Title tags with >70 characters but most important words at start. Is this really a problem?

[lcourse]

Is there in fact any kind of negative impact having title tags longer than 70 characters, as long as I place the most important keywords at the start and make sure that title still is compelling when cut somewhere around 70 characters?

Are the additional words after the 70 characters limit just ignored? May additional words dillute the strength of the first words or may they even be helpful ?

Any experience or any studies you know about impact of longer title tags? Or any statement from google about it?

[RepLoc_Tim]

One area where it will have an indirect negative impact is in CTR from the SERPs.  The Title gets a searcher's attention, while the Desc sells them on the click.  Anything beyond 70 char is not there for the searcher or visitor's sake since they won't see it.  This could lead to a negative impact in CTR which is a trust factor issue.  If your CTR is less than surrounding sites in the SERPs on a consistent basis, you will likely start to see rank drops.

Here is a Matt Cutts video on Title that emphasizes this point: http://youtu.be/THYguer_JrM

Beyond the user experience concern, it comes down to whether the extra characters are being used for keyword stuffing or not.  If not, it probably won't have a significant negative impact, but then you have to ask yourself why did I choose to use these extra characters...

[eyepaq]

Tim covered this well.

As an addon comment:

May additional words dillute the strength of the first words or may they even be helpful ?

** Yes, more words - will dilute the strength of the keywords even if those are placed in front. Count it like - the strength is split between the number fo words in the Title Tag.

Cheers.

[lcourse]

thanks Tim, thanks eyepaq

The point with the dilution is very interesting
Do you remember any sources where anybody tested whether dilution takes place or did you yourself  see significant changes in ranking after shortening title tags?

[BlueprintMarketing]

You like that sort of information SEOmoz beginners guide at search engine optimization    Or

Distilled.net/U

[TimothyCarter69]

Look at it this way: You are telling the search engine what your page is about and why the page should be considered  relevant. This is hard to do with a lot of title words. In a perfect SEO world you would have one title phase, have the H1 tag match that title phase, and try to mention the phase in the first part of the text. Use parts of the phrase throughout the text. All is lost if you are worried about writing for search rather than people. It is a myth that the search engines consider the first key word phase the most important, they look at all the title words and try and see how they are relevant to the text. So more key words the harder it will be to make all of them relevant in the text. Do the work create relevant pages  for each key word or phrase.

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[cbielich]

Exactly what Tim said, its more about User Experience than anything else. I know top competitors with 70+ and rank well.

Having that ... at the end leaves me wondering most of the time

[BlueprintMarketing]

Tim answered your question correctly and I'm going to give him a thumbs up for that buddy

[lcourse]

thanks everybody for the feedback.

I actually also stumbled upon an excellent whiteboard friday from Cyrus related to the topic (also excellent comments at the bottom of the post)

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/title-tags-is-70-characters-the-best-practice-whiteboard-friday