Your SEO titles must briefly and accurately communicate what your page is all about. It should contain keywords or phrases that are relevant to your content. On the search engines results pages (SERPs), the SEO title tag appears as the clickable display title for a specific result. It is also seen at the top of the browser. When your user has multiple tabs open, the title tag serves as his/her guide to identify which tab has your content.

Meanwhile, the description tag provides a summary of what is in your page. It appears below the clickable title tag on a SERP. An excellent marketing tool, a description tag serves as a venue for you to talk about what you offer and convince search users to visit your page.

Why are SEO titles and description tags important? Search engines refer to the title and description tags to know what your page is all about. Similarly, your users get their first impression of or initial idea about your website using these elements. Technically, the title and description tags are your first point of contact with your potential customers. These elements have the power to increase or decrease traffic to your website. So, if you want to have more visitors, it is not enough for the site to have a good ranking on the SERP; your title and description tags should also be interesting or compelling enough for users to click on the link.

Suffice it to say, title and description tags play integral roles in search engine optimisation efforts. These elements also give search users a good understanding of how your page or site relates to their search query. Moreover, title and description tags can improve click-through rates (CTR) and consequently, drive more traffic to your website.

Given the importance of title and description tags, you shouldn’t take them for granted. Leverage these elements to improve your site’s visibility and get higher click-through rates. Come up with good title and description tags!

How To Write Good SEO Titles And Description Tags

1. The most important and most specific keywords should be at the beginning of the SEO title. This is because keywords placed at the beginning of the title tag have more impact on search rankings.

2. Do not stuff your title with SEO keywords. Also, do not create titles containing variations of the same keyword, e.g. Budget Hotel, Cheap Hotel, Best Hotel, Affordable Hotel. Apart from having no real value for search users, this kind of title can affect your search engine ranking.

3. When you separate the keywords in the SEO title tag with a vertical line ” | “, Google will separate them when reviewing the page – i.e. when you have “Management Courses | Part Time | Dublin Ireland”. Google will think you are focusing on these keywords separately, e.g. “part time” or “Dublin Ireland”. However, if you have “Part Time Management Courses Dublin Ireland”, Google will mix and match all these keywords and show the page for “part time management courses”, “management courses Ireland”, etc.

4. Since SEO title tags are displayed to people on Google search results pages, you should also use them as a marketing tool. So, you need to make them “make sense” to readers, while still keeping the ranking rules in mind (as described above). So, I usually use them in a format like this: “Part Time Management Courses – Management School Dublin Ireland”

5. Many SEO people are very keen on keeping the length of SEO titles to a certain limit of characters. However, from my experience, the only reason this “should” be done is that the whole SEO title won’t be displayed on Google’s search results pages. The thing is, I don’t see this as an issue since at the end of my SEO titles I usually put words like “Dublin Ireland”, and it is not a big deal if these are not displayed. The same goes for description tags. I actually think it is useful to have a few more words in the title as it helps Google decide whether a particular page is relevant to a specific search term or not.

6. The description tag is for your customers. So, it’s a powerful marketing tool which you can use to its max by mentioning benefits and/or testimonials and adding a call to action. According to Google, it does not consider description tag as a ranking factor anymore. So, don’t be too concerned about creating SEO-focused description tags; instead, focus on writing for your customers.

To learn more about creating good SEO titles and description tags, call us at +353 (0) 89 466 2000 or +353 (0) 1 960 9023 and talk to our SEO specialist.