Thread: How Long Should Your Blog Title Length Be Does it Really Matter

Originally Posted by Sami4u

Guys your losing your own battle here.

How so?

Originally Posted by Sami4u

The title would read something like this.

No, it wouldn't. It would read as "How to Build a Chicken Coop" or "Building a Chicken Coop." These titles would attract people looking to build red chicken coops and blue chicken coops. These titles would attract people looking to build chicken coops made of chicken wire and steel. You need to target a broad audience.

Originally Posted by Sami4u

After thought now wouldn't they get to your article even if they did all these short searches.

how to build a chicken coop

how to build a chicken coop out of wood

how to build a chicken coop out of metal

how to build a chicken coop out of chicken wire

how to build a red chicken coop

Building a chicken coop out in a day

Simple plans to build a chicken coop

And so on. All are relevant on the article that is on the site.

And if dummy me was searching for "Super simple and easy instructions on how to build a red and green chicken coop from metal wood and chicken wire that can be made in a day."

I should get to also.

It don't make seance to me to take the time to write an article and not try to get people to it every way you can.

You may very well appear in the results for these searches but if someone searches for "how to build a red chicken coop" and sees the result "Super simple and easy instructions on how to build a red and green chicken coop from metal wood and chicken wire that can be made in a day," they will not visit it if they are looking to construct a chicken coop made of steel.

The reason why you should not apply conditions to your keywords is because you will limit your target audience. It is, however, okay to target multiple keywords - provided that they all mean the same thing (i.e. chicken coop, chicken house).

yourdomain.com: Building a chicken coop: metal, wood, chicken wire, simple to do, easy instructions, how to, red, green, make in a day,

If someone is looking for:
Building a red chicken coop
Building a green chicken coop
Building a chicken coop in day
Easy instructions to build a chicken coop in day

your site may appear in SERPs and you may also get #1, but the keywords like red/green/in a day/easy instructions etc will truncated.

They will only see 'Building a Chicken Coop' and people want the keywords they are looking for in the title..if they don't see red/green/in a day/easy instructions etc in title they wont click through to your site..

However, if the site below you has the exact words in the title then he will get whatever traffic you lose.

On the other hand, your page may get traffic for metal/wire/wood KWs... If you want, create another page for red/green/in a day/easy instructions...

As for me, I always go with 'One Page, One Keyword'

What's funny is that these rules, mostly governed by Google, has most people scrambling to make titles that sometimes seem forced. If it seems relevant then do it, that should be the number one guideline. Then we have issues like keyword stuffing and the likes that seem to be a last ditch effort. I wonder what wil change the landscape to reflect a more natural work ethic?

Hi,

Originally Posted by Charles

You may very well appear in the results for these searches but if someone searches for "how to build a red chicken coop" and sees the result "Super simple and easy instructions on how to build a red and green chicken coop from metal wood and chicken wire that can be made in a day," they will not visit it if they are looking to construct a chicken coop made of steel.

Your right But the article is not on building a steel chicken coop. So you wouldn't want them anyway for all they will do is bounce.

Look at my Amazon example again please it is on Fire Down Below

Amazon.com: Fire Down Below: Steven Seagal, Kris Kristofferson, Marg Helgenberger, Stephen Lang, Brad Hunt, Harry Dean Stanton, Levon Helm, Mark Collie, Alex Harvey, Ed Bruce, Amelia Neighbors, Richard Masur, Jeb Stuart, Julius R. Nasso, Ronald G. Smith, William S. Gilmore, Philip Morton: Movies & TV"

If is not on The Patriot they have that titled like this.

Amazon.com: The Patriot: Steven Seagal, Gailard Sartain, L.Q. Jones, Silas Weir Mitchell, Camilla Belle, Dan Beene, Damon Collazo, Whitney Yellow Robe, Brad Leland, Molly McClure, Philip Winchester, Douglas Sebern, Ross Loney, Bernard O'Connor, Leonard Mountain Chief, R.J. Burns, Robert Harvey, Ron Andrews, Jeff Tillotson, Don Peterson (IV): Movies & TV"

I started this thread about about Blog Title Length Does it Really Matter.

So if you want to pick something apart let us please talk about the amazon example and not about chicken coops.

These long titles don't seem to be hurting them with search results. I think it helps because of all the different way they use the same page to appear on on page one of Google (check photo)

Originally Posted by Charles

The reason why you should not apply conditions to your keywords is because you will limit your target audience. It is, however, okay to target multiple keywords - provided that they all mean the same thing (i.e. chicken coop, chicken house).

Yes and that is what Amazon is doing with the samples I provided. Just using a really long title.

Originally Posted by rome9t9

They will only see 'Building a Chicken Coop' and people want the keywords they are looking for in the title..if they don't see red/green/in a day/easy instructions etc in title they wont click through to your site..

Well seems to be working for Amazon (See photos samples listed below)

Originally Posted by rome9t9

However, if the site below you has the exact words in the title then he will get whatever traffic you lose.

OK so you are saying that % numbers are wrong and first place means nothing then for most people don't click on links on the first page of Google and they read all titles till page 10 before they click just to to find the title right match.

Again I would disagree.

Originally Posted by rome9t9

On the other hand, your page may get traffic for metal/wire/wood KWs... If you want, create another page for red/green/in a day/easy instructions...

Really more lost here on this one for this makes no sense to me at all. Why would you rewrite the content and the title just for a different search word when you can have the same article cover everything.

OK as I said when I started in the OP Do your own homework to determine your blog title length.

Here is mine to backup what I am saying all of these search are on page one and all go to the same page on Amazon.










This is still on page one but in 9th spot.





This is still on page one but in 8th spot.



I believe you can get more searching and get more use out of your article with LONG titles.

Sami

Hi,

More these searches as well and see what you get

What was the movie with Steven Seagal, Marg Helgenberger #1

What year was Fire Down Below made #5

Fire Down Below dvd #1

Fire Down Below movie #6

That is getting the most out of your article IMO

Sami

OK so you are saying that % numbers are wrong and first place means nothing then for most people don't click on links on the first page of Google and they read all titles till page 10 before they click just to to find the title right match.

Again I would disagree.

First place means a lot but when the required KWs are truncated and not visible to the searcher then you will get relatively less traffic w.r.t when the reqd KW is visible.

Look at my previous posts, I never said that long title would negatively affect your SERPs. All I am concerned about is the CTR. For a good CTR the searcher must see all the KWs that he is searching for.

Yes, using a long title will have no negative impact - but you do need to question how they affect end-users. Are you limiting the number that will visit your site? Admittedly, end-users would not want to be on your site if your content was irrelevant to them - but this says to things... a) make your content relevant to them b) if you can get them onto your site in the first place, they will then be able to navigate to find the content that they need (via ads, who knows?).

Amazon's title: I do not believe that Amazon is ranking well for its "target" keywords solely as a result of its title. Amazon most likely gets linked to with a range of different anchor texts. A friend of mine has a hubpage, which he link built with thousands of different long-tail keywords. This page now earns him multiple thousands of dollars every day. His <title> tag is 4 words long.

I'm going to agree with Sami that Google will not penalize a page for having a very long title. I'm also going to agree with Charles that the penalty might come from the end-user, instead. The page might show up in the top 10 for lots of different words, but it's possible that not all of those queried words show up in the title that Google displays. This is because some words can end up being truncated. However, in Sami's example search screenshots, this was not the case. The names of actors which were queried actually did show up in the body and so were bolded in the SERPs (underneath the title).