Special Characters in SEO

[sfalcont]

I am trying to derive the best method of using (or not using) special characters in code such as {TITLE} or {META} tags, as well as the relevancy in link text.

Examples:

<title>Orthodontists Example Name [b]& amp;[/b] Firstname Surname serving City Name [b]& amp;[/b] City, LA (Louisiana)</title>

<a href="http://www.example.com/">Website by Example [b]& #8482;[/b] </a>

Question #1 is: Which is more beneficial? "&" "& amp;" or "and"

Question #2 is: Does this affect anything in a positive or negitive way? Character limits for the title tag as an example? Just purely asthetics?

<snip>

[edited by: engine at 4:04 pm (utc) on June 23, 2006]
[edit reason] See TOS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[Quadrille]

Best avoided.

Used in the header, they will not assist in SEO (nobody searches for 'Penn &amp; Teller')

Also most SE's will not render them correctly, so they look silly. 'Penn &amp; Teller' might stand out among a serps page full of "Penn and Teller"s, but not for what one might call 'good marketing reasons'

Finally, it's very 2003; it was briefly a fad until Google got bored and stopped showing them correctly - now, 90%+ of the time, they don't work.

Used on the page they will show correctly in all modern browsers (if the page is built correctly), but the Hx tags are important, and should reflect possible searches, not impossibly unlikely ones.

[Mistra]

Common words like 'and, the, of, the, on, and,...etc' are not important in SEO as search engines ignore them.