Meta Title tags: Good ones vs long, boring, spammy ones

According to many sources, the optimal character length (including spaces) is 68. That is the number of characters Google will display in its SERPs (see below), and any keyword after the 68th character is cut off and I am starting to believe that it is either disregarded or given less weighting in keyword searches.

I have seen sites come up very high in the rankings with longer title tags, so I would venture to say that Google doesn’t give demerits for title tags longer than 68 characters, though I would be wary of creating title tags much longer than 80 or 90 characters.

My own Title tag basics for Recruitment websites:

1. Jobs pages:
   • Get the word ‘Job’ in early- that’s what the page is about, first and foremost.
   • Job Title
   • Location
   • Sector or Discipline
2. Avoid repetition like the plague.  There is good eveidence that Google will treat this as keyword spamming.  Essentially, it is!
3. Read Google’s own guidelines.   If your jobs site has good jobs on it for people searching in Google, then Google are also here to help your candidates find jobs on your site, believe it or not.