Key Takeaways
- SEO Metadata Optimization: Metadata (titles & descriptions) are crucial for SEO, helping Google understand your page and influencing click-through rates.
- Include Your Keywords: Include your target keyword, and place it in your metadata for better visibility in search results. Well-written meta titles & descriptions can indirectly affect rankings.
- Leverage AI Tools: Utilize AI tools to create or optimize meta titles and descriptions in 1 click, ensuring they are relevant, engaging, and aligned with SEO best practices.
What is Metadata in SEO?
Meta data tags are HTML element that provides a short summary of a webpage. They consist of a Meta Title (also known as Title Tag) and a Meta Description. It can appear as a snippet below the page’s URL and title in Google’s search engine results pages (SERPs).
Google automatically creates a snippet for your pages by considering the search query, the content on the page, and the page’s meta data. It selects the option that best matches the user’s search intent.
This means your meta descriptions need to be unique, descriptive, and relevant to the page.
Here’s an example of what a meta description might look like on a SERP:
How Impactful Are Meta Titles & Descriptions On Google?
Meta titles and descriptions play a crucial role in the SEO process & how your content is perceived by both search engines and users, significantly impacting your website’s performance on Google. While meta titles directly influence search rankings by helping Google understand the topic and relevance of your page, meta descriptions, though not a ranking factor, are key in driving click-through rates (CTR).
SEO Metadata Best Practices
Meta Keywords SEO Best Practices
- Use a free SEO tool like Google’s Ads keyword planner to perform keyword research to find your primary keyword to target.
- Your target keyword should have a defined keyword intent, have high search volume, have a lower keyword difficulty score, and be a non-branded keyword.
- Include your target keyword at the beginning of your title tag.
Related: How To Perform a Light Technical SEO Site Audit
Meta Title SEO Best Practices
When crafting SEO meta titles, it’s essential to follow best practices to maximize visibility and click-through rates. A good meta title should be concise, ideally under 55 characters, to ensure it displays fully in search results. Including the primary keyword at the beginning of the title helps search engines and users quickly understand the page’s content. Additionally, the title should be compelling and relevant, encouraging users to click through to the site.
Examples:
- “SEO Services & Strategy | Boost Your Rankings with [Your Brand Name]”
- “Buy Affordable Running Shoes | Top Brands & Free Shipping”
Using tools like Yoast SEO, you can automate and optimize your meta titles by generating snippet variables, such as the current year, to keep your content timely and relevant. For example, using a variable like %%currentyear%% in your title can automatically update the year, ensuring your meta titles stay fresh without manual updates, for example:
"Top 10 Marketing Trends for %%currentyear%% Stay Ahead with %%sitename%%"
This not only saves time but also enhances your SEO efforts by making your titles more appealing to users.
Meta Description SEO Best Practices
Meta description best practices involve crafting concise, compelling summaries that accurately reflect the content of your page while encouraging users to click through from search results. Although meta descriptions are no longer a direct ranking factor for SEO, they significantly influence click-through rates (CTR), making them crucial for attracting visitors. A good meta description should be around 155 characters, include relevant keywords naturally, and present a clear value proposition or call to action.
Examples:
- “Boost your website’s visibility with our expert SEO services. Learn the best practices for meta descriptions and drive more traffic today.”
- “Shop the latest fashion trends at unbeatable prices. Free shipping on all orders over $50. Find your style today!”
- “Stay ahead of the competition with the latest top marketing trends. Discover strategies and tactics to boost your business.”
These examples are not only descriptive but also encourage users to take action.
Page Title SEO Best practices
SEO page titles are crucial for both search engine optimization and user experience. A well-crafted page title should be concise, descriptive, and include the primary keyword to help search engines understand the content of the page. Ideally, it should be under 60 characters to ensure it displays fully in search engine results. Header tags (H1, H2, H3, etc.) are equally important as they structure the content, making it easier for both users and search engines to navigate and understand the page.
- The H1 tag should include the main keyword and summarize the page’s content,
- While H2 and H3 tags can be used to break down sections and include related keywords.
Free tools like the Detailed SEO extension can be invaluable for checking if your headers are correctly implemented. This tool allows you to quickly analyze your page’s structure, ensuring that your headers are in the correct order and appropriately tagged, which can significantly enhance your SEO efforts.
Header 1 (h1) Best Practices
An on-page element that is visible to readers and displays the overall theme of the page. The h1 is similar to the page meta title tag, in that it gives meaning and summarizes a page’s content. The h1 should be located at the top of the page and appear in the largest font size. The meta title tag of the page should be wrapped in the <h1>. For example: <h1>SEO Services</h1>
Header H1 Attributes:
- It is recommended that there is one h1 per page.
- Include the same or relevant high search volume terms, known as Latent Semantic Indexing keywords or LSI keywords. It’s good to have a long tail keyword that is different from the primary keyword in the title tag.
- Use the keyword planner tool to perform keyword research to find supporting keywords to use in your headers.
- Targeted keywords: SEO Services
- H1 Example: SEO Services & Strategy
Header 2 (h2) Best Practices
An on-page element that is visible to readers that acts as a subheader to the h1. An h2 is often utilized best when more text exists on the page, splitting up smaller content subsections. The <h2> tag should contain similar high search volume search terms that are relevant to the theme of the page and its respective content. A common best practice is to ask questions that most users are asking when conducting research on Google.
For example: <h2>Why our SEO Agency is Different<h2>
- Multiple H2’s can be utilized when appropriately placed within the context of a page.
- The important thing is to create a clear and easy to follow header hierarchy.
- Include relevant related keywords from the meta title tag.
- Take the keywords you’ve found in your keyword research for ideas on the header structure.
Related: Improving Your Site Structure to be More SEO Friendly
On-Page SEO Best Practices
Body Copy: In reality, the title tag and headers are considered a part of your overall on-page SEO strategy; but, optimizing your web body copy is very important for relevancy, not just for Google, but for users as well. Google calls this “Main Content” or MC, which is the visible, informative content on the page that users want to see and read. This body section can include text, images, video, tables, graphs, audio, and much more. SEO studies have shown that content that is over 1.7k words perform best in Google. Remember though that just because your blog post is long, doesn’t necessarily mean it is quality content that’s going to rank. Make sure your content is hitting on what users need and want. One way to measure this is to look at your Google Analytics and check out your Behavior Metrics like Time on Site, Pages Per Visit, and Bounce Rates. Poor behavior metrics include time-on-site under a minute, high bounce rates above 80%, and low pages per visit of under 1.5 are metrics to be concerned about.
On-Page Optimization Attributes:
- According to Google, your main content should serve a purpose and contain information that clearly indicates the theme of the page and provides insight to readers. This will lead to stronger search engine results.
- Include targeted and related keywords throughout the page copy.
- Use keyword variations around 2-3 times throughout the body content following the title. For example, if you’re talking about running shoes, talk about related topics such as comfort and durability. Use Google suggest or Google’s “related searches” or “People Also Ask” answer boxes for ideas on related topics for LSI keyword ideas.
- Use exact match anchor text for your internal linking strategy. Use target keywords to link from to link to a page you are trying to rank. Adding internal links is also a great way to improve user engagement.
- Make sure to add an image alt text to your images.
- Avoid keyword stuffing as it will compromise the quality of the page. It’s better to improve your page relevancy by adding a variety of relevant keywords.
- Create content that helps to answer users’ search queries, engages users, and encourages them to share.
- Be unique and provide value to the reader.
- Add schema markup to get your content a featured snippet result.
Going through all the SEO best practices is worth the effort as Google may reward all your hard work with page one rankings and organic traffic to your site that could last for years. This traffic is valuable and the real estate on page one of Google is highly coveted, so the more effort you put into creating quality content, the better results you’ll have.
SEO Meta Title & Description Tools
Meta description checker tools
These tools are really useful for checking and updating your meta description and title:
Check the total number of meta descriptions in your site’s URLs
SEO meta in 1 click tools
Here are a few tools that will generate your meta data in just 1 click:
Check out more information about our SEO services or browse one of our other educational on-site SEO blog post like site depth.
