Using a hyphen in the title tag

[Roell]

Does using a hyphen in the title tag make any difference as far as SEO is concerned?

For example let say you have a site reviewing tennis rackets.
One of your pages reads " Wilson tennis rackets - reviews of the top 3".
Is using the hyphen a waste of valuable real estate?
Or does it read better using "Reviews of the top 3 Wilson tennis rackets"?

Is either way more or less effective?

[Georgech]

Hyphen doesn't hurt my search results ranking. But, if it is possible I prefer to not use hyphen as it consumes some characters. It is always recommended to maintain your title within 60 characters as anything more than that will be truncated by many search engines. One more thing is that it's best to place the primary keywords that you wanna optimize at the start of the title as search engine especially Google gives more credit to the words at the beginning of the title tag.

[Roell]

sound advice, thanks

[googleuser]

For me, it's better this title

Wilson tennis rackets : reviews of the top 3

However it's almost the same for google.

[blueorca17]

It's fine using a hypen, semi colon, colon or whatever other character you want to use. It does take up space, however so long as you have your main keyword AT THE FRONT of the title, then you'll be more likely to outrank someone who has their keyword at the END of the title. Tested many times, and always works.

[robinincarolina]

I put the keywords in front, then hyphen, then an attention grabber. It works very well for me. If it's just something mundane after the hyphen, it won't really compel the reader to click.

Example: Flirting with Girls - Your Secret Weapon.