Html file names & <title> tag

This is borderline SEO related, but I’m wondering what is best practice for html file names and html title tags please.

I currently separate the descriptive keywords with hyphens for the html file name and typically use between 2 and 6 words, depending on the page.

e.g. dedicated-soil-testing-instruments-brandname.html
e.g. products-brandname.html
e.g. contact-us.html

4 words to me feels like a good maximum file name length but sometimes 6 words helps describe the page better and would help the search engine find them I guess. What is good for search engine results though can be annoying when you are actually surfing the site itself and navigating between pages. The question is whether one is better off trying to trim down the html file names somewhat and relying more on the title tag and meta name description tag to convey this information.

My domain name is my company’s name and we are a distributor for a US manufacturer. On most pages that pertain to products, I have included the manufacturer’s name as the last keyword in the html file name to help with SEO (as seen above). Is this too cluttered in your opinion?

Title tag example:

e.g. CURs | Dedicated Instruments & Test Kits | BrandName
e.g. Hydrochloric Acid | Test Kits | BrandName

One consequence of having long title tags with the BrandName at the end is that our search function for the web site shows the html titles as the search result page names, so it looks rather silly with the BrandName at the end of most page results. However, the search function doesn’t get a huge amount of use.

Many thanks!

Yes!
A meaningful URL is not a bad thing, but ‘keyword stuffing’ it and making it unnecessarily long isn’t good for anyone.
SEs are more concerned about the actual page content than anything else.

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Thanks Sam. BTW do you think the same applies to the title tag too, to avoid using the maximum read length with keywords and to keep it short and punchy? Some of my existing titles are being cropped short in the google search results at present, so presumably they are too long. As the title on the first line of every google search result, you’d think it was more important to someone searching than the URL which appears under it and is not highlighted.

The title should be reasonably short and to the point, it’s just to name the page, not give a description, use the description tag for that. I think the recommended length for the description is about 160 characters IIRC. Don’t make it too short and don’t make it too long or it will get cropped off in SERPs.
Again, avoid keyword stuffing these both. While it’s true these tags are important for SEO, there is a big misconception as to why. People like to stuff them with keywords to try and affect ranking for those words. In truth Google is more interested in the actual content of the page to determine what the content of the page is (believe it or not :smiley:).
The real reason these tags are important for SEO is because they are often what people (yes, real human beings) see in the SERPs, and you want your site to be the one on the SERP that they click on, essentially “click bait” for people.
Therefore the title and description should be meaningful and human friendly (not KW stuffed nonsense aimed at bots), you need to let visitors know that they have found what they are looking for.
Sure, you will want to include keywords that people are likely to use, but if it looks messy and doesn’t read well, it can look spammy and be a turn-off for potential visitors.
A lot of people put too much emphasis on trying to please the bots, but at the end of the day, bots don’t spend money on your site, people do, so who do you want to please?

Moved to Marketing.

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You see quite a lot of rather lengthy title tags in the SERPs, which are both naming and describing a page, which I’m assuming is not optimal practice.

Regarding the description tag, it seems that many web sites like to use it as the place for marketing copy, including calls to action or attempts to engage the reader (USPs), as well as a few actual words to confirm that this page is indeed what the reader is looking for (without being too dry). I guess it depends on the type of page as to what the optimal balance is. For product pages, I’ve seen lines like ‘Request a quote’, ‘40 years experience’ or ‘ISO9001 Compliant’ which are generic phrases that could apply to any number of pages rather than this specific one. I guess this doesn’t matter as long as it encourages more people to click on it in the SERPs and doesn’t put people off or constitute a missed opportunity to communicate what the reader is interested in seeing?

Google’s “Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide” contains advice on writing good page titles and descriptions (among other things).

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Thanks very much. That was useful! One interesting thing I noticed was that Google’s SEO Starter Guide recommends ‘brief but descriptive titles’. I presume they say that so that readers ensure their titles are connected with what is on the page. They state ‘The title for your homepage can list the name of your website/ business and could include other bits of important information like the physical location of the business or maybe a few of its main focuses or offerings’.

Would you agree with that example? I must say that seeing so many search results all the time, often poorly presented, my eye doesn’t tend to read the longer titles in the SERs and I am more likely to read the description of a SER that has a shorter title, even if it is not as descriptive.

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