To Pipe Or Not To Pipe – That’s | In Meta Tags

Confused about using | in your meta tags?
Confused about using | in your meta tags?

What I am talking about here is whether you should use pipes or | to separate your keywords in your Meta title tag. Some SEO gurus swear by it and others blow it off. I have used pipes and not used pipes on websites and do not have a strong preference one way or the other but for my own website I do not pipe the Meta title tag.

That being said for mature sites where we have a narrow list of keywords I have used pipes and gotten excellent improvement in organic placement. The best tip I can offer is: if your site is new don’t pipe. If your site is mature and you have had good placement previously but have dropped lately, try pipes to get a boost that may help you organically.

The big key on whether to use pipes or not is the nature of your keywords. If you need a wildcard match or have a number of phrases and word combinations that you want to place on then I would stay away from pipes. You only have 80 characters or so in the title tag and so need to use every character well. If your phrases are only one to three words and you have only one or two try piping the title tag to see what happens.

One Reply to “To Pipe Or Not To Pipe – That’s | In Meta Tags”

  1. Thank you! I have been looking for this clarification every where on net.
    I hope what you say helps. Going with pipes for now!!!

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