Page Title - What is better?

[aidanlawlor]

Hi SEO Heads,

I have another question if someone would be so kind in answering

What page title of the 2 below is better for SEO

(i)

Chocolate Cake|Chocolate Cake Recipe|Xmas Cake

or

(ii)

Chocolate Cake | Chocolate Cake Recipe | Xmas Cake

As you can see (ii) Page Title has a space before and after the | (vertical bar)

I know the second page title looks better to human eyes but on some pages I had to forego the space so i could fit my keywords in the page title.

is this a good idea? Can anyone help me?

Cheers

Aidan

[igor.pinchevskiy]

Hello Aidan,

I believe you should create a title that looks better to human eyes as well as contain 1 or 2 keywords. You do need a space between words or a seperator otherwise it looks confusing to humans and might not rank properly with search engines. In your example I would use something like this:

Chocolate Cake Recipe or Best Chocolate Cake Recipe or

Chocolate Cake Recipes, etc...

keep in mind that singular and plurals are not the same for Search Engines its 2 entirely different keywords

Create another page for the Xmas Cake or Xmas Chocolate Cake or Xmas Chocolate Cake Recipe

Basically what you need to do is Keyword Research to see which keyword phrase has the most searches with lowest competition and that is the keyword you want to start targeting. Without keyword research you're just assuming that users search for that information. For example Chocolate Cake Recipe gets 1000 searches a month versus Easy or 10 Minute Chocolate Cake Recipe gets 10,000 searches a month you might be missing out on a lot of potential traffic if you haven't done your keyword research. I strongly recommend using SEOMoz keyword difficulty tool as well as Market Samurai (they have training videos on how to perform keyword research that are excellent). And try to stick with 1 to 2 keyword/phrases per title.

Hope this helps!

[aidanlawlor]

Thanks Igor,

I was just using Chocolate cake as an example. My site is actually about silk.

I am using 2 keywords per title + my company name

So my question was solely about the | and the spacing but thanks for the answer

Thanks

Aidan

[igor.pinchevskiy]

Hello Aidan,

Understood. 1 -2 keywords + company name is the most optimal.

[ChristopherM]

Hi Aidan,

I've always been a big fan of on-site SEO, so when it comes to this sort of thing, I've spent a lot of time doing trial and error with all sorts of combinations. Here are my thoughts based on my feedback:

1. "keyword | keyword" is better than "keyword|keyword".
2. Writing a meta title that reads as a sentence is better than "keyword | keyword"

So for example, I might actually go for:

"Great Chocolate Cake recipes for Christmas"

Instead of actually trying to stuff all the keywords in. If you're desperate for 3 keywords on a page, then make use of other on-site factors to achieve this, stuffing them into the title won't get you the desired result - at least, that's what my experience shows.

Hope that helps

[David_ODonnell]

In this case the spacing is definitely a better option for readability.