What are Page Titles & Meta Descriptions?

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What is a page title?

The page title, also known as a title tag, is a brief description of a webpage that appears at the top of a browser in Google search results. It is one of the most crucial parts of optimising a website for search engines to find and understand what your site has to offer.

There are a number of ways to optimise your page title, but it is really critical to include your main ‘keyword’ at the beginning of the title since this is a major ranking factor for your site. When it comes to character count, we recommend you stay within 60-65 characters.

What is a meta description?

Meta descriptions give you a little more space to tell the user what your site is about & what you have to offer. It’s an opportunity for you to give them a compelling reason to click through to the site. There shouldn’t be more than 160 characters in your meta description, as this will cause it to ‘truncate’ within the search results and mean that the reader might miss what you have to offer. Try to use highly relevant keywords from that specific page & place them near the front to catch the reader’s eyes. This doesn’t have the same ranking impact as your page titles but is still critical for getting users to click through from the search results..

Every page on your site will have a different topic, so each description should be unique. Include a call to action within your meta description so that you can clearly explain what your readers should do. For example, using things like “take a look here” or “check us out today”.

Lastly, it is a smart idea to check your description and title using the Google SERP snippets tool. This will show you how long your description is in pixels since Google is measuring the size of the text to determine if it will fit on the page. It will let you know if the text won’t fit on the Search result as it will be highlighted in red next to your description.

Page titles & meta descriptions

Page titles and meta descriptions are a crucial part of SEO and engaging with users to try to drive them to your website. Don’t skip this or ignore it. Whether you found this article helpful or learned a thing or two, here at The Spark Agency we’re here to help. Our team of highly trained digital marketing members are ready to assist you with all things SEO, PPC & Social Media.

Get in touch & speak to one of our friendly team members today!