Meta titles and descriptions play a huge role in your on-page SEO. Meta descriptions are essentially a summary of what your page has to offer users. The information that you provide in your meta titles and descriptions should be relevant so that your website can be indexed correctly by the search engine. This week’s blog is all about the importance of meta titles and descriptions.
What is a meta title tag?
A meta title is often displayed as the primary reason for visiting a webpage. It is the headline that you would click on to visit a webpage. Title tags are much shorter than meta descriptions because they are designed to be read quickly. It is recommended that title tags are no longer than 70 characters. Each page on your website must have its own unique title tag that incorporates relevant keywords where possible. However, while you’ll want to try to include keywords, do not include them when it’s not necessary.
You should do some research into search queries that are relevant to your business and see if you can create pages or posts on your website that answer the questions of users. Having relevant meta titles can really help to boost your site’s SEO.
What is a meta description?
A meta description is used to give a brief summary of what your webpage has to offer. It is a HTML element that helps both users and search engines to work out if your page is relevant to the search query. You will usually find the meta description of a page underneath its meta title on the search engine results page, but it can also be found by right-clicking on a page and selecting ‘view page source’.
Meta descriptions are often your first opportunity to impress users with your business. If you can encourage users to click through to your website through your meta description, with a high-quality website and content, you know that you can give a good first impression and potentially make a sale.
If you use a content management system, such as WordPress, you’ll have a guide on how long your meta description should be. The guide uses colours to indicate if your description is too long or too short. Previously, meta descriptions could be up to 160 characters long, but Google now allows and displays up to 275 characters, so you should try to aim for that.
Meta titles and descriptions and SEO
Search engine optimisation (SEO) is very powerful. Using SEO means that you are marketing your products and services to users that are genuinely interested in making a purchase from you.
Meta titles and descriptions are free to use, so any traffic that you receive through this is organic. A high-quality and relevant meta description mean that more people may be interested in your website, which means you’ll have higher levels of organic traffic.
If your business offers something that you know your competitors don’t offer, it might be a good idea to use that information in your meta description. If a user searches for a particular business type and you and your competitors come up on the SERP, users may be more likely to choose to purchase from your company over theirs just because of the information in your meta description.
Within your meta title and description, you should try to use specific keywords that your business ranks for. This will really help to enhance the SEO on your website.
If you’d like any more information on meta titles and descriptions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.