What is a meta title?
Simply put, a meta title is a meta tag that does two basic things:
- Tell web crawlers what page title to display in search engine results pages (SERPs)
- Provide search engines with more context as to what a page or piece of content is all about
If you want a more in-depth understanding of this topic, check out the FAQ section below:
Question #1: How do I write a good meta title?
To write a good meta title, you need to be:
- Concise. A meta tile can only be about 60 characters long before it gets cut off. This means that you should always try to keep yours under that limit. But if you really must go over 60 characters, make sure that you put the most important information upfront so users browsing SERPs see it.
- Clear. Aside from keeping things short, you also need to make sure that your meta title gets the point across in the simplest way possible. Keep in mind that you are competing with a lot of other pages for the user’s attention on SERPs. If you do not immediately make it clear what your content is about and what the user will get out of it, chances are they will move on to another search result.
- Compelling. Most search engines display 10 organic results per page. This means you need to outshine at least nine other pages to get users to click on your link, which is why it is extremely important to craft meta titles that give users a clear and compelling reason to do so
- Purpose-driven. Users perform web searches with a particular purpose in mind (a.k.a the search intent). The better you understand the search intent of your target audience and the better you can align your meta title with it, the higher the odds that your target audience will choose you over all the other search results they are presented with.
Question #2: What are things to avoid when writing it?
The most important things to avoid when writing a meta title include:
- Being verbose. As we have seen in the previous section, you only get about 60 characters before your meta title gets cut off in SERPs—that and you need to make it as easy as possible for the user to understand what your page or content is about and what they will get out of clicking on your link if you do not want them to end up tuning you out.
- Using the same one for all pages. You need to help search engines make sense not only of the content of each page on your website but your overall content structure as well. Using the same (or extremely similar) meta titles for all your pages does the exact opposite of that.
- Stuffing too many keywords in. Doing so makes your meta titles sound totally unnatural—which brings us to our next point:
- Writing exclusively for web crawlers. While meta titles do help web crawlers better understand your content, it is actual human users who will see and interpret it on SERPs.
- Use your company or website name. Again, the primary purpose of your meta titles is to help web crawlers and users understand what your content is about.
Question #3: Will crafting a good meta title help me rank?
Not necessarily. You see, while a good meta title can definitely help web crawlers make better sense of your page or content, it is just one of the many factors search engines look at to determine just how relevant said page or content is to particular search terms.
The goal then is to not only make sure your meta titles are good but also get everything else right, including the actual content and content structure of your website if you want to increase your chances of ranking high in search.