How to Choose Your Website Page Title and Meta Description
 If your website design is to be effective you will need to choose an appropriate page title that will get people's attention. If you have not done so, take a look at headings to die for. You can apply some of this information to your website page title.
As an example let's use ™Google Adwords to illustrate. They appear on the right-hand side of your browser and also show at the top of a results page (sponsored ads). These ads are paid advertising. When you click on one of the ads, it costs the website owner $ and is known as pay per click advertising. You will note that each ad is only four lines of text. There is a heading, followed by two lines of body text and then the domain name. So realistically you have only two lines of text to get your message across.
The people that best describe accurately in a few words, what the website is about, will get more visitors. This is not always easy to do effectively considering you only have 35 permissible character spaces to use. We can learn a lot from looking at these ads. Which ones do you click on...well it's not difficult. We pick the ones that concisely describe the product or service that will fit our needs and click on the link.
A good heading (page title) and a short effective description make us act and visit the website. The same principle can and should be applied to our website title and it's description. If you are using Internet Explorer, look to the top of the browser window in the blue title bar and you will see the title of the current web page and a few words to describe the content. The information that you see in the title bar is mostly the same information that is displayed in search engine results after you have typed in your keyword or key phrase for a search. Most people mistakenly want to use their company name as the page title. In some cases, this would be appropriate. But in most cases this is not ideal.
Let's look at this from the other side of the desk. When somebody comes to your website they are looking for you to fill a need and are saying, “what is in it for me”. They typed in a keyword or key phrase in their favorite search engine and got the appropriate listed results. They did not type in your company name, because they do not know who you are.
Do you really think at this point that your visitor is interested in your company name? Your visitor is more interested in what you can do for them and how relevant your website is and whether it can fill their needs and wants. They keyed in appropriate words that described what they were looking for.
We have to see this for what it is. A careful analysis of website titles and descriptions will give us some idea of what works best. When considering your heading or title, spend some time looking at titles and descriptions that would move you to action. Which ones stand out and motivate you to visit their website?
If you were searching for a rifle scope and you used “rifle scopes” as your search word. Would you pick:
1. PREDATOR RIFLE SCOPES. Quality Rifle Scopes at Affordable Prices.
2. XYZ Rifle Scopes Ltd.
3. Our Company Rifle Scopes. We import products from Japan.
If you are taking in what I'm trying to get across here, you will have picked
The first example.
It clearly states the title of the website and gives you an idea of what you will find when you arrive at the website.
The first example has a number of different elements that make it more appealing and more effective than the other two examples.
Rifle Scopes is mentioned twice. Once in the page title and then again in the text description.(this is a great SEO technique)
The capitalization clearly separates the header title from the description.
The text description is offering you something...quality at low cost.
In the second example We are not interested in buying a company, we are interested in rifle scopes. We are not likely to choose this second option first, as there is no text description about the content. If you have an established brand as in a large corporation then it would be appropriate to use the brand name as this is what people would search for.
The third example is lacking in expectation. Although if we were looking for a rifle scope from Japan this may be our first choice. At least it gave a description of what content we may expect to find on the website. But without any real expectation.
The full page title and description for Predator Rifle Scopes is... PREDATOR RIFLE SCOPES Quality Rifle Scopes at Affordable Prices. Spine Tingling Sure Kill Accuracy.
You will probably agree, a hunter would want to visit this website. Some website designers omit to include the title tag and you will see displayed on the title bar at the top of a web page“untitled document”. This will not assist you in any shape or form. Going back to the first example:
Predator is the company trade name. (we managed to get the company name in)
Rifle scopes is matching the search criteria.
The description tells us clearly what to expect when we visit the website.
The description also has matched our search criteria as it has “rifle scopes” as part of the text.
Unlike the ™Adword example, in a generic search you have more opportunity to describe your product or service so you need to take advantage of this by making a compelling description of your product or service. You should aim at keeping the meta description to under 250 characters. The meta description is part of the source code (your designer does this part) and helps search engine spiders index your website. It is beneficial to have some idea of what you want your page title and description to say.
Not all but some search engines use the meta description and place this text under your page title in the search engine results. When selecting a web page title and meta description, we suggest you use the following format.
Get their attention.
Tell them what you do and what you can do for them.
Tell them how they will benefit.
When it comes time to talk to your web designer, you will already have prepared your page title and meta description. You know your business well so get it right first time. Your website designer is more than capable of assisting you with title and meta description but you know your own business and all it's subtleties. Getting these right may make the difference between somebody visiting your page or them going to your competitor's website.
It is a good idea to look around on the Internet for good examples. The best place to look for punchy heading lines is in the paid advertising. Find a good ad and adapt it to your own company's products and services.
Now it's time to get your website up to speed so that you can retain your visitors when they arrive and get your message across. Learn about designing sticky pages.
We will be adding more information to this page, so please check back at a later date.
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