It’s true: title tags and meta descriptions won’t help your website magically rise to the top of the search engine results. Google confirmed it back in 2007 so let’s kill that myth right at the outset. However, these two elements can improve click through rates and entice people to click on your link rather than the link of one of your competitors. So why do site owners neglect title tags and meta descriptions, pushing them to the back burner?

Title tags and descriptions tell search engines and users what your site is about. They describe the content on each page of your website and explain how it relates to a user’s search query. And, when used properly, they can act as a “hook” of your advertising in the search engine results.

If you don’t know what title tags and meta descriptions are, why they’re important and how to write them to get more prospects to click on your links in search engine results, we’ll explain it all in this short guide.

What are title tags and meta descriptions?

Title tags and meta descriptions are bits of HTML code in the header of a web page. They help search engines understand the content on a page. A page’s title tag and meta description are usually shown whenever that page appears in search engine results. (We’ll look at some examples of this later.)

Well written and compelling meta tags can attract more users to click to your website from the search engine result.

The title tag

The title tag is the title element of a web page that summarises the content found on a page. It will appear in three key places: browsers, search engine results pages, and external sites such as Facebook or Twitter. We’ll look at examples of title tags later.

There’s one important thing to keep in mind. Search engines expect a titles tag to include relevant keywords and phrases that describe what that page is about. So if the title you create is not relevant for the page, Google can choose to show a different title instead. You don’t want that to happen. Why? Because title tags are a great opportunity to attract prospects to click through to your site so make sure it gives an accurate, concise and compelling summary of what that page is about.