How to separate your - keywords - and | Brand name in the Title Tag

[Switch_Digital]

I have traditionally used hyphens (-) and vertical bars (|) to separate out keywords/brands in title tags. A client has asked if other characters will work such as tilde (~), apersat (@), forward slash (/) etc. Are there any special characters we should steer clear of?

[Christy-Correll]

Hi Switch, thanks for your question! Chris is correct in that it is best practice to keep your title brief and readable, with your keyword on the front end and your brand name on the back end. I personally feel that separating the page/article title from the brand name makes the tag easier to read. As Google now truncates title tags based on the total width of the characters (vs. the number of characters), I prefer using the pipe separator for this purpose. Hope that helps!

[Chris.Menke]

Switch,

Your title is best if it's short and readable, brand name towards the back, primary keyword to the front.  With 70 characters to play with you really don't have much room to be talking about other keywords.  If you feel you have to use some sort of separator, the title's probably not as readable as it should be or it's running long.  If you're thinking separator,  think separate page for the keyword, instead.

[JMacSupply]

I would stick to the hyphens, and vertical bars. Google recognizes those two as separators.

While tildes, apersats, and slashes could hypothetically work as well - there will certainly not be any gained SEO advantage.