Useful Info On All In One SEO Post Title Settings And A Huge Shout Out to Jay
Hi WArrirors and WArriettes
I've recently started a new website using the Generate Press Theme and when I wrote a post a few days ago and did my SEO Title, the character count went way above the 60 max that Google allows (well, 'prefers'), even though it should only have been 41 characters long.
The reason was that somehow unbeknownst to Yours Truly, my Website Title was being included along with my Post Title.
Since I hadn't encountered this problem with other websites using different themes, I naturally assumed it was an issue with Generate Press....
WRONG!
It was to do with the settings on my All In One SEO Plugin, which as you know is the default SEO Plugin that we get with our sites here at Wealthy Affiliate.
JAY TO THE RESCUE!
A quick Mayday call, and the Cavalry came galloping to my rescue in the form of Jay Neil (Magistudios), our outstanding Live Training Coach. And BTW, if you're a Premium Member here and you aren't checking out his live trainings, then you are doing yourself a terrible dis-service. If you can't catch the Live, they are all uploaded within 24 hours.
See the LIVE EVENTS section of your Dashboard on the left of your screen.
The solution is copied and pasted below:
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This has nothing to do with the GeneratePress theme.
It is a setting in All in One SEO.
Go to All in One SEO > General Settings
Go to the section Title Settings and look for 'Post Title Format'
From there, remove the part that says | %site_title%
Scroll back up and press Update Options.
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See the attached screen shot, courtesy of Jay.
Job done - took me a couple of seconds!
Thank you so much, Jay, you're an absolute diamond. Remind me to buy you a beer in Vegas!
Hope you all find this useful, folks.
Cheers
Rich :-)
Recent Comments
53
I’m glad you finally got this sorted, for your personal preferences, but my worry now, especially after seeing the responses below, is that everyone is now removing their Site Title from their SEO settings. This is not needed or recommended, as you are now removing your branding and additional keywords.
The 60 characters, for desktop and 40 for mobile, is only the preferred and visible section within search result listings. But the whole title, even if it’s 100 characters is still used by the search engines and also your visitors, especially if they bookmark your page.
I would therefore not advise that everyone goes and removes this unless you really do want it removed and not displayed.
That's a very good point, Chrystopher.
At the level I''m at in the in the training so far, what I've learned is that the SEO title shouldn't be more than 60 characters. The way that's put across is that it's pretty much set in stone.
I hope that what you say here is featured and made clear in the later stages of training as it's a little bit concerning that there might not be that clarity.
It did occur to me over the couple of days I was wrestling with it in my head that Google would look at my whole title - site and SEO - but that was from the angle of Google not distinguishing between different websites using different themes. As it turns out, it was nothing to do with GeneratePress.
Would you suggest that I put my Site Title back in? It only came to a total of 79 characters in any case.
It seems the solution has raised other questions.
Thanks for bringing this up. I hope it'll become clearer as I progress through the training.
Cheers
Rich :-)
Hey Rich, I would put it back in, yes, as per the training at the beginning, to leave “Post Title - Site Title” in the SEO Plugin for global settings. You can double check and confirm this by looking at other websites that appear in the search results. You will see that they include their Site Name on the end. The 60 limit, is just the optimal length for what is displayed on desktop search results within Google. If you really want them to me optimal, then it should be 40 characters, as that’s all Google displays on mobile search results. All it means, is if your title goes beyond 40/60 characters, it will just be truncated, but it will not affect your ranking. Other search engines have different character limits. All we’re doing here is optimising what users see whilst on a desktop searching Google. Hope that makes sense.
That's brilliant, Chrystopher - thanks for clarifying it in such easy to understand terms.
Have a great weekend!
Cheers
Rich :-)
So glad you jumped in here, Chrystopher, what you say was certainly my understanding and I have no intention of removing our branding from our posts.
Also, I think many people don't realize that the character count includes not only periods, comas, etc but also spaces.
Philip
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Great Stuff Richard,
I too have come across little things in the All in One SEO settings. A click of a button resolves most of them but as you say its knowing where to look for the error. And once learnt we know where to go the next time.
Thanks for sharing
Louise