So I am here to debunk this myth! While it is good practice to keep page titles at a limit of 60 characters and meta descripts between 150-160, you will not rank lower in results because they are too long. A good SEO company will keep your primary keywords in the forefront, leaving out your business name or words like HOME, as your page title. The reason for the length in characters is merely for the searcher, not the search engine. Spiders tend to cut off the data in the SERP’s at 160 characters for meta Descriptions and 65 for Page Titles displaying only the content within. It is not bad practice however to go beyond these limits, but rather more important to list your primary keywords first.

If a company is really concerned about whether or not their SEO company is working for them ethically and stratigically, they should look into how their site is keyword relevant to their industry. Does it have the proper keywords in the proper places and most importantly are the page titles and meta descriptions unique on every page. These will ultimately have more weight in the search results rater than “how long your meta tags are’.
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Patience

The nature of search engines is that it takes time for new content to register.  One shouldn’t expect amazing results within one month or two.  While it’s reasonable to expect significant improvement in your search engine ranking between three to six months, it can take as much as a year for all new content to be in place and having the proper optimizing effect.

Web Presence

Some SEO companies will not take clients who haven’t had a web presence for more than a year.  The fact of the matter is that it is extremely difficult to get a business on the first page of any search engine result if they are brand new to the web.  Search engines like mature and stable web presences, that is, they like sites that have been around for a while and which still produce new content.

Keyword Niche

Selecting the right keywords to optimize requires a considerable amount of time because one has to balance the results they could reasonably expect with certain keywords with the difficulty of optimizing generic or broad keywords.  Our best advice is to (1) geo target your keywords to your business service area and (2) select niche keywords that specifically pertain to your products/services so that you can maximize conversions and lower site bounce rates.

SEO marketing has the potential to create lasting benefits for you and your business but it takes more than simply spending one day optimizing the generic keywords on your site.  You can tell you have a respectable SEO company if they are honest with you and present reasonable expectations (ignore all who claim that they can have you on the first page of Google within a month—it’s either a blatant lie or an effect of a trick/black hat tactic that will eventually be noticed.)  When considering optimization, keep in mind that it is a long-term investment in your business that could pay off for years to come.

(Humorous video of some lofty SEO expectations below)

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