Let’s face it, SEO is a complicated mess. Anybody who says otherwise is seriously kidding themselves. With all the variables involved, can you believe that title and description probably cause more arguments than just about anything else? It’s true. Everybody has their two cents on which is more important. Well, this marketer is going to give you his two cents on the subject. Take it for what it’s worth to you.

There is no question that the title of your site is important. After all, if you’re fortunate enough to get listed (not always a given) that is going to be the first thing that people see. So granted, you need a title that clearly defines what people are going to see there. So for example, let’s say you have a site that is on Internet Marketing Tips. You’re going to want THAT to be your title. That way, if people see it in the SERPs, they’ll know that going there HOPEFULLY will give them tips on THAT subject.

However, because there are so many sites with the same darn titles (go do a search if you think I’m kidding) what happens is that searchers develop a blindness to them. Think about it. If you did a search for Internet Marketing Tips and the first 20 results in the SERPs all had the same title, what do you think would happen? You’d probably just glaze over all of them OR…and this is where the description comes in…you’d look to see who had the BEST description.

Okay, but what IS the best description? That is something that is impossible to qualify for any site no matter what the niche is. The reason is because now we’re really getting into the area of copywriting. Simply changing your description and waiting for the SERPs to index your page with the new one can literally mean the difference between 1,000 visitors a month and 10,000 visitors a month.

But now I’m going to throw another monkey wrench into the fire, which is why you can’t say for certain that description is more important than title. See, Google, in all their infinite wisdom, does not always print your description tag as is. They will sometimes print a description based on certain content from your page that they feel is most relevant to the prospect. If you think I’m kidding, go check out a few web pages and see how they’re listed. It’s almost laughable.

Therefore, since there is no fool proof way to insure that your description is going to appear the way YOU want it, I can’t give that meta tag a clear win over title.

So for those of you who pick one over the other, the truth is, it’s a crap shoot between the two. But at least the title, you have complete control over. So while it may not help much, should there be 20 pages with the same title, it is at least one variable that you don’t have to worry about being messed with by the SERPs.

Yeah, and you thought SEO was simple.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

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