How to perform a title tag and meta description review

When it comes to SEO, you can’t just set and forget.

With the algorithm constantly changing and competitors popping up with newly optimised sites, it’s important that you are regularly conducting reviews of your title tags and meta descriptions.

It’s also a great way to find any new pages that might have been made live without title tags and meta, review your main keywords and see if they are still what you want to be communicating to your potential clients.

What are title tags & meta descriptions?

A title tag is the HTML element that signals the title of a web page. In Google, it appears in blue as the “title” of your search result.

The meta description is the HTML element that summarises the web page’s content. In Google, it is the small “paragraph” of your search result made up of 155 characters.

Why are title tags & meta descriptions important?

Both title tags and meta descriptions contribute to SEO in their own way.

Shown in the Google search results, they can determine whether someone clicks on your result or not depending on what is written and how it’s written.

A lot of research has been done that states that the closer a keyword is to the start of a title tag, the higher your search result will be.

Keywords in meta descriptions don’t have a direct impact on your rankings but should naturally appear if writing about the content on your page. In essence, your meta description is like a mini ad for your website. Make it as appealing to click on as possible!

How to review your title tags & meta descriptions

Step 1 – Find and collate

If you have a small website, you can probably look them up manually, but for anything more than 10 pages, or if you want to ensure you don’t miss a single page, you should use software like Screaming Frog to collate all your web pages.

Manually

There are a few ways to check your title tags & meta descriptions manually.

The first is to right-click on your web page and choose inspect page or show page source. Then Ctrl + F and search for <title>. Your title tag should sit within <title> and code. Then search for description to find your meta. It should sit within the section.

The second is to go through your CMS and find the area where you input your title tags and meta for each page.

The third is to go through your website and copy your URL, past it into the Google search bar and see what comes up – but this can lead to incorrect results as Google can sometimes pull content from your page if it matches a search result more than your meta description.

Automatically

Screaming Frog is an application that allows you to type your URL into the search bar, and it essentially acts like a Google spider finding every single slug (the name of your web page in the URL), among a whole bunch of other things.

Once you’ve done this, you can scroll to the right and view each page’s title tag and meta description and download them as a CSV file.

Create a spreadsheet with your URLs, title tags & meta all laid out neatly so you can review them all at once. Leave a blank column next to the title tag column and meta column. This is where your new or revised ones will sit.

Step 2 – Research

Ideally, you would have conducted some keyword research or had someone else do it for your website. Check your keywords and see if they still relate to your business, if people are still searching for them (using Google Keyword Planner or Keywords Everywhere) and where you sit in the rankings.

It’s important to check how you rank if you give your title tags & metas a makeover, you could be changing a keyword that gives you a lot of traffic.

You can check your rankings using a paid analytics tool like SEMrush or Ahrefs, or do it manually by using incognito mode, searching for the keyword and using Ctl+F to find your URL in the first 3 pages.

Remember to highlight any title tags and metas that appear to be ranking well. You don’t want to change these too much.

Also, have a look at your known competitors and see what keywords they are targeting. After all, you want to be ranked higher than them.

Step 3 – SEO Copywriting

This is where you get to jump into our world!

Writing new title tags

• You need to put your most important keyword at the start of the title tag

• Use – or | to separate words, it makes them look neat

• Include your business name at the end of the title tag. If it’s very long, try and shorten it

• Give every page a unique title tag

• Keep your title tags under 60 characters. Use SEOMofo Snippet Optimizer to check the length and look

Writing new meta descriptions

• Treat these as an ad for your website and highlight your most compelling offers in this copy

• Include your focus keyword – it isn’t a straight-up ranking factor, but it should appear naturally if the page content is about that keyword

• Give every page a unique meta description

• Keep a conversational and upbeat tone

• Keep your meta descriptions under 155 characters. Use SEOMofo Snippet Optimizer to check the length and look

Step 4 – Monitoring

Once you’ve implemented your title tags and meta descriptions, you should review them to check if they have been updated and look correct. You can do this by pasting your URL into the Google search bar or by downloading a handy Chrome app called SEO minion.

It may take a few days or a week for Google to re-crawl your webpage. You can speed this process up by submitting your pages to Google Search Console.

Monitor your page rankings for a few months after the changes have been made. You might start to see some movement in both directions – don’t be worried if you see a little dip in rankings; it should sort itself out eventually if you’ve done the right thing.

Otherwise, monitor your organic traffic to those web pages to see if it has made a difference. If it hasn’t, you’ll need to do some more investigation as to why your rankings or organic traffic aren’t changing.

Title tags and meta descriptions are one of the first things your clients see in their buying journey, as well as being really important for your SEO, so it’s crucial that you make a good impression.

If you need help writing or reviewing your meta descriptions, you can book an SEO consultation with our founder Remi.