Still Need to Write Title & Description Tag?
-
My SEO has advised me that Google has stopped using title and description tags for search results and as such, it is no longer necessary to write specific title and description tags.
I see that Yoast seems to pull text to create these tags and sometimes it looks like it reflects the best elements of the content, sometimes it does not.
Should I be asking our SEO team to write dedicated title and description tags or is it best practices to leave it to the Yoast plugin? My SEO is of the opinion that writing these tags is not a productive use of time as Google will serve results based on the user inquiry rather than the content on his tags. It sounds logical but it would be reassuring to receive further confirmation of this.
Thoughts?"
Thanks, Alan -
Not a problem Alan
-
Dear Effect Digital:
Thanks for your very detailed and thorough response. Confirms what I suspected, but with ranking factors in flux great to have this confirmed.
Thanks so much,
Alan
-
Thanks as always!
-
Great response from EffectDigital.
-
It's true that Google no longer necessarily must use Meta descriptions and Title tags, however Google is still pre-disposed to using them if they are written well. Why let Google crawl all your content, let a mechanical brain 'decide' which snippet (or paragraph) to display - when you can still control it with minimal effort?
If Title tags and Meta descriptions are written badly (poor grammar, keyword stuffed) then Google now can take these elements from your content instead. That's a fall-back though, it's not a reason to 'get lazy' and 'not do stuff'
In SEO, there are no 'magic bullet' solutions (that's commonly said, in our industry). But if there are no magic bullet solutions, that means that there are very rarely, any single changes that massively increase results. If that is true, it means that most factors in SEO only hold a very small (yet relatively equal) weighting
If you follow me on that, you'll see why the small 'seemingly unimportant' stuff is still critical. If in SEO, all factors under your control only make up a tiny sliver of the whole pie - then by saying 'I won't do the small stuff' what you are really saying is 'I won't do any SEO'. But these small, seemingly unimportant changes - are all part of what gives you an 'edge'. When you come up against a competitor of relatively equal standing (and popularity), you might just get ahead. That's what SEO is really for
Imagine you have two car manufacturers stripping down and gutting out their cars for the rally track (maybe one is Mitsubishi and one is Subaru). They go around the chassis, making tiny reductions here and there - so that their car finishes the track less than a second faster than the other. That has value to them, but if the team said "well each of these tiny changes doesn't do much, so let's sit on our butts and do nothing" - the opposition WOULD beat them
The art of optimisation is small, consistent, fractional weight loss and streamlining. That's what it means, not just in SEO but everywhere
If you have an SEO company which is hesitant to do their own darn job, look elsewhere. You need someone who just 'gets on with it' instead of taking your money and making excuses when you pull them up on stuff (although budget is also a factor there, since I don't know anything in that area - I at least have to say that for them)
Meta descriptions don't influence Google's rankings any more, but a search result which has a nicely written description may draw more traffic through from Google without having its ranking position increased. If people see it and it looks more attractive, they may choose that result over the top one. Although Google can 'generate' SERP snippets from your content - since when has generated crap ever been better than hand-written, targeted, authored text? Do you let Google Ads write all your own Ad-text for PPC? No? Then don't do it in SEO
Page titles can still influence rankings. Not as strongly as they used to, but I see evidence every day that they can still make the difference in some small situations. That's what optimisation is, bundling up all the small stuff into a package and benefiting from it. Someone who says "this is too small to bother with" ISN'T an optimiser. Optimisation is attention to detail for small, cumulative, multiplicative gains which snowball over time
Too many people are still selling SEO as a pure marketing package instead of a B.I. & fat-trimming / competitive edge based product
Final thoughts: Yes, write your own page titles and Meta - and don't let people fob you off when you're paying them your own real money. They should be coming to you with things they have missed (it does happen, people are human after all) not the other way around with you having to pick up on stuff, go to forums, aggregate answers. You're doing the research now - that they should have done before they even opened their doors. Everything I have said is (EXTREMELY) common SEO knowledge
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Pagination & SEO
Hi We have automatically created brand pages based on which brand they have in their attributes. At the moment, developers have restricted the ability to properly optimise these for SEO, but I also wanted to look at how we should handle pagination. Example: http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/brand/manutan?page=1 http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/brand/manutan?page=2 http://www.key.co.uk/en/key/brand/manutan?page=3 Should we do any of the following - which I've found in an article: Put no follow on all links located on pagination pages Should we no index these pages as they are wasting crawl budget? - Don’t show links to page 2, 3, 4, 5… 10, 11, 12… at the end of your content but only a link to the next and previous pages so that you won’t dilute your page authority. Or does anyone else have any tips on how to handle these pages? Thank you!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BeckyKey0 -
Competitor Title, can I use the same???
there are some pages, my competitor is ranking well and also, we have done page optimization it is 100% for page title keywords as im going to use the same title of the competitor? Will this affect me? Pls suggest wht should I do..
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Rahim1190 -
Guru Needed
Hello, We are interested in finding someone experienced in SEO, who is willing to take a look at my work that I am doing for my employer, on an ongoing basis. This would help me ensure that I am on the right track and we are doing the right thing. Even tough I have some knowledge with SEO, I am still novice in the field. I also have background in marketing and management. I believe by having someone to mentor, would help me to grow professionally, as I feel very passionate about SEO, but to also deliver good work to my employer. I believe someone's experience, reviews and suggestions about our campaigns can help, and I would not expect someone to give out their time freely. Therefore, if required we could talk about a financial agreement. Thank you for your time, and looking for your replies. Monica
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | monicapopa1 -
Need suggestion for link-building
Link Building Question i want to get rank in google for www.topnotchlawsuitloans.com so have to build backlinks with lawsuit loans alt tag but main question is this have to build or gain backlinks for this domain only or one of my website sub domain www.topnotchlawsuitloans.com/lawsuit-funding-philadelphia.html on page #6 so have to build backlink for this URL ??? what are the effective strategy to gain backlinks for main page or all sub pages have to build backlinks ?? how many back-link per keyword & per page is good for website.???
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JulieWhite0 -
Not alt tags but Title and description Meta: My designer's answer.
Hello! I was busy doing lots of key wording for my images which I hate and notices that when viewed in source code, the different places I inputed information translated into Title and Description meta tags but NO alt tags. As I'm a a photographer, it's really important to me that I make the most of my images to get increased traffic so I challenged the people behind my website about it. This is their response to the question: "We all know how important the alt tags are for image SEO so why does
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IoanSaid
the design allows Title, Description and Keyword image tags but not alt
tags?" Unfortunately, there is no way to add an alt tag and title tag specifically to an image display page. However, as you have pointed out here, we use other elements that essentially accomplish the same thing. Each image display page does have its own page title and meta description, as you have also noticed. For the title, we use the IPTC Headline field (if there is no headline, then we use IPTC Title, and if there is no title, then we go to file name), and for the meta description, we use both the IPTC caption as well as the keywords - so all of that information is embedded on the image display page with the image itself and search engines can index this content. Alt Text data intends to given contextual information to search engines when they crawl your site, and the IPTC metadata that shows along with your images, does this as well." What is your opinion on that answer?0 -
Duplicate titles got me stumped
Webmaster tools is showing duplicate titles for example: http://www.musicliveuk.com/lincolnshire/bands-in-lincolnshire/ and: http://www.musicliveuk.com/lincolnshire%20/bands-in-lincolnshire/ What's the %20 all about? I didn't create that page and it is a duplicate of the first. I'm also getting them for some pages with capitialisation? Eg: http://www.musicliveuk.com/lincolnshire/bands-in-lincolnshire/ http://www.musicliveuk.com/Lincolnshire/bands-in-lincolnshire/ I have also installed buddypress on another site I work on (I use wordpress) and have since had duplicate title issues for members that have signed up: /members/admin/activity/friends/ /members/admin/activity/groups/ /members/admin/activity/just-me/ These pages are all showing duplicate titles? How can I fix this? I use all in one SEO pack and have <a title="Click for Help!">Canonical URLs checked.</a> Any help much appreciated!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SamCUK0 -
Are tags an issue in SEO
SEOMoz saw that my tags were duplicate pages. Are tags a serious issue in SEO? Should I remove it entirely to prevent the duplicate pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | visualartistics0 -
Canonical Tag and Affiliate Links
Hi! I am not very familiar with the canonical tag. The thing is that we are getting traffic and links from affiliates. The affiliates links add something like this to the code of our URL: www.mydomain.com/category/product-page?afl=XXXXXX At this moment we have almost 2,000 pages indexed with that code at the end of the URL. So they are all duplicated. My other concern is that I don't know if those affilate links are giving us some link juice or not. I mean, if an original product page has 30 links and the affiliates copies have 15 more... are all those links being counted together by Google? Or are we losing all the juice from the affiliates? Can I fix all this with the canonical tag? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jorgediaz0