Joomla problem, title tag too long

[polyniki]

Another problem SEOMOZ reported is that my title tags are too long. However, when I type in the title and the description for a particular page on Joomla, the description later appears not only as the meta description, but as part of the page title as well, thus the title appears to be too long. I have no idea how to seperate those two. Anyone?

[RyanKent]

Where exactly are you seeing this issue? In search results or on your site?

Can you share a URL example of a page with the title tag issue?

[polyniki]

Sure, on every page actually. Eg this is how the mozbar sees the data from my main page

| Page Title | Free Games Online - Browser Games - Δωρεάν παιχνίδια - Το πρώτο ανεξάρτητο ελληνικό portal για free games online. Παίξτε δωρεάν... freegamesonline.gr | 150 |
| Meta Description | Το πρώτο ανεξάρτητο ελληνικό portal για free games online. Παίξτε δωρεάν παιχνίδια στα ελληνικά. |

Do you see that the meta description is part of the page title, although on Joomla these are two seperate fields. I attached a screenshot for you to see how it looks like.

QsJlo.jpg

[RyanKent]

If you position your cursor somewhere on your home page, right-click and choose VIEW SOURCE you will notice towards the top of the page the following code:

<title>Free Games Online - Browser Games - Δωρεάν παιχνίδια - Το πρώτο ανεξάρτητο ελληνικό portal για free games online. Παίξτε δωρεάν... freegamesonline.grtitle>

Something within your Joomla software is causing the title to be presented as the title and the meta description combined.

I notice with your screenshot that is not a native Joomla screen. I presume you are using a SEO extension already. It is likely a setting is off within that extension. I would suggest visiting the forums of the extension's creator and asking them why your title and meta descriptions are being merged.

The good thing is you are using the proper tools on your site and discovering issues which need to be fixed. The solution in this case depends on discovering how this problem began in the first place. This seems to be the result of either an issue with an SEO extension, or someone manually modified one of the php page templates for your site.

[polyniki]

Thank you so much, I will look into this further!

[RobertFisher]

In Joomla you have you can set up page titles in several places. Global configuration includes use Site Title in page title, Most templates (I just looked at one in JSN Epic) have an SEO option - Enable website title, and you have the option for each page to set metadata options (meta description is here and there is a sitewide meta description).

So, most likely what is happening is you have your settings where you are picking up the site title on every page and then you have put a title on every page (this is the one where alias is under Title).

I would suggest going to Global Configuration and to the right side where it says include site name in page title, mark that as NO. Save and close then look at site (after refreshing). Run SEOmoz page elements before and after and see if there is a change. _If not, you can go back and re check to yes include site title in page titles. (This way you are only changing one thing at a time which is important to track the error and know you are correct). _

If you are still having the problem with meta description, go to Global Config and cut the site meta description out and paste it somewhere else (I am pretty sure you have to be using Explorer for cut and paste in Joomla) or copy it to somewhere so that you do not have to rewrite. Once there is no site meta description, save and close again. Refresh again and run page content from SEOmoz toolbar on a couple of pages. If each page has been given a separate meta desc. then you should be seeing that as opposed to site meta. (Typically the site meta is for the feature page which for our uses is always the home page).

Let us know how this works out and we will follow along. Best.