Company Name in Home Page Title? If and Where?
-
My guess is you want to do the {title} | {company name} format as I would suspect Google gives slightly more weight to the words at the beginning of the title? (This is assuming your company name isn't a generic word or you are specifically trying to rank your home page for your company name when it isn't ranking well already)
But what about cases where you have like 5 or 6 keywords that are really important and used in the title gives you like 50 characters and your company name pushed it up to like 65 increasing the chance Google will use some other source to list the name of your home page in the search results?
Obviously one can experiment, but wondering what the general consensus is - long keyword title, or longer title with company name? The company name can be included in the meta description and the domain name of the url displayed also gives the indication to the company. But maybe the algo "respects" long itles that have company name more than ones without as then it looks more like a keyword stuffing title? So many factors to consider. Yes - on page SEO isn't just about the title, but for this thread I'm just talking home page title.
-
So EGOL just gave the best possible response to this I can think of, and I think option #4 is what your default should be, however, you also want to maximize your meta title (which is using about 60-70 characters before trailing it off). So if your post has a short title, it doesn't usually hurt to throw your company name in there to take up more of the title tag real estate.
If you are trying to optimize a service page for a local company, it can make sense to exclude the business name as it will give you more room to include your target keyword or further describe your service (I like to try to include an LSI of the main page KW if possible). Check out https://mza.seotoolninja.com/blog/title-tag-hacks-whiteboard-friday for some solid title tag optimization hacks!
-
We use #4 in almost every instance.
We believe that it is more valuable to optimize the title tag for ranking and for eliciting clicks. Everyone can see our domain in the URL. Our website has been online and pulling lots of traffic for over 20 years. Still most visitors are first time visitors. Anyone who knows us, knows us. Domain in the title is a waste of valuable optimization or impact space.
-
It appears Google chops the title display on the SERPs at between 55 and 70 characters depending on the word lengths near the end (it doesn't break in the middle of a word)
In our case, if we include the short version of the company name at the end, we get cut at 55 char and the company name doesn't even appear visible in the SERPS. We're a new company and no one is going to be searching for us by name so to be easily identifiable by name in the SERP titles at this point is of low importance. So I guess we put the company name at the end and realize it probably won't shot, or, since it won't show, leave it out so there are less words in the title?So I'm trying to decide between (3) and (4)
-
I think that there are many correct answers to your question... my strong bias will be shown in my response.
-
If you want a keyword optimization answer, then the keyword or keyphrase that you want to rank for should be in the title tag on the left.
-
How the company name appears is governed by marketing, ego, arrogance, and sometimes by common SEO sense. Some businesses or their owners/directors feel a need to SHOUT their company name in everyone's face. These businesses place their company name on the left of the title tag at the expense of their page optimization. Those who have it really bad got to have that company name in ALL CAPS.
-
Other business owners feel that the topic that they are publishing takes priority over the name of their company, so they place the title of the article on the left of the title tag and their business name on the right. They use UpLow or in ALL CAPS depending upon how hard they usually pound their chests.
-
Some people have "a message to get out" and that message is bigger than their egos or the amount of noise that they try to make when they pound their chests. So they use the title tag to the fullest extent possible to convey their message. They know that every person with common sense will see their URL in the SERPs and the name of their business at the top of their website.
There you have four options. Choose one that works for you.
-
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
-
Video titles and descriptions
Hi everyone, I have a question about embedding videos on a website: if you optimize the title and description for the video in Youtube, will these be taken into account for the ranking of the page where the video is embedded? Or will only the Youtube link for the video show in SERP's, instead of the page itself? I've read in a post of Phil Nottingham that it's usually not a good idea to embed a Youtube video on your own site, but use Wistia instead, exactly to avoid cannibalisation of your own rankings. Is this correct? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Mat_C0 -
SITEMAP - Does <changefreq>and <image:title>have any apreciable effect?</image:title></changefreq>
Hi everyone. It was hard to find some actual evidence that some of the atributes to be declared in a sitemap have some real impact.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Gaston Riera
Particularly, im interested in these two: <changefreq></changefreq> and**image:title</image:title>** I've used them in a few cases just to check their effect and couldnt see any.
Do you have any experience with these? Or any other atribute that might be helpful, in order to create a more accurate and effective sitemap? Also, this could be a great topic to create a new Moz Blog post, the one about sitemap is 8years old.0 -
Parking page for domain names
Hi all, I represent a hosting company which has thousands of domain names that is parked for the clients until they start using them. Currently we are presenting the client and visitors information about the situation in the top of the pages and we have placed information about all the main products in the last part of the page. You can see an example here:
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | proisp-no
http://prodesign.no/ Would you recommend utilizing these pages in a better way than how we are doing today (SEO wise towards our own website)? We have the ability to instantly change all of these pages at once and we are also able to present different pages for every single parked domain name if we want to. Best regards,
Jon0 -
Landing pages, are my pages competing?
If I have identified a keyword which generates income and when searched in google my homepage comes up ranked second, should I still create a landing page based on that keyword or will it compete with my homepage and cause it to rank lower?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | The_Great_Projects0 -
How to rank product pages?
Hi guys, Please advice me on something improving my product pages ranking. We are doing well for head terms, categories but not ranking for product pages. We have issues with product pages which I am think is hard to tackle. For instance we have duplicate products (different colors), duplicate content internally (colors) and from manufacturer websites. Product pages linked from sub-category i.e. Home > Category > Sub-Category (20 per page) using pagination for next 20 and so on. Product pages linked internally via widgets that says other Similar products, featured products etc. Another issue with our product pages is that we are using third party reviews platform and whenever users add reviews to product pages this platform creates an hyperlink to different anchors which is not relevant to product. Example - http://goo.gl/NUG652 Can somebody please give some advice on how to improve rankings for product pages. writing unique content for thousands of pages is not possible. Even our competitor not writing unique content.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Webmaster_SEO0 -
Urgent Site Migration Help: 301 redirect from legacy to new if legacy pages are NOT indexed but have links and domain/page authority of 50+?
Sorry for the long title, but that's the whole question. Notes: New site is on same domain but URLs will change because URL structure was horrible Old site has awful SEO. Like real bad. Canonical tags point to dev. subdomain (which is still accessible and has robots.txt, so the end result is old site IS NOT INDEXED by Google) Old site has links and domain/page authority north of 50. I suspect some shady links but there have to be good links as well My guess is that since that are likely incoming links that are legitimate, I should still attempt to use 301s to the versions of the pages on the new site (note: the content on the new site will be different, but in general it'll be about the same thing as the old page, just much improved and more relevant). So yeah, I guess that's it. Even thought the old site's pages are not indexed, if the new site is set up properly, the 301s won't pass along the 'non-indexed' status, correct? Thanks in advance for any quick answers!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JDMcNamara0 -
Why does my home page show up in search results instead of my target page for a specific keyword?
I am using Wordpress and am targeting a specific keyword..and am using Yoast SEO if that question comes up.. and I am at 100% as far as what they recommend for on page optimization. The target html page is a "POST" and not a "Page" using Wordpress definitions. Also, I am using this Pinterest style theme here http://pinclone.net/demo/ - which makes the post a sort of "pop-up" - but I started with a different theme and the results below were always the case..so I don't know if that is a factor or not. (I promise .. this is not a clever spammy attempt to promote their theme - in fact parts of it don't even work for me yet so I would not recommend it just yet...) I DO show up on the first page for my keyword.. however.. instead of Google showing the page www.mywebsite.com/this-is-my-targeted-keyword-page.htm Google shows www.mywebsite.com in the results instead. The problem being - if the traffic goes only to my home page.. they will be less likely to stay if they dont find what they want immediately and have to search for it.. Any suggestions would be appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chunkyvittles0 -
New Site: Use Aged Domain Name or Buy New Domain Name?
Hi,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | peterwhitewebdesign
I have the opportunity to build a new website and use a domain name that is older than 5 years or buy a new domain name. The aged domain name is a .net and includes a keyword.
The new domain would include the same keyword as well as the U.S. state abbreviation. Which one would you use and why? Thanks for your help!0