I normally recommend adding your brand name at the end of the title tag throughout the site (especially if the brand name is short, catchy and unique).
The main reason for that is that it helps for branding (people consistently see the name pop up in SERPs). If the brand name contains a keyword, the tactic also results in some unexpected long tail.
I really saw no downside: in the worst case the name is just cut off in SERPs (if the title turns out to be too long). Keeping the name closer to the end made sure all title tags were unique.
However last week I came across this interview with Neil Patel talking about how he managed to boost rankings of TechCrunch.
One of the first things he did was to remove the word ‘TechCrunch’ from the page title template, so that instead of “Post title – TechCrunch”, it became just “Post title”.
Neil’s explanation that it made all pages unique, besides:
They already ranked high for the word “TechCrunch”. Why would you need to use this word throughout the whole site? [refer to the full interview for this part]
This encouraged me to bring it to discussion here, so:
And please share your opinion in the comments!
People frequently misspell ourcompany name, so page titles represent a good opportunity to rank for the natural variations of our name that people search for. We have a portfolio of about ten variations that people commonly search for, it’s worked in getting visitors that may not have otherwise found our site.
It’s situational.
If you’re struggling to rank for your brand name, you’d better put in your title.
If your not, you might want to keep your keyword power focused on keywords that matter.
Note that having your brand/site name in the title helps users navigate in the history list and between browser windows: it’s a usability win if it doesn’t help SEO.
Only on our homepage. Helps us to stand out from most of the others in the SERPs. Plus, I am testing to see if I notice any “brand love” from Google, since our brand is 9 years old. We’ll see.
Keeping the brand name has usability and accessibility advantages especially for those who bookmark or otherwise save your URL or are searching for your page in History.
Interesting – I’ve always used “Moller Marketing” at the end of each post, primarily so I can be notified by Google Alerts when the post has been indexed.
Thanks for the poll and link to the Neil Patel interview – it’s worth testing.
Let me know what more you find out.
I don’t think it’s a ‘yes or no’ question. Like Neil noticed, I have seen lift from removing excess words from Title Tags. And I have worked with clients who couldn’t care less about branding. On the other hand, for companies in competitive industries where brand recognition is crucial, I think it’s vital to include the brand name at the beginning of each page’s Title Tag. It really depends on the situation and the goals of the site.
The only place I add brand in the title tag is on the home page, at the end.
However, I do include brand name in all meta descriptions, as I want some element of branding and brand building in the SERPs.
Many people demand “it depends” option. Yes, I know it should be there but I decided not to add it because clearly the majority would choose it – yes, it is ALWAYS depends :) So to avoid obvious results I just decided to make it a hard choice. Please choose the one that you do most of the time (and comment)
Like the other commentors mention, this is an obvious “it depends” answer. A good rule of thumb that I stick with is that I typically always put it on an About Us/Contact page because this is a natural fit and can provide a bit of uniqueness here. I also sprinkle it around the site on the end of a title tag string sparingly – depending on the situation.
Like many things in SEO/SEM, I use traffic and keyword search results to gauge effectiveness and whether or not this strategy needs to be tweaked.
I was intrigued by Neil’s anecdote about removing the TechCrunch brand from title tags as well – and considered the problem for about 10 minutes before I realized I disagreed with the approach. A branded title, so long as you keep the brand part short, is a big usability boost.
Yes Ann, You are right. We can use brand name in Title. If we want more value to brand name then we can also use it in Description.
Treat brand name as anchor text and generate some backlinks, This way also we can get good value to brand name. Brand Name always matters.
As I was attending the A4UExpo Amsterdam, the “expert SEO panel” consisting out of 4 respected SEO guru’s, unanimously agreed it’s better for your rankings to leave the brandname out of all pages except the homepage.
Their main motivation was the pages would rank better for the keywords targeted in the rest of the title tag.
Hi,
I am totally agree to use your brand name at the end of title for each page if your website is new and have recently launched. this is because, when you search using your brand name it may happen that other pages like digg, stumbleupon, other articles or profile may come at first rank.
If you use your brand name in title than you will always find your website on first page for your brand name.
If your website having good brand image in search engine and having good reputation, as u said for techcrunch. than you can remove brand name from title.
When your website already ranks well for the brand searches, there is no need to have the brand name in the page title of every page.
I also agree that if the website is new or perhaps you have launched a new section, adding the brand name in the page title would help
i tend to agree with berend and those seo people, at least that’s the way i’ve worked it, brand name on the homepage – leaves space on the other pages for their own keywords/phrases in the title and description tags
If I’m working with a popular brand I actually like to put the brand name FIRST, and not in the end. Branding is very important in the SERPs, and bigger brands statistically get more click-throughs (so why not cash in on that by making it eye-catching).
Plus, algorithmically I have not seen a difference between putting the brand at the front or the back. I don’t really believe in the old school ‘keywords to the front’ recommendation anymore.
That’s just how i do it. I do subscribe to different rules for smaller brands, where I may focus more on the keyword and targeted messaging component.
Typically I only use it on corporate websites, not usually on blogs etc. Interested that they found it made a huge impact for TechCrunch.
For branding purposes I think it’s exceptional to put the brand name in short titles at the end: | Brand. It benefits visibility, positioning on top of social sites like Digg (for SERP purposes), like someone mentioned already.
The important thing is spread it around organically (not in every single page) but coherently in landings that you really want to highlight the brand. For long titles, just tweak around the keywords.
I think it’s good to use the brand in the title if the name is not too long and there is room to include that along with some keyword. For me the keywords I’m optimizing for come first for for obvious optimization reasons but also because people searching ar generally searching by keyword and not brand so keywords in the title link in search results will generally be more powerful in generating click throughs. Now If I have room to also put the brand name then that’s a bonus.
I pretty much echo what’s here.
When a site is new, we front load the brand to both get it out there and to avoid any investors not being able to find it!
Then once the brand is a little more mature, we usually move it to the end of the title tag and concentrate on capturing other demand.
I have to say that including brand terms in title tags for big brands is an absolute must – removing them can dramatically reduce CTR’s.
On smaller brands I think you can get better results not including them throughout the site
I use to place my brand name at the end of my description where the visitors read about site.I have never taught about placing a brand name at the end of my title.
Were as brand terms are concern they are must to be included in the title tags.
Yes, almost always. It is not just about search engines. The brand also appears during the users bookmarking process. User first, search engine second.
I will also add– user in leading them to a conversion for the client. This is not always via search engines. Social media plays a large role and link-bait title tags are important for that strategy.
I use to include my name at the end of my blog post titles, but realized that it was often getting cut off in the SERP.
Also, my last name is rather unique and I rank for it, so I didn’t need the addition relevance.
My titles look much cleaner in the SERP and it makes my analytics cleaner to read and report as well.
I think word density also plays a role in ranking.
i.e lesser words means more weight to each word
so removing even one word should help in giving the rest of the words a little more boost than with the extra word.
eg. with A B C, say a score of 20 is spread across 3 words.
but with A B the same score will be spread across only 2 words!
From a pure marketing perspective, having the brand name in the title makes sense. Since we live in a confined SEO world where title tags only get X value after a certain point due to length, it really does come down to what needs the most keyword love.
Because of this, I’ve recently begun only putting the brand at the front of the title on the home and contact pages of most client sites, and at the end of the title tag on all other pages.
It’s sad how far I take the process lately – I obsess about the character count so that the title appearing in the Google SERPs is clean – I hate having Google cut off a keyword that I consider important enough to seed into the title!
Interesting. Brand is important for me despite where we are for generic SEO, as I want potential customers to see this company as it has some stand-out in certain financial services and telecoms markets.
Overall, to brand or not to brand (that is the question) is down to the market, competitors, overall brand visibility and a few other things beside. at a different company to this one I am sure some or all the above might be somewhat different.
Oh yes, don’t forget the title tag populates people’s bookmarks too!
I would never dream of not including the company name in the title tags. Remember that 9 times out of 10 your company doesn’t mean squat to the end-user, so keeping the name there healps in two ways; it makes it easier to remember what website they are one, and it subsequently it helps engrave it in their memory a little more.
I think sometimes the line between traditional approaches and SEO shouldn’t be crossed.