevant to the body text.
- Remove duplicate title tags across the website.
- Create unique title tag for each web page
- Use brand names in the middle of the title tags so that it doesn’t get truncated by Google easily.
- Make sure that a website doesn’t have web pages with missing title tags. Google can create its own title where the title tag is missing.
There is also a great post published on title tags in this week whiteboard friday of SEOmoz. So check it out:
:
If you like this post then you should subscribe to my blog and follow me on twitter.
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Let me tell you one little secret. Google can and is making changes to your title tag to make it relevant to the search query. Not always but can quite often.
For e.g.
Search Query – seo tools seomoz
Page URL- http://www.seomoz.org/seo-toolbar
Title – SEO Toolbar for Firefox & Chrome | Download the Free … – SEOmoz
No of characters displayed in SERP – 65 characters
Actual length of the title tag- 79 characters
Search Query – seo toolbar
Page URL- http://www.seomoz.org/seo-toolbar
Title – SEO Toolbar for Firefox & Chrome | Download the Free MozBar SEO …
No of characters displayed in SERP – 65 characters
Actual length of the title tag- 79 characters
Google can also make changes to your title tag to show different results to users in case your content is scrapped/shared across SERP. For e.g. See how the title tag of my blog post changed after being shared on a forum:
If you search for more examples, you can find them easily. Not only Google can change your title tag to suit the search query but it can also change its visible length (no of characters it displays in SERP) and can truncate characters from anywhere (in between the title tag, end of the title tag). I have noticed these changes happening esp. to those web pages which exceed the 70 characters title tag limit, web pages with duplicate title tags or missing title tags. So this is a strong reason to stay within the title tag length limit and follow best practices. Here is what Google has to say about changing your title tags:
“Google’s creation of sites’ titles and descriptions (or “snippets”) is completely automated and takes into account both the content of a page as well as references to it that appear on the web………..Make sure that each page on your site has a useful and descriptive page title (contained within the title tags. If a title tag is missing, or if the same title tag is used for many different pages, Google may use other text we find on the page. “
Source: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=35624
Why this is not an experiment?
Check this video from Matt Cutts in which he has clearly said that “if you use a really really long title, Google may still use it in its scoring but when they are ready to show it to the user they may find a better title“. He has also confirmed that the title itself can change like meta description.
How to keep a control on your title tags
- Keep the length of your title tags less than 68 characters. Shorter the better.
- Make sure that the title tag is relevant to the body text.
- Remove duplicate title tags across the website.
- Create unique title tag for each web page
- Use brand names in the middle of the title tags so that it doesn’t get truncated by Google easily.
- Make sure that a website doesn’t have web pages with missing title tags. Google can create its own title where the title tag is missing.
There is also a great post published on title tags in this week whiteboard friday of SEOmoz. So check it out:
:
If you like this post then you should subscribe to my blog and follow me on twitter.
If you are a SEO consultant or an agency and are looking for affordable Linkbait Development and Content Development services then we can be the right choice. Contact us
About the Author: Himanshu Sharma is the founder of seotakeaways.com which provides seo consultation, content development and analytics consultation services to businesses of all size. He holds a bachelors degree in ‘Computer Science’ and is also a Google Analytics Certified Individual with GAIQ Score of 95%.He is also the founder of EventEducation.com and EventPlanningForum.net.
Great post on title tags. Titles are most important on-page factor and we should all be aware of how Google treats them.
Nice post himanshu. That matt video will come handly in convincing the clients. Great work as always.
Thanks Himanshu. This post has cleared up lot of confusion regarding google treatment of title tags esp. matts video is really helpful.
Awesome post. I have one question. Can google completely rewrite a title tag to match the search query?
Yes it is possible esp. in case of missing title tags.
Thanks for sharing the matt cutts video. My best practie is to keep the title less than 65 characters.
Great post. Clearly explained and Some good general guidelines to work with in.
Nice post Himanshu. I love hearing SEO stuffs straight from the Matt’s mouth. I always stick to the SEO best practices and keep the titles shorther than 65 characters. To be honest i haven’t see Google displaying 68 or more characters in the titles for quite some time.
I?ve reetncly began a blog on this subject, the information you have shown on this site has helped me out immensely. Thank you so much for all of your time & hard work.
This post is very helpful. It has confirmed my doubts of Google playing with my titles. Is there any advantage of repeating keywords in the title tags?
I haven’t seen any benefit of repeating keywords in the title tags. In fact it makes a title look spammy.
Hi,
I have one question……..my website has a listing of medical doctors and I would like to have unique title tag for each one of them. Basically, I want their names to appear in the title tag. Since I have over 10.000 doctors I wonder is there a quick way to do it.
Thanks a lot,
Your web developer can help you here. Ask him to create a script which put doctors name in the title tags.
Hello Himanshu,
Great post, and I wanted to chime in that your readers might also benefit from a comprehensive video and post that I just did for our blog on exactly how to create compelling title tags, and 3 best practices:
http://www.biquitous.com/3-critical-title-tag-seo-practices-video
I think you and your audience will get a lot from it, and keep up the good work.
Chris
Thanks for sharing the resource Chris.
Can Google change the description tags just like a title tag?
Google changes description tags a lot.