Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Title Tag : use comma, pipe or colon (:)
-
Hi,
If Title has two and three keywords then which one is better option to separate them either with comma or pipe or colon.
Example : Arvixe Review, Coupons (Jun 2015) and Uptime Report (I used (,) as a separator)
Arvixe Review is primary keywords and Coupons and Uptime are secondary keywords. Aim is rank on keywords like Arvixe Review, Arvixe Coupons and Arvixe Uptime.
Also, including current month and year with Title tag and it will change every month. Its means every month our title is changed.
Is this effect in SEO?Suggest best possible title for keywords like Arvixe Review, Coupons (Jun 2015) and Uptime Report.
Rajiv
-
Re: pipe or hyphen in browser title, does anyone know which is the more accessible option?
GOV.UK, a leader in accessibility, uses hyphens... -
Below is a copy and paste of keywords relating to Arvixe obtained from Semrush. You should check them. Coupon is very competitive, so I have skipped that. So I would suggest:-
Arvixe Hosting Review | Arvixe Coupon | Sitegeek
or
Arvixe Hosting Review | Arvixe Uptime Report | Sitegeek
You should include your brand name as google usually will do regardless. It really is a personal decision as you know your brand / company best. Hope this helps.
Keyword Volume CPC SERP source arvixe coupon 480 18.85 arvixe web hosting 170 6.10 arvixe control panel 90 24.38 arvixe hosting review 70 11.61 arvixe cpanel login -
Page is https://www.sitegeek.com/arvixe
and want to target Arvixe Review, Arvixe Coupons and Arvixe Uptime Reportshould title ? Arvixe Review | Arvixe Coupons (Jun 2015) | Arvixe Uptime Report
or
Arvixe Review | Coupons (Jun 2015) | Uptime Report
or
Arvixe Review : Arvixe Coupons (Jun 2015) and Current Uptime Report
Arvixe Review is our primary keywords.
-
The word Arvixe - would not be highly competitive - so need to use that 3 times. Coupons is competitive.
The below is the title that appears if I google Arvixe
Web Hosting | Shared Hosting | Website Hosting by Arvixe
Are you changing the Title to the home page or is it a new page? The Coupon page? The most common search term according to Semrush is "Arvixe Coupon". The above suggestions appear to be targeting 3 different topics rather than one broadly, like your current title. Need some more info on what page you are targeting and why - otherwise could be leading you down the garden path.
-
there are lot of variations in using comma, title or colon. I do google search with following keywords :
1. hotels review
2. cheap flights
3. airlines review
4. mobile recharge
5. mobile review
-
thanks John!
As you suggested that pipe is best for both SEO and clickability. So options should be as follow:
1. Arvixe Review | Coupons (Jun 2015) | Uptime Report
Note - we should use 'Arvixe with all there keywords . Even, few SEO research shows that a keywords should not be duplicated in Title. whats your take? we can use in such cases?
2. Arvixe Review | Arvixe Coupons (Jun 2015) | Arvixe Uptime Report
3. Arvixe Review | Arvixe Discount Coupons | Arvixe Uptime Report
Please Tell us which one would be better title.
-
You are always right... so I got confused! All good...
-
Hi John
Yes, I am not disagreeing at all and sorry if that was portrayed somehow - especially if I gave a "free for all" point of view - this was not my intent. I was just referencing Matt from the perspective of "does it matter?" in Rajiv's question.
I personally like pipes in my titles. As long as it's clean, speaks to the content, and consistent across the site in format, you should be all good.
Be good!
-
Patrick
The company I work for specializes in CTR on search results - we run complex experiments on them ie 30-40 today alone. There is a difference between pipes and hyphens on CTR. It is small but it is statistically significant. Sure it is irrelevant to most but for big boys chasing keywords like "car insurance" etc it is vital as each click is has such high cost in competitive spaces.
Matt Cutts noted the CTR factor between them as well. I do not believe it makes any difference on SEO except in so far as it uses more pixels. So maybe we agree, but a clean tidy looking title that looks professional to the customer does have an impact on CTR.
-
Hi there
This is going to require some research about your audience and what they may be searching for. No one knows your audience and business better than you, so you need to make sure that whatever you are putting in the titles are both the best representations of your user's searches and your website's content. Be natural, be real, and be specific.
When it comes to pipes and hyphens, it doesn't matter. Here's a video from Matt Cutts on the subject.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
-
We do alot of experiments for clients on the difference between pipes, colons and hyphens.
99 out of 100 the pipe is the preferred separator. Generally the pipe is best for both SEO and Clickability. This is as the pipe also uses less pixels. Recommend as follows:-
Most Important Key Word | Second Keyword | Brandname ( no more than 512 pixels in length or otherwise it truncates).
If you detail a couple of options I can probably tell you what is likely best.
-
You are fine using any of them and it's down to personal preference, although I use a pipe because it is clearer when looking at the title. It also depends on the Title as well - sometimes a pipe won't do the job and you need to use a comma.
Also, including current month and year with Title tag and it will change every month. Its means every month our title is changed
I would try to avoid this. You don't want the same page title to keep changing. By all means add something to the page that states when it was last updated, but I wouldn't use the Page Title for this.
-Andy
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
-
Site Footer Links Used for Keyword Spam
I was on the phone with a proposed web relaunch firm for one of my clients listening to them talk about their deep SEO knowledge. I cannot believe that this wouldn’t be considered black-hat or at least very Spammy in which case a client could be in trouble. On this vendor’s site I notice that they stack the footer site map with about 50 links that are basically keywords they are trying to rank for. But here’s the kicker shown by way of example from one of the themes in the footer: 9 footer links:
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | RosemaryB
Top PR Firms
Best PR Firms
Leading PR Firms
CyberSecurity PR Firms
Cyber Security PR Firms
Technology PR Firms
PR Firm
Government PR Firms
Public Sector PR Firms Each link goes to a unique URL that is basically a knock-off of the homepage with a few words or at the most one sentences swapped out to include this footer link keyword phrase, sometimes there is a different title attribute but generally they are a close match to each other. The canonical for each page links back to itself. I simply can’t believe Google doesn’t consider this Spammy. Interested in your view.
Rosemary0 -
Can I leave off HTTP/HTTPS in a canonical tag?
We are working on moving our site to HTTPS and I was asked by my dev team if it is required to declare HTTP or HTTPS in the canonical tag? I know that relative URL's are acceptable but cannot find anything about HTTP/HTTPS. Example of what they would like to do Has anyone done this? Any reason to not leave off the protocol?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Shawn_Huber0 -
I have a recipe food blog and use wordpress, but my recipes are usually in more than one category...?
The recipes are in most cases in more than one category (usually two) each. Do and (and if so how) need to set each post to one canicol url? E.g A recipe on Peas is in healthy foods (which is the default wordpress cat.) and also Vegetarian Dishes. I use YOAST for wordpress
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Kelly33300 -
Do I lose link juice if I have a https site and someone links to me using http instead?
We have recently launched a https site which is getting some organic links some of which are using https and some are using http. Am I losing link juice on the ones linked using http even though I am redirecting or does Google view them the same way? As most people still use http naturally will it look strange to google if I contact anyone who has given us a link and ask them to change to https?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Lisa-Devins0 -
Unique page URLs and SEO titles
www.heartwavemedia.com / Wordpress / All in One SEO pack I understand Google values unique titles and content but I'm unclear as to the difference between changing the page url slug and the seo title. For example: I have an about page with the url "www.heartwavemedia.com/about" and the SEO title San Francisco Video Production | Heartwave Media | About I've noticed some of my competitors using url structures more like "www.competitor.com/san-francisco-video-production-about" Would it be wise to follow their lead? Will my landing page rank higher if each subsequent page uses similar keyword packed, long tail url? Or is that considered black hat? If advisable, would a url structure that includes "san-francisco-video-production-_____" be seen as being to similar even if it varies by one word at the end? Furthermore, will I be penalized for using similar SEO descriptions ie. "San Francisco Video Production | Heartwave Media | Portfolio" and San Francisco Video Production | Heartwave Media | Contact" or is the difference of one word "portfolio" and "contact" sufficient to read as unique? Finally...am I making any sense? Any and all thoughts appreciated...
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | keeot0 -
Tags on WordPress Sites, Good or bad?
My main concern is about the entire tags strategy. The whole concept has really been first seen by myself on WordPress which seems to be bringing positive results to these sites and now there are even plugins that auto generate tags. Can someone detail more about the pros and cons of tags? I was under the impression that google does not want 1000's of pages auto generated just because of a simple tag keyword, and then show relevant content to that specific tag. Usually these are just like search results pages... how are tag pages beneficial? Is there something going on behind the scenes with wordpress tags that actually bring benefits to these wp blogs? Setting a custom coded tag feature on a custom site just seems to create numerous spammy pages. I understand these pages may be good from a user perspective, but what about from an SEO perspective and getting indexed and driving traffic... Indexed and driving traffic is my main concern here, so as a recap I'd like to understand the pros and cons about tags on wp vs custom coded sites, and the correct way to set these up for SEO purposes.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | WebServiceConsulting.com1 -
Using an auto directory submission
Has anyone used easysubmits.com and what's your experience with it? Any other directory submission or link building tools that help automate and manage the process like easysubmits.com says they can do? I'm just looking at it currenlty and wanted to hear others thoughts before I get taken in by some black hat method that hurts my websites instead.
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | Twinbytes0 -
Is using twiends.com to get twitter followers considered black hatting?
Hi, I've been struggling to get followers on Google Plus and Twitter, and recently stumbled upon twiends.com. It offers an easy service that allows you to get twitter followers very quickly. Is this considered black hating? Even if Google doesn't consider the followers as valid, am I likely to be punished if using their service? Even if it doesn't help rankings, it is nice to have lots of followers so that they will see my tweets which has the potential to drive more traffic to my site, and give awareness to my business. What are your thoughts?
White Hat / Black Hat SEO | | eugenecomputergeeks0