I have a quick question.. I am targetting a keyword in the title of my page. It makes sense to break the keyword with a colon or a hypen, but I still want the search engines to see it as one keyword. So say the keyword phrase I was targetting was "cats and dogs toys".. if my title was "Cats and Dogs: Toys For Both!" would the search engine ready that keyword phrase as "cats and dogs toys" or would they see it as "cats and dogs" and then "toys for both". I'm a newbie when it comes to this, but I'm just wondering what kind of effect a colon would have on a keyword phrase. I'd like to insert a colon in a keyword phrase so it makes more sense to the reader. What do you experts recommend?
Toys for Cats and Dogs or why not just use the keyword as it is, ie. "Cats and Dogs Toys" - I don't think it needs anything else adding in the title like a colon or 'Toys for both' etc. Pete
colons don't really affect anything as far as I can tell cats and dogs: toys for both is the same as cats and dogs toys for both to me; the first one looks better in the SERPs. I wouldn't really put both of those keywords on the same page though. I'd put dog toys and cat toys on different pages if you even want a remote chance at ranking for either.
I would just using that as an example. I'm sorry if it was really poor. I appreciate the responses. I'm glad to hear colons don't really have any effect.