Let’s fix some titles and meta descriptions!

Do you ever wonder why all SEO guides mention titles and metadata? Because that’s what people first see when your website shows up in search results. For you, it may be just another title, but for your target audience is what either convinces them to click or pushes them away to the next page listed by the search engine.

Think of what Google shows you when you make a query. A list of web addresses and titles, each followed by one or two sentences that are meant to invite you in (that’s what we call a meta description).

Let’s see how you can optimize each of these elements to make them appealing to search engines and internet users at the same time.

Titles:

• Each title should include the exact keyword that you target. Go back on each page, see what keyword you want it to rank for, and integrate this term or phrase naturally in the page’s title.
• Try to keep things short–maximum 70 characters if you want search engines to display your title completely.
• Make sure every page on your website has an optimized title to increase your chances to rank for the right keywords.

Don’t let numbers or marketing lingo discourage you. Here’s an example that can help you master this title optimization thing. We’ll analyze one of our blog posts, “Top 3 Tips to Write Plagiarism Free Content.” The keyword we wanted to rank for was “write plagiarism free content”. See what we did here? Depending on the purpose of our content, we could have called it “The Challenges of Writing Plagiarism Free Content in Marketing” or “How to Write Plagiarism Free Content for Your Business Blog.” Now it’s your turn to take your keyword and try different combinations until you find the one that fits with your content.

Meta descriptions:

• Use this space to explain what the page is about. If you’re not sure where to go with this, you can copy a phrase from the text. Not writing anything shouldn’t be an option.
• This text is similar to the subject line of an email–people click if you convince them to do it. It’s a good idea to use this short pitch to highlight the value that readers can find when they arrive on your page.
• Include the same primary keyword you’ve used in the title or something similar (for example, in our blog post, the keyword in the meta description was “writing plagiarism free content”).
• Keep the meta descriptions under 160 characters, to make sure they’re entirely displayed in search results.
• Ideally, close with a call to action!

That’s it! You’ve done the first step toward more effective SEO. From now on, every time you publish new content on your website, take five more minutes to optimize the title and craft a compelling meta description. If you need help with checking the length of your titles on all devices, you can use our free Snippet Optimizer.