8 replies to this topic

[1dmf]

I read the 'Title Tags' article with interest and am surprised over the 'company name' advice.

I can understand perhaps maybe the homepage having this, or utilising your logo to link back to your homepage using the company's name as the alt attribute text, but it seems a waste of characters to place on other pages in the title tag when more important, page relevant / keyword text seems more appropriate.

Also what about those who's domain name has their company name in it, would it then be wise to also include it in your title tags or again wasting valuable chars for other keywords.

I'm not discounting the advice given, but it didnt' go into enough detail to help indetifiy when and where to use it and in which circumstances, which I'm hoping this thread will facilitate.

I look forward to others input on this article.

Regards,
1DMF

[Michael-F]

It seems to me that having your company name in the title is more of a branding issue than anything. Hopefully, one shouldn't have to worry about ranking for one's company name, so from an SEO standpoint it's usually not helping a whole lot. However, seeing an identifiable brand name on the title while looking through SERPs does lend some credibility. CTR should improve by having it in there, and it makes your site more memorable if a visitor has a reason to head back to your site at all.

This seems especially true when you domain matches your company name. It's more likely that someone will remember your URL if the company name matches it, making it easier to navigate back to your page again in the future. I don't imagine a lot of people are checking the URL at the bottom of a search result even if many of us do. If you're targeting anything with pages besides your homepage (and in most cases you should), then it has the same effect on those pages as well.

If your company name shows up in a tab while someone is browsing through multiple pages, it makes navigating between tabs easier too.

It might be a trade-off SEO-wise - and people with more expertise than me would be able to let us know if that is the case - but it still seems very much worth it. You want people to be able to discuss and recommend your brand name, and that's harder when you don't make every effort to brand yourself.

This is just my initial instinct. I honestly haven't looked at the issue very much at all. My company does have the brand name in all our titles, and our branding is getting pretty solid. However, I don't know what effect removing that company name would have.

[1dmf]

I can certainly see the 'branding' point of view, but i'm just wondering how usefull it is in the title.

OK I know it shows up in the SERPS, but so does the description, would that be a better way of utilising 'Branding' while leaving the title tag for your desired keywords.

The title tag plays little to no part in branding once people reach your page, 99% of users I ever speak to don't even know what the title of a page is, and hardly ever notice it.

The amount of times I've tried to explain to people, and their response is 'what's the title', I say 'you know the blue bar across the top of the browser' and 9 times out of 10 they reply 'wow - never even noticed that before - I don't usually look up there!'.

It seems from my limited experiece, it's of more use to SE's than it is users as most don't even notice it, so branding yourself in the title could be a complete waste of time.

My sister's website uses a CMS, all her product pages had the same title 'company name - web address'

OK great branding, absolutelty useless for targeting her desired keywords though, I can understrand brand awareness, but it's a catch 22, if people don't find you, they don't know you exist for you to brand yourself to them.

being found for her major keywords is more important than having brand awareness isn't it?

banner advertising, newsletters, decent logo, media coverage is surely far more effective and a better place for branding yourself rather than your title tags.

Plus her company name is her domain name, so for company name search, she's no.1 anyway, this article however has made me feel like i've given her bad advice!

[Jill]

The article didn't say to use company name instead of keywords. So why do you think you wouldn't show up for your keywords if you had your company name in there along with the keywords?

It's all about branding. Your meta description won't always show up in the search results, but your title will.

[1dmf]

The article didn't say to use company name instead of keywords.

No I know, I didn't say that it did, but if you are using up most of the real estate (visible title area), depending on the length of your company name, it won't leave much room for anything else.

Plus I thought it was believed the text at the start of the title tag carried more weight than at the end, is this not true?

I understood that the SE's use the words in a liner fashion when evaluting the keywords in your title (as explained by Karon in a previous thread), if your company was Quality Playground Technologies Limited and you were targeting 'Roundabouts' , and you used.... "Quality Playground Technologies Limited | Roundabouts | Spinning Disc | Rotating Rides"

Will the SE's see the two word & three word keyphrase 'Limited Roundabouts' or 'Playground Limited Rides'

Neither of those are correct or desirable along with many other permatations. Is branding really that much more important than well designed, keyword rich title tags?

[Randy]

In my mind it sort of depends 1dmf.

To take an easy example, let's say someone was going to bookmark (in their browser, not social bookmarking) the Roundabouts page of your site. For bookmarking purposes it would be a good thing to have your branding appear in the bookmark title. That way if people are researching several Roundabout options they'll be able to easily discern your site from the others they may have saved.

FTR, I typically flip my titles around the other way, putting the company name or branding at the end of the title string. And no I don't really have any tests that say putting it at the end is better than putting it at the beginning. Either for SEO purposes, clickthru rates or for branding purposes. It's just the way I've always done it because I like to get a short call to action, with my keyword phrases, in the first.

[Jill]

Plus I thought it was believed the text at the start of the title tag carried more weight than at the end, is this not true?

It's something many SEOs spout off, but I don't know that it's ever been proven one way or another.

But regarding company names in Titles it really does depend. If you have a really long company name, I might make modifications by putting it at the end, or using it's common abbreviation, or just the first couple of words (if it's still recognizable as the brand).

And sure, if it really doesn't make sense for a particular page, then put it in the Meta description. You should know by now 1dmf that there are no hard and fast rules for anything in SEO (in my opinion). And I wasn't providing hard and fast rules in that article. I thought that was fairly clear. (Think I said, all in all, you can do it a number of different ways and in the end it won't make much dif.)

[qwerty]

Plus I thought it was believed the text at the start of the title tag carried more weight than at the end, is this not true?

I'm one of the ones who believe that, but I don't push hard on the idea because my proof is pretty flimsy.

[1dmf]

You should know by now 1dmf that there are no hard and fast rules for anything in SEO (in my opinion). And I wasn't providing hard and fast rules in that article. I thought that was fairly clear. (Think I said, all in all, you can do it a number of different ways and in the end it won't make much dif.)

Come now Jill, I did caveat the first post with

I'm not discounting the advice given, but it didnt' go into enough detail to help indetifiy when and where to use it and in which circumstances, which I'm hoping this thread will facilitate.

That was the point of my question, you threw an idea out there, that had merits, but I just wanted to discuss when and where it is best to be used, how one should make that judgement, and when it's better to use a different method.

The problem with SEO is it seems you make it up as you go along, for someone who likes to understand things it can be very frustrating and mind boggling!

I can see Randy's point about a bookmark, but then a gain, do people constantly put things in their favourites, I never use that crappy facility, tried it ended up with a list as long as your arm of threads I never bother visiting again, I have websites in mmy favourites that's years old, I can't be arsed to maintain the list, it;s a pain. If I want something I search, if I find what I want the way I want it I buy.

If I want to buy from them again because i was impressed, I dig out the email with my order confirmation which has their web address on it, I don't go hunting for them in my favourites, plus how do I know they are any good at that point , I could stick them in my favourites upon purchasing, then it turns out the goods don't come for weeks, then they turn up damaged, I never want to buy from them again, not I have to go through the hastle of finding their bookmark and removing it.

Or maybe i'll forget , and because they are in my favourites I purchase from them again, making the same mistake twice, I could go on, and I know generally do, but for me there are far more reasons to not fill your favourites up that there is in favour of it.

The problem again Randy, is I think like me and not my target audience!