WP SEO plugin

[stevefidelity]

When working with WP sites I generally use Michael Torbert's All in One SEO Pack. I've encountered a few examples where when the homepage shows up on a Google search results page the title/title tag shows up as {Business Name:} | {Keyword/Description}. In the 'General Settings' of the plugin in the 'Home Title' field, I have it listed as {Keyword/Description} | {Business Name}

I'm not sure why the order is getting switched and where the ':' comes from. I'm not sure if this even has any adverse effect. If anyone has had experience with this, your input would be appreciated.

Note - I'm not seeing this issue reflected on Bing.

[OlegKorneitchouk]

Look at the source of the page and make sure the <title>content is as you want it to read. If it is, than Google is choosing to change the way it displays your title in SERPs. Unfortunately, there isn't much you can do. Just make sure your title length is short enough to be displayed fully in search results.</p></title>

[spencerhjustice]

This is definitely Google choosing to put the business name at the beginning of the title. This is extremely common and in my experience it will only do this for homepages. This doesn't always happen though and I'm not sure exactly what makes Google decide to rearrange it.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Hi Steve,

First, I would suggest looking at Yoast's SEO plugin. This offers much more in terms of customisation and function.

Do you mind listing the URL so I can take a look at the homepage? It might be Google (probably is) but just need to be sure.

-Andy

[MibuKotaro]

I have also been experiencing this with a few of my clients. As Spencer said it is Google choosing to re-arrange the tag with business name first.

[DennisSeymour]

I'm actually about to write about this lol. This happened to my site as well. Google can switch that for you. If you look at the source, it is usually what you want to be, but Google shows otherwise.

It does happen and it's pretty common. Change it to something else, something better and try to let it get indexed again. It normally shows up correctly the next time around.

[David-Kley]

I have seen this as well, and have experience with both SEO plugins mentioned in this thread. Yoast is very good, as is All in one seo pack. Not many people are aware of the different rules of robots for a page.

The page title switching is controlled by Google, as mentioned above. The effects can be mitigated by adding a special meta tag on that page, which is ODP = no. ODP (stand for open directory project) will allow Google to switch around the titles to better suit the users search query. Another tag you should add is archive = no. Below is a complete example:

name="robots" content="index,follow,noarchive,snippet,noodp" />

This states to the search engine, index this page, follow all links, do not show archived pages, (old, cached) allow snippets and markup, and do not customize displayed titles from open directory project. Want proof?

http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/google-supports-meta-noodp-tag/

"In some circumstances, Google uses descriptions from the Open Directory Project as the title and snippet for a web result; this tag lets you opt out of the ODP title and description."

I have used this on my site, and on clients sites with great success. If you add this tag, it will take a while to reindex, but give it a try and see if they display the real page title after you submit and wait a bit. This should help you out quite a bit.