Interpreting "SEO Issues" in Your Page Titles & Meta Tags

Recently a client asked me to take a look at a report of SEO issues their internal web specialist had exported from Ahrefs.

Apart from my overall analysis and recommendations, they wanted clarity around two specific things:

1. Meta descriptions that are too short or two long
2. Page titles that don’t match SERP titles

They’d started rewriting all the meta descriptions in the report, then decided it was best to get an expert opinion before investing all the hours it would take to rewrite all of these tags.

Ahrefs offers some great resources, but as with any SEO tool, its data is most helpful when contextualized by someone with solid SEO experience—not taken at face value.

Meta description length and whether or not the HTML page title matches the SERP title frequently appear in these kinds of reports. Here’s what they mean, and how to decide what to do about them (if anything).

Issue #1: Meta description too long / too short

Here’s what Ahrefs says about this issue:

As a rule of thumb, maximum meta description (aka search snippet) length is 157 characters. 

When a meta description exceeds this length and is used as the snippet it might be cut off, for example: 

But if your meta description is awesome and goes over the “limit” a little bit, you don’t need to tinker with it to fit an exact character count.

When a meta description is “too short” (a subjective value) it’s not necessarily a problem, though you might want to consider beefing it up.

Reasons why a short meta description may be undesirable:

• You’re not taking advantage of all the available space, thereby potentially providing a less-than-optimal preview for searchers
• You’re missing opportunities to include the target and/or semantically related keywords (which are often bolded in snippets)

However, depending on the page content, audience and search intent, sometimes a deliberately short and well-crafted meta description is all you need.

For example:

Here’s the thing about meta descriptions:

Estimates are that Google “rewrites” meta descriptions  around 70% of the time anyway (hard to get an official number as SERPs are often personalized).

Even in Google’s own documentation on how to write a meta description, the meta description provided in the page HTML doesn’t display as the search snippet:

From the documentation:

<blockquote class="quote">Snippets are automatically created from page content. Snippets are designed to emphasize and preview the page content that best relates to a user's specific search. This means that Google Search might show different snippets for different searches.</blockquote>

<blockquote class="quote">Snippets are primarily created from the page content itself. However, Google sometimes uses the meta description HTML element if it might give users a more accurate description of the page than content taken directly from the page.</blockquote>

So yes, you should put some thought into the meta description, especially for popular landing pages like the homepage.

But it’s not where you should spend the majority of your time when optimizing a page, and meta description length isn’t necessarily a priority to “fix”, simply because it’s in an automated report.

Recommendations:

Review the flagged meta descriptions through the following lens:

• Does this page generate enough organic traffic as a landing page to be worth optimizing the meta description?
• Does this page include minimal text, making it more likely Google will display the meta tag instead of an automatically-generated snippet drawn from page content?
• Is the same meta description used across multiple pages?
• Does the meta description fail to provide an accurate and attractive summary of the page contents?

If yes to any of the above, then it’s probably worth optimizing the meta description.

Use a SERP preview tool to see what the title link and snippet will look like on a SERP (always view in mobile device format unless the data says the majority of your page visitors are on desktop).

If you’re using AI to generate meta descriptions, review and (if needed) edit the output to make sure it’s accurate, appealing to your target audience, and includes relevant and semantically-related keywords in a natural way.

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Issue #2: SERP title link does not match meta title HTML element

Here is what Ahrefs says about this issue:

This is similar to why Google automatically generates snippets from the page content: they want to provide search engine users with the most helpful and relevant results (so people keep using Google search, so Google keeps getting eyeballs on ads and making money).

Here are some common ways Google modifies title tags, resulting in a SERP title link that’s different from the HTML title tag:

1. Omitting the pipe and brand/domain at the end of title tags 

Is this an issue? No. Users can see the URL itself, as well as the site name and favicon on the SERP. And anyway, you can’t force Google to show the entire title tag.

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2. Omitting redundant words, such as when a store/branch/clinic location name matches the city name, and the HTML title tag includes the city name twice 

Is this an issue? No. Either way, the person searching for a location near them is seeing a specific and accurate title for the location page.

Google also frequently omits redundant words when a title tag is stuffed with multiple variations of a keyword.

Not only is this not an issue, they’re doing you a solid by helping your page look less spammy. You can even use this report to find examples of keyword-stuffed page titles and make them better.

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3. Displaying the h1 instead of the title tag

This is a known thing that Google does sometimes, and in fact it’s a good reason to NOT exact match the title tag and h1 when creating new page content—especially in situations where there are there are two closely related target keywords (you can use a different keyword variation in each tag, giving Google the option of displaying either one as the title link on SERPs).

Is this an issue? No. And again, it could be an opportunity to give your page a bit of an edge by distinguishing the title tag and h1, thereby giving Google two great options instead of one.

Recommendations:

Review the non-matching page and SERP titles through the following lens:

• Does this page generate enough organic traffic as a landing page to be worth optimizing the title tag? (If the page has thin content and is not competitive in search because other web pages fulfill the query much better, then optimizing the title tag alone will not help.)
• Could the title tag be written in a more descriptive and concise way that avoids repeating words and gets the point across quickly on a mobile SERP? 
• Does the title tag fail to include the most relevant and helpful information about the page, based on search intent for the query? (e.g. including the year for an annual event so users know it’s up to date) 
• Is the title tag similar or identical to other pages?
• Is the title tag inaccurate?

If yes to any of the above, then it’s probably worth rewriting/optimizing the title tag. Here’s a link to Google’s documentation on title tags with best practices and other details.

Don’t forget to use a SERP preview tool using the device view aligned with the majority of your audience. It’s also a good idea to open up an incognito browser session, search a few queries you want to be visible for, and think of how you can craft a page title and snippet that stand out from the ones already visible at the top of results.

<div class="post-note-cute">Do you want a professional take on a report you got from an SEO tool? That’s what we’re here for! <a href="https://momenticmarketing.com/contact">Reach out today for a quick consult</a> or learn more about best practices for <a href="https://momenticmarketing.com/seo-best-practices">customer-led SEO</a>.</div>