Which is better Title length vs. keywords?

[JobBiz]

We run a jobboard.  The title tag on a page for a job is often over 70 characters.  An example of one would be:

" Supplier Quality Inspector (Electrical Manufacturing) Job in Orlando, FL 32809 at Pro Image Solutions | Orlando Jobs!"

The company name 'Orlando Jobs!" comes at the end but is also a really good keyword e.g. 'Orlando' and 'Jobs'  I am interested in suggestions as to how to make these titles better. For example take off the company name when we go over 70 characters?  Move the company name to the front of the title because the company name is also good keywords?  I am looking for the best way to handle the issue is all.  Thanks.

[Vizergy]

In this instance I would probably go with something like this:

Orlando Jobs!: Quality Inspector | Electrical Manufacturing - Orlando

[sbaylor]

I agree with Billy in that in your case, I'd put the Orlando Jobs first, because that is eye-catching and a good keyword for you.

There's a good, albeit basic article that I read this morning that talks about whether using branding in the Title is a good idea or not:

http://www.polepositionmarketing.com/emp/complete-guide-title-tags/

In your case, I think I'd put Orlando Jobs first, then the auto-generated title of the job. If you have to truncate the job title to keep it under 70 characters, that's probably better than having the brand fall off the end.

[ThompsonPaul]

I'm going to come in on the other side and say I think your current page title structure is actually extremely good, Scott.

As always with these kinds of questions, it's best to approach it from the user's perspective first. Most of the time that also lines up very well with what the search engines will value, but a well-ranking page that can't get someone to click is wasted effort. So user first.

This in mind, who is this page more valuable for - someone just generally looking for job listings in Orlando? Or someone who who's background has him looking for quality inspector or quality control jobs in Orlando?

It's important to remember that search engines place considerably more value on words earlier in the title (and human readers do too), so having "Orlando Jobs" at the beginning would imply the page is most useful for info about Orlando Jobs. But for a searcher looking for general job info, this page is going to be a severe disappointment - it just doesn't provide any of the info and resources a general job seeker is looking for. The home page or a special "how to search for jobs in Orlando" resource page would be much better.

So, given this page is ONLY useful for someone looking for quality inspector-related work, "Orlando Jobs" is not a good focus keyword because it just doesn't accurately describe the very specific value of the page. It's never a question of whether it's a good keyword for you, it's a matter of using good keywords for your targeted visitor and for what each page is specifically about. Plus, putting that phrase at the beginning of every page title would seriously confuse the search engines.

Also, by having the wrongly targeted Orlando Jobs at the beginning, you'll likely run out of room to include the much more useful (to the user) full job title on the actual results page. That title on the results page needs to function (along with the meta-description) as a very strong indicator that clicking to the page will get him what he is looking for. And remember, that page title is what will get displayed if someone links on Twitter, Facebook or other social media so specific is better there too.

If the title ran a little long, I'd be much happier losing a bit of the generic phrase/company name than any part of the job title. Which is also to say I'm not advocating dropping the company name - I think it's fine where it is for the times that it does get included. It's not like anything breaks when the title is over 70 characters, it just means the tail end of the title may get truncated with [...]

Sorry if this went on a little, but figured it might help to have the background which you could use to make decisions about other pages' titles as well, rather than just a prescription for this one use case.

Bottom line - I vote for leaving your titles as-is!

Hope that was helpful?

Paul

P.S. If I were trying to shorten the titles, I'd consider leaving out the zip code. Do you find many people searching for jobs that way? (Your Google Analytics/Webmaster Tools will tell you if many use the zip as a search term) If not, you could drop it. I'm just not familiar enough with your line of business to know whether that gets used a lot, so I'd want some data to back up the decision either way.

[TGOOSE]

Hi,

I will suggest something like this

Orlando Jobs| Supplier Quality Inspector|FL 32809@Pro Image Solutions

Supplier Quality Inspector|FL 32809@Pro Image Solutions|Orlando Jobs

If we go through your specifications like     "FL 32809 at Pro Image Solutions"

Search engines they won't care about prepositions,verbs like "at","on","is",

so after delimiting these things i got these two Titles. And instead of "Pipe symbol" you can use "hyphen ( - )".

I hope it is useful.

Thank you.

[JobBiz]

Thanks for all your answers