Never Start Your Page Title with Your Brand

In Google's Webmaster Tools help section, Google suggests including your branding in your page titles. I'm going to tell you why you should not and how to do it correctly, if you must.

You Should Never Include Your Branding in Page Titles Because:

• No One Cares – people search for webpages that provide them with solutions to their problems. They do not care who provides it.
• Branding Devalues Your Page Title SEO – unless your company or domain name provides SEO value, it detracts from your SEO.
• Better Words Exist – as mentioned in 6 Ways to Reduce Bounce Rates, you should use your page title to help you reduce your bounce rates.
• Proximity Metric – putting your most important phrase at or near the beginning of your page title indicates to search engines the value of that phrase.
• Density Metric – density is based upon the number of words and characters you include in your page title. The more words and characters you include the lower the density metric you have for your keyword or phrase.
• Google Changes Page Titles for Search Results – in traditional Google-fashion, things change. Google changes pages titles to make the more helpful to searchers and suggests avoiding boilerplate content in pages titles.

When You Absolutely Must Include Your Branding:

• Only When Mandated by Company Executives – your company executives make decisions daily that affect the business. They may have reasons for their mandates.
• Include at the End of Your Page Title – by including your branding at the end of your page title, you’re forced to ensure you keep your title concise and limited to the visible text search engines show.
• Use Special Characters – Special characters such as & and @ provide meaning nearly everyone can understand and typically saves you a minimum of two characters each.
• Use Special Delimiters – Special delimiters such as the colon and pipe provide you with the means of separating boilerplate text from more important page title characters and words.

The Takeaway

Webpages within your online store software must always have unique page titles that allow you to perform ecommerce SEO services. By following the above recommendations, you will always have solid page titles that attract the attention of quality visitors.