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I am bit confused about the appropriate length of the title and meta description tags. Quite often SEOs suggest that title should be of 65 characters and description of 165 characters as Google does not display more characters than these. But some say that although Google doesn't display these many characters yet it crawls and index them and therefore we can use more characters. Which one is true?
Someone (g1smd?) on the Google forums persuasivly argued that sticking EXACTLY to these limits is libel to be a reliable indicator of SEO work, which is not necessarily to your advantage.
I would suggest you craft these tags so the CTR is maximised (get the important stuff within the limits) but would also allow them to be longer if that is what you need.
In summary: Natural lengths, crafted with important info within character limits
Oh, but don't use the extra bits for keyword stuffing. That will be counter productive
Google has decided (that is to say, has calibrated its objective data processing to a subjective optimum point) what makes a "good" website. It wants SEO to be about delivering that site. To which end, it publishes guidelines for "whitehat SEO". Stick to that, you will be fine, and will enjoy decent rankings.
However, the algo has 'edges' that the savvy SEO can exploit AND NOT NECESSARILY TO THE GOOD OF END USERS. G doesn't like this, but has no interest in spending alot of money developing patches, unless it is being exploited by spamming techniques.
Anything SEO that is not for the end user is therefore slightly manipulative, slightly frowned upon, and has varing degrees of effectivenes (from Highly Effective through Indifferent to Penalisable). Flagging too many of these could get your site a manual visit.
Theoretically (no direct evidence) G could even penalise you just for having too many minor misdemeanors.
Effectively, G has said "X is good for users". G then rewards X. Sites that do X has optimised for G, and that is SEO by definition.
OTOH, collecting PR from dead pages by 301-ing to your home page is NOT for the end user. It is SEO, but not the type G wants. Anecdotes report it currently works.
Strictly speaking, keeping title/desc short isn't SEO because it doesn' effect your ranking.
To see the context of my other comment, see [webmasterworld.com...] especially post #3872655.
How can this be explained ?
