When Optimising a Website for Search, What Impact Do Meta and Title Tags Have on the Search Engine?

Title tags are an HTML element of a page that offers search engines and users details about a particular content.

Meta and title tags significantly impact search engine optimisation and user experience.

They’re there to offer the reader context on your article – it’s a great way to provide insight into your content, improve your click-through rate and send relevant signals to search engines.

What are Title Tags and Meta Descriptions?

Title tags and meta descriptions are HTML elements of your page that provide the web page’s title – this title is then used in the search engine page results (SERPs), browser tabs and page links on social media platforms.

Title tags are part of all web pages and appear in the HTML coding – but it’s easy to alter your title without coding knowledge.

Title tags and meta titles impact search engine rankings. You can optimise your descriptions to not only improve the reader’s experience but you’re also able to improve your search engine optimisation.

Title Tags Appear in Search Engines, Social Media & Browser Tabs

Title tags are essential for optimisation. The titles are shown on social media, browser tabs and search engine results.

The search engine results page (SERP) will display the title tag if you search on Google or other search engines.

What Role Does a Title Tag Play?

Title tags are imperative in gaining organic traffic – they help you achieve a search engine ranking, improve click-through rates and user experience.

Meta tags provide search engines with content information, making indexing and searchability easier.

Click-Through Rates

Title tags improve click-through rates, are often the first thing a reader sees on the SERP, and allow you to garner attention and provide users with details about your content.

Click-through rates make a difference to your website traffic. By improving your click-through rates, you are gaining more organic traffic.

A good click-through rate also helps your search engine rankings, signalling to search engines that readers want to see your content.

Optimisation

Title tags are often used for optimization and subsequently improve search engine rankings when done correctly. 

This helps with crawling and signalling to Google the relevance of your content to the search intent.

User Experience

Titles add to the user experience. This tag is used to give readers an insight into the content and encourage them to click through. 

We’ve all heard of “clickbait”, but the best tags encourage users to click and are accurate to the content.

What Roles Does a Meta Tag Play?

Meta tags offer data to search engines on your content or web page. The search engine can then determine the relevance to the user’s intent. 

This information helps with search engine optimization, making it easier for them to crawl, index and give readers the relevant web pages they need.

Different types of meta tags include titles, alt-text tags, meta descriptions and more.

Things to Avoid in Your Title Tag

There are plenty of things you can do correctly when creating your title tag but there’s just as much that you can do wrong.

Don’t make these common mistakes on your title tag:

Too Many Keywords

The aim is to provide Google and other search engines with relevant information. That doesn’t mean that you keyword stuff the content.

Title tags that have been keyword stuffed don’t look great, make sense and they will fail to help your search engine rankings.

Too Many Characters

The character limit is there for a reason – don’t exceed the characters allowed on your title tag.

By staying inside the limit you ensure that users will be able to read the information that you’ve provided.

Duplicating Tags

It can be tempting to duplicate your data, especially when some of your articles are similar.

But you should avoid duplicating your tags – give them a unique spin. Not only does that help offer data to search engines, but it provides a better insight to users.

Relevant Tags

If you update your content, be sure to update the tags accordingly.

Search engines do not take well to mixed messaging – for that reason, you should ensure that your tag matches the content on the page.

How to Write an Optimised Title Tag

There’s a lot to take into consideration when writing an optimised title tag; here are some of the things you can do to increase your site’s visibility:

Target Keywords

Find target keywords for your content. Consider who’s looking for your content and what they’ve searched for and need.

Once you have researched, you can add keywords to your meta tags. But remember, don’t aimlessly stuff your tags with keywords.

Accurate

The tag should be accurate to the content you’ve provided. There’s no point in discussing things you haven’t covered or answered.

Ensure you can satisfy the reader’s curiosity once they make it to your article.

Concise

Your title tag should be concise and informative; you want it to remain within the character limit – plus, there’s no need to add fluff to the content.

Add relevant information and ensure the reader knows your article’s contents in a snippet.

Create Curiosity

Following on from the last point – you want to be informative, but you also want to give the user a reason to continue reading.

You can insert curiosity through your rating to help improve the click-through rates.

What Benefits Can Optimized Title & Meta Tags Offer?

Title tags bring a lot to the table, improving website traffic in several ways. Here’s what optimised title tags offer.

Search Engine Rankings

Optimised title tags help you improve your search engine rankings. If you optimise your title, you can rise in the rankings.

Brand Awareness

Informative

Title tags are concise and to the point, offering lots of information to users. The tag gives them an idea of the article and your website.

Improve Click-Through Rate

A well-written title tag will not only help you improve your ranking, but it can improve your traffic by encouraging a click-through.

Once a user finds you on a search engine, they will read your title and decide whether to proceed to your website. This is where optimisation comes in. Not only to optimise your visibility on search engines but to encourage a click once your title is seen.

Clear Indexing

A title tag will help you gain accurate and faster website indexing.

For more accurate indexing, you will want to signal to Google what your business or website is about in the title and meta description.

Summary – Final Thoughts

Title tags are essential to SEO – these tags are shown on search engines, social media and browser tabs. Send signals to search engines to offer an accurate idea of what your content is about.