Capitalisation in meta titles. Do you do it?

[Shopclicks]

I've always subscribed to the idea that advertising is about standing out in the crowd and being seen. If you've got something to say, then why not shout it in the SERPS.

Full capitalisation or partial or none? What are your thoughts?

 

[Ideaswise]

Capital letter at the beginning of all words in the title tag, not throughout. Lower case in the page description tag except in the usual places like the first word in a sentence.

 

[Collin88]

Its become a norm, capitalizing the first letter of every word, it started with newspapers doing this for their headlines, moved to the web and people also use that in search results.

Shopclicks, your idea is a good one to stand out of the crowd. I however wouldn't apply it sitewide, would test it on some URL's and check how good my CTR is before moving ahead.

 

[fisicx]

Yuk. I wouldn't even click.

Because YOU Can Make £££ Online In Just 5 Minutes Each Day

Looks horrible and smacks of desperation

 

[Shopclicks]

I think there is a place for capitalisation where you have a selling point to highlight.

For example in a title: Massive range of snowboards in stock - FREE DELIVERY

I use both full capitalisation in some titles and partial in others.

Some of my titles look like this: BUY SNOWBOARDS ONLINE - FREE DELIVERY

fisicx I agree that the example you use looks horrible and smacks of desperation. However it's the wording of the title that makes me skip over it.

 

[fisicx]

Some of my titles look like this: BUY SNOWBOARDS ONLINE - FREE DELIVERY

Yes it does stand out - but for all the wrong reasons. Capitalisation is the internet equivalent of shouting. People don't like being shouted at.

Do your stats show a significant difference between the two version of the title (Sentence case v Uppercase)?

 

[OldWelshGuy]

Title format (capitalising the first letter other than the bridge words (if , at , of , to , the etc) was the norm in newspapers it kinda moved across.

 

[Shopclicks]

My view is slightly different. Capitalisation is the forum equivalent of shouting.

I'm advertising the websites I administer and I think in advertising if you have something to sell you should shout it as loudly as possible. I use capitalisation where I have a message to get across and where the landing page fulfills that promise.

It's difficult to gauge the effect capitalisation has had as there are numerous reasons for increased traffic. However, I have no reason to believe the effect is detrimental.

I'm simply interested to know why it isn't more widely used. Is it purely etiquette?

 

[UKSBD]

I'm simply interested to know why it isn't more widely used. Is it purely etiquette?

It dates back to screen readers, Usenet etc.
A small minority are very anal about it, would complain about sigs, quoting, top posting, shouting, etc.

I would hazard a guess they would be the worst possible type of customer too.

If you said you had a Massive range of snowboards in stock, they would probably count how many, try and order the one which is out of stock and then complain because they don't consider 96 to be a massive range and think it is terrible that the one they want is out of stock.

 

[OldWelshGuy]

Just a quick FACT on usability, there is no difference in usability read speed etc on title text (see above) to normal text, HOWEVER, all caps slow down the reader as it is harder to read. For that reason ALL CAPS SHOULD BE AVOIDED WHEREVER POSSIBLE AS IT IS AN UNCOMFORTABLE EXPERIENCE AS WE ARE NOT USED TO READING TEXT LIKE THAT SO THE BRAIN SUBCONSCIOUSLY COMPLAINS AND YOU will LOSE SALES.

Sorry I couldn't resist

 

[Shopclicks]

I get that in the context of a sentence. However, in the context of a headline in advertising, I don't want to conform or blend in. I want to SHOUT! I want to draw the buyers attention to the website that is going to engage them and offer them what they are looking for.

 

[sirearl]

Just a quick FACT on usability, there is no difference in usability read speed etc on title text (see above) to normal text, HOWEVER, all caps slow down the reader as it is harder to read. For that reason ALL CAPS SHOULD BE AVOIDED WHEREVER POSSIBLE AS IT IS AN UNCOMFORTABLE EXPERIENCE AS WE ARE NOT USED TO READING TEXT LIKE THAT SO THE BRAIN SUBCONSCIOUSLY COMPLAINS AND YOU will LOSE SALES.

Sorry I couldn't resist

I agree loud and brash stands out like a sore thumb,whoever heard of a loud brash advertising board.

 

[Shopclicks]

I'd also be interested to know if there is a perception among SEO professionals, that Google and other search engines downgrade organic ranking when capitalisation is used.

 

[UKSBD]

http://arnoldzwicky.org/2012/08/03/how-to-get-comments/

 

[fisicx]

I'd also be interested to know if there is a perception among SEO professionals, that Google and other search engines downgrade organic ranking when capitalisation is used.

Test it. It's the only way to find out.

 

[sirearl]

I'd also be interested to know if there is a perception among SEO professionals, that Google and other search engines downgrade organic ranking when capitalisation is used.

Google treats upper and lower case the same.

 

[Shopclicks]

Test it. It's the only way to find out.

I have been using capitalisation for years. There is no issue with ranking.

It's the reasons SEO's and administrators don't do it, I'd like to hear about.

 

[fisicx]

They don't use it because conversions are better if you write like a normal person.

 

[OldWelshGuy]

Personal preference. For the record, I use title text, and also will use capitals for things like :-

Blue Widgets 100% UNIQUE and all with FREE DELIVERY

I don't think there is a one size fits all, this is marketing we are talking about. and it makes no difference to rankings, but may make a difference to clicks etc, which in turn may impact on rankings

 

[sirearl]

They don't use it because conversions are better if you write like a normal person.

You have evidence.

I would have though conversion would depend on what one is offering and the way it is presented.

 

[Shopclicks]

They don't use it because conversions are better if you write like a normal person.

'Normal' is over-rated

Conversions are better if you get seen and you are offering what the buyer is looking for.

 

[fisicx]

Sorry, should have said clickthroughs.

All caps fares less well then other combinations. - I've tested this.

 

[Shopclicks]

Ok. A little background.

For the major site that I administer, I run 22 seperate Adwords campaigns using 2700 keywords/phrases. There is obviously a need to run these campaigns as although this website ranks #1 or #2 in organic for the top ten keywords/phrases used, people still click on our paid Ads.

The idea of using capitalisation was to draw those people towards a 'free' click rather than paying more than we needed to.

Currently for that website our visits run 64% organic/direct vs 36% paid.

12 months after the site was launched (five years ago) we were over 50% paid visits.

 

[ZeroDouble]

The idea of using capitalisation was to draw those people towards a 'free' click rather than paying more than we needed to.

If that's your intention, I would have thought that adding a hook would work better than all CAPs?

Maybe craft your title so that it cuts of at the 'FREE' (i.e. 'This is Your Title Tag - Visit NOW for FREE................DELIVERY on all Items!') so that people have to click through to find out what is actually 'free'?

If I see ' free delivery' mentioned in a title, I think 'Great!' and might click through (or might not), if I just see something like 'free..' then I'll probably click through out of curiosity, then think 'great!' and possibly buy something while I'm there as well.

At least that's the theory anyway, but it's certainly something I'd test (and something that works really well for me on my sites).

WRT your descriptions, make sure you add your main keyword(s) and modifiers so that google doesn't show something else random instead, then craft the rest as a sales pitch using your (or other people's) PPC data.

 

[OldWelshGuy]

But Adwords will slap your ads for improper use of Caps won't they.

 

[ZeroDouble]

I meant to use the PPC data as a guide to things to write in your description that are working to produce a good CTR. I probably should have mentioned that you would then want to capitalise words / letters where you deem it necessary. Thanks for pointing it out though - I went off on a bit of a click through tangent.

 

[davidjohnfarmer]

My gut feeling is that Google prefers Proper Case titles, as on some websites in the past, it has automatically changed them for some URLs.

 

[davidjohnfarmer]

In fact, it's also reworked URL's and added the company name at the end too.

 

[davidjohnfarmer]

*title tags* even (not the URL's).

 

[Shopclicks]

In fact, it's also reworked URL's and added the company name at the end too.

Hi. I've only found in the past that Google will change the title tag if the title contains too many characters or in some cases where they find a headline which is more relevant to the search term amongst the page content. I've never seen a capitalised title reverted to proper case (google.com.au may do things a little differently)

The shorter of my uppercase titles have the website name tacked on the end if there is room.

As far as ranking goes, it is my experience that it has no effect at all, other than to make the entry stand out from the crowd.

 

[davidjohnfarmer]

Yeah, I have no evidence to suggest uppercase gets ranked higher/lower, just gut feeling.

The website in question was driven by Car Part reference numbers - and Google seemed to switch intermittently between what was specified by ourselves and the descriptive part name. Then strangely, when using the uppercase part numbers, it was forcing some of them to be propercase.

 

[OldWelshGuy]

Google treat upper case and lower case as different words, to what degree I am not sure, but I have seen google returning data that included terms using capital (titled) first 'Letter', and normal script 'all letters equal'

As I say I have seen no evidence of differential treatment, and haven't run any tests.

 

[StevePoster]

Capitalization in the title tag as a form of shouting in the field will not determine the effectiveness but the proper use of it as well as the headline has interesting and not been offered from other brands.

 

[Shopclicks]

Capitalization in the title tag as a form of shouting in the field will not determine the effectiveness but the proper use of it as well as the headline has interesting and not been offered from other brands.

It surprises me that it's rarely used.

I would use it in my Adwords campaigns if Google would let me

 

[Dennis Groen]

Depends on the context. Because it's used so much - overused I'd say - you automatically assume it's advertising when every word is capitalised.

On social media titles that are written without the use of caps (other than the first letter) tend to attract attention because they don't look like advertising.

For meta titles it makes no difference for ranking and it's a matter of taste - capitalisation matters less to SERP than the content of the title and description.

 

[sirearl]

Depends on the context. Because it's used so much - overused I'd say - you automatically assume it's advertising when every word is capitalised.

On social media titles that are written without the use of caps (other than the first letter) tend to attract attention because they don't look like advertising.

For meta titles it makes no difference for ranking and it's a matter of taste - capitalisation matters less to SERP than the content of the title and description.

I would suggest that almost everything that appears on search engines is advertising.

 

[Shopclicks]

Depends on the context. Because it's used so much - overused I'd say - you automatically assume it's advertising when every word is capitalised.

The people who see my organic search results are buyers scanning Google for the best website to buy what they want .... yes, I'm putting my hand up and saying LOOK HERE! Is that advertising? Yep! Are buyers looking for advertisers? Yep!