Creating Meta Titles and Meta Descriptions

What are meta tags?

Meta tags are pieces of code in your website’s HTML that determine whether and how your website appears in Google. Two important meta tags for marketers are the meta title and the meta description. There are a number of other meta tags that are also essential for your website, such as meta content type and viewport. Your web developer or development team is likely already familiar with these meta tags and has implemented them correctly on your website. If not, there’s work to be done.

What is a meta title?

The search results display a blue link that the user clicks on; this is the page’s meta title. The meta title therefore displays the title of your web page in the search results. By creating a good meta title, you show users that you offer a page that is relevant to their search query.

In the example below, two meta tags are explained: the meta robots tag (which specifies whether search engines are allowed to index a page) and the meta title tag:

Google then displays the meta title in the search results as shown below:

You can see that Google picks up this title and that users click on it to visit our website. Since many users come to our website when they search for an SEO agency, we’ve chosen to place the words “SEO agency” at the beginning of the meta title. That way, we show that we’re relevant to potential visitors.

That’s important because you write the meta title specifically to show that you offer relevant content to users who are searching. By creating a good meta title, you can increase your CTR and help search engines better understand what your page has to offer users.

When does an H1 heading appear as the meta title?

In August 2021, Google rolled out an update that causes it to regularly display the H1 heading as the meta title. The algorithm does this when the specified meta title isn’t relevant enough. It’s best to avoid having Google make these adjustments on its own, because in many cases the H1 heading is actually even less relevant. Furthermore, we often see that the CTR in such situations is lower than when Google displays the meta title you specified.

How to Write a Good Meta Title

Writing the best meta title is a challenge and often a process of trial and error. With Google Search Console, you can easily track the CTR and changes to your optimized pages. To do this, go to the “Performance” report, filter by URL, and then click “CTR” at the top. Fortunately, you don’t have to take a shot in the dark—there are several tips that make writing a meta title easier and more effective.

1) The length of a meta title

A common mistake is creating a title that’s too long. In that case, Google will truncate the title itself or display your page’s H1 heading. Below, you can see what a truncated meta title looks like.

A truncated meta title often has a negative effect on the CTR, and the same applies to situations where Google chooses to display the H1 heading as the meta title. This can be partially prevented by making sure your meta title isn’t too long.

The recommended length for a meta title is between 285 pixels and 575 pixels, which amounts to a maximum of 61 characters. Keep in mind, however, that some characters take up more space than others. For example, UPPERCASE LETTERS are much wider than lowercase letters, and the letter “w” is larger than the letter “i.” For this reason, Google looks at the length in pixels rather than the number of characters.

Check your customized titles in Google regularly and rewrite them if they’re too long (or too short). There are several SEO tools you can use to check your meta titles. For example, you can use our Google SERP Preview Tool, ContentKing, Semrush, or Deepcrawl. Keep in mind that this is a standardized technique, and it’s possible that the tools might overlook some details.

2) How to Write a Meta Title

Place the most important search terms that should help users find the page at the beginning of the meta title. Research by Brian Dean has shown that this helps make the page easier to find. That’s not surprising, since it makes it immediately clear to the user what the page is about. After that, you can add another important search term or a rock-solid short call-to-action (CTA). Finish with your brand name. The structure of your title will then look like this:

{Primaire zoekterm} – {Secundaire zoekterm} | {Merknaam}

An example of this is:

Looking to buy grass seed? The best grass seeds – Graszaaddirect.nl

A word like “TIP” or the year in the title has been shown to increase the CTR by 20%! That’s how simple and effective it can be to experiment with your meta titles.

3) Brand name in the meta title

As mentioned above, it’s important to include your brand name in the title. In most cases, you place it at the end, and sometimes Google does this automatically for you. On the first page of search results, it’s often best to place your brand name at the beginning. If your brand is not well-known yet, you can also choose not to mention the brand name extensively. Try to persuade the user in another way to click on your search result.

4) Unique meta titles

If you have a website with thousands or tens of thousands of pages, writing a unique meta title for each page yourself is a huge task. Don’t try to do this for every single page—instead, focus on the most important ones. Use Analytics to generate a list of your most important organic pages—say, a top 100—and start optimizing those pages manually.

For the remaining pages, try to come up with a simple structure so that each page still has a unique meta title. This can often be automated with a few lines of code, by using a template, or by implementing an existing extension compatible with your CMS. Try to avoid duplicate meta titles as much as possible, as they can sometimes cause duplicate content issues.

In the example above, Wehkamp uses the full product name as the meta title—as indicated by the arrow above—and automatically appends “Wehkamp” to the end of all pages. This ensures that all meta titles are unique and prevents duplicate content.

In e-commerce SEO and platform SEO, it’s common to automate meta titles and meta descriptions using programmatic SEO. This ensures that pages always have a unique meta title. Major platforms like Amazon, for example, use dozens of templates to automatically generate meta titles (and meta descriptions).

What is a meta description?

The meta description is a summary of your page that appears below the meta title in search results. A meta description is not clickable and is not visible on your website itself. Search engines use the meta description to display additional information about your page.

A meta description allows you to display more information about your page; a good meta description is between 430 and 920 pixels in length. This equates to approximately 71 to 153 characters. A good meta description helps increase your CTR.

Bolded search terms in the meta description

When you search for our brand name, you’ll notice that the keyword “SmartRanking” is in bold in the meta description. That’s because this is your search query, and Google uses this to help you find relevant search results more easily.

This is a good example of why it’s a best practice to include your key search term(s) in the meta description—this makes your search result stand out more quickly. That, in turn, leads to a higher CTR. Google also recognizes the plural forms of the terms you use. For example, if a user searches for “grass seed” and your meta description says “grass seeds,” the word “grass seeds” will also appear in bold in the search results.

Google often uses the meta description you provide. However, Google may also choose to generate its own meta description. Research by Ahrefs has shown that Google rewrites the meta description itself in over 62% of search queries. This happens, for example, if you haven’t entered anything, or if Google doesn’t consider the meta description relevant to the search query.

In the first case, Google often selects the first and second lines of the text on your page as the meta description. In the second case, Google selects a sentence that the algorithm deems most relevant. You have little control over this, except by making sure you always use a good and relevant meta description.

Why is a meta description important?

A meta description is important largely for the same reasons as the meta title:

How do I write a good meta description?

Writing a good meta description can also be a challenge at times. Our advice is to test different meta descriptions to find out which ones generate the highest CTR. This varies greatly depending on the target audience and industry, so there is no single “perfect” format for meta descriptions. These tips will help you with this:

1) The ideal length of a meta description

Google uses different lengths for meta descriptions on desktop and mobile. A meta description in mobile search results is often longer than a meta description in the desktop version of Google. However, it is not possible to specify different types of meta descriptions. Therefore, it is recommended to use a length between 430 pixels (70 characters) and 920 pixels (155 characters).

Meta descriptions that are too long result in the well-known … at the end of the description, while meta descriptions that are too short cause Google to generate its own meta description more quickly. Just as with meta titles, capital letters take up more space than lowercase letters in a meta description. For both the meta title and the meta description, Google therefore considers the length in pixels.

2) Structure of the meta description

Start as far to the beginning as possible in the meta description with your page’s most important keyword. Entice users by adding a specific CTA or a USP. Then include 1 or 2 of the most important latent keywords in your meta description, so that the search result is also relevant to users with a slightly different search query. It’s important that you actually cover these keywords on the underlying page.

The example above is a search for “cheap airline tickets.” Google is a semantic search engine (it understands what the user is looking for and makes connections), so it immediately recognized that “cheap flights” means the same thing and has the same search intent. In this case, by adding a latent keyword to the meta description, you’ve created two bolded keywords. A clever trick in this description is that it mentions KLM, EasyJet, Transavia, and Ryanair. This way, the description is also relevant for a search query such as “cheap flights Transavia.”

3) Use of special characters in the meta description

You can really go all out with special characters in the meta description. For example, with characters like: ✅ ☎ #16 ♥ ⭐ ✔. Keep in mind, though, that Google always prioritizes readability. The SERP shouldn’t look like a carnival, and the meta description must be relevant to your target audience. So use colors sparingly and opt for multiple HTML checkmarks, as in the Momondo example above. Sometimes Google ignores your emojis; in that case, the algorithm deems them irrelevant to your target audience.

4) Use unique meta descriptions

Just like with meta titles, Google doesn’t like duplicate meta descriptions. Make sure your website has unique meta descriptions, and be sure to write the meta descriptions yourself—at least for the most important organic pages. When optimizing on a large platform, it’s recommended—just as with meta titles—to use templates and variables to make your descriptions unique.

Conclusion

Using the tips above, you can get started right away on optimizing your meta titles and meta descriptions. Keep in mind that there’s no one-size-fits-all rule. The ideal meta titles and meta descriptions vary depending on the website, target audience, page (or group of pages), and search intent. So be sure to thoroughly test the impact of your changes and keep a close eye on Google Search Console.