Digital marketing is full of Character limits. While some may call these limitations, it’s one of a  marketer’s primary jobs to make sure the message matches the medium. 

Whether you’re working on social media marketing, pay-per-click advertising campaigns, or search engine optimization, every platform and medium you’re working with has Character Limits of which you must be aware. Seasoned professionals and newbies alike must keep up-to-date with the ever-evolving digital marketing landscape, including character limits. 

Social Media Marketing Character Limits

The length of social media posts varies widely across platforms. While keeping it short and sweet works for one platform, others demand longer explanations. Just because you can write a long post, doesn’t mean you should, but that’s a post for another day. The tried and true of knowing who your target audience is and the messages that resonate with them will never be outdated.

Sample Tweet with accurate character counts:

Pay-Per-Click Advertising Character Limits

When continuously optimized, pay-per-click advertising can be a cost-effective way to drive new and interested traffic to your website. 

SEO Character Limits

Your website will never dominate the first page of Google or Bing search results if you’re not making the best use of title tags and meta descriptions.

Example of Search Engine Results Page (SERP) with visible title tag and meta description:

A note about title tags: Industry best practice is to have your site’s entire tag visible in the search engine results page (SERP) as the clickable headline. However, there is no specific character limit for title tags. 

Why is there a range instead of a specific character limit? Google sets their title tag limit in pixels, not characters. There is a maximum of 600 pixels in the clickable headline on a SERP. If your title tag exceeds the pixel limit, Google will truncate it with an ellipses (…). Because some characters are bigger and composed of more pixels than others, there is no specific character limit.

Therefore, your best bet is a title tag between 50-60 characters, keeping the most important part of the tag near the front in case it gets truncated near the end.

A note about meta descriptions: Similar to title tags, Google will truncate your meta description on SERPs if you exceed the limit. Don’t run the risk that your audience will miss important information about your brand because you didn’t take the time to write an effective meta description within the set parameters.

Need Help With Your Digital Marketing?

Getting to know character limits is just the tip of the iceberg. You also need to understand image sizes, video production and more. If your organization needs help developing and implementing a comprehensive social media, pay-per-click and SEO strategy, contact us today! 

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