Bars Verus Hyphens in Title Tags
-
It has been quite a while since I have seen an article really talk about this and I am wondering if this even matters anymore? I prefer the look of a - rather than a | but just wondering if this is still a thing... If you know of a recent article going into findings on this supporting one or the other it would be appreciated.
Thanks!
-
Use a colon. Requires one less space.
-
Hi Thomas
It really does not matter anymore. If anything, there might be more reason to use a hyphen rather than a |.
Starting about a year ago, Google seemed to be rewriting the title tags of pages that looked like: "Keyword 1 | Keyword 2 | Brand.com" into "Brand.com: Keyword 1 | Keyword 2" - Here's an article on that. I've seen it happen with hyphens too but far less often.
But in any case, use whichever option you prefer. I like the hyphen too, but there's nothing right or wrong with either - just be sure to make your title tag designed for the user and for clicks rather than search engines (out with the example I used earlier, in with "Get Keyword 1 with free USA delivery - Brand" style title tags - and make sure it will show up in search and not be shortened. You can use Moz's title tag tool for that.
Hope this helps.
-
The main thin I consider is that the maximum size of the title is defined by the pixel-width, not by the character count. For this reason, I prefer "|" as you can fit more on it. But for individual services on a brand with a short name, "-" can be preferable.
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
-
# Tag - opacity and SEO impact
Hello,
Technical SEO | | Tiffany_Barn
I have a query animation 'fade-in-up' on my website: tiffanybarnard.com which moves the H1 tag slightly and fades it in from zero opacity to 1. Will this affect the SEO value of the H1 tag?
Thank you!0 -
How can i safely eliminate wordpress unused tags?
Hi Over several years I used many tags ( more then 1000 ) on my wordpress website 😞 but most of them haven't any view and haven't any clicks on google search . now I want delete this old - useless - unused tags but I'm worried about seo problem like many 404 pages and problems like this . Does anyone have safe way to delete these wordpress tags? how can i safely remove them?
Technical SEO | | markdoel0 -
Google Results Title vs My Page Title
I'm having some trouble with my titles of a new site, it has been online for around two months now and i'm getting weird titles from most indexed pages. Since my site is focused on finding courses, the course title format is the following: URL: https://www.maseducacion.com/estudios/programacion-curricular--tecnigrap-2982
Technical SEO | | JoaoCJ
My Title: Course - Institute | Mybrand
Google Search Title: Course - Institute | Mybrand - Educativa Half of my results have that word at the end, don't know where it comes from, that word is only included in two links. Any idea on how to fix it?0 -
Issue Missing Meta Description Tag
Hello Friends, Today I found missing meta description tag when Seomoz update my website crawl diagnostics. I recovered other type missing meta description tag but I don't understand how can I recover this type page. Here is the examples. http://www.example.com/blog/page/2/ http://www.example.com/blog/page/3/ http://www.example.com/blog/page/4/ Links continue...... Thanks KLLC
Technical SEO | | KLLC0 -
How are meta tags added once campaign has been set-up?
Once a campaign has been set-up in SEOmoz how can additional meta tags be added? I have not found a simple method to making this happen. Please advise.
Technical SEO | | ScottClark350 -
Issue Duplicate Page Title
I'm having some really strange issues with duplicate page titles and I can't seem to figure out what's going on. I just got a new crawl from SEOMOZ and it's showing some duplicate page titles. http://www.example.com/blog/ http://www.example.com/blog/page/2/ http://www.example.com/blog/page/3/ Repeat .............. I have no idea what's going on, how these were duplicated, or how to correct it. Does anyone have a chance to take a look and see if you can figure out what's happening and what I need to do to correct the errors? I'm using Wordpress and all in one SEO plugin. Thanks so much!
Technical SEO | | KLLC0 -
How can we fix duplicate title tags like these being reported in GWT?
Hi all, I posted this in the GWT Forum on Monday and still no answers so I will try here. Our URL is http://www.ccisolutions.com
Technical SEO | | danatanseo
We have over 200 pages on our site being flagged by GWT as having
duplicate title tags. The majority of them look similar to this: Title: <a>JBL EON MusicMix 16 | Mixer | CCI Solutions</a> GWT is reporting these URLs to have all the same title: /StoreFront/product/R-JBL-MUSICMIX.prod/StoreFront/product/R-JBL-MUSICMIX.prod?Origin=Category/StoreFront/product/R-JBL-MUSICMIX.prod?Origin=Footer/StoreFront/product/R-JBL-MUSICMIX.prod?Origin=Header/StoreFront/product/R-JBL-MUSICMIX.prod?origin=../StoreFront/product/R-JBL-MUSICMIX.prod?origin=GoogleBase These are all the same page. There was a time when we used these origin codes, but we stopped using them over a year ago. We also added canonical tags to every page to prevent us from having duplicate content issues. However, these origin codes are
still showing up in GWT. Is there anything we can do to fix this problem. Do we have a technical issue with our site code and the way Google is seeing our dynamic URLs? Any suggestions on how we can fix this problem? The same is true in our report for Meta descriptions. Thanks
you,
Dana Tan0 -
Using symbols in the html title of a webpage
If you a symbol in the title of a webpage will this dilute the keywords in the title
Technical SEO | | mickey11
thus making it rank worse in search engines here is an example <title><br /> Black Shoe Polish<br /></title> versus <title><br /> ▶ Black Shoe Polish<br /></title> will the extra symbols count as words and thus the dilute the effectiveness of the Black Shoe Polish keyword. sort of making like 4 words instead 3. By the way, The reason to use a symbol is to make it stand on in the search engine results0