The Title Tag - Question

[byinstinct]

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The Title Tag - Question

We all understand the importance of The Title Tag on the page, particularly on the home page.

However I would like to ask what everyone thinks is the best way to populate it. I am noticing various techniques. I am particularly interested in how long before its starts to become negative. What’s the shortest recommended length? Does the separator matter e.g. pipes, comer, hyphens. Also the range of keywords and the relationship to each other, does it make a difference.

I am finding a range of information everywhere allot of which is very dated.

Any help and advice appreciated.

Mark

[accelerator]

We all understand the importance of The Title Tag on the page, particularly on the home page.

However I would like to ask what everyone thinks is the best way to populate it. I am noticing various techniques. I am particularly interested in how long before its starts to become negative. What’s the shortest recommended length? Does the separator matter e.g. pipes, comer, hyphens. Also the range of keywords and the relationship to each other, does it make a difference.

Use a different page for every keyphrase you want to target, and use this keyphrase as the title tag, e.g.

Nikon Digital Camera Reviews

Don't let title tags get too long, they shouldn't need to be too long - get your keyphrase in and no more. When I looked at this years ago I remember a 60 character length being mentioned. You may be able to get more updated info, but try not to go over the limit, but don't lose sleep if your keyphrase is slightly longer.

Separate words with a space, don't use other characters.

The word order does matter, match it to the popular keyphrases given to you by search data, see:

Keyword Suggestion Tools

Hope that helps.

Rgds

[monkeynuts84]

I agree with accelerator. However, if you must use a separator use a hyphen. Matt Cutts (from Google) wrote an article on his site about this - Dashes vs. underscores

[hairycornflakes]

oh interesting read, cheers for that :-)

[amisuggests]

Include your keyword early in your title tag
The length problem is because after a certain number of characters, your title tag gets cut off in the display

I try to stick to less than 65 characeters myself

[Brendon]

From the SEO point of view, the important thing is not the numbers of chars, but the number of words.

Every additional word (except stop words) decreases the relative "value" of all the others - there is only a limited amount of value to go around

[jezaff]

yeah I thought of that Matt Cutts post. Subscribe to his blog if you dont already!

[byinstinct]

Cheers for this - you've all been heplful

Mark