2

If we search for our brand name or any keywords that relate to our website, the first words to appear in the title shown in the Google result preview follow this format:

Brand Name: Title

Here's a screenshot:

enter image description here

I am using Yoast WordPress SEO, and each of the pages are not optimized the same as the above result.

Here's the WordPress code:

<title><?php wp_title('&laquo;', true, 'right'); ?> <?php  bloginfo('name'); ?></title>

If we comment out the PHP code inside the title, the page itself has no title then.

I wanted to have the title first, followed by the brand name in the search results.

dan
  • 15,123
  • 11
  • 44
  • 52
rahstame
  • 228
  • 1
  • 8

1 Answers1

2

You can change the Title Template for your site's <title> tag, as covered here.

In the SEO section of your Admin, navigate to: SEO → Titles & Metas

Make sure you have the title variable followed by the sitename variable, as pictured below. To see what each variable is for, see the bottom of the settings page:

enter image description here

dan
  • 15,123
  • 11
  • 44
  • 52
  • I have this format: %%title%% %%page%% %%sep%% %%sitename%%, should I just copy the your example above? – rahstame Jan 14 '14 at 07:07
  • Taking a look at your source code now... – dan Jan 14 '14 at 07:11
  • 1
    It looks your source code has this for a meta title: Hotel Management System | Custom Software | Reservation and Queue | Jinisys Software Inc. It seems Google can't use that, so placed your company name first, followed by part of your title. So I would try the example in the screenshot, as that would shorten it to just the title and sitename, which Google may be able to then use. That should result in something like: Hotel Management System | Jinisys Software Inc. – dan Jan 14 '14 at 07:14
  • Thanks, The meta title is purposely done by us. I have replaced my prev format with yours. I am not sure what you meant by shorten it up, we need the meta title as it is. Does it mean that the title will be truncated or the company name will be removed and placed at the last? – rahstame Jan 14 '14 at 07:23
  • 1
    No problem. See my comment above, it should look like that after modified (with the other variable information removed). Google tries to use whatever title it finds in your source code (view the source code for that page). If it can't use your title (e.g., because it's too long), then it will create another one for that page. – dan Jan 14 '14 at 07:25
  • Just to confirm my understanding, the | separator and the too long title triggers Google to re-arrange the title but I need the long title for keyword targeting. What should I do? *sobs.. .should I just make it as one sentence form? – rahstame Jan 14 '14 at 07:39
  • 1
    I can't speak as to what will work best for Google, just that it chose to generate one for that page based on what it found - see the second to the last paragraph here. So my suggestion would be to shorten it to just the variables that contain keywords relevant to the content of that page. One last suggestion is to use the HTML Improvements tool found here. – dan Jan 14 '14 at 07:48
  • I learned a lot for today! Thank you @dan. Enjoy the rest of your day and have a good one!!!!! – rahstame Jan 14 '14 at 07:59
  • 1
    :-) You too. Take a look at the last two links in my comments, they should be helpful to you in the future. – dan Jan 14 '14 at 08:00