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.
Bad SEO Practice: in title tag?
-
Greetings,
I just discovered that some of our content was produced with
tags in the title tag.Example: <title>Diabetes Symptoms <br> In Women Over 40</title>
My gut says this is bad for SEO, but I couldn't find a definitive answer on the web, so I thought I would ask the community of gurus here at Moz.
Thanks in advance for any reply.Kind regards,
Eric
-
I love the way you phrase things. lol
I agree with EGOL here - it's definitely not helpful, it's definitely not needed, it could be harmful, and it's a sign of other potential issues. I would definitely work to remove it from the title.
Plus,
.... I mean what's it trying to accomplish? This tells me it's auto-generated or (stealing EGOL's word) "dumb." because it's a line break. You can't line break a title. I mean I could see some example of code that are meant to do something in a title (for instance, **for bold) but not BR? It makes no sense. ** -
If I see code in a title tag, I will know that a dumb programmer worked on that site. It tells me that there could be other surprises waiting inside.
So, I will not click into that site. I will skip over it.
If
was in the titel tags of one of my sites we would do whatever is needed to get it out of there. We would work for an entire week to get rid of it because we don't want to be in the SERPs with our pants down. -
Like Mary, I'm not a guru, but don't think it'll harm your SEO, but:
- What does Google display for these sites? If the
is displaying in search results, that's 4 of your precious characters wasted that could be used to convince people to click on your site. - What do browsers do when they encounter a
in a title tag? It might get kind of ugly up in the tab or title bar.
TL;DR: If you can get rid of them I would.
- What does Google display for these sites? If the
-
Well I'm no Guru -but it seems to me like the
is unnecessary. I don't think it is harmful to search, but visually if that
is appearing on your browser tabs/search results it'll look odd to the user so I guess in that sense it's not great.MOZ has a great write up on best title tag practices for SEO, and they give the optimal format as:
Primary Keyword - Secondary Keyword | Brand Name
If it were my content I would probably change it, just to be safe. 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
-
Default Wordpress 301 Redirects of JS and CSS files. Bad for SEO & How to Fix?
Hi there: We are developers with some digital marketing expertise, but a current issue has us perplexed. An outside SEO firm has asked us to clean up a large number of 301 redirects. Most of these are 'default' Wordpress behavior that relate to calling the latest version of a JS or CSS file. For instance, a JS file is called with this: https://websitexyz.com/wp-includes/js/wp-embed.min.js?ver=4.9.1 but ultimately redirects to this: https://websitexyz.com/wp-includes/js/wp-embed.min.js. We are being asked to prevent the redirect from happening by, presumably, calling the ultimate file to begin with. The issue is that, as far as we know, there's no easy way to alter WP behavior to call the ultimate file to begin with. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Thanks.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Daaveey0 -
Lightboxes and SEO
Do lightboxes (AKA popup boxes when you click "learn more" type CTAs) have any negative effect on SEO? We are looking at revamping our sites to have more of a tiled approach, and a lightbox with summary content popping out with additional CTAs, directing to pages with more information or free trial pages. Is there any downside to this approach from an organic perspective? is there anything specific to keep in mind when creating these if not?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Chris81980 -
Null Alt Image Tags vs Missing Alt Image Tags
Hi, Would it be better for organic search to have a null alt image tag programatically added to thousands of images without alt image tags or just leave them as is. The option of adding tailored alt image tags to thousands of images is not possible. Is having sitewide alt image tags really important to organic search overall or what? Right now, probably 10% of the sites images have alt img tags. A huge number of those images are pages that aren Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | 945010 -
H3 Tags - Should I Link to my content Articles- ? And do I have to many H3 tags/ Links as it is ?
Hello All, On my ecommerce landing pages, I currently have links to my products as H3 Tags. I also have useful guides displayed on the page with links useful articles we have written (they currently go to my news section). I am wondering if I should put those article links as additional H3 tags as well for added seo benefit or do I have to many tags as it is ?. A link to my Landing Page I am talking about is - http://goo.gl/h838RW Screenshot of my h1-h6 tags - http://imgur.com/hLtX0n7 I enclose screenshot my guides and also of my H1-H6 tags. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. thanks Peter
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | PeteC120 -
Domain Alias SEO
We have 5 domain alias of our existing sites
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | unibiz
All 5 domain alias are domain alias of our main site. It means, all domain alias will have exactly same site and contents
Like Main domain: www.mywebsite.com
DomainAlias: www.myproduct.com, www.myproduct2.com, www.myproduc3.com
And if anybody will open our site www.myproduct.com, it will open same website which I have in primary site what can i do to rank all website without any penalty....i s there any way? This is domain alias of in hosting industry Thanks0 -
How does badly formatted HTML affect SEO?
Our website uses a custom built CMS, but uses a fairly standard WYSIWYG text editor. I've looked at some of the code it produces, and it's not pretty. My gut feeling tells me that this extra bloat is bad for SEO. Am I right in thinking that Google doesn't look kindly upon badly formatted and bloated HTML? Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | OptiBacUK
James0 -
If you have an unlimited SEO budget, what would you do?
Here's a bit of background information: I've achieved the targets and is now being offered what is essentially an unlimited budget. I have a nice list of ideas but thought I would the brilliant people here at the SEOMOZ community what they would do. So as to promote as much response as possible, I'm going to keep my list to myself for now. And by "SEO", I mean I can do things like content strategy, blogging, infographics, etc. Shoot away!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | andrep0 -
Iframe redirect bad for SEO?
Hi, I have a website (http://www.blowingminds.de) wich I put a spreadshirt shop into via iframe. The thing is I am not sure on how the iframe effects my SEO? Can I just optimise the main domain for search? Well I want the spreadshirt shop to be found under the domain name (www.blowingminds.de) but the only real way to do it is by implementing an iframe because each spreadshirt shop has its own subdomain eg.: blowingminds.spreadshirt.de but the only real way to do it is via iframe, as they do not offer a complete domain redirect. (Or have I overseen some other way?) I hope you guys can help me on this one 🙂 Thanks in advance. Malte
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | wellbo1