There aren’t many quick wins in SEO. Most of the time, it will take months to see results from your SEO efforts; unlike other types of digital marketing like email marketing or social media campaigns, SEO requires a lot of patience.
Because quick wins are so rare in SEO, it’s always exciting to discover a relatively quick and easy way to boost your search engine performance, increase your click-through rate (CTR), and encourage more conversions. Yes, we’re talking about optimising meta titles and descriptions as part of your content SEO strategy.
But what exactly are meta titles and meta descriptions, how do they impact SEO, and how important are they, really? In this blog post, we’ll take a closer look at this aspect of on-page SEO and the best practices you can apply to your website.
Meta tags explained
Meta titles and meta descriptions both come under the category of meta tags. These little snippets of code are what tell search engines key information about your web page such as how to display it to users and how it should show up in the search results.
Search engines scan the HTML of a webpage to gather information about it and to understand what it is about. Meta tags play a crucial role in this process, and by using them within the HTML code of the webpage you have the power to determine how search crawlers view the title, summary, key summary of the page and also command if the crawlers should index the page or not.
Meta tags include a range of different tags including meta robots, meta viewpoint, and more, but we’ll focus on meta descriptions and titles today.
In short, a meta title refers to the title of a webpage as it appears on the search results, and the meta description is the brief summary of the webpage that is displayed below the title on the SERP.
Meta titles: An overview
As the name suggests, the title meta tag defines the title of the web page and is what shows up on the SERP. Although meta titles are comparatively less important as a ranking factor than the main content of the page, they are still an important on-page SEO element.
Simply put, meta titles are important for SEO because of the power they yield when it comes to influencing both search engines and users. They appear as clickable links and can contain concise headlines for individual web pages. Crafting a good meta title helps you easily communicate to users and search engines the relevance and context of your webpages in relation to specific search queries.
For search engines to understand and associate your webpage with particular search terms, it is important to include relevant keywords in your meta title. However, the purpose of these meta tags is not limited to search engine performance; they also attract users’ attention and can influence them to click through to the website. In fact, a well-crafted meta title can mean the difference between someone stopping to click on your page or scrolling past it on the SERP.
Meta title best practices
So, what defines a well-crafted meta title? Let’s take a look at some key tips to follow to optimise your meta titles.
- Character limit: Try to keep the length of your title as concise as possible. The recommended character limit for meta titles is 59-70 characters.
- Appropriate keyword usage: Always remember to incorporate the target keyword of the webpage onto your title tag. However, avoid keyword spamming and ensure that the same keyword doesn’t appear in lots of title tags. This is to avoid keyword cannibalisation.
- Keep tags unique: It is recommended to have a unique meta title for each webpage because pages with the same meta title could be viewed as duplicate content by search engines.
- Include your brand name: It’s always a good idea to insert your brand name towards the end or at the beginning of your title tag. You can separate the name from the rest of the title using a hyphen, colon, or pipe.
Meta Descriptions: An overview
Now that we have discussed the importance of meta titles for SEO, let’s take a look at how meta descriptions play a pivotal role in your content SEO strategy. As with meta titles, meta descriptions are an initial touchpoint between your business and customers. In simple words, a good meta description provides a concise description of the web page content. While meta descriptions are not a ranking factor, they can be crucial in improving your click-through rate and organic traffic.
A meta description is an excellent opportunity for you to strategically include relevant keywords, and these keywords will be highlighted in bold in the search results to gain the attention of the searcher. With a good meta description, you can set the expectations of the users for what your page content will offer, reducing the risk of them bouncing back to the search results. In short, effective meta descriptions can have a real impact on engagement and conversions on your website.
Meta description best practices
We keep talking about ‘good’ meta descriptions, But what exactly is a good meta description? The guidelines for writing a good description is quite similar to that of writing a title. Let’s take a quick look at them.
- Length: Google does not have a limit on the meta description length. However, the snippet is truncated in the search results as needed to fit the dimensions of the device. Thus when structuring your meta description, it is advisable to keep the character limit around 155 characters to ensure that it is displayed properly on the search results. Keeping the description concise will allow searchers to quickly scan through it and increase the likelihood of clicks.
- Keyword choice: While inserting keywords into the meta description, conduct proper keyword research and focus on target keywords. However make sure to avoid keyword spamming.
- Structure: Your description should be structured in a way that makes sense and is easy to read quickly. One or two sentences is perfect.
- Unique: As discussed earlier with meta titles, your meta descriptions must be unique to each of your web pages. While it’s tempting to be lazy and use the same meta description across your website, this will only damage your pages’ performance in the SERPs.
So, how important are meta titles and descriptions, really?
Because Google doesn’t publish the specifics of its ranking algorithm, SEOs are often left to make their best guesses at the extent to which different factors impact performance in the SERPs. Google has confirmed that meta titles are a ranking factor, although they are not very highly weighted, while meta descriptions are not a ranking factor at all. Does this mean that these meta tags aren’t worth your time? Certainly not!
Even if editing all your meta titles and descriptions isn’t particularly likely to make your website shoot up through the rankings, making the effort is definitely worthwhile. Optimised meta titles and descriptions help search engines figure out what content to show to users and encourage your potential customers to click on your page instead of your competitor’s. In short, it’s a fairly quick and easy way to improve your site while you wait patiently for the more impressive results from the rest of your SEO campaign.
Optimise your meta tags and ace your SEO game today!
In conclusion, optimising your meta titles and descriptions is one of the key aspects of your content SEO strategy. If you’re not sure where to start with on-page SEO, don’t fret! Here at Viaduct Generation, our experts can get you started with our comprehensive content audit. By closely evaluating your website’s performance, we identify missed opportunities and diagnose issues that are holding your site’s SEO back. Then, we can help you establish strategies aligned with your business goals to harness the power of organic search. We even offer SEO copywriting and content creation services to help your site stand out from the competition.
For a free taster of what we can do, book your free SEO audit today. Or, get in touch and we’ll be happy to share our expertise.
