Punctuation at the Start of Page Titles

[ZaddleMarketing]

one of my clients appears to be using an exclamation mark (e.g. "! Graphic Prints By Mirrorin - Fun Childrens Graphic Prints") and to be completely honest, I have no idea if this is bad practice or if it wont have any affect from an SEO point of view?

Any help would be appreciated because it is site wide, therefore if it is an issue I would like to be able to get it sorted asap!

Thanks

[TecmarkUK]

I don't believe that this would be 'damaging,' per se. But there's still correlation between rankings for a keywords and not only the inclusion of that word in the title, but the position of that word in the title. I would therefore recommend the titles all begin with a letter - preferably the first letter of the most relevant keyword/phrase for that page.

Is there a reason for the exclamation mark? Maybe an attempt at manipulating CTR or something?

[Chris.Menke]

Normally, I would say don't do it because wasting character space in the title area is a pet peeve of mine but maybe it helps you with click through--maybe not.  At number 10, it doesn't seem to be hurting your rankings but maybe it is-- have you tried it without the exclamation point to see if your result moves up?

[RobMay]

1. Remove the punctuation. Although it doesn't really damage search listings or impact how SERP's look at your site for rankings, as Chris said, you only have so many characters to work with in the <title>field and it's best to really optimize the <title> to improve end-user experience :)</p> <p>2. Craft custom <titles> for each and every page, and consider where you place the KW in the field. Importance will be taken into account as well as position and meaning of the KW in relation to the <title>. Try mixing things up to see where you impact ranking positions. I would still remove all punctuation (but perhaps, keep a few pages ranking now, with punctuation to see if you impact the rankings) See #3 below.</p> <p>3. Look at choosing a few test pages in the domain to work with to monitor rankings for this very test, and analytic's data like bounce, exit, click through, etc. </p> <p>4. Doing this will also help you reveal how the customer reacts to the page once they click in, after the find it in the organic SERP listings. Did the punctuation impact your rankings, and if so, was the click through higher, while also decreasing the bounce and/or exit rates from said pages from end-user? A great experiment and test platform :)</p> <p>It's not an exact science, but more a art and science mixed together ;). I wish you all the best with this, as it sounds very interesting. Keep us all posted on your findings!!</p> <p>Cheers.</p></title>

[ZaddleMarketing]

Some fantastic Replies, thank you very much.

I think I will be removing the exclamation marks simply due to the number of titles that have too many characters anyway. The point about the positioning of the keyword was also good, that had completely skipped my mind on this occasion! I'll see what difference removing them makes to the CTR and weigh up the options.

Thanks