Utf-8 symbols in the Title or Meta Description?
-
Has somebody any experience (pros or cons) to using utf-8 symbols in the Title or in the Meta Description tags?
Expedia uses it:
http://prntscr.com/74ofrv -
Google is officially supporting some emoticons. I talked to one big-brand SEO last week who has tested it with a fair degree of success. A couple of warnings:
(1) Testing the impact on one title tag is a fair amount of work, so it really has to be a high-impact SERP. This isn't something you want to spend days on across thousands of results.
(2) Make sure the character/symbol really is relevant. People focus on the first two words of a headline, and that emoticon may well take the place of one of those words, so make it count. I wouldn't do this just because you can.
(3) Not all characters render properly on all OSs and devices. Make sure to test.
-
Thanks for your Answer Ikkie, but my question was especially about using "utf-8 symbols in the Title/Meta tags".
Should I use, or not? -
that there are no real pros or cons in where you place the
TITLE
element within the HTML document’s HEAD area. However, although this is nothing whatsoever to do with SEO, I do remember reading that in an HTML document, the best practise is to include theTITLE
after the firstMETA
tag that declares the content-type and/or charset value(s), e.g.:<code><title>[Placeholder Title]</title> […]</code>
(I am fairly certain that this technique is stated somewhere in the W3C Recommendation, HTML 4.01 Specification, in the section "The global structure of an HTML document" ( …but if I would double-check this.) Although I think the technical reason was to ensure titles that contain HTML entities that need to be escaped should always declare a character set before you provide the actual text, it still makes you think: is source-ordering important?
At the very least, it is conventional wisdom to always place the content you want to gain the most exposure in terms of SEO/the search-engines' results pages (SERPS) higher up in the web pages (X)HTML source code (e.g. in a website without any
META
description tags set, the first paragraph in the document will probably be the one chosen to represent that webpage’s description in its SERP listing, not the second or third etc., etc.) Ultimately, I would say that you certainly have nothing to lose in placing thisTITLE
(or any content) higher.You can also see the guidelines for this on the MOZ blog link here
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
-
Google Adding Incorrect Location to the end of Title Tags in SERPs
I have an issue with the way Google is adding to a client’s Title Tag. Since we relaunched the website a few months ago, Google has been adding an indiscriminate “– London” to the end of title tags. That would be fine if the company was solely London based but we have stores outside London too, and it’s adding “– London” to the end of those individual store title tags there too. So, if you do a search for “location widget” our page title is:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DrewDaviesLondon
“location widget | Brand name”
but then Google pops in:
“location widget | Brand name - London”
Which isn’t great if the location is in Scotland! We are adding structured data to the store pages to try and combat this, the store pages are all well optimised for the location (and ranking well), but I’m wondering if I’ve missed anything obvious? I thought it might lesson as the new site became more trusted in Google, but the rogue “London” seems to be increasing... Thanks for your help!0 -
New meta description limit?
Hi guys is the new meta description limit something temporary - Google just testing or can we assume it will remain moving forward? Just wondering if i should increase my meta description limit to 300 characters for all my sites. Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cathywix0 -
Optimal Page Titles to avoid cannibalization
Hi there Moz community I spent today researching optimal "page titles" to avoid cannibalization of keyword. Why? Because when i set up my site previously for another industry I obviously well and truly stuffed it up with page titles that were different, but still too similar ie field marketing project setup, field marketing saas, field marketing reporting. I never ranked once for that term. Consequently, we nearly went broke in the process. Hence my research, which led me to Rands video and other information about choosing the best page title. However, I came across two opposing name theories. So, before i make a colossal error again, could someone please clearly clarify which would be the best way for me to proceed. First option(according to Rand's video about the snowboard website) Main page title - Field reporting and mobile data collection (same keywords as site title?) Subsequent pages - titles - (p1) Field reporting for construction (2) field reporting for medical (p3) field reporting for retail (or is that cannibalizing "field reporting"?) Second option Main landing page - Field reporting Solutions for your business, for your industry Subsequent page titles - (p1) defect inspection & reporting for construction (p2) incident reporting for medical But my quandary is that I wanted to rank for mobile data collection and field reporting for these industries. So how do I write the page titles without firstly keyword stuffing, secondly avoid cannibalization and lastly, not too long? Any explanation that specifically says yes or no would be greatly appreciated Thanks in advance and happy friday. Sharon
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Sharonrice0 -
What is the proper way to write a title for local SEO?
Good Morning, I was wondering if some one could clarify the best way to write a title tag for local SEO. 1.) "Pet Store in Boston, MA" or 2.) "Boston, MA Pet Store" Thank!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Charles_Murdock0 -
Duplicate keyphrases in page titles = penalty?
Hello Mozzers - just looking at a website which has duplicate keyphrases in its page titles... So you have [keyphrase 1] | [exact match Keyphrase 1] Now I happen to know this particular site has suffered a dramatic fall in traffic - the SEO agency working on the site had advised the client to duplicate keyphrases. Hard to believe, huh! What I'm wondering is whether this extensive exact match keyphrase duplication might've been enough to attract a penalty? Your thoughts would be welcome.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | McTaggart0 -
HTML 5 sites, segmentation and Meta data?
Hello Mozers, I am currently building an HTML 5 site. I've run into a couple of issues. While implmenting segmentation in each of my mian menu iten, I am able to pluggin Meta data only for one segement (or the page). I am unable to inser Meta data for each of the segments. For example: I have (main menu) Services ----> Submenu (teaching, upgrading, Dancing) I can implement meta data for the Services but not for teaching, upgrading and Dancing as they are segment in the same page. Whats the best logic to get around this
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | waspmobile0 -
Duplicate titles but redirecting anyway (without redirects set up!!!)
Google has done a crawl of my site and is flagging up duplicate titles on my wordpress site. This appears to be due to the face that some posts are tagged in more than one category. I have just gone to make sure that each post just has one category and add redirects and I've noticed that all the duplicate title issues google has notified me about appear to redirect anyway. For example: http://www.musicliveuk.com/latest-news/live-music-boosts-australian-economy and http://www.musicliveuk.com/live-music/live-music-boosts-australian-economy have duplicate titles apparantly but the 1st url redirects to the 2nd one. I use the redirection plug in but have no redirection set up for that url so I'm a bit confused. And if they're redirecting anyway then why is google flagging up duplicate titles? Any help would be much appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK1 -
Charity project for local women's shelter - need help: will Google notice if you alter the document title with Javascript after the page loads?
I am doing some pro-bono work with a local shelter for female victims of domestic abuse. I am trying to help visitors to the site cover their tracks by employing a document.title change when the page loads using JavaScript. This shelter receives a lot of traffic from Google. I worry that the Google bots will see this javascript change and somehow penalize this site or modify the title in the SERPs. Has anyone had any experience with this kind of javascript maneuver? All help would be greatly appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jkonowitch0