Use of '&' in meta title
-
Hi, I know that use of '&' would be helpful to save space and also add more keyword variation to the title tag. But just want to make sure if it matters if I use '&' in most of my title tags? And also is it common to use more than & in one title?
Would the following title be different in Google's perspective regardless of the title length? I am thinking they are all targeting the keywords 'fruit cake' and 'fruit bread', but the first one is the best.
buy fruit cake & bread
buy fruit cake & fruit bread
buy fruit cake and fruit bread
Thanks in advance.
-
Hi Linda,
Thanks for your answer Just wish to confirm if the first option "buy fruit cake & bread" will capture the keywords "fruit cake" and "fruit bread" as I wish to save the space for more other information in title tag.
I guess it is a balance we have to make, to be more clear or to be more concise.
Thanks for all the other answers.
-
Google uses titles as an important step in determining whether a website answers "searchers intent" - should google display that page on the SERP.
The composition of a title is far more complex than the obvious. The title has a strong SEO focus but also it has to be optimised for clickability. So there are trade-offs. An example is we have changed titles - a few words around and seen a 6 times uplift in CTR. So optimising for the customer is integral.
So the first thing to do is determine keywords - then trade off with click ability. I am not sure I would start with the word buy. A standard method is
Most Important keyword | Second most important Keyword | Brand.
Should be a nexus between the two keywords. Also the title can only be 512 pixels long before it truncates. Hence the title has limited space and two competing components clickability & SEO. Big decisions.
To answer your question, from the information at hand on the and v &. It is semantics but i agree with Linda the latter is more attractive and secondly it uses less pixels.
Let me know if need any more information.
-
Hi Russell,
I use '&' and 'and' both but in different scenario. e.g
If keyword is 'artificial plants & trees' (having significant search volume) then I will use 'artificial plants & trees' not 'artificial plants and trees' and If keyword is 'artificial plants and trees' then I will use 'artificial plants and trees' not 'artificial plants & trees'.
So first you should check keyword is with 'and' or '&' and use in title according to that. If you are using 'and' or '&' like separator then it would be better to use pipe(|) or dash (-).
Hope this helps.
Thanks
-
The first one is more ambiguous. Is it fruit cake and bread of some type, or is it fruit cake and fruit bread [the ampersand generally being a joiner]?
If you do the searches, you will see they are all somewhat similar, with the second two being obviously more related. [collinstreet.com is going to wonder about the strange impressions data in their Adwords campaign...]
An ampersand and the word "and" are mostly the same in Google & there are some who feel that a special character in a title can attract more attention & so is a good thing.
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
-
Is there a way to keep your brand name in the title tag even if your title is cut off?
Hi, I've been thinking of placing our brand name in the front of our title tag for brand recognition purposes. While doing research I came across a few sites that seem to have their brand name on every title tag, regardless of whether of not their title tag was too long and getting cut off by Google. Ex: Personalized Cutting Broads & Humidors...-Etsy The title tag for the example above was for a store in Etsy that sells personalized cutting broads, which was what i searched for. Normally a title tag that is too long gets cut off by Google and your brand name no longer shows if you've positioned it at the end of your title tag. Is there a way to get your brand name to show up at the end of every title tag even if your title is long and gets cut off by Google? Obviously, I could just place the brand name at the front of my title tag, but if I wanted something like my example above is that possible? Thanks You
On-Page Optimization | | znotes0 -
Wordpress 'Hide Title' Feature, does this help shorten title length
Im wondering if anyone with some Wordpress experience can help me. I am using Yoast to create my page titles, but yet Moz tells me that my page titles including my actual page title tag which is 'dumfries wedding photography | Hemera Visuals' by clicking on the 'hide title' feature in wordpress will this in turn stop wordpress from automatically adding my page title and therfor bring my title length down drastically? And if so will I have to wait till google next crawls my page to see if this works? Kind Regards Cameron.
On-Page Optimization | | hemeravisuals120 -
Does name of town in title tag help if queries don't include the town name?
Hi. Wanted to know if targeting local traffic online and the search volume of KWs in the area do not include the local names (according to KW planner) does it still help to keep the town names in the title tag? does google deliver local results based on location names in title tag if query didn't mention it?
On-Page Optimization | | Morris770 -
Dates in URL's
I have an issue of duplicate content errors and duplicate page titles which is penalising my site. This has arisen because a number of URLs are suffixed by date(s) and have been spidered . In principle I do not want any url with a suffixed date to be spidered. Eg:- www.carbisbayholidays.co.uk/carbis-bay/houses-in-carbis-bay/seaspray.htm/06_07_13/13_07_13 http://www.carbisbayholidays.co.uk/carbis-bay/houses-in-carbis-bay/seaspray.htm/20_07_13/27_07_13 Only this URL should be spidered:- http://www.carbisbayholidays.co.uk/carbis-bay/houses-in-carbis-bay/seaspray.htm I have over 10,000 of these duplicates and firstly wish to remove them on block from Google ( not one by one ) and secondly wish to amend my robots.txt file so the URL's are not spidered. I do not know the format for either. Can anyone help please.
On-Page Optimization | | carbisbayhols0 -
Changing Ttile Tags & 301's
I recently began re-optimizing my title tags site wide. Could this cause 301 redirects and the loss of backlinks?
On-Page Optimization | | BeautyStop0 -
Duplicate Page Titles
I have over 200 duplicate page titles on a site that I am working on. Does putting a date at the end of some of them make it a unique enough title?
On-Page Optimization | | SavingSense0 -
Changing of title page and description
Can I ask how long after changing the Title and Description tags on a website do people have to wait to see these changes reflected in Google? I changed a site of mine a couple of weeks back, pinged the site to google and had well over 5,000 googlebots to the page (not a result of pinging, I get that anyway), yet Google continues to display the old listing. Any secret techniques to speeding this up? Thanks
On-Page Optimization | | Grumpy_Carl0 -
Using meta robots 'noindex'
Alright, so I would consider myself a beginner at SEO. I've been doing merchandising and marketing for Ecommerce sites for about a year and a half now and am just now starting to attempt to apply some intermediate SEO techniques to the sites I work on so bear with me. We are currently redoing the homepage of our site and I am evaluating what links to have on it. I don't want to lose precious link juice to pages that don't need it, but there are certain pages that we need to have on the homepage that people just won't search for. My question is would it be a good move to add the meta robots 'noindex' tag to these pages? Is my understanding correct that if the only link on the page is back to the homepage it will pass back the linkjuice? Also, how many homepage links are too many? We have a fairly large ecommerce site with a lot of categories we'd like to feature, but don't want to overdo the homepage. I appreciate any help!
On-Page Optimization | | ClaytonKendall0