Should I include a "|" for better page title SEO results?
-
I have seen many sites that include the "|" in page titles and was wondering if there is some SEO value in the practice.
Example:
Product Name | Company Name
Instead of:
Product Name by Company Name
I have not seen any value in it myself other than a good way to avoid stop words. I wanted to make sure. Currently I have the "by" included in the page titles.
-
I always prefer the pipe for the following reasons, though I don't think it has any specific SEO value.
a) its reader friendly
b) its a natural separator
c) as Seth says below, it looks cool!
d) Whats good for SEOmoz is good for me!
-
SEO advantage I would suggest is negligible, if any in this case - more a case of aesthetics as has been suggested, as well as character count saving.
Section pages I would go with "Section | Company Name"
Product pages I would go with "Product - Section | Company Name"
-
When it comes to a web page Title Tag Google's Supper Smart Spiders pay no attention to the markup or punctuation used. So it truly comes down to the personal preference of the site owner. As for me and my OCD I prefer the Pipes cause they just look cooler!
To prove this point query the following:
allintitle:"-"
allintitle:"|"
allintitle:"/"
allintitle:""
allintitle:","
All come back with BUPKIS
-
| has my vote! More for readability than anything.
-
| has my vote! More for readability than anything.
-
The pipe and hyphen as already suggested are the way to go for pure usability and space saving for your title tag. In my opinion neither has a direct SEO advantage over the other however they both have a distinct advantage over other techniques. For me keeping the keywords used in the page title to the point help without any extra "by, or, and" breaks the keyword blocks both visually and semantically for the search engines. Now don't get me wrong I don't think this makes or breaks a good SEO effort on a page but for me it's certainly a preference.
-
Sounds like it is just an issue of conserving valuable character real estate while being aesthetically pleasing to the reader.
-
I think people prefer pipe symbol over hyphen..as it takes relatively less space...that's the only benefit I have seen..
-
I use the pipe because SEOmoz uses it. Visually it indicates something different is following. I think it more professional looking than the mere dash.
-
I am not sure the is any technical benefit however more used as Alan and EGOL suggest to separate keywords / phrases and increase CTR
-
I don't think that a pipe or dash or any other character adds or subtracts any SEO value. Certainly what you type after it is more important.
If your brand is widely known and respected then adding it might help increase your clickthroughs or conversions.
If you don't have a popular brand then "free shipping"... "learn the secrets!".... or a kickass price in the title tag will pull the visitors in.
... and if you have something that everyone wants such as "free beer" then you might want to included it in CAPS.
-
There's some disagreement in the industry as to whether the pipe symbol or hyphens are best - either way, one of these two would be recommended for readability purposes. This is especially valid when you've got more than one keyword phrase.
Product Name | Alternate Product Name | Company Name
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
-
Thoughts on adding "near me" to title tag for local SEO?
I want to lean out my title tags and will most likely be doing an A/B test. They currently have the "Near Me" modifier in there, which I believe Google can distinguish local SEO without it. Thoughts?
On-Page Optimization | | imjonny1230 -
Google is showing erroneous results on SERPs page
Hello, All, In April, two months ago, we caught a hack on a client's website. It created about 40 pages in what looked to be a black hat link tactic. We removed the pages, resubmitted the sitemap.xml (it reprocessed) and ran it through screaming frog to confirm all the pages were gone, but the forty pages still show up in the search results for a site search. We have both the www. and non www. version of sites claimed and set a preference. Nothing is awry with the robots.text. We're not really sure what to do to resolve it. We asked Google to recrawl (fetch) the site. I'm not sure what's going on with it. The website's name is fortisitsolutions.com The site search bringing up the pages from the hack is below. site:www.fortisitsolutions.com Any ideas?
On-Page Optimization | | Cazarin-Interactive0 -
Is it OK to include name of your town to the title tag or H1 tag on a blog to enhance local search results
I recently attended a webinar by ETNA Interactive on local search SEO. The presenter recommended including the name of your town in the title of the blog to increase local search SEO. Is this OK? Ive always been concerned that it is such an obvious attempt to rank locally that Google would consider it "spammy" ? black hat, "sketchy" or otherwise manipulative. Have the rules changed? Is it OK to do? Brooke
On-Page Optimization | | wianno1680 -
What's better for SEO a page per review or a page with all reviews?
Was wondering what's better for SEO. We have a platform where consumers can read and write reviews. But the question is: is it better to give one page per company with all the reviews on it? Or should we have different pages for the specific company? Example: Itunes has a company page with all reviews on the page, but not the whole review. You have to click further to view the whole review (new page), at the moment this the current situation. What if we place the whole reviews on the company page, so you don't have specific pages for the reviews? Hopefully can someone help us out. Contact me if it's not clear or you want more extended information. Kind regards
On-Page Optimization | | MozzieJr0 -
Homepage title on pages/posts title
I want to see the title of the page/post. Right now it is indexing it like page name / homepage name site:forumlist.info Brief info about site
On-Page Optimization | | csfarnsworth
Build in wordpress
SEO Plugin "All in one SEO pack" Settings snapshot are available below http://i.imgur.com/G278Y1Z.png http://imgur.com/gb0YQUO http://imgur.com/fbXQgd1 http://imgur.com/atj3AS4 Anyone can guide me how to fix it?0 -
Will Google handle "this not that" pages differently?
If you create pages about "try keyword1 not keyword2" will there be any barriers to getting the pages ranked for keyword2? Example: You have furnished rental units in a small town, and you offer nightly/weekly rentals. You want to rank for "town hotel" since you offer the same service as a hotel. Since you're not really a hotel, you create a page called "Better than a hotel: Town nightly rental units". Anyone know if Google has an algorithm to detect this (they would have to detect the meaning of the words you were using and know that you were promoting something other than a hotel) and determine you're not really relevant to "town hotel" and not rank you well? I think they probably do not, as I've seen things like Google Adsense Alternatives articles ranking well for the term Google Adsense, or Boycott Godaddy sites ranking well for the term godaddy. But I would like to hear any evidence or facts others know of.
On-Page Optimization | | AdamThompson0 -
My website is saying I have duplicate page content and page title. How do I fix it?
Hi, I created a website on webstarts.com. After I launched it then ran a scan through SEO it says I have duplicate page content and page title. The 2 pages it is reading are technically the same page. www.mobilemowermedicsinc.com and www.mobilemowermedicsinc.com/index . I am unsure how to get rid of on of these as it keeps saying this is an error in the SEO scan. Could someone please advise me of what to do from here. Thanks!
On-Page Optimization | | bcarp880 -
Does keyword density on a landing page effect SEO?
I'm relitavely new to SEO, and I just wondered how keyword dense the homepage to our businesses site should be? Is there any value in loading the frontpage at the potential expense of readibility, or should our content elsewhere be responsible for our yield in search engine results? Look forward to any responses. Thanks, Mark
On-Page Optimization | | RobertHill0