Best practice for the brand name in Page Titles

[TTS_Group]

We are considering changing the way we treat our brand (TTS) in our page title tags. In MOZ I found the following advice:

Optimal Format

Primary Keyword - Secondary Keyword | Brand Name
or
Brand Name | Primary Keyword and Secondary Keyword

Are these of equal merit or is the former (Primary keyword | Brand) the better route?

Currently we use the second version - 'Brand | Primary Keyword' - but we are proposing to shift to 'Primary Keyword | Brand'. We currently get an awful lot of brand traffic that converts very well so I need to be sure that no harm is done as a minimum.

All views appreciated. Many thanks.

Jon

[AndreVanKets]

I agree with Phillip,

If your site is established and ranking well for brand terms, then making this change shouldn't effect the over all branded rankings, especially seeing as your not taking the brand out completely.

The keywords should ideally be the main focus of the page, thus having your keywords in the front of the title should boost rankings for those targeted terms.

I have always used and recommended using: Main Keyword | Secondary Keyword - Brand Name

On a side note: Something i recently started noticing (I don't have any resources to refer to) is that quite a few of our competitors don't use the "Keyword | Keyword - Brand" formula, instead they use "Great [Keyword] deals from leading [keyword] suppliers - Brand Name" and they seem to be ranking really well. (More descriptive words that entice users)

Perhaps Google is starting to prefer "natural" looking titles (including stop words, adjectives etc) and not putting much extra value on "optimized" title tag formula's (Keyword | Keyword - Brand) This is just a thought and haven't researched it much.

Greg

[RobertFisher]

I believe the best convention for brand is the _Primary Keyword - Secondary Keyword | Brand Name. _Typically, unless your brand is something that is the search term (Nike Tennis shoes, etc.) you want it last. If people who already know your brand are searching for you, they will find you IMO. (You have TTS in the domain and in every url as the result of that already). 
To me, working with clients, I want them to get the new customers to their site where possible with SEO. As the result of that desire, for title tags we use the convention I put here. People searching for music sets for example, may not know your brand, and you want the optimal opportunity to rank for that term. In that case the first convention is best. But...

...as to going through and changing all title tags and leaving all else the same, I am not sure I would spend time on that. If I am optimizing the site and doing multiple things to get it better for key terms, I would.

I hope that helps a bit,

Robert

[Kingof5]

The brand name coming first is generally seen with big brands - Amazon, Walmart, etc. The reasoning I've heard is that it lets the consumer easily know they're shopping there and generates trusts. And obviously brands like that don't really have to worry about trying to rank for a particular keyword.

Unless you're super well known, I'd keep it Primary Keyword - Secondary Keyword | Brand Name.

[zeepartner]

This change should pose no problems. But I understand if you're hesitant since you're already ranking. How about testing this on a few dozen pages or 20-30% of your pages? (I don't know how large your site is and which implementation is more realistic). See whether this change affects you positively or not and push it to the entire site after a couple of months.

But in general, such a slight change should not pose any problem. It might result in a temporary shift downwards but this has always recovered in my experience.