New Title Tag Guidelines

Did you notice Google's search results were recently redesigned? I'm not talking about an algorithm change here. Last month, Google rolled out a new design for Google.com's search results. The most notable difference between the new design and the old design is the larger font for the webpage Titles. Google simply increased the font size of the blue hyperlinks in the results.

This sounds like a harmless update since all they really did was increase the font size, but it actually has a big impact on the most important on-page SEO factor - we now have even fewer characters to work with before Google cuts off our Titles and uses an ellipsis. According to some nifty research by Dr. Peter J. Meyers at Moz.com, the new maximum character limit is closer to 55. If you write Titles longer than 55 characters, then they're likely to get cut off.

Now is a good time to review the key pages on your website to make sure you're using the best Title Tags. As always, make sure you're using your target keyword phrase in the Title, and write the Title like a compelling headline in under 55 characters.