Title tags & meta descriptions explained

You can have a beautifully designed website, useful content and exactly the service somebody is searching for – but before they visit your website, you still have to persuade them to click on it.

That is where title tags and meta descriptions come in.

They are small details in the code of a webpage, but they can have a surprisingly large influence on how your pages are presented in search results and, importantly, whether somebody chooses your website rather than the result above or below it.

They’ve been part of SEO for a very long time. The way Google uses them has changed over the years, but writing them properly is still an important part of good on-page SEO.

What is a title tag?

A title tag is the HTML title given to an individual webpage. It helps search engines understand what that particular page is about and is one of the sources Google can use when creating the clickable title shown in its search results.

For example, the title for a website design page might be:

Website Design Eastbourne & Sussex | Influense Design

Rather than something rather less useful such as:

Home | Influense Design

Every important page of a website should have its own descriptive title that accurately reflects the content of that page.

Google recommends making titles descriptive and concise, avoiding vague wording, unnecessary repetition and keyword stuffing.

In other words, don’t try something like:

Web Design Sussex | Sussex Web Designer | Website Designer Sussex | Web Design East Sussex

That isn’t optimisation. That’s just repeatedly shouting the same thing at Google whilst hoping nobody notices.

Do title tags still matter for SEO?

Yes. A good title gives search engines useful information about the subject of a page and helps establish its relevance to a search.

But title tags should be written for people as well as search engines.

Someone looking through a page of search results is making a series of very quick decisions. Your title needs to tell them:

• what the page is about
• whether it matches what they searched for
• why it might be worth clicking

That makes a title tag both an SEO element and a tiny piece of advertising for the page.

It’s another reason why the structure and content of a website need to be considered as part of the website design process rather than SEO being bolted on afterwards.

Google may change your title

One important difference from when I originally wrote this article back in 2013 is that the title tag you provide isn’t necessarily the exact title Google will display.

Google calls the clickable heading in its results a title link.

Your title tag is one of the sources it can use to create that title link, but Google can also consider headings, prominent text on the page, anchor text from links and other information.

So writing a good title doesn’t guarantee Google will reproduce it word-for-word.

What it does is give Google a strong, relevant title to work with.

Clear page content and sensible heading structure help too. If your title says one thing, your H1 says another and the page itself seems to be about something else entirely, you’re making Google’s job unnecessarily difficult.

What is a meta description?

The meta description is a short description of the content of a webpage.

It may appear underneath the title in a search result and gives you an opportunity to explain what somebody will find if they click through.

For example:

Independent website designer in Eastbourne creating bespoke WordPress websites for businesses across Sussex. Professional design, development & ongoing support.

Unlike the title tag, the meta description isn’t a direct Google ranking factor, that description tag is plain text – you can’t add links or formatting to a meta description – but it gives the searcher a concise summary of the page and a reason to click.

That doesn’t make it unimportant.

A useful description can make a search result more relevant and appealing to the person looking at it. And ultimately, attracting the right person to click through to your website is rather the point of appearing in the search results in the first place.

Will Google always use my meta description?

No – and this is another area where SEO advice has changed considerably over the years.

Google frequently creates the search snippet from content it finds on the page itself. It may use your meta description when it considers it an appropriate description for the particular search, but it can display something different.

This actually makes sense.

A single page might be relevant to several different searches. A paragraph buried halfway down your page could answer someone’s particular query better than the general description you wrote for the page.

Google can therefore show a snippet based on that paragraph instead.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t write meta descriptions. It means you should write good ones while recognising that Google ultimately decides what appears in its results.

How long should title tags & meta descriptions be?

You’ll often see very precise recommendations such as “50–60 characters (or about 600 pixels)” and “150–160 characters for a description”.

They’re useful guidelines, but they’re not laws.

Google doesn’t simply count characters and chop everything off at an exact number. Search results are displayed according to the available space and can vary between devices.

So rather than obsessing over squeezing a title into an arbitrary character count, concentrate on making it:

clear, concise, relevant and useful.

Put the most important information towards the beginning and remove words that aren’t doing anything useful.

The same applies to descriptions. Write enough to explain the page and encourage the click without trying to cram your entire sales pitch into a search result.

Should every page have a different title & description?

Where practical, yes.

If twenty pages all have exactly the same title and description, you’re giving search engines very little help in understanding how those pages differ.

A page about logo design should have a title and description about logo design.

A page about WordPress development should describe WordPress development.

And an article about local SEO for small businesses should have metadata relevant to local SEO.

It sounds obvious, but duplicate, generic and forgotten metadata is still remarkably common.

This is particularly important as a website grows. New pages are added, services change and articles are published, but older metadata can easily be forgotten.

Don’t stuff keywords into them

Keywords still have a place in a title when they accurately describe what the page is about.

If you’ve created a page specifically about website design in Eastbourne, it is perfectly reasonable for the title to include Website Design Eastbourne.

What you don’t need is every possible variation of that phrase squeezed into the same title.

Search optimisation has moved a long way from simply repeating keywords.

Good SEO starts with creating genuinely useful pages around subjects your potential customers are actually searching for. Your titles, headings, copy, internal links and descriptions should then make the purpose of those pages clear.

That’s also why I treat SEO as part of the wider process of planning and building a website rather than as a collection of tricks applied once the site is finished.

How can I check my existing titles & descriptions?

A quick Google site: search can still be useful:

site:influense.design

It gives you a rough view of pages from your website appearing in Google’s index and can reveal some obvious problems.

But don’t treat it as a definitive audit of your website.

For something more useful, Google Search Console can show which pages are receiving impressions and clicks and the searches that are generating them.

If a page is appearing frequently but receiving relatively few clicks, its title, description and – more importantly – whether the page actually satisfies the searcher’s intent are all worth investigating.

SEO plugins such as Yoast SEO, which I use on WordPress websites, also make it straightforward to create and edit titles and meta descriptions for individual pages and posts.

Don’t forget the page itself

This is perhaps the biggest change in thinking since I originally wrote this article.

Title tags and meta descriptions shouldn’t be treated in isolation.

Google can use the actual content of a page when generating both its title link and search snippet. That makes clear headings, relevant copy and a properly structured website more important than ever.

A carefully written meta description can’t rescue a weak page.

Likewise, a good page shouldn’t be let down by a vague title such as “Services” or a description automatically pulled from the first few words on the page.

The two need to work together.

Small details can make a big difference

Title tags and meta descriptions are hardly the most glamorous part of website design.

Nobody is going to admire your new meta description over your shoulder.

But they sit at an important point between your website and the people searching for what you offer.

A good title helps explain the page. A good description can help persuade someone to visit it. Strong page content gives Google enough context to understand what the page is really about.

None of them works particularly well in isolation.

And considering how much time businesses spend worrying about getting onto Google, it’s worth spending a little time thinking about what people actually see when they find you there.