How to write effective meta title and description – 2020 SEO Best Practices
Are you one of the webmasters who is struggling to get your website rank higher and increase your CTR and organic traffic?
Have you read somewhere about meta title and description and worried to write effective meta title and description that boost your organic traffic?
This is a perfect blog for you to understand the best practices you should follow to write effective meta title and description.
Before proceeding about best practice let me give you a short description of meta title and description
Meta title and description:
Meta title and description are small HTML code that you should add in web page header which helps search engine to understand the entire content of your page.
Where Meta title and description are shown?
Meta title and description are short snippets that display in search result which describes your webpage as shown in the below image.
Your Meta title tag is shown at the top of the web browser. When someone opens multiple tabs, meta title act as a placeholder to ensure that visitors don’t lose track of your content.
To view your meta description and meta title you can use
https://seomofo.com/snippet-optimizer.html
Keep reading…
Tips to write effective meta title and description:
- Write a reasonable length :
It advised having meta title no more than 60 characters and meta description no more than 160 characters.
Usually, Google will truncate the meta description if you have more than 160 characters as shown in the fig below
In some cases, Google will fetch content from the website if your meta description is not catchy and doesn’t follow the best practices.
For below google results google fetched content from the website and total character of below example shows more than 160 characters.
Yes in some cases we may get description more than 160 character
2. Unique Meta Title and description :
Make sure to write a unique meta title for each page. Unique meta title helps google to understand how unique each page.
3. Avoid alphanumeric character in meta description :
As double quotation are used in HTML of the meta description, Google cuts off the description from the double quotation mark when it appears on a SERP. To avoid this problem It is suggested not to have any alphanumeric character in the meta description.
4. Avoid so many keywords in the title :
Avoid adding so many keywords in Meta title and description as it may affect user experience which results in a decrease in CTR. Your meta description and title should encourage your user to click on your website.
5. Add engaging word in Meta title
Some Meta title ideas you can use to improve your CTR are :
Low price – Visitor tends to click on your website if you mention the low price
Updated – Visitors always wanted to update content. So it is important to have updated content on your website.
For example, you can mention 2020 trends, latest tips which trigger visitors to click on your website.
Volume – Mentioning volume always triggers visitors to click on your website.
Speed and easy – Visitors always wanted to get faster and easy tips. So it is advised to use triggering words like easy and fast in the meta title.
Add Benefits – Add benefits of your services, content in your meta title that encourage your visitors to click on the website.
6. Prioritize your Keywords :
According to MOZ, keywords closer to the beginning of the title may have a higher impact on search results. It is advised to use high priority keywords at the beginning of the title.
7. Focus on your customer intent :
It is important to focus on your customer intent. Customer intent may vary.
Customer intent :
Knowledge –
Visit –
Do –
Buy –
It is important to consider customer intent while writing the meta title.
8. Make use of the brand name in meta title :
There is two main advantage of using the brand name in the meta title.
1 – If you’re a well-established brand you can make use of your brand power in meta title to increase your CTR.
2 – You can use the brand name in meta title to create your brand awareness.
9. Use call to action in meta title :
You have to optimize your meta title and description that entice people to click on your website. Adding a call to action increase your CTR which increases organic traffic.
10. Avoid complex words :
Don’t use complex words in your title and description. Always make use of simple words so that visitors can understand clearly.
In Some cases, your meta title and description don’t show in search results.
Reasons, why google, won’t show your meta title and description ;
- Keyword stuffed meta title and description
- When your title and description don’t match the search query.
- When your title and description is too long or too short
- When you have multiple meta description
Avoid all the above points to show your title and description in search results.
Common Technical SEO Issues and Problems
Comment below if we missed out any other best practices.
Post Your Comment