Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
How would you compare all three?
Also any opinions on:
"My_Page_Title" vs "My-Page-Title" vs "My Page Title"?
However, trying to brand a new site using TITLE elements is like paying for a commercial that runs on a channel with no viewers.
Exactly, you can’t even have the branding discussion until you rank strongly enough to get visitors to see it. You get just about 65 characters, including spaces and punctuation, displayed in a title. You get more ranking punch from key words in your title especially when it comes to long tail terms than say the meta description. If you want to tell people who you are or whatever your story is, use the meta description. Properly done now you have your brand displayed in the url (I assume their the same) and the meta description.
This is a good thread no matter what side you come down on because most people don’t spend enough effort on their titles. You can in fact approach it from an optimization standpoint and make them look natural if you put the effort into it.
The higher you rank, the more the branding road makes sense, although I would place the pecking order;
Ranking purposes; you gotta get the traffic first
Click through rate; give them a reason to click, titles afford the best avenue to shout at surfers
Branding; if your trust and familiarity is such it will increase the click through rate
