How To Write Perfect* Page Titles and Meta Descriptions for SEO (2022)
– In this video, I'm gonna show you how to write the perfect, asterisk, Well optimised page titles, i.e., titles tags and meta descriptions, can help increase your
click-through rate from search, get you more traffic from organic search, and also help your rankings. So they're really really important. In fact, we go so far as to say that page titles, in particular, are word for word, one
of the most important SEO elements on any page of your website. So, first up, what are page titles and meta descriptions? Well, page titles and meta descriptions are both forms of metadata. So, metadata is code on your website, which isn't actually visible when you're browsing on a page. So let's look at page
titles, first of all.
When you're navigating on a website and you see the title
of that page in the tab, that is usually the page title. Likewise, when you're on Google and you see this big blue link, or it's purple, once you've clicked on it, blue link at the top here,
this is the page title. Now, the meta description
is the descriptive text that's there. So that's what page titles
and meta descriptions are. How do they impact SEO
and how do they help you get more traffic to your website? Well, they help you get more
traffic to your website, because if you have compelling page titles and meta descriptions, when people see your page
in the search results, they're much more likely to click on it.
So I've just searched for how to write page titles
and meta descriptions. And you can see the Exposure Ninja's blog post on this topic is
ranking at the top of Google. We have the featured snippet and we also have this
top organic result here. Now, you can see that
because I've searched for how to write page titles
and meta descriptions, that's the terminology
that I have in my head. That's what I'm looking for.
So, what have we got here? We've got how to write page
titles and meta descriptions, that matches exactly
what I'm searching for. And then here we have title
tag 2019 SEO best practises. It's kind of what I'm looking for, but doesn't actually use
the same terminology, and so on, and so on and so on. So because I've matched exactly
what the search query is, I've got the most chance
of getting that click and also showing Google that I'm really relevant for that term, exactly the same with meta descriptions. If, for example, we see a
meta description like this, learn how to write the best
meta descriptions here, although page titles might vary, all pages will appear to be the same because of the dot dot dot, it's a poorly formatted meta description. And it's gonna make me less likely to click on it because
it's less descriptive, and it's slightly confusing as well. Now, what's often happening
with meta descriptions is if Google doesn't like the meta description you've submitted, it's just gonna be using its own, and it's gonna create its own from the content on your page.
And that's most likely what's
gonna have happened here. So, page titles and meta
descriptions are important because they're gonna
increase the percentage of people that see your
website in search results, and click through and visit your site. And obviously, it's the
visitors that we want. It's all well and good ranking on Google, but if people aren't actually
visiting your website, they're never gonna be able to convert. Every page on your site has a page title and has a meta description,
if you choose to use them. Probably the easiest way to find your page titles and
your meta descriptions, if you go view page source on any page, and what you're looking
for is this section here, which starts with the little title tag, and inside that is the page title.
The next thing that you're looking for is the meta description. So that'll start something
like meta name description, and then you'll have the metadata, which makes up your meta description. If you're using WordPress, for example, you can see
the Exposure Ninja site is built on WordPress, we're
using the Yoast SEO plugin, and that's allowed us to put
the meta description in there. The page title is set on the
WordPress page editor itself. So, every page on your site should have a different page title and should have a meta description. And you can see them
behind the scenes here. So how do you write the perfect page title and meta description? Well, the first thing
that you need to do is you need to do a bit of research and see how Google is showing page titles and meta descriptions in your searches.
So, for example, let's head over to Google and we're gonna search for
landscape gardener Nottingham. Not the sort of search
that you would usually use. If you were looking for a masterclass in page titles and meta
descriptions, it has to be set. So, up at the top here, we've got the ads, they're not page titles
and meta descriptions, they look like them. But these are obviously set
inside the Google Ad platform. Down here where we have
the organic results, this is where we have page
titles and meta descriptions. So we can see that some of
these have been truncated. For example, you can
see there, dot dot dot, dot dot dot, dot dot dot. Some of these are shown in their entirety, for example, that one. Now, this is actually a
pretty good page title, because what have I searched for? Landscape gardeners Nottingham, and we can see here that the page title uses our target keywords there, landscape, gardening, Nottingham.
So it's using the phrases
I've searched for, which is a good idea. Here's MyBuilder, same sort of thing, landscape gardeners in
Nottingham, pretty good. And what they've done
though, is their page title is too long, so Google's truncated it. This one here says
garden design Nottingham, which isn't actually
what I've searched for. I search for landscape
gardeners, Nottingham, which is slightly different. So one of the things that they could do to push this site even
further up the rankings and possibly challenge for position one, is to have a landscape
gardening page on their site, which is called landscape
gardeners, Nottingham.
Now if we move over to having a look at the meta descriptions, we see
a similar sorts of things. So, some of these are
showing the meta description in its entirety. And some of them are showing a kind of truncated and
automatically generated one, using the content from the page. Generally, you wanna have as much control over how your site is shown in search. So, you want to try and
keep under character limits to make sure that your meta description is being shown exactly how you intend. So, when you're having a look through and researching the sort of page titles and meta descriptions that
you're seeing in your space, one of the best things to do is to think about the sorts of things that are enticing you to click
through into the website. So, things like USPs and reasons why your business is
different to somebody else can be a great way of attracting clicks. For example, let's imagine that one of these landscape gardeners offered a free landscape
garden design service, where they designed it free of charge, and then they'd come and build it out if you wanted to work with them.
Well, that might be a really useful thing to put in their meta description, because then when I see that, I'll think, oh, yeah, that looks great, that's a great first step for me to take. And I click through onto the website. The great thing is they've just got me as a visitor to their site, but also, I've now got in my head, oh, where's that free design consultation? So I'm already kind of
pre-converted on that thing. And when I get on the page, I'm looking for that call to action. So I'm more likely to convert. In meta descriptions, you
typically wanna stand out, you wanna give reasons why
people should click on you, rather than somebody else.
In the page title though,
it's slightly different. Because Google uses the keywords mentioned in the page
title as a ranking signal, you wanna make sure that you're using your target keywords in your page title. It doesn't matter so much
in your meta description, but in your page title,
it's particularly important. And where possible, you want
to use them at the start. Because if I've just searched for landscape gardeners, Nottingham, what's the first thing I want to see? I want to see landscape
gardener, Nottingham, ideally, because that's the
thing I've searched for. I'm looking for that
familiarity, that recognition, right, I'm in the right place, let's go. Another thing that can
be really useful to do is understand your searcher's intent. So, if in the meta
description I'm talking about, we're gonna show you, you
can learn how to do this, discover the template for the perfect page title and meta description, that's gonna be much more attractive to an informational searcher.
If I was searching for a
landscape gardener in Nottingham, that's more of a commercial search. So, I want to make sure that my page title and meta description reflect the fact that I'm
targeting a commercial searcher. So I might talk about things like, get a free quote, I might talk about the fact that we offer free no
obligation consultations, all of this stuff is
designed to be attractive to someone who is looking to move forward on a buying journey. What about length? What's the perfect length? So the question that's on everyone's mind is what is the perfect length? Well, the perfect length
for your page titles and meta descriptions, actually is not a
particular character limit. So the challenging thing
about page titles and metas, is Google actually has a pixel
width as a maximum length, not necessarily a number of characters. For example, if your page
title, for whatever reason, was just the letter, one
over and over and over again, you could fit a lot
more ones in that space, than you might be able to Ws. So it doesn't really make sense to have a character limit for page titles.
Instead, you have a pixel width. Having said that, most page titles are between 30 and 60 characters, and usually we want to give as many characters as
possible in that space. There are lots of different page title and meta description length checkers that you can use online, which will measure the
pixels in your page title and show you where it's
gonna be truncated. But usually, we say up to 60
characters in your page title. Now, what about meta descriptions? Well, between 730 and 928 pixels, pretty difficult to track. So if you just stick to a limit of say, 130 to 140 characters,
you're usually pretty safe. Just to make things even more tricky, Google actually uses
different maximum page title and meta description lengths
on mobile as desktops. But generally, because you
need a rule to live by, generally, the best rule to live by is maximum of 60 for page titles, maximum around 140 for meta descriptions.
So, let's look at some examples
of perfect page titles. Perfect doesn't exist, but
if it did, these will be it. So, first one up here, best laptop 2019, which laptop is best for you? Why is this good? Because people are searching
for best laptop 2019, so they use that at the
start of the page title, that's the target keyword. Wallop, there we go. Then we've got a variation of that phrase; Which laptop is best for you? And then we've got the brand
name at the end, Tech Advisor. Often you'll see Google
truncate a page title to put the brand name in. So if you can put it in yourself, that's a really good thing to do, 'cause then you control how it's shown.
Next example, how to get
a small business loan in five steps, NerdWallet. People might not be looking for how to get a small business
loan in five steps, but they're looking for how
to get a small business loan. Five steps sounds nice
and easy to consume, nice and easy to do, so that's great, so that's a really good page title. The best monthly makeup
subscription boxes in 2019. People are gonna be searching for best monthly makeups subscription
boxes 2019, pretty good. So you get the gist. Basically, you just wanna reflect what your audience is
gonna be searching for in your page title. There's really no need to overthink this. What about meta descriptions? The key mistake that people
make with meta descriptions is they use the same meta description for multiple pages on the website.
This makes no sense, because the content of every page on your site
is hopefully different. So why would you describe
it in the same way if it's different content? So use unique meta descriptions. Now, whilst Google doesn't necessarily look in your meta descriptions for the keywords that you wanna rank for, it's still a good idea to
use your target keywords in your meta description, because those are the things that your audience is looking for. And we always wanna talk
in our audience's language.
Let's look at some examples of perfect meta descriptions. Perfect doesn't exist, but if it did, these guys will be standing on the podium. Are you looking for the best mattress for back and neck pain? Read what you need to
know before purchasing a mattress for back pain. Okay, mattress for back pain is obviously the phrase
that we're targeting here. And they've also kind of sewn a bit of a seed of doubt in the, oh, you need to read this before you buy, so I'm gonna likely to click on that, higher click-through rate. Well, it definitely means more traffic, potentially means better ranking as well. Really good thing to do. Amazon, fast free shipping
for Amazon Prime customers. Buy carrier slings at low prices. Large collection of
more than 1500 products. We've got our USPs in there, we've got the fact that
fast free shipping, everyone loves that,
they've capitalised it. So, really hit us over the face with it. So that's great. Let's have a look at Santander. Save tax-free for your first
home of Help to Buy ISA.
If you're a first time buyer, save up to £200 a month
towards your first home with a Help to Buy ISA. Pretty good. If we're looking for help to buy ISA. They're repeating that, but it's not become spammy. Benefits, save up to £200 a month towards your first time. Save tax-free. So, it's clearly describing
what's on that page. I'm pretty likely to click on that. Here's a really good one. Get free instant
conveyancing quotes online. Fill in the form for established
conveyancing solicitors with genuine user feedback. So, we've got the
benefit, what I get, free, facts like get instant
conveyancing quotes, this isn't just filling in details and someone's gonna contact you, and then there's established
conveyancing solicitors with genuine user feedback.
So, another benefit, another USP. So, really good job there. Now one quick tip before we go. Writing your page titles
and meta descriptions is not just a one-off task. You don't just write it and you're like, yeah, frickin' smashed it, off you fly, my beauty, to the top of Google. It's something that you're
gonna want to revisit. And you're also gonna want to measure the impact of changes to your page titles and meta descriptions.
That's why at Exposure Ninja, when we're working on an SEO campaign, we'll periodically revise page
titles and meta descriptions based on the click-through data that we're getting from Search Console. So, you wanna change your page
title and meta description after recording what the old one was and what your click-through rate was then, change it, have a look at how your click-through rate changes, and then you might wanna optimise or you might even wanna
revert back to your old one if your click through rate drops as a result of the change. Recap. Step one, understand what page titles and meta descriptions are. They are metadata for
every page on your site that give users and search engines a clear indication of
what your page is called and what it's all about. The first step to writing
the perfect page title and meta description is spend some time on Google having a look
at how they are displayed. So, have a look at what
sort of page titles are enticing you to click, what the format is of the page titles that are ranking best
for your target phrases.
Likewise, with the meta descriptions, have a look at the different USPs, benefit statements and calls to action people are using in
their meta descriptions, to see what might be a good
approach to take for you. The next thing is to understand the perfect length of page
titles and meta descriptions. There is no such thing as perfect, but if there was, it would probably be a maximum of 60 characters
for your page title, and around 130 to 140 characters
for your meta description. But always check in a
pixel checkout first, before changing your page
titles and meta descriptions. Next thing is to go and revise
your page titles and meta. So, write killer page titles using your target keywords at the start and your brand name at the end. Write your perfect meta description by summarising what's on the page, why people should click on your site, rather than any of the other
sites in the search results. And then including some kind
of call to action or next step.
And then you wanna get those page titles and metas updated on your site. But you're not just gonna stick 'em up and leave 'em and never revisit them. You're actually gonna check
back in Search Console to see how your revised
page titles and metas have impacted your click-through
rate from search results. And then once you've updated
your page titles and metas, you're gonna want to keep an eye on how your click-through rate in Search Console changes over time to make sure that your new changes are having a positive effect and you haven't just tanked
your click-through rate and you're getting low traffic. So, I hope you found this video useful on writing the perfect page
title and meta description. Perfect doesn't exist, but if it did, then hopefully it'll be a
result of watching this video. Don't forget to like and
subscribe and comment. If you want us to cover any other topics in our weekly, twice weekly, however many videos we do per
week, then leave a comment.
And don't forget also to
check us out on social media, we're extremely active,
there's shinobis everywhere. And don't forget also,
if you want some help improving your website's
visibility in search, you wanna generate more
leads and sales through it, then you can request a free website and marketing review from
the ninjas at Exposure Ninja. What we'll do is take a look at your site, how you're driving traffic to it, we'll also have a look at what
your competitors are doing and what's working best in your space.
We'll put all of this
into a 15 minute video, which we'll send over to you via email, usually within three to four working days. It's awesome. Go and check out some of its
reviews on Google and Facebook. Until the next video,
keep chasing perfection. You will never attain it. But hey, we've got to chase something..
