Title and Description tags. Rules for its writing

1. Factors affecting the indexing frequency by the search engines

Title tag is a page title.
The title is displayed in the title of the browser tab and shows search engines and visitors what the page is about.
This markup attribute is taken into account by bots in site ranking.
Title is located at the beginning of the page code.

Visibility of the Title in HTML-code

It looks like a link to a site in Search.
We see a Title on the website when we hover over the browser tab. Users decide to switch or ignore the website based on how the header looks like.

In a browser

In the Search

On social media

You should rely on search results, competitor metadata, the semantic core, and query frequency in writing a Title.

Google is able to change the title if your Title is writing incorrectly.

When does this happen:

• key absence in the description;
• meta tag longer than 90 characters;
• keys duplicates;
• nonunique of a Title.

How a Title would change:

• form from Description;
• substitution of Title H1 of the Main website.

From the example, Google didn’t like a Title (or this tag wasn’t wrote), and the search engine additionally uploaded the information that was not asked at all.

Follow the rules when writing a Title to prevent this:

• unicity (own for each page);
• match Title to Page Content;
• the most frequent words from the semantic core are registered in the first 60 characters;
• absence or minimum of stop words (meaning unions, interjections, particles);
• at the end – the brand name, if it used;
• length – 60-90 characters (600 pixels for Google).

Correctly writing Title will raise you in the Search above competitors and bring more traffic to the site.

Common pattern:

[Main Keyword] – [Secondary Keyword] | [Brand/Site Name]

Example:

Or [Call to action] – [Phrase] – [Incentive (restriction)]

In this image, the guys even in Description wrote limitations.

For product cards:

• product name;
• "Buy"/"Price";
• region;
• online store name.

2. Description meta tag

Description tag is a content or page summary.

It is taken into account during ranking to determine the page content.
The more fully Description responds to User Intent, the higher the likelihood that visitors will go to your site.
A well-written Description helps to improve behavioral factors: the CTR increases and this improves the website metrics as a whole. As a result, you become a sought-after website for search engines.

Visibility of a Description in HTML-code

If you decide not to waste time writing Description, then in the snippet you will get what you see in the picture:

Here we see the same situation above with a Title tag – Google has added some "irrelevant" content to the Description.

Rules for filling the Description:

• Title and Description must be different;
• Description displays USP;
• contains a call to action;
• unicity (for each page is formed separately);
• duplicates checked through the Google Search Console;
• use of the most frequent words from the semantic core;
• availability of no more than 1-3 key queries;
• useful phrases with meaning rather than listing keywords;
• description should call to action;
• length – 70-170 characters (300-930 pixels).

Mask for writing Description:

Buy [Section Name] Advantage [Contacts] Online Store [Store Name]

For product cards:

• product name;
• price;
• region;
• advantage;
• store name.

Services allow checking the display of snippets in the search results:

• saney.ru;
• portent.com;
• websiteadvantage.com.au.

Want to be more attractive to users and rank higher in the SERP?
It is useful to track competitors’ tags. There is a bookmarklet allowing you to view full information about page metadata.

Also, do not neglect micro markup, especially for product cards. It is advisable to add there the product rating, number of reviews, price. Using emoji, special characters and UTF-8 encoding increase the number of clicks.