Create good titles and snippets in search results with Rank Math SEO Plugin.
If your page appears in a search results page, the contents of the title may appear in the first line of the results (if you’re unfamiliar with the different parts of a Google Search result, you might want to check out the anatomy of a search result video).
The title for your homepage can list the name of your website/business and could include other bits of important information like the physical location of the business or maybe a few of its main focuses or offerings.
Accurately describe the page’s content
Choose a title that reads naturally and effectively communicates the topic of the page’s content.
Avoid:
- Choosing a title that has no relation to the content on the page.
- Using default or vague titles like “Untitled” or “New Page 1”.
Create unique titles for each page
Each page on your site should ideally have a unique title, which helps Google know how the page is distinct from the others on your site. If your site uses separate mobile pages, remember to use good titles on the mobile versions too.
Avoid:
- Using a single title across all of your site’s pages or a large group of pages.
Use brief, but descriptive titles
Titles can be both short and informative. If the title is too long or otherwise deemed less relevant, Google may show only a portion of it or one that’s automatically generated in the search result. Google may also show different titles depending on the user’s query or device used for searching.
Avoid:
- Using extremely lengthy titles that are unhelpful to users.
- Stuffing unneeded keywords in your tags.
Use the description meta tag
A page’s description meta tag gives Google and other search engines a summary of what the page is about. A page’s title may be a few words or a phrase, whereas a page’s description meta tag might be a sentence or two or even a short paragraph. Like the “Do you want to learn how to increase your traffic from Google with Rank Math SEO Plugin? SEO Lesson 1 – Page Title And Meta Description Tutorial.”
What are the merits of description meta tags?
Description meta tags are important because Google might use them as snippets for your pages. Note that we say “might” because Google may choose to use a relevant section of your page’s visible text if it does a good job of matching up with a user’s query. Adding description meta tags to each of your pages is always a good practice in case Google cannot find a good selection of text to use in the snippet. The Google Search Central blog has informative posts on improving snippets with better description meta tags.
Accurately summarize the page content
Write a description that would both inform and interest users if they saw your description meta tag as a snippet in a search result. While there’s no minimal or maximal length for the text in a description meta tag, we recommend making sure that it’s long enough to be fully shown in Search (note that users may see different sized snippets depending on how and where they search), and contains all the relevant information users would need to determine whether the page will be useful and relevant to them.
Avoid:
- Writing a
descriptionmeta tag that has no relation to the content on the page. - Using generic descriptions like “This is a web page” or “Page about baseball cards”.
- Filling the description with only keywords.
- Copying and pasting the entire content of the document into the
descriptionmeta tag.
Use unique descriptions for each page
Having a different description meta tag for each page helps both users and Google, especially in searches where users may bring up multiple pages on your domain (for example, searches using the site: operator). If your site has thousands or even millions of pages, hand-crafting description meta tags probably isn’t feasible. In this case, you could automatically generate description meta tags based on each page’s content.
Avoid:
- Using a single
descriptionmeta tag across all of your site’s pages or a large group of pages.
