When optimising a website for search, what impact do meta and title tags have on the search engine?

4 min readJul 1, 2021

What impact do meta and title tags have on the search engine?

Most of the website owners often neglect title tags and meta description in their web pages.

These two elements can improve click-through-rates (CTR) and attract more people to click on your link rather than the other search results.

• Title tags essentially decide how your audience as well as search engines read your title. They are HTML elements that tells about the web page title.

• The meta description help the search engine in identifying the nature of the webpage. It explains to each engines and (sometimes) users themselves what your page is about.

Before starting with the topic, let’s first try to understand what are meta descriptions and title tags.

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Title Tags:

Title tags are HTML elements that specify about the page title. They are the 2nd most important on-page factor after content. It’s basically the headline on the SERP (search engine results page).

When you open a search engine results page, you see the title for each of the displayed results. Title tags help users as well as the search engines understand the content of a page.

HTML Code:

<head>
<title>Your title/text here</title>
</head>

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Impact of title tags

Title tags are the first thing that any audience sees once they enter the search results. A clear title that’s relevant to your page is a sign of good page for both humans and search engines.

When your title tags attracts the user then search engines prioritize your page and it’s content, that’s what title tag optimization do!

Optimization of Title Tags

Title tags should be short (50–55 characters) as they will be easier to read by the users.
If your title tag is too long, search engines will cut off your title with an ellipsis (…) so readers and search engines won’t be able to see the entire title tag.
Your title tag should contain your main focus keywords that are relevant to the content
Title tags if optimised with right keywords, can help you rank better in Google search results
Use unique title tags
Don’t forget to use your brand name in title tags
Use action words like Get, Take, Boost, Learn etc

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Meta description

The meta description is also an HTML attribute(just like title tag) that provides the brief the summary of a web page.
Search engines such as Google display(not always) the meta description in search results, which can draw the attention of the searches hence influencing click-through rates.

HTML Code Sample

Impact of Meta description

Search engines say there is no direct SEO benefit from the meta description as they don’t use it in their ranking algorithm any more.

But there is an indirect benefit: Google uses click-through-rate (CTR) to know the performance of your site and compelling meta description has the power to raise the click-through rate of your organic search results.

If more people click on your link in the search results, Google considers that your content is helping it’s users and then moves you up the rankings.

So now you know why optimizing your meta description is important.

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Optimization of Meta Description

Optimal length of meta description is 150–155 characters. Although there is no limit but keep it short yet sufficiently descriptive as Google usually cut short long meta descriptions.
It should be directly relevant to the topic it describes, and unique from the other descriptions of search results.
Try to focus on what the reader will get from clicking. Favour “your” over “our”
Use relevant keywords in the meta description

Keep in mind, there is no guarantee Google will display the meta description that you’ve written.

But, as there is a chance, it’s always worth the effort to add it to your post or page.

Conclusion

Title tags and meta descriptions tell search engines and users what your site is about.
They describe the content on each page of your website in a summarised way and explain how it relates to a user’s search query.
If these two are used properly, they can significantly impact your SEO and hence improve your website ranking.
Catchy title tags and compelling meta description can attract more users to click to your website from the search engine results.

Also Read : How to Increase Traffic to Your Blog / Website

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