Title Tag : use comma, pipe or colon (:)
-
Hi,
If Title has two and three keywords then which one is better option to separate them either with comma or pipe or colon.
Example : Arvixe Review, Coupons (Jun 2015) and Uptime Report (I used (,) as a separator)
Arvixe Review is primary keywords and Coupons and Uptime are secondary keywords. Aim is rank on keywords like Arvixe Review, Arvixe Coupons and Arvixe Uptime.
Also, including current month and year with Title tag and it will change every month. Its means every month our title is changed.
Is this effect in SEO?Suggest best possible title for keywords like Arvixe Review, Coupons (Jun 2015) and Uptime Report.
Rajiv
-
Re: pipe or hyphen in browser title, does anyone know which is the more accessible option?
GOV.UK, a leader in accessibility, uses hyphens... -
Below is a copy and paste of keywords relating to Arvixe obtained from Semrush. You should check them. Coupon is very competitive, so I have skipped that. So I would suggest:-
Arvixe Hosting Review | Arvixe Coupon | Sitegeek
or
Arvixe Hosting Review | Arvixe Uptime Report | Sitegeek
You should include your brand name as google usually will do regardless. It really is a personal decision as you know your brand / company best. Hope this helps.
Keyword Volume CPC SERP source arvixe coupon 480 18.85 arvixe web hosting 170 6.10 arvixe control panel 90 24.38 arvixe hosting review 70 11.61 arvixe cpanel login -
Page is https://www.sitegeek.com/arvixe
and want to target Arvixe Review, Arvixe Coupons and Arvixe Uptime Reportshould title ? Arvixe Review | Arvixe Coupons (Jun 2015) | Arvixe Uptime Report
or
Arvixe Review | Coupons (Jun 2015) | Uptime Report
or
Arvixe Review : Arvixe Coupons (Jun 2015) and Current Uptime Report
Arvixe Review is our primary keywords.
-
The word Arvixe - would not be highly competitive - so need to use that 3 times. Coupons is competitive.
The below is the title that appears if I google Arvixe
Web Hosting | Shared Hosting | Website Hosting by Arvixe
Are you changing the Title to the home page or is it a new page? The Coupon page? The most common search term according to Semrush is "Arvixe Coupon". The above suggestions appear to be targeting 3 different topics rather than one broadly, like your current title. Need some more info on what page you are targeting and why - otherwise could be leading you down the garden path.
-
there are lot of variations in using comma, title or colon. I do google search with following keywords :
1. hotels review
2. cheap flights
3. airlines review
4. mobile recharge
5. mobile review
-
thanks John!
As you suggested that pipe is best for both SEO and clickability. So options should be as follow:
1. Arvixe Review | Coupons (Jun 2015) | Uptime Report
Note - we should use 'Arvixe with all there keywords . Even, few SEO research shows that a keywords should not be duplicated in Title. whats your take? we can use in such cases?
2. Arvixe Review | Arvixe Coupons (Jun 2015) | Arvixe Uptime Report
3. Arvixe Review | Arvixe Discount Coupons | Arvixe Uptime Report
Please Tell us which one would be better title.
-
You are always right... so I got confused! All good...
-
Hi John
Yes, I am not disagreeing at all and sorry if that was portrayed somehow - especially if I gave a "free for all" point of view - this was not my intent. I was just referencing Matt from the perspective of "does it matter?" in Rajiv's question.
I personally like pipes in my titles. As long as it's clean, speaks to the content, and consistent across the site in format, you should be all good.
Be good!
-
Patrick
The company I work for specializes in CTR on search results - we run complex experiments on them ie 30-40 today alone. There is a difference between pipes and hyphens on CTR. It is small but it is statistically significant. Sure it is irrelevant to most but for big boys chasing keywords like "car insurance" etc it is vital as each click is has such high cost in competitive spaces.
Matt Cutts noted the CTR factor between them as well. I do not believe it makes any difference on SEO except in so far as it uses more pixels. So maybe we agree, but a clean tidy looking title that looks professional to the customer does have an impact on CTR.
-
Hi there
This is going to require some research about your audience and what they may be searching for. No one knows your audience and business better than you, so you need to make sure that whatever you are putting in the titles are both the best representations of your user's searches and your website's content. Be natural, be real, and be specific.
When it comes to pipes and hyphens, it doesn't matter. Here's a video from Matt Cutts on the subject.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
-
We do alot of experiments for clients on the difference between pipes, colons and hyphens.
99 out of 100 the pipe is the preferred separator. Generally the pipe is best for both SEO and Clickability. This is as the pipe also uses less pixels. Recommend as follows:-
Most Important Key Word | Second Keyword | Brandname ( no more than 512 pixels in length or otherwise it truncates).
If you detail a couple of options I can probably tell you what is likely best.
-
You are fine using any of them and it's down to personal preference, although I use a pipe because it is clearer when looking at the title. It also depends on the Title as well - sometimes a pipe won't do the job and you need to use a comma.
Also, including current month and year with Title tag and it will change every month. Its means every month our title is changed
I would try to avoid this. You don't want the same page title to keep changing. By all means add something to the page that states when it was last updated, but I wouldn't use the Page Title for this.
-Andy
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
-
Is RSS feed syndication an effective link building strategy? Has anyone used it and had success?
This process was recommended to us and I am having trouble understanding exactly how it works. Does this type of link building directly benefit your site or is it an indirect process? Also, can you be penalized for republishing someone's content on your feed?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | marketingdepartment.ch0 -
What do you think of this "SEO software" that uses Rand's "proven method" ?
I saw an ad on Search Engine Roundtable and the call to action was... "What is the #1 metric that Google uses to rank websites?" I thought, "I gotta know that!". (I usually don't click ads but this one tempted me.) So I clicked in and saw a method "proven by Rand Fishkin" that will "boost the rankings of your website". This company has software that will use Rand's proven method (plus data from another unattributed test to boost the rankings of your website). I am not going to use this software. The video made my BS meter ring. But if you want to see it.... http://crowdsearch.me/special-backdoor/ Rather than use this "software", I would suggest using kickass title tags that deliver the searcher to kickass content. That has worked really well for me for years. Great title tags and great content will produce the same results. The bonus for you is that the great content will give you a real website.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | EGOL1 -
Can I Use Meta NoIndex to Block Unwanted Links?
I have a forum thread on my site that is completely user generated, not spammy at all, but it is attracting about 45 backlinks from really spammy sites. Usually when this happens, the thread is created by a spammer and I just 404 it. But in this instance, the thread is completely legit, and I wouldn't want to 404 it because users could find it useful. If I add a meta noindex, nofollow tag to the header, will the spammy pagerank still be passed? How best can I protect myself from these low quality backlinks? I don't want to get slapped by Penguin! **Note: I cannot find contact information from the spam sites and it's in a foreign language.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | TMI.com0 -
Pointless Wordpress Tagging: Keep or unindex?
Simple as that. Pointless random tags that are serving no purpose other than adding apparent bulk to a website. They are just showing duplicate content and literally are random keywords that serve almost no purpose. And the tags, for the most part are only used on one page. If I remove them however, they will probably drop our site from around 650 pages to 450 (assuming I keep any tags that were used more than once). I have read through some of the other posts on here and I know that Google will do some work as far as duplicate content is concerned. Now as far as UX is concerned, all these tags are worthless. Thoughts?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | HashtagHustler0 -
Keyword in alt tag and future G Updates
Hello, I notice that it is common practice to put the page's keywords directly into an alt tag. I don't see how this helps the user and how it helps the user using screen readers and such. Do you think future G updates will slightly penalize pages with alt tags that are just the page's keywords and not a helpful phrase? What do you recommend to put in alt tags in light of future G updates?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | BobGW1 -
Can you have too many NOINDEX meta tags?
Hi, Our magento store has a lot of duplicate content issues - after trying various configurations with canonicals, robots, we decided it best and easier to manage to implement Meta NOINDEX tags to the pages that we wish the search engines to ignore. There are about 10000 URL's in our site that can be crawled - 6000 are Meta No Index - and 3000 odd are index follow. There is a high proportion of Meta No Index tags - can that harm our SEO efforts? thanks, Ben
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | bjs20100 -
Hidden H1 tag - ?permissable
Until now I have been building websites either from scratch or with a template. Recently I decided to learn Adobe Dreamweaver. At the end of the first "Building a Website using Dreamweaver" lesson, the author notes the site is done but an H1 tag is missing. The instructor advises "The page doesn't have a top-level heading ( ). The design uses the banner image instead. This looks fine in a browser, but search engines and screen readers expect pages to be organized with a proper hierarchy of headings: at the top of the page, ..." The instructor then walks readers step-by-step into creating an H1 tag and using absolute positioning of -500px top to cause the tag to not be visible. My initial thought was the instructor was completely wrong for offering this advise, and users would be banned from search engines for following these instructions. I had planned to contact the writer and suggest the instructions be modified. Prior to doing such, I wanted to request a bit of feedback. The banner image's text in this example is "Check Magazine: Fashion and Lifestyle". The H1 tag that is created and positioned off-screen uses that exact same text. In an old blog comment, Matt Cutts shared "If you’re straight-out using CSS to hide text, don’t be surprised if that is called spam. I’m not saying that mouseovers or DHTML text or have-a-logo-but-also-have-text is spam; I answered that last one at a conference when I said “imagine how it would look to a visitor, a competitor, or someone checking out a spam report. If you show your company’s name and it’s Expo Markers instead of an Expo Markers logo, you should be fine. If the text you decide to show is ‘Expo Markers cheap online discount buy online Expo Markers sale …’ then I would be more cautious, because that can look bad.”" I would like to get some mozzer feedback on this topic. Do you view this technique as white hat? black hat? or grey hat?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RyanKent0 -
Using Canonical Tags to Boost Lead Form Ranking
I presently have a number of whitepapers that bring traffic to our site. If a visitor elects to download the whitepaper they are taken to a lead form with an abstract of the whitepaper. The abstract is present because the visitor may or may not have come to the lead form directly. I imagine this would be a "no no," but how do you feel about placing a canoncial tag on a whitepaper that points to the lead form w/ abstract? The obvious idea being to take the umph of a whitepaper to direction search visitors directly to the lead form.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | shoffy0