Published:
Updated:
by Wayne Smith
The page title and description have been part of SEO optimization since Yahoo. It is a tenured SEO qualifier that has proven its importance over time.
While the page title has a limited number of characters the meta description is about 1-3 sentences ... It is also a qualifier.
A search rarely provides a page for a keyword, not in the title and description. It can happen for non-competitive terms when the keyword is in a headline tag.
... In a perfect world
The title and description accurately represents what the page is about.
- The keyword in the title is the search term with the highest search volume the page can rank for.
- The description contains the keywords with high volumes that are searched for in combination with the main keyword.
- The keyword and description represent content providing an additional POV from the pages it is competing against.
- The title and description match the user intent for the search.
Google may shorten or change the page title
When the site name appears in the page title, Google may remove the site name from it. It can also look for separator characters like "|" and use the text on only one side of the separator character.
Google may also ignore the title and use the headline tag when the headline tag more accurately represents what the page is about. Links to the page can also cause Google to ignore the title because it lacks the keyword.
Google may choose a different description
When the search query is not represented in the description. Google may choose a part of the content with the keyword to use as the description.
Google prefers to show pages with the term in the description when not present uses content on the page ... but the content on the page may not be a helpful description. It is best to optimize the description to include the query terms.
... Click Through Rate KPI ...
Being in the first spot on a search page does not guarantee people will click on the link. There is an average distribution of clicks based on a ranking position like the average age of people in a country ... click-through rate is based on peaking people interest.
To peak interest, the title and description should show or somehow be different than the competitor's title and description. People will also click on brands they know.
Search Engine Pain Points
A pain point for search engines is when pages are listed on the results page but are not helpful for the client.
Navboost is designed to demote pages with little user engagement from the top of search results for the terms where they do not provide value and promote pages that have user engagement.
A lower-than-expected click-through rate may not mean a page has no value for the term ... there is no way to see the click-through rates for other pages and advertising et al may cause lower-than-expected click-through rates.
Navboost in interested in:
- What site was clicked first
- What site did the visitor remain on for the longest period of time
- What site was clicked last
... Search intent ...
The first part of keyword research is finding competitors and discovering the actual keywords people use to find the content that needs to be published.
The second part is looking at the search results for the keywords and discovering what Google's algorithms have determined the user intent is for those keywords.
For user engagement the content the user finds needs to match with what they are looking for.
... Solution Smith tests SEO tactics so you don't have to ...
Full-stack SEO has a lot of moving parts, and it takes time and effort to understand the nuances involved. Solution Smith takes care of the overhead costs associated with digital marketing resulting in real savings in terms of time and effort.