Using Brand Name in Page titles
-
Is it a good practice to append our brand name at the end of every page title? We have a very strong brand name but it is also long. Right now what we are doing is saying:
Product Name | Long brand name here
Product Category | Long brand name here
Is this the right way to do it or should we just be going with ONLY the product and category names in our page titles? Right now we often exceed the 70 character recommendation limit.
-
In my Opinion your Brand Name should not be in your Titles. At least not on all pages. It should be in Contact pages, in pages and articles texts but it titles not that much. The reason I'm saying this is that there is 2 possible options :
1- Your Brand is not so well known so why trying to rank for your Brand when you could target a more efficient Target in term of relevant traffic generation.
2-Your Brand is well known, so that it is probably already in your Domain name and the texts everywhere everywhere on your sites, in anchor text of incoming links. You probably had a website running for this brand for a while so that Search Engine knows that your web property is the one of your brand. You probably also have a lot of links pointing to your homepage with your Brand for Anchor Text. Search Engine will then know.
So instead of focusing on your Brand, I think it's more clever to focused on bringing visitors and customer by using Keyword related to your products and services and have a larger base of customers to get awareness of the brand and then promote and recommend your Brand !
-
I thought about this after lunch and while I still stand behind my original post I think you can get away with leaving off your brand name if your products have a brand of their own.
Search for "Chuck Taylor All Stars". That's a brand in and of itself so Converse didn't add their name to that title tag.
Whereas if we're talking about a general product I'd say absolutely add the brand name like with "Pencil Sharpeners | Office Max".
-
In the case of Gap, not only is their brand name short, but it is also the brand of their clothes. People are going to be looking for Gap Jeans and the like. If you're in a similar situation where it's your brand name + product that signifies a sale, it'd probably be wise to have the brand in the title tag in that case, but you'll want to consider whether or not it's worth it across your site globally.
In a case like Harbor Freight, their name is some what long, but they use it on their location specific pages because they have stores, they get localized searches, and they are going to pull in visitors, and the usage adds value. On product specific searches it makes fewer appearances.
-
That could be. Then again, how do some brands become so well known for their brand identity? By including it everywhere human eyeballs are.
-
That's why I initially offered that the brand can be optional - if it's a weak brand, make use of that space in the Title - however rather than assuming a site can be found for Product Name | KickA$$ Price (very unlikely to be a high volume longer phrase), I believe it's better early on to get a couple phrases in each title where each phrase by itself is relevant, and the combination of those phrases (in different various sequences) is much more likely to get that many more people ultimately finding the site.
This is especially true when having quality content on the page - combine all those Title variations and partial variations with a handful of words in the content that results in exponential long tail visits.
Just my experience though.
-
I think that a lot of people using THEIR BRAND in the title tag are simply lazy or egotists.
... but it's OK with me.
-
Gap is lucky to have such a short brand name.
In a lot of cases we are talking about egos that are enormous compared to the size of a brand as widely known as Macy's.
For my sites at least I think that the opportunity to grab extra sale through the title tag is more important than trying to communicate a weak brand when I am head-to-head with a Macy's. I'd rather use my title tag to shout value propositions, elicit clicks and reach for more keywords.
When we are talking my brand vs Macy's I need to get my foot in the door with value and then impress them with service and quality.
-
I like the Hybrid approach. Much more dynamic.
-
Macy's, Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman, Fortunoff, Gap... All have their Brand in page Titles.
Interestingly, Gap uses the combination of Category | Gap | Sales Hook (a hybrid of my suggestion and EGOL's) on many of their pages.
-
To your comment Alan, I am talking about a world-renowned brand. With that in mind, it sounds like we should keep the brand there at the end in order to maximize clickthrough and brand recognition.
-
In most cases I'm a fan of leaving the brand name off of the title tag as EOGL mentions. It's probably in your URL and all over the page that someone is going to see if they click on your search result, so you should do as much as possible to get that click. His examples are great.
Also consider that people searching for your brand already know about your site and if they don't they still have a VERY high likelihood of interacting with your site at some point. With generic searches you want to do as much as possible to expose your brand to people that are unfamiliar with your brand, the ones that are the farthest from knowing who you are and what you do. If you track how someone arrives at your site via search, you're very likely to see this progression:
1. Generic search
2. Generic search + brand or domain name
3. Brand name search
4. PurchaseYour brand is important, but having it in your title tag has very little influence over steps 2-4. Focus on getting those initial visits.
-
I always recommend to clients that unless they're a world renowned brand, it's important to include the brand name on core information type pages (about, contact, jobs, etc.) as the first part of the page Title, but that it's optional to include on the rest of the site - and if it is included on other pages, it should definitely be at the end of the Title string, after each page's primary topical focus.
As for products and categories, unless you've got a site that's dominating the search results, I always recommend Product Name | Product Category | Optional BrandName
This is vital because you need to build topical relevance for every product - both specific to that product and how that page relates to it's larger category. Imagine having 30 product pages in one category - that's 31 pages that would have the Category emphasized, yet in proper syntactical order for individual page relevance.
Then, as your site becomes truly strong in search results, you can go with EGOL's method.
Always remember that Google only displays the first 70 characters at most from each Title - so look at how Titles would in Google. If you do include the brand at the tail, it's okay if it gets cut off in the Google display - they'll still see it, and users will see it in their browser when on your site - as an additional brand-strengthening aspect of your site's design.
-
Lots of people are hung-up on using their brand name in titles. I think that they should consider some of the examples below.... and use their imagination to appeal to the searcher. Let's be honest... brand names make a really sleepy title tag...
Product Name | KickA$$ Price
Product Name | Free Shipping
Product Name | A Phrase that Elicits Clicks
Product Name | Most Popular Uses
Product Name | Immediate Shipping
Product Name | What the Competition is Keeping Secret
Product Name | Buy Now and Get Free Beer
-
I think if you use Product Name | product Category you shouldn't use your brand name as second keyword but your product category.
On pages that you're not putting as much focus on the title ex: About us | Long Brand Name Here
Remember each page is treated as a unique page.
-
I'd say stick with what you have. Even if it exceeds 70 characters, like you say it's a recommendation to stay within it, not an absolute.
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
-
Should my canonical tags point to the category page or the filter result page?
Hi Moz, I'm working on an ecommerce site with categories, filter options, and sort options – teacherexpress.scholastic.com. Should I have canonical tags from all filter and sort options point to the category page like gap.com and llbean.com? or have all sort options point to the filtered page URL like kohls.com? I was under the impression that to use a canonical tag, the pages have to have the same content, meaning that Gap and L.L. Bean would be using canonical tags incorrectly. Using a filter changes the content, whereas using a sort option just changes the order. What would be the best way to deal with duplicate content for this site? Thanks for reading!
Algorithm Updates | | DA20130 -
Does this mean my pages are ranking better?
In GWT impressions are down 17%, clicks are up 57%. Is it safe to assume that pages are ranking better for my site? We have earned a couple great links in the past month.. 5lDZEUJ
Algorithm Updates | | Theskimonster0 -
How to content marketing: Should my blog posts link to my sales page?
Hi, I've been doing a weekly blog making sure that each blog post contains my money keywords in the text, sometimes in h2 tags etc. My blog posts never contain any links to my actual sales page. Should I link each blog post to my sale page or is it overdoing it? Will internal linking of all my blog posts to my sales page will improve its page authority or have any SEO benefits? What about using exact match anchor text on these internal links? I couldn't find any resource online about this matter. Thank you for your opinion and help! -Marc
Algorithm Updates | | marcandre0 -
Have I been Hit by a Penguin? No Warning in Webmaster / Some Pages still Rank
Hi all, I have recently signed up to MOZ as I have seen a large drop in the turnover of a site I work with as well as a slump in visitors. I know part of this slump is the transition from google product search from being free to paid and chewing through our adwords budget quicker. The other part though seems a little more tricky, I have always been under the impression from reading online that an algorithm update would see a site destroyed for most terms and a notification generated in webmaster tools, however the site still seems to still rank for some terms, others however it has fallen off the face of the earth for. As you can see in the attachment webmaster tools is showing much decreased visibility, and MOZ agrees with this. Key terms that have lost rank have done so by around 4-10 positions. The content on the site has all been hand written by myself, however some of the pages are a little "stale" so I am currently running through re-writing every product page on the site (1000 products or so) all my product pages grade a minimum B with 99% A on the Moz page grader. I am keeping my fingers crossed that fresh content should assist in getting google interested again? However my real questions is, Is this Penguin? or is this just stale content? dmDdMr5.jpg pYkzck0.jpg 9f4mgM9.jpg
Algorithm Updates | | speedingorange1 -
How much is Page Rank really worth?
We are in a position to purchase a domain, made of relevant keywords to our company with a current page ranking of 4 for their home page. However in looking at their analytics and other information they do not do well on significant keywords and have very low site traffic. In fact they do very, very poorly. With their high page ranking would it be relatively easy to conduct a successful SEO campaign on the domain if we were to take it over as our own and attempt to climb in the SERP's? I know Page Rank doesn't mean everything when it comes to your ranking, but 4 is relatively high in our field, so I don't really understand why they do so poorly when it comes to their actual rankings on key words.
Algorithm Updates | | absoauto0 -
Correct usage of expired pages -410 or not?
Hi Mozzes, We're running a property portal that carries around 200.000 listings in two languages. All listings are updated several times per day and when one of our ads expire we report this via the "410 Gone", and place a link to our users: This ad has expired, click here to search for similar properties. Looking at our competition I seems that here are many different ways to deal with this, one popular being a 301 to the corresponding search result. We've tried to get directions from Google on what method they prefere, but as usual dead silence. Advices are mostly welcome.
Algorithm Updates | | PropertyPortal0 -
Large site with faceted navigation using rel=canonical, but Google still has issues
First off, I just wanted to mention I did post this on one other forum so I hope that is not completely against the rules here or anything. Just trying to get an idea from some of the pros at both sources. Hope this is received well. Now for the question..... "Googlebot found an extremely high number of URLs on your site:" Gotta love these messages in GWT. Anyway, I wanted to get some other opinions here so if anyone has experienced something similar or has any recommendations I would love to hear them. First off, the site is very large and utilizes faceted navigation to help visitors sift through results. I have implemented rel=canonical for many months now to have each page url that is created based on the faceted nav filters, push back to the main category page. However, I still get these damn messages from Google every month or so saying that they found too many pages on the site. My main concern obviously is wasting crawler time on all these pages that I am trying to do what they ask in these instances and tell them to ignore and find the content on page x. So at this point I am thinking about possibly using robots.txt file to handle these, but wanted to see what others around here thought before I dive into this arduous task. Plus I am a little ticked off that Google is not following a standard they helped bring to the table. Thanks for those who take the time to respond in advance.
Algorithm Updates | | PeteGregory0