How to Add WordPress Meta Description, Meta Titles, and Focus Keyphrases
Website SEO plays a crucial role in driving traffic to the website. Many factors influence our website’s SEO.
Meta Description, Meta Title, and Focus Keyphrase (Focus Keywords) are essential components of SEO, and they contribute to improving CTR —these target snippets aid in attracting users and converting them into website visitors.
This article will teach you how to properly use meta descriptions, meta titles, and focus keyphrases.
What is a Meta Description
Meta Description is an HTML element tag that contains a short introduction of page content.
It is very important to provide a summary of a web page to search engines, it enables users to get information about the page’s content.
If the title and meta description satisfy the user’s query, he clicks on the page link to visit the website.
To Improve SEO you also need to learn about meta title and focus keyphrases, these are related to each other.
What is a Focus Keyphrase
Focus Keyphrases are also referred to as focus keywords. Our content is all centered around these words. We use our content to explain and provide answers about these keyphrases.
Google uses key phrases as the primary criteria to search for content for users who initiate searches on Google. When a user types keywords in the search bar, Google compares the content in the database for those keywords. The most relevant content is listed on the result page.
It’s crucial to include key phrases in our content that are naturally linked to our content.
Don’t stuff keywords in content. Make sure to use the appropriate keywords in the content, which are used by users to search for content on Google.
What is a Meta Title
A meta title or title tag is an HTML element in the head section of the page. The purpose of a meta title is to describe the page’s topic in SERPs.
The meta title is not the website name; occasionally, people include the website name in the home page title. It is good to write a title that gives an introduction to the page content.
To describe individual page topics, it’s better to write the title according to page content, and not the same for all pages.
A good meta title of the page attracts the user to click the page link, so it helps to improve CTR. Use key phrases in the page title.
Difference Between Meta Title Tag and H1 Tag, Purpose of Use
To avoid confusion, it’s beneficial to understand the difference between these two.
The meta title is an HTML element that is located in the HEAD section of the HTML page.
It is not visible in the HTML page output or directly on a web page to the user. The user cannot see it at the output of an HTML page or directly on a web page. It is located within the HTML code.
It is only seen on search engine result pages (SERPs) or within the browser tab. Search engines display the page title using a meta tag title.
On the other hand, H1 tags are used to display large text on the page as the page title. WordPress uses it to display post titles. The search engine does not display H1 tags on SERPs .
It’s a good practice to have a meta tag title and H1 tag similar. If someone arrives at your web page or post and sees a page title (H1) different from the one they saw on the search engine result page, it may cause confusion. So he can leave the page.
It is recommended to use only one H1 tag per page or WordPress post.
Importance of Meta Descriptions, Meta Title, and Focus Keyphrase
It is very important to provide a summary of a web page so that visitors may know about the page’s content. The user is more likely to click the website link and visit the webpage if it is related to their query. so it is very helpful for SEO.
If we do not add a meta tag description to the page, Google may generate it automatically by extracting words from the page. Google’s random generation of descriptions may not be fully aligned with page content, causing us to lose potential visitors to our website or blog.
Users examine meta tag descriptions and meta titles and search focus keyphrases in both.
So we can say all these play an important role in bringing visitors to the web page.
How do Meta Description, Meta Titles, and Focus Keywords Work for SEO?
The primary objective of search engines is to fetch results for users when they make a query on the search engines. Search engines use certain parameters to select the website link for the user’s query.
Page URLs, titles, keywords (focus keyphrases), and meta tag descriptions are the parameters that comprise these parameters. Search engines compare all these parameters and select the most suitable content for user queries. So meta tag description, titles, and keywords are parameters of selection for the SERP list.
The search engine introduces the page to the user by writing a description of the page. If we add a meta tag description to the page, search engines will display it on SERP; otherwise, search engines will generate a random description that search engines think is most appropriate.
If search engines discover that our description is not relevant to the search keywords, in that case, they also generate descriptions.
So it is very important to add a meta tag description with relevant keywords.
The user is required to locate a page that is most useful or appropriate for him. The user selects a page by examining the title, description, and keyphrases, which are copies of the website page title and meta tag description.
This is a working process of meta tag description, meta title, and focus keyphrases to bring traffic to our page.
Why add WordPress Meta Tags?
Meta tag description, meta title, and focal keyword all have different functions to improve SEO and CTR.
The meta tag title and meta tag description contain focus keyphrases. These three are closely linked and used to present page content to search engines (search engine crawlers) and users.
These help the search engine to locate your content and present it to the user if your content is appropriate for the user’s query.
SEO is enhanced by the collaboration of these three. Our discussion will focus on each of the three.
How to Add Meta Description, Meta Title, and Focus Keyphrase?
There are multiple ways to add meta tags to a website.
On a static website, we can add them manually, in the head section of an HTML page. Use the following code:
<head>
<title>This is an example of the meta title tag, include the main keyword in it</title>
<meta name="description" content=" This is an example of meta description, include the main keyword in it"/>
</head>
To generate the meta title and meta description in WordPress, we can either use a plugin or add some code.
The code automatically generates a meta tag title from the post title and a meta tag description from the first paragraph of the post.
This guide explains how to add meta tags without a plugin.
Using an SEO plugin is the most convenient way to add a focus keyphrase, meta title, and meta tag description in WordPress.
This method is straightforward and doesn’t require technical expertise in coding. Plugin provides a step-by-step guide to managing all these things.
Some parameters are used by these plugins for the proper implementation of meta tags from an SEO perspective.
All you need to do is download and install the plugin. Here we will use All in One SEO plugin.
How to Add Meta Description in WordPress Post and Pages?
You can add a meta title while you publish a post, or you can edit a post to add a meta title that is already published.
Adding Meta Description, Meta Title, and Foucus Keyphrase in New Post.
To Add a meta tag description, meta title, and focus keyphrase in the new post simply write your post and navigate to the post bottom. You will see All in One SEO plugin interface.
In the top bar, you can see “General” is selected by default. Leave it selected.
Now you can see the preview snippet; it already displays the title and meta tag description, It is a sample of how it will look on the search engine result page.
In fact, by default, the AIOSEO plugin takes the post title as the meta title and extracts the few lines from the first paragraph as the meta tag description.
We can edit these and make them more attractive by customizing them.
Adding Pre built Tags
You have the option to add pre built tags to your title and description now.
By clicking the buttons above the title field with the ‘+’ sign, you can add a post title, a separator, a site title, an author name, and other tags.
Similarly, by clicking the button, you can add a post excerpt, post content, author name, date, and other tags.
Search Engine Snippet Preview of Meta tag Description and Meta Title
You can see a search engine snippet preview.
By default, the snippet preview displays a desktop version.
You can view the mobile phone snippet preview also.
Change the snippet preview to mobile by clicking the mobile phone icon in the right top corner.
Adding Meta Tags in Old Post.
The procedure is almost the same. If the post is already published, follow the steps as below.
In the WordPress admin sidebar, search for Posts and now click “All Posts”.
Find the post, to add a meta tag title and meta tag description.
Now click Edit.
Navigate to the bottom of the post.
Now the procedure is the same as mentioned in the section: how to add meta tag title, meta tag description, and meta key phrases in a new post.
Best Practice: How to Write a Meta Description
Keep a few things in mind while writing a meta description.
How long should a meta description be?
It have no specific length limit. You should write a description, sufficient to elaborate your page idea to the user.
Google truncates snippet characters over 155 to 160 to fit in the target device. So it is advisable to specify your main idea in less than 160 characters. Because characters over 160 will not be visible to users.
So meta description length should be less than 160 characters, if not possible try to write the main message under the first 160 characters.
Consider Following Point when Write a Meta Description
- It must describe page content in brief.
- Explain your idea less than 160 characters because characters over 160 will not be visible to users
- Add focus keyphrases to your meta description
- Write in an active voice and make it seem actionable to attract visitor
- It should be unique.
- It is good to add a call to action
Conclusion
Meta tags are essential components of SEO. Without these, it is impossible to improve SEO and CTR.
Before clicking on the page link, the user examines the meta description and meta title. In order to persuade users to click the link, it is essential to include the main keyword accurately in both. The addition of keyphrases increases the CTR.
I hope this article will help you understand and implement all of these correctly to get more traffic to your website.
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