Claim: Optimum length of title text is 10 words or more.
Status: False.
The claim is that the text in the <title> tag of the page should optimally have ten words or more. The claim was made here
by one Kalena Jordan, citing Jill Whalen, an expert of some repute. Perhaps that is not really what the lady said.
The claim makes no sense. In my experience, a title that precisely matches the main keyword of your page will get the
highest optimization for that keyword, whether it is one word or 20. If you are optimizing for more than one keyword, you need to include
them too, but generally your keywords are going to be 1-3 words long, and they should be the only thing in the title
text except for a minimum of stopwords.
Optima are also claimed for descriptions. Common sense tells us that if descriptions or keywords are too long they
are probably going to dilute the value of the keyword and parts of them may be ignored by some search engines.
There is no optimum imposed by search engines on title text, at least, there is no minimum and probably no maximum as
long as what you are doing makes sense and doesn't exceed the capacity of the spider to parse titles. The title should
be as long as your keyword phrase. It doesn't make sense, of course, to try to optimize for a one word keyword like
"Windows," which has over a billion Google listings, especially if you are going to have a little 100 page Web site. I
have optimized fairly successfully ( top 10 listings) for single word keywords that have 20 million pages registered in
Google, in pages on Web sites with a few thousand pages. Generally you will need to find a longer phrase that expresses
your "niche." On the other hand, a keyword phrase of 10 words is usually not going to get many searches unless you
happen to know something "hot" - so there is no point at all in making a title tag of 10 words.
More Search Engine Optimization Superstitions
Online Search Engine Optimization Handbook
