How does Google treat special characters in titles?
-
Seems like a stupid question, but one that I never really gave much thought about before. How exactly does Google treat special characters in titles? Do they all get seen as spaces?
e.g. Does
Awesome Product - OptionA/OptionB/OptionC available
get seen the same way as
**Awesome Product - OptionA, OptionB, **OptionC available
? Or even
**Awesome Product - OptionA OptionB **OptionC available
? Or will Google see the first title as **OptionA/OptionB/OptionC **being a whole "keyword" due to there being no space between them? Like I've always just assumed that with apostrophised words will be seen as keyword s. And when using commas, there's always a space after the comma anyway. Are all "special characters" treated the same?
-
Thanks for your input, Dan. I won't be using slashes but I was curious as to how they would work with Google.
The category page I had in mind at the time, I had just merged the multiple subcategory pages into the one main category due to cannibalisation evident in rankings (and I was experimenting with how to optimise browser title for previous subcategory-related keywords). The single page is already outperforming the separate pages, but thanks for your suggestion
-
Hi Ria
99.9% certain Google 'sees' all of those as the same in terms of character/word separation. I don't think OptionA/OptionB etc will be seen all as one keyword.
However Patrick has the right idea - to question if you really need one page or if things can be broken into separate pages.
I'd also optimize for readability and clicks too
-Dan
-
I usually use commas as option separators, etc. But when pixel width is limited, sometimes the extra 3 or 4 characters comes in handy for things like Blue/Red/Black/White instead of Blue, Red, Black, White.
The specific example I had in mind in the OP (Awesome Product - OptionA/OptionB/OptionC available), I was actually thinking of a category page I'm working on and not a product (I realise now my choice of example title was confusing).
Originally, category structure was this:
Awesome Product
-
OptionA
-
Lots of products
-
OptionB
-
Lots of products
-
OptionC
-
Lots of products
-
etc
But subcategories have been noticeably slipping over the past year, and I've attributed this down to the landing pages cannibalising each other. So I'm in the process of flattening the whole category and using filters to separate the different product options, and working on strengthening the main category page to accommodate all user search patterns. While drafting a new title for the category page to incorporate the deleted subcategories, I was just curious how Google treats the forward slashes as I'm usually a comma person too. And whether it makes a difference at all to Google.
**TL;DR: **I'll probably stick with the commas because it does look more readable for users, just wondering how Google reads characters like that and whether it extracts the separate keywords OptionA/OptionB/OptionC.
-
-
Hi there
I like the commas - the way you have the /'s in your title make it look like one word. You could do...
Awesome Product - OptionA / OptionB / OptionC available
...but is that really the best title? I'd challenge you to come up with some different titles. If the variants are different enough to warrant their own pages with their own URLs, own descriptions, and markup, then you could create unique page titles that are dedicated to one product.
Hope this helps! Good luck!
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
-
Does Anchor Text in Links Count When Google Looks at Overall Keywords on the Page?
So, on our site, we have a list of related blog posts on a page that focuses on bamboo flooring. These blogs posts have anchor text like "What's the best bamboo flooring?" "How to install bamboo flooring." "Yada yada bamboo flooring yada." Because the main keyword for the page is bamboo flooring, would the presence of these words within anchor text on the page be considered as keywords on the bamboo flooring page, affecting that page and possibly stuffing within that page?
Keyword Research | | Syed10 -
Remove poor performing pages, or leave for google?
Hi - we have a few old pages on our site which were created for SEO purposes a long time ago. They are pretty poor pages and we are rewriting them. However some are no longer relevant. We score "F" on those pages and I imagine google won't like them. Should we delete the page and redirect nicely to the home page, or leave the page there, but remove it from our site? What is best practice for removing old content? Many thanks
Keyword Research | | Rj-Media0 -
How do I use Google Keyword in onsite seo?
Hello to all, I wanted to ask if I am doing this correctly. So I own a Bernese mountain dog website I used the google keyword research tools to view keyword ideas. I listed my results below. So my questions are: 1 - Bernese Mountain Dog Puppies (the keyword) blow away the other keywords. So when you are looking at your sites most popular keywords, do you make the most popular keyword your homepage? Because it gets the most link juice? Like would you build the homepage around the best keyword instead of branding - like the company name etc? Or does it matter? Basically just as long as you use it for one page? 2 - When you have keywords that have parts of other keywords, is it safe to use the longer keyword because it has parts of the other phrases? Such as Bernese mountain dog puppies for sale is a part of Bernese mountain dog puppies for sale in Colorado. So if you use bernese mountain dog puppies for sale in Colorado, it will also hit the bernese mountain dog puppies for sale? ( without the In Colorado) What type of strategy would you use for this type of situation? 3- Lastly, and thank you for your time - I watched a video from a grey hat seo guy. He said to take a keyword or phrase like say Colorado home builders, create a page like example.com/Colorado-home-builders/ Then make you h1 tag - The Best Colorado Home Builders Add The Best Colorado home builders to your meta description and one more time in your h2 tag Then create a Bold, and italic The Best Colorado Home Builders in your unique content paragraphs. So my question is - is this grey hat and bad? Or the standard? I do not want to get hit for over optimizing. So just wanted to ask you opinion first. In the end, I truly thank you for taking the time to read my questions. I appreciate everyone's help and greatly appreciate your knowledge. So my results look like this | bernese mountain dog puppies | 590 | Low | $0.45 | 1% | |
Keyword Research | | Berner
| bernese mountain dog puppies for sale | 90 | High | $0.42 | 9% | |
| bernese mountain dogs | 90 | Low | $0.37 | 0% | |
| bernese mountain dog puppies for sale in colorado | 30 | Medium | $0.76 | 0% | |
| bernese mountain dog breeders in colorado | 20 | Medium | $0.32 | 0% | |
| bernese mountain dogs colorado | 40 | Low | $0.08 | 0% | |
| bernese mountain dog puppy breeders | 10 |0 -
Amazon Item Title VS Item keywords
I am a new seller on amazon. People told me that i shouldn't put the same anchor texts on the item title and the item keywords. I am trying to sell an very competitive item: HDMI cable, which it doesn't have much different than what everyone is selling. Any suggestions of what i should put?
Keyword Research | | ringochan0 -
Is Google mistakenly identified names in the website?
When i search "Song for a stormy night nhaccuatui" (nhaccuatui is nhaccuatui.com) URL: https://www.google.com.vn/search?q=Song+for+a+stormy+night+nhaccuatui&pws=0&hl=en Google result bold Zing - Google may have trouble doing that? This may affect the SEO cause of nhaccuatui or not? P/S: Sorry for my English. xiT4a.png
Keyword Research | | LeQuy0 -
Is there any sites other then Google Insights which have cataloged search volume for particular queries over time?
I know Google Insights gives this data, but the fact that it's relative to overall search requests make it very difficult to see anything other then obvious trends (Toys sell better in November, go figure?). Each query I've looked up[ is showing degradation over time, but I'm postulating that this has more to do with search volume increasing then with the volume of my queries decreasing.
Keyword Research | | bbelgard0 -
Is using "-" in the title of a page to seperate targeted keywords bad for seo purposes?
For example "Dog-Leashes" Is that bad if I'm targeting dog leashes as my keywords.
Keyword Research | | ibex0 -
Does google exact match domain name bonus work if the keywords are reversed?
For example, we all know that there is a ranking boost to having a domain name: http://bluewidgets.com when someone searches for "blue widgets". But would the domain name http://widgetsblue.com also get a bonus in the serp for "blue widgets" ?
Keyword Research | | adriandg0