It's no secret websites take a lot of work. Many people spend copious amounts of time and money to build a site, then splash out even more resource on paid search and other channels to drive traffic. What amazes me though, is after investing so heavily, they forget about the one way they can efficiently get people to their site for free - meta titles and description tags.
If you're not familiar with html, meta descriptions allow you to choose how your site appears on the Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP).
Leaving your title and meta descriptions blank means you have no control over what message snippets potential visitors see. You're relying on Google to decide what content is relevant and pull it through from your page to display in search results.
A lot of companies spend a lot of money and time trying to reach top SERP position by implementing paid search ads. Search specialists spend hours and hours managing these accounts, A/B testing ads, tweaking them and monitoring to try and serve the most efficient one. I'm not saying this isn't an efficient way to drive traffic, but we shouldn't forget about our organic rankings either.
While Google crawlers (that go through the page checking how relevant the content is to the search) don't actually read the meta title or descriptions, the users who are searching do. You can choose exactly what they read. If tweaked in a way that appeals to searchers, you'll generally achieve a higher CTR. Google then sees this as more relevant to the SERP and it should improve your rankings.
There are of course a million things that affect your website ranks, but this is a very easy and vital way to improve CTR. Plus, it won't cost you a thing.
You should treat your meta title and description like a search ad. Do simple things like include a call to action. Keep title tags between 50-60 characters and descriptions between 150-160 characters. And remember, they should always be unique.
Now my question is, have you tweaked and optimised your meta title and description tags for your most important pages? Well then, maybe it's time.
