Page Title Tags - SEO vs CRO ?

[stukerr]

Hi everyone,

Thanks to what seems to be a recent(ish) algo change in Google, some of our more targeted deeper pages are ranking for search terms where before only our homepage would rank.

This is of course great however I am a little worried that some of the page titles of our internal pages are a little short, for example our main departments (we are an ecommerce store) are titles 'Department Name | Liberty Games' so for example 'Pool Tables | Liberty Games'.

I have heard varying reports on what to do with the title tag, I have heard to keep the most relevant keywords to the left of the tag, which we have done, I have also heard that shorter is better.

I am just a bit concerned that our tags are looking a little stumpy in the serps alongside other results which are longer (although admittedly a bit keyword stuffed).

So (eventually) my question is, will short titles harm my click-through rate ? but are shorter titles better for SEO ? If longer is better are there any recommendations about what I could add to these titles that could potentially help click-throughs and natural rankings ?

Many thanks,

Stuart

[petrakraft]

Hi Stuart,
title tag optimization is an important onpage ranking factor.
Just keep in mind the following items:

• the title should not be longer as seventy characters in lenght (although the spiders can read them, they are not displayed with more than 70 characters and regarding usability it is best to stay below that number)
• your most prominent keyword(s) should be - as you already wrote - at the left of the title
• don't keyword stuff the title
• just explain in short terms what the visitors are going to find on that page
  By the way - I love this tool here http://www.seomofo.com/snippet-optimizer.html

I would suggest to add your brand to the title - you can do that after your category page(s).
Each page should be treated as an individual (starting) page and like that your potential visitors can identify the brand, too and are more comfortable to click.

I have never heard about a negative aspect regarding SEO if a title is too short. Just try to keep your title as natural as possible.

[stukerr]

Thanks for the response, I should have mentioned "Liberty Games" is our brand term so is at the and after the | of every page on the site.

I did read that it was a good idea to try and target the singular and the plural term in the title tage, so for example 'Pool Tables, buy a pool table online at Liberty Games' - although i'm not sure if this would appear too stuffed as when you search for the singular google already highlights the plural so it clearly knows the link. That said we don't rank as well on the singular so any boost would help.

[petrakraft]

I find this title almost perfect and not spamy if there is a single and a plural version in it and much more user friendly. I recognise the brand name now

I would only put the singular term at the beginning because in that case the search volume is higher with the sigular word.

--> Pool Table, buy pool tables online at Liberty Games

[Dan-Petrovic]

For one of our clients we have purposely trimmed down the title tag two merely two words and reduced the description to a one liner thus creating lovely white space with reading clarity which makes eyes focus on it.

By doing so we've improved our click through rate by 20%.

[Ken_Jansen]

I would try to find a compromise between SEO and CRO. Make the title tag long enough to give the 'scent' of information specifiicty, but not SO long that its hard for the average visitor to scan and absorb.

[Dr-Pete]

On the CRO side, usability research actually suggests that (on the web) the first 2 words of a headline carry most of the weight. In SERPs, I think that's even more at play - people scan, they don't read full TITLEs. The natural assumption is that long TITLEs carry more information, but in many cases, what's good for SEO is good for users with titles and headlines.

Of course, you don't want to be too spammy, or just string keywords together - that might get someone's attention but then cost you the click. Overall, though, I wouldn't be afraid of short TITLEs.

More info here in a post from 2009 by Jakob Nielsen:

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/nanocontent.html

[stukerr]

Thanks for the advice, that article looks great will have a good read of it over the weekend. I think it might just be down to a case of trying various things on a few different pages and see which works best.

[BlinkWeb]

Awesome find on the snippet optimizer!

[BlinkWeb]

Awesome find on the snippet optimizer!