Write Effective Meta Titles, or Google Will on Your Behalf

Google has always advocated that webmasters write unique and descriptive page titles and meta descriptions for the snippets. Google uses the meta <title> tag of a page for its search results titles (most of the time). The "most of the time" in parentheses should be emphasized because a recent Webmaster Central blog post admitted that sometimes Google will even replace the page's title in its results with an alternative title that is generated from an algorithm. The algorithm seeks to identify page titles that aren't useful for users and replace it with more descriptive text. Some factors that constitute non-useful titles are:

• Non-descriptive titles (e.g., "Home")
• Duplicate titles across pages
• Not having a title
• Too short or too long titles

Quick tip: you can use Google Webmaster Tools to identify how many duplicate titles your site has.

When writing titles, ensuring they are descriptive for users should be the central focus. But SEO should also be taken into account as well. Integrate important keyphrases used by your search audience within your titles to increase the chances the pages will rank more often. Be sure not to keyword stuff and be cognizant of length constrictions. Verndale uses proven techniques for writing page meta titles and descriptions, which integrate both usability and SEO best practices. Work with your SEO team to ensure your page titles and descriptions are performing strongly.