Short and Sweet Titles and Metas

The importance of good title tags for your website can’t be overstated. The title tags are what people see in the search results. A good title tag should be well written and draw the searcher towards your website. The same goes with your meta descriptions. They’re often (but not always) used as the ‘blurb’ that appears for your page in the search results. Good metas describe who you are, promote your products and services, and have a call to action.

That’s a lot to keep in mind when writing title tags and meta descriptions, but here’s one more piece of advice: keep them short and sweet. In many search engines, like Google, there are limits on how many characters appear in the titles and metas featured in search results. Google seems to limit to about 65 characters in titles and 160 in meta descriptions. That doesn’t mean your titles are totally limited to seven or eight words, it just means that only the first 65 characters will appear in the results. Anything beyond that will be followed by ellipses and appear cut off.

What does this mean for you? Make sure you have well thought out title tags and meta descriptions. Include only the most relevant keywords for a particular page to help you focus your tags. Importantly, don’t stuff your titles or metas with every keyword you use on your website. Short, informative titles and metas will show searchers exactly what your page is about and bring traffic to your site. People will click knowing you have what they’re looking for, whether its information, a product, or a service. Don’t let people skip over your search engine results because the titles and metas are cut off, filled with non-relevant terms, or don’t showcase your capabilities.

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