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
-
SEO Moz Says I have Multiple Page Title Elements
I am getting this recommendation from page grader. I recently added Yoast to my site. Can you confirm that I really have multiple title tags because my seo guy says it is fine and it is just a problem with the crawl. I think I see it on line 18 and line 125 am I correct? urbanforestprofessionals.com
On-Page Optimization | | lehcherry0 -
Why is Google replacing my meta title with the business name on home page?
For all queries that return the home page, Google is not showing my meta title. Instead it replaced it with the official business name which of course makes it harder to rank for key terms since they don't exist now in the meta title. You can see this is you search on "mt view estate planning attorney". The site in question is dureelaw.com and the title showing is "The Law Office of Daniel L. DuRee." View the source and you'll see my meta title. Why is Google substituting it?
On-Page Optimization | | katandmouse0 -
Should we add our company's name in page title tag or not?
We have been adding our company (Townscript) name in all the page titles. For example, in an event page of Lucknow Conclave: www.townscript.com/lucknowconclave the page title is Lucknow Conclave | Alexis Society | Townscript I read somewhere that it's not necessary to put your company's name in the title tag. Is it right? Please help!
On-Page Optimization | | sanchitmalik0 -
Area pages
As area pages are seen as trying to game google (see link below) is their a 'better way' to target multipe areas (100 odd)? https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2721311?hl=en Cheers
On-Page Optimization | | webguru20140 -
Local Service Pages
We've all been here before if you do local. What type of content should go on a local service page when dealing with multiple service locations? You could: Describe Services List Local News Articles List staff in that location (although I would prefer in the staff page for that city) Testimonials from that location or service But what happens when you are describing something that needs no explanation. Or a medical procedure that requires no localization and altering the wording can actually cause legal problems if misstated. Matt Cuts recommends a few sentences to a paragraph to describe a service, but my experience hasn't found this to hold up locally. Any ideas or suggestions about how this could be remedied?
On-Page Optimization | | allenrocks0 -
How do you see a list of URLs with duplicate page titles?
When looking at the Duplicate Page Title report, the Other URLs column has various numbers that presumably indicate the number of pages that share the same title. When I click on one of these numbers, say a URL that shows 4 in that column, the next page reports "No sample duplicate URLs to report". Why isn't it showing me the other 3 URLs with the same page title?
On-Page Optimization | | jkenyon0 -
Why does SEOmoz use /blog/content-title vs /category/content-title? Any difference?
Assume a brand new blog being designed and all other things equal. What are the pros & cons between using the url structure /blog/content-title vs. /category/content-title? Note:
On-Page Optimization | | JasonJackson
Both scenarios would be using categorical archiving.0 -
Duplicate page title issues with a CMS
I am using MODx as a CMS on a site and trying to eliminate duplicate page titles. url.com/ url.com/[~897~] which is really {~897~} its a resource number. url.com/home/ How can I resolve this issue when its all one page in the CMS? thanks
On-Page Optimization | | tjsherrill0