Title Tag and SERP Preview

Ranking fifth with a title people want to click beats ranking third with one that reads like a file name. The title tag is the single highest leverage piece of copy on any page, and most photography sites waste it on their business name.

The rules worth following

• Lead with the search term. “Hampton Manor Wedding Photographer” not “Your Studio | Wedding Photography”. The first words carry the most weight and are what the eye catches.
• Include the word photographer or photography. It sounds obvious and it is missing from an astonishing number of photography title tags.
• Put the brand last, or drop it. On a venue or city page the brand is the least useful thing in the title.
• Stay under about 600 pixels on desktop. That is roughly 55 to 60 characters, but it genuinely depends on the letters, which is why this tool measures pixels.
• Make every page different. Duplicate titles across location pages is one of the clearest signals of thin, templated content.

Meta descriptions do not rank you, they get you clicked

Google frequently rewrites them and they are not a ranking factor. They are still worth writing, because a good one measurably lifts click through rate, and click through on a result you already rank for is the cheapest traffic gain available.

Say what makes you different, name the place, and give a reason to click. Put the important half first, since the end is what gets truncated.

Why pixels rather than characters

A title of sixty narrow characters fits comfortably. Sixty wide ones will not. Capital letters and letters like W and M are far wider than i and l, so two titles of identical length can behave completely differently in the results. This tool measures the rendered width in the same font Google uses.