Company Name in Home Page Title? If and Where?

[Wizkids964]

My guess is you want to do the  {title} | {company name} format as I would suspect Google gives slightly more weight to the words at the beginning of the title?   (This is assuming your company name isn't a generic word or you are specifically trying to rank your home page for your company name when it isn't ranking well already)

But what about cases where you have like 5 or 6 keywords that are really important and used in the title gives you like 50 characters and your company name pushed it up to like 65 increasing the chance Google will use some other source to list the name of your home page in the search results?

Obviously one can experiment, but wondering what the general consensus is - long keyword title, or longer title with company name?  The company name can be included in the meta description and the domain name of the url displayed also gives the indication to the company.  But maybe the algo "respects" long itles that have company name more than ones without as then it looks more like a keyword stuffing title?  So many factors to consider.  Yes - on page SEO isn't just about the title, but for this thread I'm just talking home page title.

[EGOL]

I think that there are many correct answers to your question... my strong bias will be shown in my response.

1. If you want a keyword optimization answer, then the keyword or keyphrase that you want to rank for should be in the title tag on the left.

2. How the company name appears is governed by marketing, ego, arrogance, and sometimes by common SEO sense. Some businesses or their owners/directors feel a need to SHOUT their company name in everyone's face.  These businesses place their company name on the left of the title tag at the expense of their page optimization.  Those who have it really bad got to have that company name in ALL CAPS.

3. Other business owners feel that the topic that they are publishing takes priority over the name of their company, so they place the title of the article on the left of the title tag and their business name on the right.  They use UpLow or in ALL CAPS depending upon how hard they usually pound their chests.

4. Some people have "a message to get out" and that message is bigger than their egos or the amount of noise that they try to make when they pound their chests.  So they use the title tag to the fullest extent possible to convey their message.  They know that every person with common sense will see their URL in the SERPs and the name of their business at the top of their website.

There you have four options.  Choose one that works for you.

[Wizkids964]

It appears Google chops the title display on the SERPs at between 55 and 70 characters depending on the word lengths near the end (it doesn't break in the middle of a word)

In our case, if we include the short version of the company name at the end, we get cut at 55 char and the company name doesn't even appear visible in the SERPS.  We're a new company and no one is going to be searching for us by name so to be easily identifiable by name in the SERP titles at this point is of low importance.  So I guess we put the company name at the end and realize it probably won't shot, or, since it won't show, leave it out so there are less words in the title?So I'm trying to decide between (3) and (4)

[EGOL]

We use #4 in almost every instance.

We believe that it is more valuable to optimize the title tag for ranking and for eliciting clicks.  Everyone can see our domain in the URL.  Our website has been online and pulling lots of traffic for over 20 years.  Still most visitors are first time visitors.  Anyone who knows us, knows us.  Domain in the title is a waste of valuable optimization or impact space.

[NickW816]

So EGOL just gave the best possible response to this I can think of, and I think option #4 is what your default should be, however, you also want to maximize your meta title (which is using about 60-70 characters before trailing it off). So if your post has a short title, it doesn't usually hurt to throw your company name in there to take up more of the title tag real estate.

If you are trying to optimize a service page for a local company, it can make sense to exclude the business name as it will give you more room to include your target keyword or further describe your service (I like to try to include an LSI of the main page KW if possible). Check out https://moz.com/blog/title-tag-hacks-whiteboard-friday for some solid title tag optimization hacks!