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  4. Bad SEO Practice: in title tag?

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Bad SEO Practice: in title tag?

Intermediate & Advanced SEO
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  • Eric_Lifescript
    Eric_Lifescript last edited by Mar 22, 2016, 3:32 PM

    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

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • MattAntonino
      MattAntonino @EGOL last edited by Mar 22, 2016, 11:23 PM Mar 22, 2016, 11:23 PM

      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. **

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 2
      • EGOL
        EGOL @4RS_John last edited by Mar 22, 2016, 5:12 PM Mar 22, 2016, 5:12 PM

        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.

        MattAntonino 1 Reply Last reply Mar 22, 2016, 11:23 PM Reply Quote 3
        • 4RS_John
          4RS_John Subscriber last edited by Mar 22, 2016, 5:08 PM Mar 22, 2016, 5:08 PM

          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.

          EGOL 1 Reply Last reply Mar 22, 2016, 5:12 PM Reply Quote 2
          • RevolutionMary
            RevolutionMary last edited by Mar 22, 2016, 4:56 PM Mar 22, 2016, 4:56 PM

            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.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
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