Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Punctuation at the Start of Page Titles
-
one of my clients appears to be using an exclamation mark (e.g. "! Graphic Prints By Mirrorin - Fun Childrens Graphic Prints") and to be completely honest, I have no idea if this is bad practice or if it wont have any affect from an SEO point of view?
Any help would be appreciated because it is site wide, therefore if it is an issue I would like to be able to get it sorted asap!
Thanks
-
Some fantastic Replies, thank you very much.
I think I will be removing the exclamation marks simply due to the number of titles that have too many characters anyway. The point about the positioning of the keyword was also good, that had completely skipped my mind on this occasion! I'll see what difference removing them makes to the CTR and weigh up the options.
Thanks
-
1. Remove the punctuation. Although it doesn't really damage search listings or impact how SERP's look at your site for rankings, as Chris said, you only have so many characters to work with in the <title>field and it's best to really optimize the <title> to improve end-user experience :)</p> <p>2. Craft custom <titles> for each and every page, and consider where you place the KW in the field. Importance will be taken into account as well as position and meaning of the KW in relation to the <title>. Try mixing things up to see where you impact ranking positions. I would still remove all punctuation (but perhaps, keep a few pages ranking now, with punctuation to see if you impact the rankings) See #3 below.</p> <p>3. Look at choosing a few test pages in the domain to work with to monitor rankings for this very test, and analytic's data like bounce, exit, click through, etc. </p> <p>4. Doing this will also help you reveal how the customer reacts to the page once they click in, after the find it in the organic SERP listings. Did the punctuation impact your rankings, and if so, was the click through higher, while also decreasing the bounce and/or exit rates from said pages from end-user? A great experiment and test platform :)</p> <p>It's not an exact science, but more a art and science mixed together ;). I wish you all the best with this, as it sounds very interesting. Keep us all posted on your findings!!</p> <p>Cheers.</p></title>
-
Normally, I would say don't do it because wasting character space in the title area is a pet peeve of mine but maybe it helps you with click through--maybe not. At number 10, it doesn't seem to be hurting your rankings but maybe it is-- have you tried it without the exclamation point to see if your result moves up?
-
I don't believe that this would be 'damaging,' per se. But there's still correlation between rankings for a keywords and not only the inclusion of that word in the title, but the position of that word in the title. I would therefore recommend the titles all begin with a letter - preferably the first letter of the most relevant keyword/phrase for that page.
Is there a reason for the exclamation mark? Maybe an attempt at manipulating CTR or something?
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Page Optimization Error
Hi, I am trying to track a page optimization feature for one of my project, https://shinaweb.com but i keep getting this below error: "PAGE OPTIMIZATION ERROR
On-Page Optimization | | shinawebnavid
There was a problem loading this page. Please make sure the page is loading properly and that our user-agent, rogerbot, is not blocked from accessing this page." I checked robots.txt file, it all looks fine. Not sure what is the problem? Is it a problem with Moz or the website?0 -
I have updated title 4 days ago but still still showing old title and description on Google serps, How to resolve it?
I have updated the title tag but not showing, Please have look at the view source for this website- https://m.yolobus.in/ I want to show this title and description- <title>Online Bus Ticket Booking | YoloBus India</title> But showing the wrong title and description on google SERP- Title - YoloBus :: Home Description - Delhi Lucknow; Lucknow Delhi; Delhi Gorakhpur; Varanasi Lucknow; Gorakhpur Delhi; Delhi Delhi; Bangalore Bangalore; Manali Manali; Chennai Chennai 7mHsdmu
On-Page Optimization | | AnkitS.19900 -
What is the best meta description for Category Pages, Tag Pages and Main Article?
Hi, I want to index all my categories and tags. But I fear about duplicating the meta description. for example: I have a tag name "Learn Stock Market", a category name "Learning", and a main article "What is Stock Market". What is your suggestion for meta description of these three pages that looks great for seo google?
On-Page Optimization | | mbmozmb0 -
SVG image files causing multiple title tags on page - SEO issue?
Does anyone have any experience with SVG image files and on-page SEO? A client is using them and it seems they use the title tag in the same way a regular image (JPG/PNG) would use an image ALT tag. I'm concerned that search engines will see the multiple title tags on the page and that this will cause SEO issues. Regular crawlers like Moz flag it as a second title tag, however it's outside the header and in a SVG wrap so the crawlers really should understand that this is a SVG title rather than a second page title. But is this the case? If anyone has experience with this, I'd love to hear about it.
On-Page Optimization | | mrdavidingram2 -
Why is my contact us page ranking higher than my home page?
Hello, It doesn't matter what keyword I put into Google (when I'm not signed in and have cleaned down my browsing history) the contact us page ranks higher than the home page. I'm not sure why this is, the home page has a higher page authority, more links and more social media shares, the website is an established one. When I have checked Google Analytics my home page gets more people landing on it than the contact us page. It looks like people are ignoring the contact us page and scrolling down until they find the home page. I'd appreciate any help or advice you might have. Thank you.
On-Page Optimization | | mblsolutions2 -
Can I use Same Keyword for Multi pages Title Tags?
Hello All, I am working on client website and currently they are targeting One Keywords for multi pages. As I have search with Allintitle: Search query and Google display around 37 pages of website which carry same keyword in "Title Tags". I have told to client to change the "Title Tags" but they want that keyword for all relevant pages. So I want to know is that harm in Search Engine Ranking? Note: They have not done the link building activities for multi pages with same Keyword, they are using only in "Title Tags" only
On-Page Optimization | | jemindesai0 -
301 redirects from several sub-pages to one sub-page
Hi! I have 14 sub-pages i deleted earlier today. But ofcourse Google can still find them, and gives everyone that gives them a go a 404 error. I have come to the understading that this wil hurt the rest of my site, at least as long as Google have them indexed. These sub-pages lies in 3 different folders, and i want to redirect them to a sub-page in a folder number 4. I have already an htaccess file, but i just simply cant get it to work! It is the same file as i use for redirecting trafic from mydomain.no to www.mydomain.no, and i have tried every kind of variation i can think of with the sub-pages. Has anyone perhaps had the same problem before, or for any other reason has the solution, and can help me with how to compose the htaccess file? 🙂 You have to excuse me if i'm using the wrong terms, missing something i should have seen under water while wearing a blindfold, or i am misspelling anything. I am neither very experienced with anything surrounding seo or anything else that has with internet to do, nor am i from an englishspeaking country. Hope someone here can light up my path 🙂 Thats at least something you can say in norwegian...
On-Page Optimization | | MarieA1 -
Would it be bad to change the canonical URL to the most recent page that has duplicate content, or should we just 301 redirect to the new page?
Is it bad to change the canonical URL in the tag, meaning does it lose it's stats? If we add a new page that may have duplicate content, but we want that page to be indexed over the older pages, should we just change the canonical page or redirect from the original canonical page? Thanks so much! -Amy
On-Page Optimization | | MeghanPrudencio0