Comments on: Do You Use Your Brand Name in the Site Title Tags?

By: Matt Saunders

Matt Saunders — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 16:33:47 +0000

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.

By: Raymond Dunthorne

Raymond Dunthorne — Mon, 18 May 2009 09:57:08 +0000

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!

By: Alan Bleiweiss

Alan Bleiweiss — Mon, 18 May 2009 07:57:06 +0000

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!

By: a

Sat, 16 May 2009 13:21:04 +0000

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!

By: Jason Bartholme

Jason Bartholme — Fri, 15 May 2009 15:53:46 +0000

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.

By: Sherry Holdridge

Sherry Holdridge — Fri, 15 May 2009 14:24:03 +0000

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.

By: Sell my car

Sell my car — Fri, 15 May 2009 12:14:26 +0000

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.

By: Matt Ridout

Matt Ridout — Fri, 15 May 2009 09:49:16 +0000

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

By: Cole Whitelaw

Cole Whitelaw — Fri, 15 May 2009 09:00:33 +0000

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.

By: Gerald Weber

Gerald Weber — Fri, 15 May 2009 03:51:21 +0000

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.