🚨 To ensure accurate reports and SEO scores, always enter page titles and meta descriptions manually.
Automatic template settings
Your site is likely set up with templates to create page titles and meta descriptions automatically from the information entered when creating certain kinds of pages. However, these automatically generated items don’t always display in the proper places, so we encourage manual settings when publishing a new page. (If you miss this step, Google should still be able to see the defaults, but reports and scores may not reflect accurate page settings.)
On some pages, such as blog posts, excerpts may be entered and automatically used for meta descriptions. Excerpts vary in length, depending on how they’re used on the site. Even if the template is set to pull them in, it doesn’t mean they’re an appropriate length for a meta description. For this reason, you always want to check for best practices and enter the field manually, even if it’s the same as what is automatically generated.
A word on best practices
When it comes to SEO, best practices vary and change pretty regularly. Search engines aren’t transparent about their methods for ranking pages, so things are always developing and changing. Always aim to meet the best practices, but understand that even complete compliance doesn’t guarantee you’ll rank for a given search.
Page titles
On your website, a page title is the official name given to each page of your site. This information is displayed in various locations, including tabs in web browsers and Google search results.
Recommended best practices
- Keep it clear and concise.
30–60 characters is the current advised length for page titles. Page titles longer than 60 characters will be cut off in Google results. - Make it descriptive of the actual page.
Do not stuff your page titles with keywords. It’s beneficial to have applicable keywords in the page title, but adding too many will hurt your SEO. - Make it unique.
You never want to reuse page titles. Each page on your site should have its own unique title with no repetition among pages. If pages are closely related, find a way to make the title distinct.
Other recommendations ✅
- For blog posts, you can typically use the blog post title, though you’ll want to keep an eye on the character count and cut extra words if it’s longer than 60 characters.
- Use proper and consistent title capitalization. The rules around capitalizing titles can be tricky and have a lot of variability, so use a capitalization tool to ensure accuracy.
- You can find tools like Capitalize My Title that will show you how to write your title in whatever style you desire.
Meta descriptions
Meta descriptions are short explanations of what can be found on a webpage. This is sometimes what is displayed on Google when your page ranks as a search result, but not always. (Depending on a number of factors, Google may use a combination of aspects to create their own description for your page.)
Still, this is an important aspect of optimizing your website and meta descriptions should always be set for each page.
Best practices
- Accurately describe the contents of the page.
It can be okay to pull text from a page if it’s a good kind of overview. Otherwise, you’ll want to craft a summary of the entirety of the page, not just pull a single excerpt. - Keep it between 120–160 characters.
The recommendations can vary, but this range is a safe bet. - Don’t stuff your meta description with keywords.
Meta descriptions should read naturally, as someone would actually write or speak. If a keyword doesn’t fit naturally, don’t force it: leave it out or find a way to reword. Hitting most of a page’s high-level keywords should be your goal. - Make it descriptive of the page’s actual content.
Similar to page titles, the meta descriptions should match the content of the page. - Make it unique.
Don’t reuse meta descriptions, even if pages are incredibly similar.
Setting page titles and meta descriptions with SEOPress
Whether you’re looking at a page in the editor (admin area) or live on the site (front end), you should be able to see the purple SEOPress icon.
Troubleshooting: If you don’t see the icon, you may need to reload the post/page. Save or publish your changes and then reload the page.
Step one
Navigate to the desired page and click on the purple SEOPress icon.
This will open the SEOPress window and allow you to make changes to the information that Google and other search engines see about your page.
Step two
The window should automatically open with Title Settings selected.
You’ll see text boxes under Title and Meta description where you can set them as desired. Be sure to click Save when you’re done to apply any changes.
Note: You don’t have to republish the page to effect these changes. Sometimes WordPress will give a warning about unsaved changes, but if you have only made edits in the SEOPress window and clicked Save there, you don’t need to republish or resave your draft.
Using AI with SEOPress
Your Valerian website comes equipped with the ability to use AI to generate your page titles and meta descriptions. This can be an easy way to streamline the creation of these settings, but you’ll want to double-check them, as AI can still sometimes be inaccurate.
Setting target keywords
The AI tool needs to know the target keywords for a given page in order to generate your page titles and meta descriptions.
If you aren’t sure about what keywords to use, the page’s headers can often supply at least one or two. For blog posts, you can also use any applicable categories or tags.
Here’s how to add target keywords and use them to generate page titles and meta descriptions:
Step one
Note: You’ll need to be logged in to the WP admin area to make any of these changes.
Navigate to the desired page and click the purple icon to open the SEOPress options.
Step two
In the SEOPress window, click on Content Analysis in the sidebar. In the Target keywords section, enter the page’s keywords, using the enter key or commas to create separate keywords. Then click on Refresh analysis to save the keywords.
Step three
The keywords will be set. Go back to the Title Settings to use AI to generate the page titles and meta descriptions.
Step four
You may need to generate multiple options before you find one that works or creates a good option for a starting point. Don’t forget to hit the Save button when you’re ready to set them.
🚨 Keep an eye on the numbers shown below the text boxes (in our example image above: 52/60 and 140/160). Do not allow page titles or meta descriptions to exceed the maximum recommended limits, even if the AI has generated it.
Using the AI-generated page titles and meta descriptions effectively
Always check the AI-generated content for quality and accuracy. Watch for errors and make edits as necessary.
A few things to keep in mind:
- Watch for accuracy, especially if the title or description names proper nouns (like your company or specific services and products) or calls out certain audiences.
- The AI-generated content may work best as a jumping-off point. Take the content and make whatever edits necessary to adhere to best practices.
- Keep an eye on the character count and keep it within the recommended lengths: 30–60 characters for page titles and 120–160 characters for meta descriptions. The AI content will sometimes fall out of these parameters, so you can either generate a new one or edit it a bit to get it back in the right range.