Breadcrumb Trail in Title

[AsheSkyler]

How do you prefer to do breadcrumb trails in the title tag? Do you start with the site name and work your way down through the folders to the page? Start with the page and work back up through to the site name? Just show the page's title and be done with it? (Or just say "ta heck" with it and let the URL show instead? )

 

[chrishirst]

You are much, much, MUCH better off using a realistic sentence that describes the content succinctly.


Document titles serve two purposes, one is to tell visitors (and search engines) what the page is about, NOT where to find it, the other is to get your branding in front of potential customers.
The content of the document title element is your first opportunity to grab the users attention, do NOT waste it with a list of "keywords".

 

[AsheSkyler]

I hadn't considered it could be seen as keyword cramming, but it makes sense. Would you say this even applies to pages marked with "no index, no follow"?

 

[Edge]

Page Titles

How do you prefer to do breadcrumb trails in the title tag? Do you start with the site name and work your way down through the folders to the page? Start with the page and work back up through to the site name? Just show the page's title and be done with it? (Or just say "ta heck" with it and let the URL show instead? )

Front load your page title with the most contextually relevant information first. E.g 'web design | your company name' NOT the other way round. It's better for search engines and its better for people who obviously read from left to right.

 

[chrishirst]

I hadn't considered it could be seen as keyword cramming, but it makes sense. Would you say this even applies to pages marked with "no index, no follow"?

That's a good point, blocking the URL from being included in "natural" results with a meta robots "noindex" directive, should certainly prevent the document from being devalued by a "keyword stuffing/cramming" algorithm, and prevent it having any "knock-on" effects. Especially if you are using "hard sell" titles and copy for a paid campaign "landing page" URL such as Adwords, where agressive or OTT 'on-page' optimisation" and a keyworded URI will improve your quality score and you do not want that document to become part of the site.

Having a "nofollow" directive as well is debatable as that URL might be valuable as an "entry point" into the site for URL discovery, and therefore allow "deeper" URls to be indexed.

 

[benjamin.morgan]

Even if a page is marked noindex, you should put a title for the human viewers. If the humans can't understand a title what good is it to the search engine? The humans are your audience anyway.