We're getting back to some basics today. Let's look at a very specific character and how it's used in your Page's Title tag.
The pipe "|" character was once widely used in the Title Tag, but not so much anymore. Let's look at the reasons..
Here's a typical example of how we would have written a page title a few years ago:
14K Gold Cross Pendant | Pendants | Gold Pendants | Bob's Jewelry
In this example the pipe character is a separator of 4 distinct topics, which we're explaining in detail here:
1. 14k Gold Cross Pendant - This is actually the product detail page for a cross pendant made of 14K gold.
2. Pendants - In this example we're showing the parent product category here. This is actually a typical, old style method.
3. Gold Pendants - This is the sub-category designation in this example.
4. Bob's Jewelry - This would be your jewelry store's name.
As you can see, the title tag in this example is trying to match up with 4 different topics. Do you want to tell people about your store; sell them all the pendants in your store; sell them only the gold pendants in your store; or just sell them the single 14K Gold Cross Pendant?
Every page of your website should be dedicated to a single topic, and that topic should be mentioned in the page title, the page URL, and the H1 tag of that page. When you use the pipe character in your Title Tag you are sending a signal that you have multiple topics covered on the page.
That's not good at all. Clean out those pipes!
Odds are that no one is going to search for "Bob's Jewelers Gold Crosses" because if they know your store name they will simply search for your store first. Additionally, you should have your store name included somewhere else on your page so Google can associate the business name to the page topic, but not in the page title.
For the above example the best way to rewrite the title tag is simply like this:
14K Gold Cross Pendant
or
14K White Gold Cross Pendant
or
14K Yellow Gold Cross Pendant
Some people will search for "white gold" and some will search for "14k gold." If you want to capture both of those search phrases you could use this combined page title:
14K Gold Cross Pendant, 14K White Gold Cross
The comma (,) is a phrase separator that we use to list associated phrases, just like you would use it in daily writing.
The bottom line Golden Nugget for today is to remove those pipe characters from your titles and figure out what's really important to say instead.
