How to handle long dynamic meta tags?

[Mulith]

Hi All,

I have a site that has upwards of 40 000 pages and I'm redeveloping it so really want to get some SEO elements spot on for the new development. Hoe do I go about handling the following:

• The user creates a title for their advert which I use as the meta title. The problem is titles are quite often longer that the accepted lengths. How should I handle this? String manipulation down to the desired size, leave it as is or is there another solution?

• The meta descriptionn is pulled from a summary they created as part of their profile. Is this the right way to do it?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Ross

[eli.boda]

Seomoz doesn't shorten the title on user profiles http://screencast.com/t/MpIwx9ep

You could always suggest that users keep their titles short. if they choose to ignore the suggestion, how much harm is it really gonna do?

[Mulith]

Yeah I suppose. But what happens when this is on a large scale, would that have a punitive effect?

[eli.boda]

i dont know of any cases where google penalized the overall authority of a site for having certain pages with extra long title tags. even if it is a bunch of em

[Mulith]

Looks like the only downside is google trying to algorithmically determine a more suitable title, which isn't that bad as these are not really high priority ranking pages.

Thank for the help.

[eli.boda]

glad i was able to help. can you give me a link to the site? id like to check it out