SEO page titles and descriptions are really important for your blog.

Raise your hand if you know what an SEO page title or description is. 🙋🏽

Mmkay, for all y’all advanced placement students, hold on just a sec.

They help Google figure out what your site is about and show your site to people searching for things like, “Pants for big butts,” or, “What shade of foundation am I?” (You can tell how my week is going so far.)

SEO meta data (another name for dis shiz) helps bloggers:

• Get more traffic from Google
• Get higher rankings in Google, as part of your overall onpage strategy

But they’re more than just a nerdy internet thing. They can actually help you surprise and delight your readers, too!

Read this post to find out how! 🤓

What Are SEO Page Titles and Descriptions?

For those who don’t know, an SEO page title is the text that appears in 2 cool places:

1. In a Google search result

2. At the top of your browser window

And yeah, this is the sort of wild stuff I do on a Saturday night: write about SEO. #NerdAlert

An SEO page description is the other texty part that shows up in a Google search result.

Page titles and descriptions can either be on PAGES on your website, or on blog POSTS. Obviously, ya wanna have SEO-optimized titles and descriptions for both of those types of content.

SEO page titles and descriptions are also known as “SEO meta data.”

Why Are They Important?

For starters, page titles and descriptions help Google figure out what your site is about. Google still scans your whole site’s content to figure that out, too.

But having the keywords you want to optimize for listed right in your titles and descriptions makes Google’s job a LOT easier. Which means, more people will find you via organic search easier!

There are a LOT of factors that go into ranking high in Google and fully optimizing your SEO. There are about 200 ranking factors, actually.

Optimizing your SEO meta data is just one small part of a robust SEO strategy, but it takes just a few minutes per page and is a good habit to get into as you write posts. Don’tcha want more traffic for just a few extra minutes?!

Some SEO strategies are harder than others, like link building, creating longform 2,500+ word count posts full of value, or searching the web for broken links to replace with your own.

Literally nothing is easier or faster than writing page titles and descriptions for your blog.

Woo! All aboard the Lazy Blogger Express over here. 🚂

How to Write SEO Meta Data

To write effective titles and descriptions, you need to know what keywords you want to optimize your blog for.

Related: How to Do SEO Keyword Research

And, make sure you change it up for different pages. If one of your target keywords is, “blog seo,” you don’t need to have that in EVERY single page title or description.

Make sure the keyword you’re optimizing the page title and description for is relevant to the page’s content.

Once you have a keyword in mind, write out that page title and description!

For SEO page titles, they need to be under 60 characters to fit on Google.

If they’re over 60 characters, it trails off like this:

For SEO descriptions, they need to be under 160 characters… and ideally more than 120.

Here are a few things to keep in mind when writing your meta data:

1. Try and use your keyword near the beginning of the title and description!
2. Don’t overdo it and use your keyword like three times. Once is enough.
3. Make it interesting! It should make someone want to click it. Treat it like more of an ad than something to please a robotic overlord.
4. Ensure your description sums up what your reader can learn from the page or post, aka describes the VALUE they’ll get!

Here’s an example.

For this post, my main keyword is “SEO page titles.”

My SEO page title is: How to Write SEO Page Titles and Descriptions for Your Blog

And my description is: “SEO page titles and descriptions are important for bringing in high-quality traffic to your blog. Learn how to write effective SEO meta data for your blog!”

You’ll notice that description wasn’t just copied and pasted from this post. I took a few seconds to write a unique description that sums up this post and what my readers will get from it.

It’s super quick once you get started.

Here’s how this post looks in search:

To stay within the character limits for meta data I mentioned, I write my titles and descriptions using the WordPress plugin Yoast SEO.

It’s a great plugin all-around, but if you want something even easier, you can write your SEO meta data in WordCounter.net and then paste them into your website afterwards. WordCounter does, well, exactly what it sounds like it does.

Jazz Up That Meta Data

Okay, so are you thinking this is super boring so far?

SEO page titles and descriptions have a human side, too.

You can use them to catch people’s attention and get them to click on your post. Don’t feel limited to making your page title just the name of your post.

Change it up! Write something funny or a little quirky.

See this search for “buying a car”? Most of the entries are just the article’s title. This one is a little different:

It caught my eye as I was scrolling through the results because the first word is, “Yes!” It’s a bit unexpected among the boring page titles of the other results.

You never know what will make someone want to click over to your blog!

Firebox, a funny gift store from the UK, does this well.

Their page title says “Not For Everyone,” which immediately makes you curious about them. And, their homepage description lists “unusual alcohol” as an item they stock. Now I’m def curious about that. 🍷

How to Implement SEO Page Titles & Descriptions in WordPress

Mmk, so I already mentioned the fab WordPress plugin Yoast SEO. It’s awesome, it’s FREE, so go grab it now.

It lets you enter your target keyword, page title, and page description in a handy little box underneath your post when you’re writing it. It also works for every page on your WordPress site, too. It’s pretty much the gold standard of free WordPress SEO.

A few other options for WordPress are:

• All In One SEO
• WP Meta SEO
• SEO Ultimate
• SEO Squirrly

But personally, I use and recommend Yoast. 😊

Related: My Top 5 Easy Blog SEO Hacks to Grow Your Traffic

Questions?

I hope you learned something nerdy n’ new from this post! Got any questions about SEO for your blog? Lemme know in the comments. 👇🏼

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