Blog SEO basics
Titles and meta descriptions: the 60-character sales pitch
September 8, 2026
More people will read your homepage title in search results than will ever read your homepage. It is the most-read sentence you will write about your business, and on half the sites we scan it says something like "Home | CompanyName".
Titles: the rules that survive every update
- Under about 60 characters, or it truncates mid-thought.
- The phrase your customer searches goes first, your brand last: "Deck Builder in Auburn, CA | Stone Ridge" not "Stone Ridge | Home".
- Unique on every page. Duplicated titles tell crawlers your pages are interchangeable, so the wrong one ranks or none does.
A formula per page type: service pages get "Service in Location | Brand". Products get "Product Name: Key Benefit | Brand". Posts get the question or claim: "How Much Does a Deck Cost in 2026?".
Descriptions: ad copy, not summary
The meta description does not affect ranking directly. It affects whether a human picks your result over the two above it, which is what your ranking is worth in money. Under about 155 characters, one concrete promise, one differentiator, and when it fits, a nudge: "Free quote in 24 hours." Every page unique, or search engines ignore yours and improvise from page text.
The silent failure: falling back to defaults
When a page has no explicit title or description, your CMS or plugin falls back to patterns and first paragraphs. The result is legible but generic, and it is why so many sites read identically in results. This is the exact installed-but-unconfigured problem: the fields exist, they are just empty.
A scan lists every page with a missing, too-long, or duplicated title and description in one table, which turns the fix from an audit project into a checklist afternoon. Run it, fix the fails, re-run to confirm.
Quick answers
How long should a page title be?
Keep titles under about 60 characters so they do not truncate in results, with the phrase your customer searches near the front and your brand at the end.
Do meta descriptions affect rankings?
Not directly, but they heavily influence whether people click your result, and click-through is what your position is worth. Treat the description as ad copy for the click.