How do I fix Title Element Too Long (> 70 Characters) errors?

[lisarein]

I have read through other postings about this issue, but since I have over 400 of these errors I am interested in seeing how to fix this issue quickly.

Does anyone have a ideas or suggetions?

Thanks,

Lisa

[Travis-W]

I don't want to sound like a smart butt, but you should reduce the amount of characters in your Title Tags to less than 70 to remove the errors.  It is that simple.  Anything more than 70 does not display in Google, anyway.

[lisarein]

haha!  I get that!  Thanks...that answer is something I deserved.  I just don't want to do that over 400 times.  Is there a quicker way than doing it one at a time?

[Travis-W]

It really depends on how the backend of your site is built.

On my site, I could edit the title tag on 100,000 pages at once using an excel file (if I wanted to).

[lisarein]

It is a Wordpress site.

[mememax]

if you have a plugin to set your titles you can update your database using excel just be sure to use the len function to be sure that the new titles are shorter than 70 chars.

[Saijo.George]

There are a few things you could do. ( NOT that I recommend you do that )

1. Use a plugin that cuts of the title after roughly 69 characters ( http://wordpress.org/plugins/limit-a-post-title-to-x-characters/ )

2. You could eliminate the Brand Name in the Title .. if its automatically appended ( perhaps that is what causes the title to go over 70 characters )

BUT what I would recommend is export out the list of pages that has title over 70 characters  and write proper  titles for them, its the best option BUT as you can imagine its not going to an easy task. I guess NO Pain NO Gain resonates well here. I would do this for the important pages first and slowly work at them over time.

[mememax]

I agree with George, manual editing is always the best one.

Export your db, then in excel you can easily spot the titles longer than 70 chars and edit them to be shorter than that.

[lisarein]

Which db do I export?

I am not sure how to look for the titles either because I can't see them in the SQL database

Thanks,

Lisa

[FedeEinhorn]

Lisa, use the plugin @Saijo George recommended: http://wordpress.org/plugins/limit-a-post-title-to-x-characters/

It will do the trick automatically for all pages and it doesn't require any programming (PHP or MySQL) skills.