Website Titles in Google

[MainstreamMktg]

I currently have a Wordpress platform website and previously I noticed that when I optimized my pages, if I indicated what I wanted my page names to be (through an application like SEO Yoast) that most times, the keyword would show up exactly how I had it typed in. Recently I have noticed that the title of my website is showing in my page titles too. So for example:

Before: Shoe Stores Windsor - XYZ Company

Now: XYZ Company | Shoe Stores Windsor - XYZ Company

In SEO practices, I know it's most often best to have the keyword you would like as close to the front of your title tag, but now this recent search adds my website title first. Plus this also seems to be making my titles longer.

I know Google ultimately has the 'final say' in a page title and I have ensured that I have the "rewrite titles/descriptions option" check in Wordpress to allow me to overwrite titles, but I am hoping someone can possibly provide me with a tip or trick to avoid this in search rankings. I think it's important to have the name of my site entered through Wordpress so that any pages that I have no optimized default to the page name and site name, but the ones I have optimized seem to be showing differently all of a sudden.

Any help is greatly appreciated! Thanks!

[webtheoria.com]

In general for home page title we prefer to have to company name 1st and the keywords to follow. This applies only for the home page. In your case I an guessing that the first words e.g. XYZ Company, have a difference in how is written at the end. It may have taken this from the Heading 1 or alternative sources to ensure better quality.

To overcome the issue, change the title to;

XYZ Company - shoe store...

[LSIversen]

Is this happening to all of your titles or just some of them?

To me it sounds like you've somehow setup WordPress (or a plugin) to add a prefix to all your titles. Which then forces in "XYZ Company |" before every title you've made. If that's the case you should be able to find it somewhere and change it back.