August 4 2022

How to optimise page titles and meta descriptions to improve SEO

Optimising your web pages and articles is a great way to rank higher up on search engine results. This article will show you how to effectively optimise your web pages and articles through page titles and meta descriptions.

What are page titles?

Page titles are the very first part of information that is present on the page. It should summarise the entire page with just one statement or question. For example, If you wanted to write an article about SEO you could use either of these potential titles:

What is SEO?
A definitive guide to SEO

How do you optimise page titles with SEO

Optimising page titles isn’t too difficult. It’s recommended that all page’s start with an <h1> tag, within this tag will be your page title. In terms of SEO, this tells search engines that this piece of information is what the page is about.

When deciding on what your page title should be, always consider which keywords best describe your page’s contents. This article’s page title is “How to optimise page titles and meta descriptions to improve SEO”. In terms of keywords, it covers a lot of ground:

Optimise page titles
Optimise meta description
Improve SEO

You could potentially have someone searching for just one of those phrases and still coming across the article. Using a variety of keywords will give search engine users more opportunity to find your web page.

To find how out how many people search for your keywords on a monthly basis, use trends.google.com

If you are a business that is looking to attract local customers, try to include the name of where you are located, for example:

SEO Services for Kent Businesses

What is Metadata?

As well as the content on your web page, Google also reads your metadata. It uses this information, and the keywords within it, to determine how relevant the web page is to each search results page.

If you’re searching for marketing services nearby, but your metadata only includes keywords based on web design, Google will determine that your web page isn’t relevant to what you’re searching for.

Metadata is only visible on search results pages, not your actual web page.

How to optimise meta titles with SEO

Like page titles, meta titles describe what your page is about. It is best to make your meta titles different to your page titles in order to cover more keywords.

Our page title examples from before are a great example:

Page title = What is SEO?: This asks a question that many people will search for.

Meta title = A definitive guide to SEO: This broadens your search term potential.

With the meta title above, your web page could potentially be found when searching:

SEO Guides
Conclusive Guide to SEO
Guide to SEO
Ultimate Guide to SEO

This is because search engines take into account the use of synonyms. The word, “definitive”, is a synonym for both “conclusive” and “ultimate”.

How to optimise meta descriptions with SEO

Meta descriptions will describe what your page is about, like meta titles, but with more detail. Because of its larger character limit, this gives you an opportunity to fit in more keywords, ideally synonyms of keywords that have already been used.

It is important not to spam keywords within your metadata, search engines will recognise this and penalise your web page – pushing it further down on search results pages.

Where can I find my metadata on WordPress?

It’s recommended to install the Yoast SEO plugin on your WordPress website. Once installed, edit one of your web pages, and scroll down to the Yoast SEO section.