Meta Title


The meta title refers to the title of a HTML document that is displayed both in Search Engine result snippets as well as the page's tab in browsers. Alternative descriptions include "title tag" or "page title". Adding a title to the page's HTML is done so within the <head> of the document, using the <title> tag. 

What is a meta title?

The page title is a mandatory element in HTML and is noted in the <head> area of the document. Alternative designations of the meta title are "title tag", "page title" or simply "title". The addition "meta" is theoretically wrong, because it is not a meta specification in the actual sense. In practice, however, the title is counted as a meta-data in the header of a web page.

General information on meta titles

The meta title is an important element for both users and search engines as it convey's the document's primary topic and purpose. It is used to form the headings of entries in SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) and can therefore increase clicks through to a ranking web page or document. As well as this, the title is shown in the document's browser tab and some social networks use the title as a heading when the page has been shared.




Therefore, it's usually a best practice to provide a clear, concise and descriptive title of the page's contents within the 50-60 character limit to help searchers make the best selection on the SERP. 

Additionally, the ranking algorithm of Google and other popular Search Engines calculate the value of the keywords in the meta title very highly, so it can provide positive ranking signals. 


What does a good meta title need?

The meta title can be considered a low hanging fruit because of its high potential to impact CTR (click-through-rate) and rankings. This is different to meta-descriptions which which no longer have ranking relevance. From an SEO perspective, a good title should only be used once for a website, and should contain the following elements:

  • The main topic or keyword to describe the page semantically. For large websites with many pages, a so-called bulk optimization could be ideal to describe the content and cover long-tail-keywords.
  • Inclusion of the company, brand or the service, to target branding effects.
  • The site’s relevance for the user, or the value which the content brings. This can be a stimulating factor to visit the site and therefore to increase the CTR.


The following aspects of meta title creation should be avoided:

  • Sequences of keywords. This is seen by Google as Keyword Stuffing and therefore as spam which can lead to a manual penalty and loss of rankings.
  • Irrelevant keywords, for example spelling terms differently, or using keywords that are very general and don't describe the content.
  • Keywords which don't differentiate between other pages.

Technical limitations of the meta title

Content Overriding 

Google doesn’t always honour a page's defined meta title tag, but can sometimes provide their own information pulled from the document if perceived usability is expected to improve. If a title includes “Click here” or other explicit calls to action that aim to drive clicks rather than provide value, the title will likely be overridden to suit the user’s search term better.

Length Limit

Although there is now no official meta title length limit from Google, it is common best practice to provide a title within 50-60 characters to avoid it being truncated within the SERPs, and appended with a "...". This could result in important contextual information being left out from the searcher's view.

One should also pay close attention to how meta titles are displayed on mobile devices due to the fact the snippet space may be reduced. With mobile searches exceeding those of desktop, it's crucial to also pay attention to one's appearance on mobile devices. 

Emojis

It is possible to add emojis to meta titles as an attempt to help them stand out further, especially for domains that target younger audiences. However, not all emojis are guaranteed to be displayed in the Search Engine Result snippet and should be tested first before full roll-out across the website. It is usually a best practice to add emojis as their HTML entity rather than copying and pasting icons. 


Significance of meta titles for search engine optimization

The meta title is significant for Search Engine Optimization. It is considered to be an important ranking signal and should therefore be chosen wisely. If changes are made to the title, these won't be visible immediately and it can take a few days until the title is visible in the SERPs. How quickly the new page title is adopted depends, among other things, on how often the website is crawled. To force Google to quickly update a meta title, reindexing the page using Google Search Console can help speed up the process. 


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