Recently one of our SEN MasterMind members drew my attention to a case study revealing that pipes in <title> tags received less traffic than dashes.

According to the Semrush blog...

My first reaction was...

Seriously? ...they had to split-test that?

I found it hard to believe they wouldn't already know.

Here's why.

Years ago, having studied the copy-writing masters of direct response marketing (back in the days prior to the internet when the cost to test a snail-mail campaign ran about $100K), I learned that lines of any sort had to be carefully restricted only to places where you actually wanted the reader to pause reading — which was almost never. That's because, suggesting a pause is inviting them to stop — and that's definitely bad for conversions.

Consider the following three example phrases and think about which one does the best job of inviting the reader to stop reading in the middle of the phrase...

Acme Daily News YourCity YourState

Acme Daily News – YourCity YourState

Acme...