Should I put my "brand" in every one of my posts / pages?

[NoahsDad]

I've heard different thoughts on this and wanted to see what you the seomoz group thought. I have been leaving my "brand" out of my titles so I could create longer titles (without my "brand" taking up precious space.) I've also read that adding your brand can take away from the words you want to optimize for in the title / post.

I've read other places that you want your brand in every page title to "strengthen" your brand.

Long story short, I'm trying to figure out if I should add my brand to the my page / post titiles, or leave them as is.

Feel free to check out my site and current title template if you'd like.

Thanks!

[CollinJarman]

I think adding the brand vs not adding the brand really depends on the site itself.  In the case of a site that is actively selling something, like an e-commerce site or a site designed to drive leads, I think that branding every page is absolutely a great idea, as it builds brand-recognition with customers and can potentially lead to loyalty and repeat purchases.

For your case, your site is more of a resource (or at least that's what it looked like, I took a quick glance at the "About us" page).  You aren't selling to customers, so maintaining brand recognition isn't as important.  What's more important in your case is the content, so anything you can do to make the titles more relevant to the content is going to benefit you the most in the long run.

This is my take on it... I could be absolutely wrong, though this strikes me as more of an "opinion" question than one with a definitive answer.  Hope it helps though!

[NoahsDad]

Thanks for the feedback, that's sort of what I was thinking as well.

[Saijo.George]

I think it comes down to what you want to show up in the SERPs . Will people click through to your site if they see your  Brand Name or would you rather have the freedom of creating a longer title that people might like ?

[KristinnD]

I think brand is always important. I did some research into this last year and came away with this: If your brand is strong lead with the brand and then follow with the primary keyword phrase and if your brand is weak, do it the other way around. Use a pipe or dash to separate them. If you search on oatmeal cookies you will see both examples. Keep an eye out on your searches and you'll see lots of results using this style. I think this is a best practice.