A meta description is a short summary of a webpage that is usually shown in search results. It provides a summary of a webpage that Google displays to influence click-through rates. A meta description should be directly relevant to the page it is describing and different from the descriptions of other pages. Meta descriptions can impact a page’s click-through rate which can have a positive impact on a page’s ability to rank among other webpages. On the other hand, a meta title is a title tag or page title that defines the title of a webpages HTML. A meta title is retrieved by web browsers and search engines to display the webpage in search results. The keywords used in the meta titles are extremely important when it comes to the ranking of a webpage in search results.

What are Meta Descriptions and Meta Titles?

Meta Descriptions

What is a Meta Description?

A meta description is a summary of webpages that helps describe a webpage. It is an HTML attribute that can influence click-through rates for a webpage. It is a piece of text that appears in the search engine results under the headline of the displayed websites page. You can find the meta descriptions for any website by right-clicking on the page and selecting “view source” or “view page source”. The purpose of a meta description is to serve as a piece of text on a search engine result page when someone conducts a search for your page. A meta description should give those searching for your website a brief description on what they will find on your website.

What should the length be?

A meta description can be any length up to 275 characters long but are recommended to be anywhere from 50 to 160 characters long. The length of your meta description will depend on how specific you are when describing your webpage. Remember that the goal of a meta description is to provide value and increase traffic to your site. Make sure to keep your meta descriptions unique to avoid duplications.

Why are Meta Descriptions important?

Meta descriptions are important because they have an influence on how many people will see your website when they make a quick search on search engine websites like Google. A meta description has the ability to increase the amount of people who see your webpage and increase your websites foot traffic.

How to create effective Meta Descriptions

• Use targeted keywords
• Never use the same meta descriptions over and over aging
• Make them unique to your products or services
• Make sure they have value to them and that they are appealing

 

Meta Titles

What is a Meta Title?

A meta title also know as a title tag is an element that specifies the title of a webpage that defines the title of each page’s website. Meta titles are displayed on search engines result pages as a clickable headline for a given result. It is used by search engines like Google to display the webpages in its search results. The meta description is meant to be an accurate description of a page’s content. The keywords used in the meta titles are extremely important when it comes to the ranking of a webpage in search results. Google uses the meta title to judge the relevancy of a website for a search query. The wording of a meta title influences whether a user will click on your sites webpage and allow them to determine if it is relevant to what they are searching for or not. A meta title should contain the most important keywords for the SEO of your website and should give users a brief, concise and comprehensible impression of what the page is about and why it is relevant for them.

What should the length be?

A meta title can be any length up to 70 characters long but it is recommended that the meta title be anywhere between 50 to 60 characters long for them to be displayed properly on search engines sites. If your title is too long, search engines may cut it off by adding an ellipsis (“…”) and could end up omitting important words that you are using. Your meta title should contain the most important keywords for the SEO on your website. It should also give users a brief, concise and comprehension of what the webpage is about and why it is relevant. When composing a meta title you should only use each meta title only once on your website because it should reflect the individual content of each page. If you use the same meta title for each subpage of a site instead, you will lose much of your SEO potential, as Google will usually display only one page of a domain in the results for a particular search query.

Why are Meta Titles important?

Meta title tags are a major factor in helping search engines understand what your page is about, and they are the first impression many people have of your page. Meta titles help search engines understand what your website is about and are the first impressions people get of your page. Meta titles are also displayed on the top of browsers and act as a placeholder, therefor, they should be easily recognizable titles that have important keywords to help people keep track of your content. Also, some social medias will use your webpages meta titles to determine what to display when they share your page.

How to write a good Meta Title?

• Watch your title lengths and keep them between 50-60 characters
• Do not overdue SEO keywords
• Give every page a unique meta title and avoid repetitions
• Put important keywords first and create meaningful sentences
• Take advantage of your brand
• Make it targeted to your customers interests