I decided to write this little guide to help clear up some confusion on the use of the title tag and meta description element. Many people fail to realize there are two main uses for the title tag and the meta description element. We all know this is used by search engines to get a quick description of a web page and can be an excellent SEO factor. What many people fail to realize is your not only courting the search engine crawlers but actual searchers as well. When you’re looking at search results the title tag and meta description element are usually displayed in the results for each listing. Sometimes search engines take their own description snippet if the description element doesn’t exist or the webmaster purposely tells the search engine crawler via a meta element to make it’s own snippet. This is where 80% of webmasters fail; they purposely make both the title tag and description element friendly solely to the search engine crawlers. It’s crucial to remember that these are what searchers are going to read and decide if they’ll click your listing in the search results. Many people argue that the top 3 positions yield the most organic traffic in search results, a good portion of the time this is true. However, if you don’t create a human friendly and very well descriptive title tag and meta description you’ll find many searchers passing your listing in the results for another one. Creating a proper title tag and description element will yield more organic traffic, even if you’re in the 5th or 6th position. Most people don’t rush and click the first listing in search results; they skim through them reading the descriptions to see which one matches what they are looking for. Your title tag should be a quick, relevant description of your web page. You want it to be sweet and directly to the subject of the web page. The meta description element is where you can add a small relevant description of the web page itself, this should be relevant summary of the web page in a whole. You may not use this in your blog or website with my solo permission. This small quick article belongs to S. Sandecki
Yep, I agree entirely with what you've said. Adding characters like ~ or # to the title tag can also make it stand out in the SERPS.
But it won't do anything for the ranking, and if it's actually not needed, may actually dissuade people from "clicking that link", thereby making them go elsewhere. Remember, people are looking online for something, they want to find it, and they want it found YESTERDAY. They don't have the time or patience to read the cutesy (and stupid) SEO games Webmasters play.
There is no need to use those types of special characters in the title tag or description element. The only ones you really ever should use are - or | and this is only for delimiters, beyond that follow the simple guidelines I stated and you'll be just fine.
I should stress that there is no ranking benefit to the description meta tag. The power of this tag is to sell the click. However, in order for the search engines to use your description and not cobble something together from bits on your web page, you have to have in the description the words in the search...so some attention still needs to be made to "optimize" the description meta tag.
The meta description element is used by search engines to get a general description of that specific web page. Matt Cutts of Google has mentioned this time and time again. I've seen results from clients of mine when I've altered meta descriptions to be "proper". http://footinmouthdisease.net/2008/...-importance-of-content-writing-and-meta-tags/ http://www.toprankblog.com/2006/04/matt-cutts-on-toolbar-data/ http://blog.hummerbie.com/matt-cutts-on-snippets-and-meta-description-tags/
Its really true.I am totally agree with your point, We should not use any type of special characters in Title, Description and Keywords.