Are there any potential negative implications in the search engines for changing your site title? I am going to change mine because at the moment it sounds quite spammy, and I want something that will be easier to build as a brand. However, they are of course both along the same theme and include the same keyword. Does changing a site title like this confuse the search engines at all? Bearing in mind that I also seem to have just got out of the sandbox in Google, and I don't want to jeopardise my position in any way! Apologies if this is a dumb question. All advice appreciated. Thanks.
It's not a problem. It's not like changing URL's. You can change content/meta anytime, and watch how your traffic flows, and then react upon that.
Cheers Cristian. I will be changing my site title to something more catchy tomorrow - and seeing if it effects traffic/page views in any way.
If you feel that your title looking spam ... rewrite the Meta Tags. It doesn't abuse your ranking and traffic to your site.
In terms of SERP there is no major effect will be happening if you change your title, meta and etc. Title is more on like your trademark for visitors to remember your site. Yes, try to make your title more catchy to visitors. One instance that it must be catchy when your site appears on top 10 on SERP of a certain keyword. Your site will get noticed first by the visitor if you have that catchy title.
I disagree with this, meta tags may not major effect in SEO terms but title may. If you have too much longer title then your each keywords in title has been diluted some important. Title is important one factor for on-page optimization.
If you change the title, make sure the title should be relevant to your content of particular page, also check what other members say about the same topic; http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=77249
For Google, I think the effect is minimum as long as you keep it close to the content. However, title is one of major factors that search engines look at when allocating relevancy to your pages. Therefore, they must be carefully written.
Try to use as many of the original words as possible but delete/move words to make it more legible. If it has a dramtic effect, which i would hope it doesnt, then change it back to the original title.
changing title, desc and keywords wont hurt serps. as Cristian Mezei ses, its not a prob, unlike changing URL is complicated...