How to separate your - keywords - and | Brand name in the Title Tag
-
I have traditionally used hyphens (-) and vertical bars (|) to separate out keywords/brands in title tags. A client has asked if other characters will work such as tilde (~), apersat (@), forward slash (/) etc. Are there any special characters we should steer clear of?
-
Hi Switch, thanks for your question! Chris is correct in that it is best practice to keep your title brief and readable, with your keyword on the front end and your brand name on the back end. I personally feel that separating the page/article title from the brand name makes the tag easier to read. As Google now truncates title tags based on the total width of the characters (vs. the number of characters), I prefer using the pipe separator for this purpose. Hope that helps!
-
Switch,
Your title is best if it's short and readable, brand name towards the back, primary keyword to the front. With 70 characters to play with you really don't have much room to be talking about other keywords. If you feel you have to use some sort of separator, the title's probably not as readable as it should be or it's running long. If you're thinking separator, think separate page for the keyword, instead.
-
I would stick to the hyphens, and vertical bars. Google recognizes those two as separators.
While tildes, apersats, and slashes could hypothetically work as well - there will certainly not be any gained SEO advantage.
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
-
Do you say Browser Title or Page Title?
I have seen much more use of "Page Title" of late....in fact hardly any of "Browser Title" except by some folks who are using a very old CMS. We need to go with one at my workplace to avoid confusion. My vote is Page Title. Thoughts? Thanks, Tim
On-Page Optimization | | Jen_Floyd0 -
Spammy page titles
Over the last couple of weeks, I have noticed that Google aren't showing the page titles for my online shop anymore. They're set up with a third party plug-in piece of software, and while it's an old version of the software, the developer said it wouldn't be causing issues. They have suggested that I re-write my page titles to be less spammy. The thing is, Google haven't attacked just spammy looking titles, they're just taking a swoop through my whole site and not showing any of my page titles in their search results. I'm getting "Category Name - Shop Name" showing. Here's some of the page titles no longer appearing and I honestly have no idea how to rewrite these to not be spammy. Are there any good articles on what's spammy and what isn't? "Coconut oil - best tasting in Australia. Buy online from <my business="" name="">"</my> "Discount Vitamix Blender. Best deal in Australia. Buy online from <my business="" name="">."</my> "Natural & Organic skin care for the face | buy online in Australia from <my business="" name="">."</my> There are others that are showing the real page titles, but I think it's only a matter of re-indexing before they're all not showing. Any clue?
On-Page Optimization | | sparrowdog0 -
Keyword in home II
Hi there! As someone told me in this forum it's important regarding SEO that the home page has the keyword in the url. When I type in www.tarifakitesurfcamp.com the home page is shown but it doesn't have the keyword por that page (cause obiously I didn't make any change at all) . I mean it should be something like www.tarifakitesurfcamp.com/KEYWORD right? The problem comes when I try to edit the url in the page section of wordpress. I'm not allowed to do that. Otherwise I CAN edit the rest of the pages of the website (not the home or considered as home). Does anybody have an answer for this issue? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | juanmiguelcr0 -
Which title tag would you choose?
Target terms: Flower Pots, Plastic Flower Pots (in order of importance) Title tags: 1. Flower Pots - Plastic Flower Pots for Gardening with Free Delivery
On-Page Optimization | | Bondara
2. Flower Pots - Plastic Flower Pots with Free Delivery
3. Flower Pots - Plastic Flower Pots from [Brand] Which one would you choose and why? If you want to produce another type please do but explain why you think yours is better than the above. Thanks0 -
To Optimize Brand Name or Product Name First on Product Pages for E-Commerce Website?
We are using your free month trial for optimization of our E-Commerce website. In regards to individual product pages such as this one http://www.amgair.com/air-purifiers/iqair-healthpro-plus-air-purifier/, would it be more effective to have the page title start with the brand name and then the product (as we have it now) or forgo the brand name and start with just the product. IE: IQAir Healthpro Plus Air Purifier or HealthPro Plus Air Purifier by IQAir. These are commodity type products and are price restricted so all competitive websites advertise at the same pricing and it would be helpful not only to have a keyword phrase that is searched for a lot but also one that is easy to rank for. Please give me a recommendation when possible.
On-Page Optimization | | youhow0 -
Duplicate Page Titles and Keywords
Still new to this SEO world, so please bear with me. I have an eCommerce site so one of the issues is duplicate content and page titles. So what I was thinking was this...for each product that I sell I have 4 or 5 keywords that I have targeted. For example for personalized iPhone cases I have decided on: iphone 4 case personalized, monogrammed iphone 4 case, personalized and monogrammed iphone case, preppy phone case, personalized iPhone case, monogrammed iPhone case For each of my products I was going to a product description (ie: trendy color block diagonal stripes) and a targeted keyword. But I was going to rotate the keywords through so as to try to avoid the duplicate page title issue. Will that help? Thanks much, Shara
On-Page Optimization | | Confections0 -
Duplicate page titles
We have search results pages on our site. They share the same page title, there is no real differentiator between the result pages, other than page 1, page 2 etc. How do we de-dup the titles? just add page 1/2/3 etc to the end of them?
On-Page Optimization | | lilibooz0 -
SERPs Showing H1s Instead of Title Tags?
Hi, I'm noticing two strange things in search results recently. Often I find that if I search for a client's company name, I see just the company name in SERPs where the title tag would normally be displayed. Examples: 'aci northwest' 'lanz heating' As strange as that is, I'm tempted to assume this is just Google's way of "getting smarter" and showing more relevant results (though I'm not sure exactly where it's pulling from). But it gets stranger. For the first example, 'aci northwest', when search that key phrase on Bing/Yahoo!, etc. I'm not only not seeing the title tag where it would normally be, but I'm seeing the H1 in it's place: "When your projects demand more, demand ACI." Any idea what's happening here? Thanks in advance!
On-Page Optimization | | VTDesignWorks0