Meta title and meta description: two SEO ingredients that can work wonders for your website in Google

I fondly remember the first time I heard about SEO. The main reason for my nostalgia isn’t really SEO, but the fact that I was in high school. Good times, fewer worries and all sorts of new things around me. Everything was interesting, and there was time to dig into anything that caught my attention.

But let’s get back to the main topic. I was a rebellious teenager in ninth grade, looking for somewhere to vent. As you well know, rebellious teenagers are also misunderstood, so I had no one to talk to about what was bothering me. So, together with a classmate, I laid the foundations of a blog. Just the foundations, because it didn’t last more than 3 months.

While it lasted, though, I had one big complaint: why isn’t anyone reading me? Back then, around 2009, Facebook was a platform where you could play FarmVille during computer class. A friend with some blogging experience told me the magic acronym: SEO. “What’s that?” I asked. “Well, you do some stuff to optimize your blog so it’s easier to find on Google.” And I started looking into this SEO thing a little for my blog.

Back then, SEO looked different too. Comments on other people’s articles, blogrolls, endless lists of tags at the end of posts, and tag clouds. There was no “do-follow” and “no-follow” distinction for links either, so you could spam your blog link freely wherever you saw a “your website” box on the internet. A true wild west of the online world.

Things have changed considerably since then. What I considered SEO at the time has taken on a new face and reached a completely different level. Of course, search engine optimization is still important for blogs too. But when I joined AdMarks, I saw things in a new light: online marketing. SEO had become part of the marketing mix for all kinds of businesses, from online stores to service companies.

Enough childhood memories, though. That’s not what this article is about; it’s about something of major interest if you care about SEO: the meta title and the meta description. I will cover each one, highlighting the following main points:

• Definition;
• Optimization tips;
• SEO relevance.

The meta title

The meta title is an HTML tag placed in the head section of a page; it is the title search engines display in the SERP (search engine results page) for a given result. Example:

• What you see:

• What the code behind it looks like:

So the meta title is extremely visible. How do we optimize it to improve our performance in the search engine?

Here are a few recommendations for writing SEO-friendly meta titles:

1. Optimize around your main keywords
The meta title is an important ranking element for Google. That is why it should be built around the main keywords the page targets.

2. Meta title length
Google displays a limited amount of space on the results page: 600 pixels, to be exact (about 70 characters). It is important to measure the length of the meta title and stay within that range.

3. Add your brand at the end
Since brands influence users’ buying decisions, you shouldn’t miss any opportunity to make yours known. Adding your brand at the end of the meta title is a good opportunity to do just that!

4. Write meta titles that appeal to users
Meta titles shouldn’t be optimized only for search engines; they need to put the user first. An appealing meta title will make users click through to the site, which will improve the CTR (click-through rate) and, as a result, your Google rankings.

5. Use a unique meta title for each page
If we use the same meta titles for different pages, Google will understand that those pages are identical and will most likely choose not to index them, or to index them only partially. That is why every page on the site should have a unique meta title.

What is the SEO impact of the meta title?

The meta title is one of the most important SEO factors, both for search engines and for users. A page’s title has a strong impact for search engines because it summarizes and simplifies the information on the page.

It also improves the user experience. A well-written meta title will make a difference when several tabs are open in a browser and the user wants to go back to your page. In short, the meta title is a ranking factor from several angles:

• Strictly through Google’s indexing algorithm;
• It improves CTR;
• It improves the user experience.

Google may sometimes not display the meta title you chose. What are the causes?

• The meta title is stuffed with keywords, which means it doesn’t do its job of describing the content on the page;
• The title doesn’t match the queries that lead to the page: if a page on your site matches a search that isn’t well represented in the title, Google will choose to rewrite the title it displays. If your title is overridden for high-volume queries, consider rewriting it;
• You use an alternative meta title, meta tags for Facebook, for example. This isn’t necessarily a problem, but if these alternative tags produce an unattractive meta title, you should rewrite the alternative tags too;

The meta description

The meta description is an HTML tag placed in the head section of a page; it is the description search engines display in the SERP for a given result (the text under the meta title).

• What you see:

• What the code behind it looks like:

Although it isn’t a direct ranking factor, the meta description matters a great deal in SEO because it influences the click-through rate (CTR): a higher CTR means more organic visits and, in the long run, better Google rankings.
So how do you make the meta description work in your favor? Here are a few tips:

1. Write meta descriptions that grab users’ attention
The meta description should capture users’ interest and get them to click on that result. In other words, it helps to write it in fluent, easy-to-read sentences, not as a simple string of keywords.

2. Write unique meta descriptions
Like meta titles, meta descriptions need to be unique to make indexing easier for Google.

3. Use a template for less important pages
If a site has tens of thousands of products, writing a meta description for every single page would take far too much effort.
So for pages of no particular interest, meta descriptions can be generated automatically using templates.

4. Write meta descriptions by hand for the most important pages on your site
Templates are recommended for pages with no potential to attract organic visits. The most important pages on the site, which target thousands of searches a month, need extra care when writing meta descriptions. So it is best to write those meta descriptions by hand.

Meta description length

Until November 2017, Google displayed a meta description of about 160 characters on the results page. After that date, the meta description doubled in length to about 320 characters. With this change, you have even more space to convince users to visit your site!

What is the SEO impact of the meta description?

Although the meta description isn’t a direct ranking factor, it has a strong impact on your site’s position in the SERP. The meta description has one big strength: it is the equivalent of organic ad copy. This means that when someone searches for a keyword the page targets, Google and other search engines will display the meta description as a summary of the page.
At the same time, a well-written meta description will attract users to your site, which also means a higher CTR. So improving this metric brings two benefits:
• Google will understand from user behavior that they found the content on your site relevant to the keyword they searched for -> you will move up in the SERP;
• Your site will get more traffic -> more conversions and more visibility.

Photo source: Topseonow.com