Page Title Tag operands , - |
-
Hi,
Anyone have any good suggestions about using commas, hyphens, vertical bar in the title tag and how it affects rankings?
Thanks.
-
Thanks everyone for you giving me your viewpoint. I was particularly interested with MorganNw answer, but I have not found any data to support this (as much as it would have been great if it was like that!)
-
We've run out of indents in Q&A. Can you clarify which is your understanding of title tags? It's not clear which person you're responding to. Thanks!
-
This is exactly my understanding of title tags as well. From our own work, this is exactly how it works.
-
I'd love to know your source for that info.
What happens when the marketer does the following for the title and would there be any any difference between that and not using pipes?
3D | Printing | Video | Computer | Movies | Jail
-
Hi Morgan,
I'm familiar with using the pipe as an OR operator in some searches (also works on Craigslist now, thankfully), but I have not seen anything about it having any type of meaning to the search engines like that when used in a title tag. Could you share any references you have about how the search engines evaluate characters like this in a title tag, rather than a search query?
Thanks!
-
Also to make a comment, it seems that when you put a | at the end then but the brand name the search engines move that to the front in the title tag in the search engine results page.
-
Character width is now a consideration when deciding what to put in your title tags. Keep that in mind too. I think the pipe most likely consumes the least real estate.
-
Hi!
The pipe ( | ) is a search engine operator that tells the search algorithms that the phrases on either side are of equal importance. When a string of words in a tag is evaluated, the first word inherits the highest weight, the last word the lowest and the steps are determined by how many words are in the string. The pipe makes the first word after it the same weight as the first word. While a hyphen ( – ) connects the words in a title and the comma ( , ) separates phrases but does not restart the weighting process so words following a comma are not considered important.
That's the main reason why I would recommend the pipe ( | ) and also because I personally find it more user friendly and more readable. It separates better the sentences or keywords you are targeting in your page title.
Have fun
-
Neither make any difference for rankings, strictly from an SEO point of view.
This video way back in 2009 discusses as such and in my years of testing and looking around I've never seen a notable difference in which separator was used. Pipes (|) and Hypens (-) are the most common. I mention that because you should consider what separator you use for user experience and click through purposes.
You might want to test which version gets better click throughs - or trump for the one that you think looks the best (this might be influenced on your competitors for your keywords. If everyone is using pipes, you'd immediately stand out if you used hyphens). I don't buy into the fact that clickthrough rate (CTR) affects SEO rankings (although some do), but all things considered you will want to use separators that will help increase your CTR, and as a rule of thumb either pipes or hyphens will help you with that. Commas can often look clunky and dated in SERPs (although that's more of a personal opinion).
Hope this 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
-
Does having alot of pages with noindex and nofollow tags affect rankings?
We are an e-commerce marketplace at for alternative fashion and home decor. We have over 1000+ stores on the marketplace. Early this year, we switched the website from HTTP to HTTPS in March 2018 and also added noindex and nofollow tags to the store about page and store policies (mostly boilerplate content) Our traffic dropped by 45% and we have since not recovered. We have done I am wondering could these tags be affecting our rankings?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JimJ0 -
Multiple h1 tags on this html 5 page a issue?
Hi Guys, I have a html5 page located here: https://tinyurl.com/yc6s3xs2 I know from some online discussions having multiple h1 tags on HTML 5 pages like this, shouldn't be an issue. Any thoughts on this? Cheers,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bridhard80 -
Category pages
I am a very basic question on managing categories in WordPress. We have an Android website, and we cover news, rumors, tips and tricks about new devices. We have been creating categories for the new devices or at least for the popular ones which are launched every year, and link to them internally with the hope that it would improve the page authority and ranking. For example, we have a category page for Moto X, another one for Moto X (2014) and one more for Moto X (2015). One of the reasons for creating a category was to ensure that it is easier for readers to get information about a particular device rather than going to a category page that has information about all the models. However, the problem with their strategy we're now realizing is that it means we have to build page authority for the new category page from scratch, which can take time. So we are thinking of reusing the same category for multiple models. So reuse the Moto X category page for Moto X (2016). However, we are not sure if it would be right approach as we would be linking to the same category page with different anchor texts. So while it would be good to reuse a page rather than rebuild the page authority from scratch, would we be diluting the authority for the main keyword by using it for different models. I would love to hear your thoughts on how we should be handling categories and internal links in this case.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gautam0 -
I've got duplicate pages. For example, blog/page/2 is the same as author/admin/page/2\. Is this something I should just ignore, or should I create the author/admin/page2 and then 301 redirect?
I'm going through the crawl report and it says I've got duplicate pages. For example, blog/page/2 is the same as author/admin/page/2/ Now, the author/admin/page/2 I can't even find in WordPress, but it is the same thing as blog/page/2 nonetheless. Is this something I should just ignore, or should I create the author/admin/page2 and then 301 redirect it to blog/page/2?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | shift-inc0 -
How to come up with the best title tags?
Hi Guys, I know title tags is one of the most important things that google looks at, any tips or advice around how I can go about improving the ones I have currently? I'm ranking pretty decent for all domains, slowly but surely, my main keywords are online psychics, online psychic readings, chat psychics, chat readings, tarot readings, and psychic readings. Any advice would be much appreciated, or direct me to resources I can look into helping me get onto the right path. my website is http://bit.ly/1KTbWg0 Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | edward-may0 -
Weird title tag in SERps (see attachment)
Hi Mozzers Does anyone know why my clients title tag appears like it does in the image attached? It seems as though Google is pulling the parent page url and putting that at the front. All other title tags are normal. Anyone any ideas and is it anything to be worried about? Thanks Anthony @Anthony_Mac85 9KhTgk5
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tone_Agency0 -
Canonical Tag Uses Source Title and Meta Data?
When optimising a regional same language micro site within a sub folder of a .com it dawned on me that our use of the hreflang and canonical meta elements will render individual elements such as H1 and title obsolete. As a canonical tag takes the canonical source title and meta right? It would still have value in optimising localised headings though? Appreciate any thoughts, suggestions (o:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 3wh0 -
What is the downside with having too long of a title tag?
With Google placing so much relevance on title tags, it seems to help if you mention local cities within your title tag. I'm wondering if the positive of having more keywords in a title tag outweighs the negative of having too long of one?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | TLSNET0