Insights

Meta Titles Explained

Author - Brett Tudor
20.01.2022

Ultimately, it’s the simple things that make a difference and meta titles are one of those simple things that can make a lot of difference in SEO. Yet for some reason, meta titles are often overlooked or put together wrong without much thought about SEO. So let’s dive in and explain some meta title best practices.

Firstly it is important to explain what a meta title is…

The meta title or title tag appears in Google search results as displayed below. It is not to be confused with the paragraph below this which is called the meta description.  

The title tag can be used in a variety of ways to encourage people to click on a search result. It is also used by Google as one of several search engine ranking factors for web pages.

This is why the meta title should include the keyword(s) being targeted by the web page. Often the title tag will also include the company name but there is no rule to say this should be the case and not having the company name included is not going to make any difference to how the page appears in the search results unless the keyword target is the company page.

The lack of any clear guidance on meta titles apart from they should be less than 60 characters due to the constaints of different browser sizes which means beyond that you will be left to decide what those 60 characters should contain.

What Should be Included in a Meta Title?

What to include in a meta title is largely a matter of keyword targeting. While some website will display the company name in the meta title as we have established this isn’t really necessary because the company name will already be displayed in the website address link. In any case including the company name means less room for the keywords you will want the page to rank for in search results.

One strategy is to just include the keyword targets for the page as long as there are no other pages using the same keywords. The latter can result in web pages competing with each other in the search results and leading to fluctuations in rankings. Sometimes on large sites with multiple products of the same type it may be necessary to avoid using the same keywords that describe other similar products for the same reason.   

Why are meta titles important?

Unlike meta descriptions or meta tags, meta titles are used as a way to rank web pages by Google and they are an important part of the process of optimising a website for search results. If a meta title doesn’t include keywords, it is less likely a website will feature prominently in the search results and visibility will be lost as a result.

Due to the importance of meta titles to search engine rankings, meta titles should not be filled out until keyword research is done to establish the best keyword targets for each page of your website.