An article about meta tags? Most website owners are likely to feel that your kidding the moment they see that. After all, this is an absolute basic topic that you approach at the very beginning of your career. As a seasoned webmaster that’s absolutely no longer of interest. You finally know everything. But is knowledge also equal to doing? If we are honest, then probably not. These basics are still a little neglected in the daily business, after all, there’s always something new to which we must take care. And therefore we are giving away a lot of potential!

When we write here about meta tags, we refer primarily to title and description. Because they are visible when a user searches on Google and our offer is displayed in the overview. Thus, we make a first impression with these two pieces of information. And this often decides whether the user clicks on the search result or not. Looking at it in this way, the meta tag is suddenly no longer an insignificant basic, but rather a marketing tool that merits close attention.

And how much attention you give to your titles and descriptions? By writing this article we just looked once in a while a bit on Google and try different keywords. We looked in each case only on the first few pages of search results and saw that you’re in great company if you don’t pay much attention to this area. A sad result because most title and descriptions are anything but appealing, mostly consisting of the keyword and a few other words that make little sense.

On what you have to pay attention

Length:
For the meta tags are a certain number of characters available. For the title is said that 55 characters are the optimal length, the description is referred to 156 characters. Nevertheless, it may happen that title or description are cut off of the display, although you are following this character limit. The reason is that not only the character itself, but also the width play a role. In plain language, this means that you have 580 pixels for the title and for the description 960 pixels available. Whether you lie within these values, you can check with this tool.

Keyword:
The keyword has to be in the first place of the title and also in the description, it should appear, at best, very early. If it is possible, even bring another modification or a synonym for the keyword.

Content:
The content of title and description should not only make sense, but, ideally, provide a response to the requirements and in the description a CTA (call to action) has to be included. Deliver therefore solutions and tell the user what to do next – namely go to your site.

That title as well as description should be used only once. Each site deserves unique meta tags, so forget copy & paste.

Conclusion

Although it is initially a bit annoying to pay attention once again to the meta tags, and to create it by the substantive rules, the expense is worth because you’ll simply receive more visitors when title and description responses and exactly serve the need that the user just have in this moment.

And over time this way of working is so normal that you no longer need to think about how you create the short texts. You just know what it takes and it only takes a few seconds to find the right words!