Is it bad for SEO to have a truncated title, even if the part being cut off is just my website name?

[Titan243]

I'm auditing the articles on my website with ahrefs/surferseo and they're both returning errors that my titles are too long. The reason this is happening is because my website's name is added to the end of each of my titles. Is it bad for SEO to have a truncated title, even if the part being cut off is just my website name?

 

[bernard]

I'm auditing the articles on my website with ahrefs/surferseo and they're both returning errors that my titles are too long. The reason this is happening is because my website's name is added to the end of each of my titles. Is it bad for SEO to have a truncated title, even if the part being cut off is just my website name?

Good question!

Google creates their own titles more and more.

Why are your titles too long, is it because you're targeting too many keywords pr. title?

If you're targeting these long questions, then you do definitely don't need to add your site name to the end of the title.

I wouldn't have the site name in the end unless it is very memorable or a known brand.

 

[Titan243]

Good question!

Google creates their own titles more and more.

Why are your titles too long, is it because you're targeting too many keywords pr. title?

If you're targeting these long questions, then you do definitely don't need to add your site name to the end of the title.

I wouldn't have the site name in the end unless it is very memorable or a known brand.

I should have been more clear. I'm creating my titles (which don't include my website name) but my website's name is getting appended automatically to the end of each of my titles in Google. I'm guessing this is an issue with my theme which I'm trying to look into. All of my titles are under 60 characters and then the website name gets appended to the end and pushes my titles over 60 characters and often into the 70s.

I personally don't care if my website's name gets cut off in the titles, but I would care if my titles being truncated is having a negative effect SEO wise.

 

[bernard]

You should use an SEO plugin to manage your titles, such as All In One SEO or Yoast SEO

 

[WinMore]

I wouldn't have the site name in the end unless it is very memorable or a known brand.

Oh damn, I tried to fit it in if at all possible.
You are right tho, probably a waste of space.

We should focus on getting more info out to the searcher/search engine, so they know they will find what they are looking for.

 

[Ryuzaki]

I would care if my titles being truncated is having a negative effect SEO wise.

I'm 99% sure it doesn't. Google is rewriting titles a lot of times anyways based on what they think will provide a higher click through rating, but what they rewrite is based on what you provide them. So there's even a possibility that having one that's too long is beneficial.

I don't think it's that important. In my own personal work I do keep the title lengths short enough to fit on Google's SERPs, but that's because it's a good barometer if it'll fit around my sites, based on the font sizes and widths I've allotted for them in various places. If the title is too long, the first thing I do is remove my site name, which I include by default.

What you do want to make sure is you use your keyword in the title and preferably closer to the beginning of it.

 

[CCarter]

Google is rewriting titles a lot of times anyways based on what they think will provide a higher click through rating, but what they rewrite is based on what you provide them.

For reference here is Google's stance on this: Better page titles in search results

They started doing this long before January 2012, but this article is the one all Google Employees reference when this topic comes up.

 

[Gandalf]

For reference here is Google's stance on this: Better page titles in search results

They started doing this long before January 2012, but this article is the one all Google Employees reference when this topic comes up.

The automatic title re-writes make me question the value of inputting custom meta descriptions. The algo is probably already trained to ignore a custom meta description when a re-write occurs, but if that’s the case I’m sure it can handle them by default as well.

Do you still bother with custom meta descriptions?

 

[Ryuzaki]

Do you still bother with custom meta descriptions?

The original titles and meta descriptions are used as ranking signals regardless if Google overwrites them. This factoid was mentioned this week somewhere in the SEO-sphere by some Googler. I saw it on my RSS feed and kept scrolling and marked them all as "read", otherwise I'd have a source for you.

I do custom meta descriptions but I just copy and paste out a small portion of the article, usually the first sentence or two, then trim it to size. This includes the target parent keyword.

 

[Gandalf]

The original titles and meta descriptions are used as ranking signals regardless if Google overwrites them. This factoid was mentioned this week somewhere in the SEO-sphere by some Googler. I saw it on my RSS feed and kept scrolling and marked them all as "read", otherwise I'd have a source for you.

I do custom meta descriptions but I just copy and paste out a small portion of the article, usually the first sentence or two, then trim it to size. This includes the target parent keyword.

Makes sense to make use of the work that’s already been done. The source was a Google employee though and not independent SEO?

 

[Ryuzaki]

Makes sense to make use of the work that’s already been done. The source was a Google employee though and not independent SEO?

The story in 3 images, straight from Googles mouth.

They don't use the rewritten title for ranking:

The rewritten titles are specifically for "display only" and not for rankings:

There's only one actual title tag. The rewritten one isn't a title tag. The actual not-rewritten title tag is what's used in ranking:

 

[CCarter]

They don't use the rewritten title for ranking:

That question from Kevin_Indig was stupid, since pages rank for multiple keywords not just a single one.

The rewrites happens while the user is searching, so you'll see, while you track SERPs, the title used for each different keyword crawled.

Within SERPWoo you'll see the titles used for "Blue Widgets" for all pages ranking in that keyword's SERPs. If you look at "Green Widgets", you'll see different titles that were displayed, even though it can be the same page/url ranking for the Blue and Green widget keywords.