The Page Meta Title or title tag and Meta Description are meta tags or HyperText Markup Language (HTML) elements that provide brief information to search engines and users on what the web page is all about. These are the first things people see when you appear in Search Engine Results Pages (SERP).

What is the difference between a Meta Title and Meta Description?

When displayed on SERP, you can view a Meta Title and Meta Description above and below the website link, respectively.

A Meta Title also appears on the web browser tab when you view a page of your website. It is the “title” of a web page and mainly restricts 50 to 70 characters.

A Meta Description outlines the overall content of a web page. Search engines display it in a limited number of characters, such as 160 characters for Google’s SERP.

How does Meta Title and Description help with SEO?

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It is a process of optimising your website to get free traffic or visits through the SERP. SEO helps boost brand awareness and increase sales leads. You need to rank high and appear on the first page to be seen by your target audience immediately.

There are many SEO strategies to improve your ranking; adding Page Meta Title and Description are one of those.

You can optimise Meta Titles by placing relevant keywords to help improve search engine rankings. This tells search engines what keywords you want to rank for.

Meta Descriptions do not directly impact search engine rankings. But you can use it to gain click-through rates which ultimately helps boost rankings.

Tip: Create concise and compelling Meta Titles and Descriptions to draw users to click on them.

Here are five best practices to optimise Meta Title and Description for SEO:

1. Keywords First — Insert the most important keywords in the first part of Meta Titles and least essential keywords at the end.
   
   Learn more about keyword research in this article.
2. Avoid Keyword Stuffing — Keyword stuffing is putting a lot of keywords in a Meta Title and Description. Once detected by search engines, your site could drop badly in rankings.
3. Stay Relevant — Meta Titles and Descriptions should be descriptive and relevant to what the web page is all about. If it doesn’t suitably answer a user’s query, search engines will get a snippet within the site page and override your original content.
4. No Quotation Marks — Don’t use quotation marks in Meta Descriptions because search engines cut off the content where the quotation starts.
5. Keep It Unique — Keep Meta Title and Description unique for each page of your website. Duplicates will not look good in SERP, which can affect your click-through rates negatively.

Optimise your Sitebeat website for SEO by adding Page Meta Title and Description.