Page title structure: SEO and accessibility

Question

I am choosing a page title structure for my website and am unsure what to choose in terms of accessibility and SEO. Is there a benefit to putting site title after the page title because of the unique part being earlier? Are there any other benefits one way or another?

Example 1: Page title | Delan Azabani

Example 2: Delan Azabani » Page title

Answer 1

Put the page title in front of site name. Chances are the only time they'll see that page title is when it's linked from a search engine result set. As soon as they find what they're looking for they'll click it. By adding your name you're only postponing (since we read from left to right) them from finding what they want.

And to be honest, they really don't care what your name is -- it's just something they'll skip over. If you ask them 30 seconds later, they probably won't be able to recall your name -- even if you put it at the front of the page title.

Answer 2

Common sense is that: if your company(site) is big or famous, you should put site title after page title. You can see this kind phenomenon on sites like IBM, ORACLE and so forth.

Some small companies (web sites)but famous in their market niches also do this.

In addition to that, if some small companies want to push hard on their brands, they also put their site names before page titles.

That being said, I do not believe there is much difference in terms of SEO or accessibility, if any. The thing you need to care about, regarding to SEO, is keepping page tile unique and putting some keywords to it. Also, keep it constant by putting either site titles behind or page titles behind for all of your page.