Should I use pipe in title tags for local seo?

[otex]

Hi, I've created a bunch of landing pages for local areas, reading, windsor, slough etc

for the title tag I have  for Windsor

Emergency Electrician Windsor - BrandName

should I be using a pipe in the tag to further help search engines learn/identify the location?

Emergency Electrician | Windsor - BrandName

Thank you

Kev

[PatrickDelehanty]

Hi there

According to Google, it doesn't really matter - both are separators. I would say whatever keywords / queries you use in the title are substantially more important and where your focus should be. Here's another tidbit from their resource:

"...consider including just your site name at the beginning or end of each page title, separated from the rest of the title with a delimiter such as a hyphen, colon, or pipe..."

I like the look of pipes personally, you'll see Moz uses pipes, and you'll see Google uses dashes. It's really upto you, just make sure your consistent with truthful titles and branding.

That being said, I would watch your duplicate content here and overoptimization for local search. I would focus on local SEO by listing areas you service (like a "Areas we Serve" page or something along those lines) with contact information and finding listings or citations in those general areas (maybe different industry related listings or chamber of commerce, etc). I wouldn't go too crazy with multiple service pages dedicated to multiple service areas because honestly, how much different are services in different areas that are worthy of their own content?

You can also look into service areas by Google My Business. Just be careful with too many local driven pages with same content. Stuff like this can look pretty spammy.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

[Alick300]

Hi Kevin,

Honestly these types of little things don't have much of a factor in SE algorithms.

Yes you can use it pipe, hyphen, comma . It may potentially impact the user experience and the Click-Through-Rate. I personally prefer to use pipe & hyphen.

Thanks

[ClaytonJ]

Kevin

From an SEO perspective Patrick and Alick are correct. It makes nominal if not no difference.

However from a CTR perspective the pipe is 97/100 times superior to the hyphen. Further you only generally have 512 pixels in the title before it truncates. ie if the title extends to over 513 pixels - often google reverses the title and places the brand first.

So every pixel matters and the pipe takes less space. Hence given the high impact of the title on SEO - and every character matters, to me it makes the pipe a winner on a few fronts.

Using your example:-

Emergency Electrician | Windsor - BrandName = 399 pixels

Emergency Electrician | Windsor | BrandName = 397 pixels

My conclusion is always use the pipe unless you are prepared to experiment and try and break a strong general rule. Plus you may be able to squeeze that extra letter in, or introduce proper Capitalization so it has a higher CTR.

Let me know if any queries on the above.