The title tag determines the name of a web page as it appears in Google. The content of the title tag plays an important part in the ranking a page gets in Google and Bing.

2. What is a description tag?

The description tag is a text of maximum 155 characters long that says what a page is about. Because Google often shows the description tag, it’s a great tool to persuade people to visit your page.

In our article ‘what is a description tag and why is it so important’ you can read in detail what Google does with the description tag and when it is and isn’t shown.

3. Title and description tag create the first impression

When making a website, a lot of attention always goes to the look & feel of the website in general and to the homepage in particular. While this is certainly very important, it’s not true that you need to do this in order to ‘make a good first impression’.

For more than half of your visitors, their first contact with you is not your homepage. Or any other page of your website, for that matter. The first contact, the first impression, is made by the title and description tag shown in Google.

4. How can you find out what your title and description tags are?

There are lots of seo-programmes that can do this for you. But there’s also Google. Just type in ’site:’ followed by your domain name and you’ll get the complete list of the title and description tags of all your pages.

On the international website of Citroën, there’s room for improvement. The title tags are clearly not specific enough. For the description tag, they seem to have written some fluffy marketing nonsense and used that for most pages.

5. Tips for the perfect title tag

If you read our article 8 tips for the perfect title tag you should be well on your way to writing great title tags.

While you’re at it, have a look at our 4 examples of clumsy title tags too. Just so you know what not to do.

6. Tips for the perfect description tag

The description tag does not influence your ranking in Google. But it is essential to get people to click on your page, as this interesting user behaviour study on search engine results pages shows.

These 12 tips for the perfect description tag will help you write great description tags that will get more visitors to your pages.

7. How to track down doubles in your title or description tags?

Google doesn’t like title tags or description tags that are the same for more than one page of your website. It’s clear why: Google uses the title and description tags to find out whether or not a page has unique content.

The first thing you need to do is make sure every page of your website has a unique title and description tag.

The Google Webmaster Tools can help you track down doubles in your title or description tags.

Log in to Google Webmaster Tools and select your website (or add your website if you haven’t done that yet). Go to the left menu, click on ‘Diagnostics’ and then on ‘HTML suggestions’.

The report on this page gives you access to double tags and it also shows you the title and description tags that are too long or too short.

Do you know of any other best practices, tools or studies on the importance of the title or description tag? Please share them in the comments.

Your website should focus on your users’ top tasks. Unfortunately, lots of websites don’t do that. They put everything they have ever done and more on their website. Result: a website with loads of pages nobody’s interested in.

Is that really so bad though? I mean, a user can ignore those pages he’s not interested in, right?

Theoretically, yes. But in practice, those extra pages make for a more complex navigation stucture, more links and more choices.

Which makes it hard for people to find what they’re looking for.

If your website focuses on the stuff people really use it for, there will be fewer pages and people will find what they need a lot faster. Because there’s no clutter to distract them.

Less is more. More conversion. More satisfied visitors. More return on investment.

Use Google Analytics to track down rarely visited pages

I’m using Google Analytics as an example because it’s the most widely used tool. You can of course use other analytics tools as well.

1. Define a period that’s suitably long

For a first analysis, I usually take 6 months. That way, I minimise the risk that the results of my findings will be brushed aside by people who blame the holidays, the weather and other stuff for the lack of visitors on ‘their’ pages. Heck, if your website is heavily subjected to seasonal changes, make it 12 months.

2. Go to ‘Content’ and choose ‘Top Content’

On this page, have a look at the total number of unique pages that were visited in the period you defined and check this number against the total number of pages on your site. If the second number is far greater than the first, I’ve got some bad news for you: you’ve got lots of pages nobody ever visits.

3. Click on ‘Advanced Filter’ at the bottom

Don’t worry. There’s nothing advanced about what we’re going to do.

4. In the dropdown ‘Filter’, select ‘Unique Pageviews’

I choose ‘Unique Pageviews’ because ‘Pageviews’ is somewhat artificial. If a person visits the same web page 5 times during 1 visit, Google Analytics counts that as 5 pageviews but only as 1 unique pageview.

5. Enter a number

For a first analysis, I usually want an oveview of all pages with less than 50 pageviews over a period of 6 months. I think that’s being quite generous…

You can of course change this number to 100 or more.

6. Click on ‘Apply Filter’

Nearly there. On the screen you see now, you can already tell how many pages have been visited less than 50 times.

7. Sort by ‘Unique Pageviews’

This sorts the results by the number of unique pageviews. The standard setting is on the total number of pageviews. For our report, that’s not quite ideal.

8. Save report

For some strange reason, Google doesn’t allow you to save the settings of your filters. (In case you can and I’m missing something: do enlighten me.) As an alternative solution, I click on ‘Add to Dashboard’ at the top of the page. That way I can quickly access this report from my homepage (the dashboard).

What do you know now?

You know which pages have been visited less than x times in the period you defined.

Hopefully that number hasn’t left you shell-shocked. We had to tell a customer recently that over 80% of their web pages were visited less than 50 times during the past 6 months…

Not the greatest news to deliver, but they took it really well and decided to dedicate the next 12 months to managing existing content rather than creating new pages.

Is ‘barely visited’ reason enough to get rid of a page?

Not always, but it does give a good indication. Apart from the cold, hard figures there are other things to take into account:

• Conversion rate
  If the conversion rate is (much) higher than average, you need to wonder why that page isn’t visited more often. Is there a way to get more people to visit that page?
• Because you have to
  Sometimes, but only sometimes, that’s a valid reason. Not because your boss tells you to but because it’s a page you have to have for legal reasons for example.
• User research
  Interviews with customers, the analysis of your search feature and other methods of user research can help you to find out what your visitors top tasks are.

  We always advise to combine logfile analysis with one of these methods: logfiles can only tell you what people do on your website, not what they’d like to do or can’t find.

  If one of your visitors’ top tasks is the same as one of your site’s least visited pages, you know there’s a lot of work to be done.

What do you do with rarely visited pages?

• Delete
  For most pages at the bottom of this list: just hit the delete button. That news article you write 2 years ago will not be missed. Goodbye and good riddance.
• Cluster information
  A lot of sites use 10 pages where instead they should just have 1 page. Pull yourself together and have the courage to get rid of the stuff nobody’s interested in. Trim the fat. Stick to the essentials.
• Reactivate
  Reactivate the interest in pages that have a high conversion rate or are actually one of your visitors’ top tasks. Some possibilities: put a link on the homepage, give it a more prominent place in your navigation, rewrite the page, create more links to the page, etc.
• Leave them to rot in your website’s darkest holes
  This only applies to those pages you need to keep for legal reasons.
  Take care to bury them really deep where they’re not likely to bother people.

You might also like:

• Information architecture: the basics
• CMSs don’t manage websites, people do

Need some help?
Start with a content review or one of our information architecture or user research services. Or just give us a call on 0032 (0)3 293 39 96 or send me an email.

But how do you write a good description tag? These 12 tips should point you in the right direction.

1. Use no more than 155 characters

Google shows only the first 160 characters of the description tag. After that, it simply adds an ellipsis (…). If you want to play it safe, don’t use more than 155 characters. Don’t forget: spaces and punctuation marks count as characters too.

2. Use keywords you want to score with for that page

Google only shows the description tag if there’s a sufficiently strong content relation between the description tag, the user’s query and the content of the page.

If you want Google to show your description tag, be sure to include the page’s keyword(s) in it.

3. Don’t create false expectations

Everybody likes to have loads of visitors. But it’s actually more important to get the right visitors.

Luring people to your website with vague promises or inaccurate description tags will work against you in the long run. Sure, you might get more people to click on your result in Google. But if you can’t deliver on your promise, they’ll be gone in a hurry. And they won’t come back.

4. Tell the user what to expect

The description tag needs to tell the user what the page is about. It should be a concise summary of your page.

5. Think about your target audience

Hopefully, every page on your website has a purpose. Some pages can be informative, others might be pages where you want to sell a particular product. Think about the goal of your page and the kind of people you want to attract. Make sure the description tag reflects that.

With our article ‘Information architecture: the basics’ we want to reach people who don’t know a lot about information architecture.

Our product page ‘Information architecture’ wants to attract people who are ready to make use of our services to improve their website’s information structure.

6. Write properly

Reading your description tag should be a pleasure, not a chore. So don’t just pile up the keywords but give people a proper indication of what the page is about.

You don’t necessarily have to write full sentences but do make sure it’s easy to read.

7. To the point

You’ve only got 155 characters. That means there’s no time for beating about the bush. Make your point in those 155 characters.

8. Don’t just repeat the page title

The description tag gives you 155 extra characters to explain what a page is about and to get people to click on your result in Google. Don’t just repeat the title tag, use those 155 characters to give extra information. (Read our 8 tips for the perfect title tag)

9. Being commercial won’t hurt you

There’s no shame in being commercial. If you know there’s one thing that makes your page stand out from the competition’s, say so.

You offer a best-price guarantee? Say so. Better yet: include the product’s price in the description tag.

Or include your phone number: “Order your tickets online or call 03 333 33 33”. Convenient for people who don’t have time or who are surfing on their mobile and need info fast.

If you offer a free online quote for a particular service, that’s a great way to end your description tag: “Get a free quote online”.

10. Unique for every page

Create a unique description tag for every page. Great for Google and for your visitors.

11. Use the right language

Make sure the description tag is in the same language as the page. Seems ridiculous to even mention but on multi-language sites you often see the description tags are all in one language.

12. What about the description tag of a language choice page?

That’s a hard one. Don’t write ‘Choose your language’ or ‘Language choice’. That says absolutely nothing.

Instead, say what your company does in your site’s main languages.

More tips?

Feel free to add more tips of your own in the comments.

The description tag is a piece of html code that’s meant to give a short – you guessed it – description of a web page. The description tag is at the top of the page in the <HEAD>section of the code.

In code, a description tag looks like this:

<meta name="description" content="Short, riveting description of your web page." />

Not visible on your web page

The description tag of a web page is not visible on the page itself. That’s why a lot of companies don’t pay it much attention.

Google shows the description tag

Google likes the description tag. If a web page has a description tag, Google shows it, provided these 2 conditions are met:

• Semantic similarity between the description tag and the content of the web page
• Significant similarity between the user’s search query and the content of the description tag

Example 1

I looked for ‘title tag’. Google shows the page’s description tag because it contains my query ‘title tag’.

Example 2

I looked for ‘page title’. Because the description tag does not contain my query, Google doesn’t show it. Instead, Google shows a sentence fragment on the page that does contain the query.

What does Google do if you don’t have a description tag?

If a page doesn’t have a description tag, Google usually shows sentence fragments on the page that contain the user’s query.

If your website is in the Open Directory Project (DMOZ) and your homepage doesn’t have a description tag, there’s quite a big chance that Google will use the description of your website in the DMOZ.

Example

Cortex abc is in the Open Directory Project. This description was made by someone at Open Directory Project.

Because the homepage of Cortex abc doesn’t have a description tag, Google uses the description of the Open Directory Project database.

And apparently that description was written quite a while ago. If you visit Cortex abc’s website today, you can see it doesn’t really fit the description anymore.

Does the description tag affect my ranking in Google?

No, it doesn’t. Google ignores the description tag’s content when it comes to ranking. The description tag will not help you to score better in Google.

Does the description tag matter, if Google doesn’t use it for its ranking?

Yes, it absolutely does. Which result people click on in Google is affected by the result’s title and the extra bit of information that appears underneath the title.

Thanks to our 8 tips for the perfect title tag you should have the title pretty much covered.

The ‘extra bit of information’ that Google shows about a page can be the description tag. Good copywriting can convince people to click on your page rather than your competitor’s, even though he is maybe ranked one or two spots higher than you are.

How do you write a good description tag?

Good question. Let me get back to you on that one.

The great thing about a content management system (CMS) is that it makes it really easy to create and publish content on your website.

So that’s what most webmasters and editors do: they create and publish content like there’s no tomorrow.

Cause it’s fun. And it’s what they’re being paid to do.

They’re often judged on the amount of content they produce. The number of pages and articles they put online. A nice and easy box to tick during the annual evaluation talk.

Managing content is boring

If you’re responsible for the quality of your company’s website, your main task should not be publishing new content. You should be managing and improving the content you’ve already got.

It’s less fun than creating new content. But it’s vital if you want to have a website that works.

It’s like Gerry McGovern says: “You’re not being paid to have fun. You’re being paid to run a good website.”

6 essential questions and tasks for every content manager

If you can answer yes to the following questions, you’re a good content manager.

• Is the content on your website up to date? Are you sure there’s not a single page you haven’t looked at in over a year? (For convenience’s sake, we’ll leave your news and blog articles out of this. Even though ideally you should have a look at those once in a while as well.)
• Are there no pages with overlapping or contradictory content on your website?
• Are your texts clear? Are they written with your visitors in mind? Are they really? Did you research that or are you just saying yes because that’s what you think?
• Do you have a list of all pages that were hardly visited over the last 6 months? Did you analyse those pages and try to figure out the reasons why?
• Do you know the bounce rates of the 100 most popular pages on your website? Have you looked into the pages with unusually high bounce rates and developed alternative pages? And then checked to see if those performed any better?
• If you’ve got landing pages, have you checked whether they are really contributing to your website’s goal? Have you tried changing them? And then checked again?

Can you answer yes to all of these questions?
Congratulations, you are either a great content manager or a fantastic liar.

You can only answer yes to less than 3 questions?
Don’t sweat it. Your competitors aren’t doing any better.

If you would do better though, that would really make a difference. Not adding new content on your website or doing a flashy new redesign.

Yeah but, isn’t that why we got a content management system?

Management’s reaction to content-related issues often is:”We’ve invested heavily in a state of the art content management system. We don’t have to do all this stuff by hand now, do we?”

Yes, you do. A CMS allows you to publish content and to assign it to a particular place or places on your website. You can add a publishing date and an expiration date as well. Hurray.

But that’s about as far as it goes when it comes to ‘managing content’.

A CMS won’t tell you that the page you’re writing is a piece of fluff nobody is interested in.

A CMS won’t tell you that what you’re writing looks suspiciously like 5 other pages you’ve already got.

A CMS won’t tell you which pages are really working for you and which ones are just dead weight.

A content manager’s job

• 80% of a content manager’s time should be devoted to managing and improving existing content
• 20% should go towards creating new content

You don’t like that? Tough.

Related articles

• Information architecture: the basics
• 8 writing tips to increase the impact of your website

Which provides us with a good excuse to also show you some examples of what not to do.

1. The root of all evil

2. Must remember to enter title tag. Very important!

3. Final countdown? Final homapge!

4. Friendly, but not really saying much

As you can see, our 8 tips for the perfect title tag could be useful for some people.

Have you seen a title tag that made you laugh? Or cry?

Share it in the comments or email me.

The title tag determines the name of a web page. Title tags are mostly visible in Google and in the browser.

Google
The page title Google shows is a page’s title tag. The same goes for Bing.

Browser
The title tag appears in the browser title bar and the browser tabs. When you add a page to your favorites or when you share a page via social media, the title tag is what apppears as the page title.

Is the title tag important?

You bet it is. The title tag is one of the most important things to get right if you want to do well in Google. It’s not the only thing but if you neglect your title tags you’re making it very hard on yourself.

Tips for a good title tag

1. Use no more than 66 characters

• Search engines only show a limited number of characters of the title tag. Google shows the first 66 characters. After that, it simply adds an ellipsis (…). If you want your title tags to look professional, don’t use more than 66 characters.
• Short titles are easier to read than long ones.
• The less words there are in your title tag, the more value Google attributes to each word. As a consequence, it’s easier for a keyword to score well in a title tag of 4 words than it is in a title tag of 8 words. This is called keyword density.

2. Make sure your title tag accurately describes your page

• The title tag should contain the keyword you want to score with for that page.
• Make sure you use that keyword somewhere on the page itself.
• Use a keyword your visitors use. It’s nice to do well in Google but if it’s with a word nobody uses it’s not really going to do you any good.

3. Think about what you want the page to do

• Make sure the title tag and content of the page correspond with the reasons people visit that page.
  ‘Netbooks: reviews of the fastest models’ will appeal to a different audience and create different expectations than ‘Cheap netbooks’.

4. Put the keyword first

• Google reportedly attributes more value to the first word in a title tag than the last one.
• Jakob Nielsen’s research shows that the first 11 characters determine whether someone continues to read on or not.

5. Don’t forget to mention your brand name

• Putting your brand name in the title tag isn’t all that important if you’re a small company. But if you’re one of the leading players in your field, it’s a good idea to mention your brand name in your title tags.
• Wa advise most companies to put their brand name last. Only on your homepage should your brand name be first.
• If you’re an absolute top brand that the majority of people knows and trusts, it can be interesting to start your title tags with your brand name.

6. Separate your brand name from the page title

• Use a vertical dash (|) or hyphen (-) to separate your brand name from the actual page title.

7. Write attractive title tags

• If you stuff the title tag full of keywords, you’ll probably score well in Google. But it will make your title tag unattractive and people won’t click on it. So you’re kind of missing the point.
• For a lot of people, the title tag is their first introduction to your brand. Make sure you make a good first impression.
• Your web page’s title tag appears in a list with other search results. Make sure it stands out.

8. Unique for every page

• Each page of your web site should have a unique title tag. If you can’t decide what a page is really about, how is Google supposed to know?

How can you adapt your title tags?

That depends on your website. Hopefully, you’re using a content management system (CMS) that lets you adapt the title tag of every page manually.

If you’re choosing a new CMS, make sure it allows you to do that. If you want to do well in Google, it’s vital.

More tips?

Do you have some more tips for good title tags? Feel free to add them in the comments section.

• Deciding when graphics will help (and when they won’t)
  How can you use graphics to enhance the user experience? And when should you just leave well enough alone. Great article with excellent examples.
   
• Patterns for the Color Blind
  A website with tips and design patterns to make sure your website is accessable for color blind users.
  Is that really important? Absolutely. 8% of white males is color blind.
   
• Hub pages: the secret weapon of SEO copywriting
  Link related articles together. It’s handy for your visitors and Google absolutely loves it.

Quotes

• Customers can’t always tell you what they want, but they can always tell you what’s wrong. (Carly Fiorina)
   
• Watching people try to carry out top tasks is a harsh lesson. You would be amazed at the amount of times they fail or give up or get the wrong answer, thinking it’s the right one. (Gerry McGovern, in If your customer falls in the forest of your website)
  In other words: user tests aren’t optional, they’re compulsory.
   
• Design for cavemen and their literal-minded and limited-capacity brains. After all, your paying customers are only one step out of the cave. (Jakob Nielsen, in Short-term memory and web usability)
   
• Content is king. But the bitter truth is that you probably have limited ability when it comes to good copywriting. (Eric Karjaluoto, in The Content Delusion)
   
• The only reason people use target=”_blank” is because of fear. (Dieter Orens)
   
• It’s no secret that Flash is a blight on the Internet and should be killed with fire. (TJ Luoma)
   
• A webwriter is a storyteller who gives away the plot in the first line. (Unknown)
  

Tools

• E-mail testing
  Handy tool to check what your mailings and newsletters look like in different mailclients.

Great cartoon

• How a web design goes straight to hell

Example 1

“As I may have noticed? How could anyone overlook a makeover of such magnitude? You’re rocking a whole new look! And a new navigation!

By the way, don’t sweat the little stuff. You know, like pages still in progress and losing my password. I’ll check back frequently to see if you’ve got it all sorted out. And register again. Happily.

I mean, it’s not like I have a life or anything.”

Example 2(.0)

“Oh my God. I had always hoped you guys would go 2.0. And now, after 2 years of strugling (not quite sure what that is but it sounds like hard work), you’ve gone and done it.

A better news section and even an agenda. You know, I thought you’d start with something simple but no… 2.0 all the way.

And on top of all that: improved SEO. Well, that is just the cherry on the cake.

Thanks, guys.”

Why is an announcement about your new site a bad idea?

• Nobody cares
  I understand that you’ve worked hard on your new website. For you and your team, getting the damn thing online is very important news. But it isn’t for your visitors.If you think it is, you need to have a big slice of humple pie. Because really, it totally isn’t.
  Half of the people who visit your site are probably there for the first time. They don’t even know what your site looked like before.
  And admit it, even your most faithful visitors probably only spend a couple of hours a year on your website. Don’t hassle them with news they don’t care about.
• It’s not news, it’s your job
  People who come to your website expect to find what they’re looking for fast. They expect your navigation to be user-friendly. And your check-out process to be swift.
  Constantly updating and improving your website is not news. It’s your job.
• It makes you lose money
  Usually, the ‘news’ about a website redesign is put on one of the most important pages of a site: on the homepage, above the pagefold, in the top left side of the content area.
  A lot of the time, that message pushes the site’s real content, the products and services people visit the site for, the stuff that actually makes them money, out of sight.
  If people can’t see what you’ve got to offer, they’ll leave. And visit your competitor. Who doesn’t bore them with news they couldn’t care less about.  

“Content is king”, you often hear. That’s true. This presentation drives that message home once more.

Tip: for a full screen view, click the second to last icon at the bottom right.

Problems?

• No Flash on your computer?
• SlideShare blocked by your firewall?

Don’t panic. We’ll talk about the tips in detail over the coming weeks.

Shameless advertising
Have a look at our writing for the web seminars.