Colons in title tag?
-
Does Google view the colon as a keyword separator like it does with the pipe (|) character?
Currently, our site automatically constructs the title tag based on the page name given by the user. Long ago, we started using the colon character to visually separate the brand & model of the product from the size, and as a result, all of our title tags have been constructed this way. This was done more to make it easier to read for humans than for search engines. My question is - should I consider getting rid of the colon from our title tags?
To give more info, our website sells tires. So, for any given model of tire, there might be 25-100 different individual sizes. The tags are constructed as follows: (brand)(model) : (size). Here's an example from our site:
GENERAL ALTIMAX ARCTIC : 225/45R17 91Q
The brand is General Tire, the model is the Altimax Arctic and the size is 225/45R17 91Q
Since this entire string really constitutes the full product name, should I remove the colon so that Google views it that way? Or, since I have used a colon instead of a pipe, will Google simply ignore it and treat the entire string as one keyword phrase?
-
Thank you for asking this question, kcourtem ,and thank you for answering, Federico. I had the same question about using colons in title tags and this helped me confirm that it was OK.
-
Federico, thanks so much for the reply. I guess it's good to know that having the colon in our title tags all this time hasn't necessarily hurt us.
-
Colons are seen by search engines as what they are. You say something, a word, then a colon, and then comes an explanation or enumeration.
In your example, you did it right, perhaps you should move the colon to where they belong, right next to the last letter of the brand, so it reads: GENERAL ALTIMAX ARCTIC: 225/45R17 91Q
The idea you mentioned, building titles for users, not for engines, is the way to go. However, there are some tweaks you can make to make it easier for both.
As in your example, the title could become: GENERAL TIRE: ALTIMAX ARCTIC 225/45R17 91Q - YOURSITENAME (personally I would put the colon next to the brand, and then comes the rest of the product name + you end up with " - YOURSITENAME" to help build YOUR brand.
Hope that helps!
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
-
Meta tag keywords with the same words in them.
I'm updating some older pages and was wondering about potential penalties from having keywords that start with the same phrase. It's a geographic area so there is the "full name" and the abbreviated name. I'd like to have keywords for both. For example: virginia beach, va beach, virginia beach attraction, virginia beach things to do, va beach attraction, va beach things to do, virginia beach dolphins tour, va beach dolphins tour Is that spammy? I understand they don't have the same weight as they used to but I'd like to optimize for them anyway since I'm redoing some things. Thanks in advance.
On-Page Optimization | | recoil0 -
Page title in Google search is defferent
Hello, Google changes the title of the main page only for my sites in this way: What I configured: My page title | my site name How it shows in Google: My site name: My page title If I checked some meta tags analyzer it will show my configured page title and also in Bing.com So what do you thing about it. Best Regards, Housam
On-Page Optimization | | anubis20 -
Google is not taking the title I set
Hi Everyone, I have the following website I am trying to SEO www.forcor.com.ar. As usual, the client decided to SEO the website after it was made by a developer that is not specialized in SEO. I am having the following issue. Google is not picking up the title I defined for the homepage. I have changed it multiple times and Google continues to take the title that was defined when the website was launched which was about 6 months ago. I also tried to verify if the title is being defined by some other website and so far I do not find any evidence that supports this. This is the title seen in the SERP (GOOGLE) as of 6 months ago - Forcor S.A: Repuestos Ford - Concesionario Oficial de Ford This is the one that is programmed via Yoast - <title>Repuestos Ford - Concesionario Oficial de Ford - Forcor S.A</title> The funny thing is that Google is picking up the correct Meta Description. Any suggestions on how to get Google to pick up the programmed title??? Another interesting fact is that Yahoo is picking up the correct title as you can see here
On-Page Optimization | | Carla_Dawson0 -
Different title tags and meta descriptions for desktop and mobile?
Is it possible to use different title tags and meta descriptions for mobile users? For Example: In the SERP for desktop you'll see the desktop title tags and meta descriptions, but in the SERP for mobile you'll the mobile versions of the webpage.
On-Page Optimization | | alex19780 -
Duplicate Page Title issues
Hello, I have a duplicate page title problem: Crawl Diagnostics Reported that my website got **sample URLs with this Duplicate Page Title **between:
On-Page Optimization | | JohnHuynh
http://www.vietnamvisacorp.com/faqs.html and these URLs below:http://www.vietnamvisacorp.com/faqs/page-2
http://www.vietnamvisacorp.com/faqs/page-3
http://www.vietnamvisacorp.com/faqs/page-4
http://www.vietnamvisacorp.com/faqs/page-5 I don't know why, because I have already implemented rel=”next” and rel=”prev” to canonical pages. Please give me an advice!0 -
Prevent Indexing of URLs Based on Tags
I started my website as a blog over at Posterous, but decided to turn it into a full scale business website with a self-hosted WordPress theme. Shortly after transitioning from Posterous to WordPress, I noticed that Google was indexing not only my old blog posts, but the URLs of my blog posts based on the tags they have. Is there any reason why this is a problem? I'm sure it shouldn't qualify as duplicate content, but for some reason it just feels a bit sloppy to me to have all of these pages indexed...Is this a non-issue? Should I just be more discriminating with my use of 'tags' if it bothers me? JiGLH.png
On-Page Optimization | | williammarlow0 -
tagged as duplicate content?
Hello folks, I'm new to SEOmoz . I was looking at our Crawl Diagnostics and found that some of our blog posts that have been commented on were tagged as duplicate content. For example: http://thankyouregistry.com/blog/remarriages-and-gift-registries/ http://thankyouregistry.com/blog/remarriages-and-gift-registries/comment-page-1/ I'm unsure how to fix these, so any ideas would be appreciated. Thanks a lot!
On-Page Optimization | | GiftReg0 -
How to fix duplicate page content and page titles?
Apologies in advance if this has already been answered (it probably has) - I'm just not seeing it. Is there a guide on here for how to fix the issues brought up by the crawler - specifically, things like duplicate page content, or duplicate page titles? A lot of these seem to have been created by wordpress.org combos that I didn't anticipate - i.e., category pages, author pages, etc. The crawler brings up the problems, but I don' t know where to start to go about fixing them. Also, any guide on best SEO practices or fixing optimization problems, specifically for wordpress.org blogs, would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | prospects1