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SEO Titles & Meta Descriptions
You know when you search for something and the results page gives you the little blurb title and description? Those are called SEO titles and meta descriptions, a crucial factor to SEO ranking. Not only are these a gold mine opportunity to plug in your site’s relevant keywords, but they allow you to grab the viewer’s attention and hopefully get them to enter your website.
These are trickier than they sound though, as you have to keep in mind text length, text relevancy, and optimal use of keywords and calls-to-action. SEO titles and meta descriptions rely heavily on a rather strict character count/pixel width, too. This makes it almost like a game where you’re trying to find the perfect balance between using the most keywords as possible, being relevant, and being within space limit, all while trying to persuade the user to enter into your website.
SEO Titles
The ideal length is determined through pixels rather than words or character count. The amount of characters you use is not set in stone – it is entirely dependent on which characters you use. For example, an SEO title will be able to fit far more I’s and J’s in comparison to W’s, M’s and other wider or capitalized letters.
Google allows for up to 600px of width for your SEO title, so do your best to use up the most of those 600px but be sure not to under-write as it’s a missed opportunity to include more keywords or other important information. If I’m a little short on my SEO title lengths, I like to add the location of the business to the end like the state abbreviation or city. It doesn’t take up a ton of space and it’s valuable for producing organic search results for people looking for things near them.
Meta Descriptions
Meta descriptions on the other hand do rely on a character count. Google’s ideal length for a meta description is 155 to 170 characters, and you should always do what you can to maintain a length within that range. Anything shorter than 155 characters is simply a missed opportunity to utilize keywords, CTAs, and other information. Anything longer than 170 characters will get cut off with “…” at the end, which isn’t as aesthetically pleasing. So, when creating these, always strive to be within the character range.
When writing meta descriptions, relevancy is very important. If someone clicks on your link thinking they’re going to a page about something, but they’re brought to a page about something different, Google will pick up on it, and therefore, drop your websites ranking on the SERP. It’s also best practice to use keywords in your meta descriptions wherever possible. This is important because these are the terms people use to look for a business on a search engine. If you use popular keywords in your meta descriptions, you’re more likely to get more traffic and increase your SERP rankings.
Check out the SERPs for executive coaching in Chicago. In the meta description of the first result (red rectangle) we see Google has bolded words in the description that it has deemed relevant to the phrase searched. Although personalized leadership training wasn't the exact term searched for, it was a close enough variant and returned in the search.
We also notice that the first result had a fully optimized meta description, while the result below only shows a partial description that begins with a ... and is not a complete sentence. A user might be less likely to click on this result because the meta description does not do a great job of attracting the users attention to earn a click.
Pro Tip: When writing meta descriptions is to include a call-to-action (CTA). CTA’s are wording that attempts to persuade or influence somebody to visit your website. Common CTA terms used include, “Discover…”, “Explore…”, “Check out…”, “Learn more about…”, and many, many more. These are some of the little things that when included, can make a difference for your website in regard to gaining traffic and completing conversions.
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