Give each page a title and a description that state its subject
Description
This criterion checks that your page introduces itself: a single <title>, 10 to 70 characters long, that is neither the bare domain name nor a generic label such as “Home”; a meta description of 50 to 160 characters; the Open Graph og:title and og:description tags.
Google sets no length limit and truncates text to fit the screen width: iPand’s bounds are those of the usual display of search results.
Why it matters for AI engines
The title and meta description are the summary you give of the page yourself. Google, whose index feeds AI Overviews and AI Mode, may use them to build the page’s title link and snippet in its results; when they are missing or describe the page poorly, it picks other text from the page.
- A generic title, or one repeated on every page, says nothing about the subject: Google recommends a descriptive title specific to each page.
- A precise meta description can be used as the snippet when it describes the page better than its text.
- og:title and og:description provide the title and summary of the preview shown when a link to the page is shared.
How to fix it
- 1 Write a title specific to the page In the <title> tag, state the precise subject of the page in 10 to 70 characters, followed by your brand name if you wish, for example “Electric bike rental in Boulder | Cyclo Example”. Avoid “Home”, the bare domain name and repeated words.
- 2 Summarize the page in the meta description Add a <meta name="description"> tag that sums up the page in one or two sentences, 50 to 160 characters long: what it offers, who it is for and what sets it apart. Write a different description for each page rather than one text shared across the site.
- 3 Add the Open Graph tags In the page’s <head>, add <meta property="og:title"> and <meta property="og:description">, with a title and summary consistent with the two previous tags. The Open Graph protocol also requires og:type, og:image and og:url: iPand does not check them, but they complete the preview.
- 4 Make sure there is only one title Open your browser’s inspection tool and search the page code for <title> and og:. A theme and a CMS plugin can each add their own tags: keep a single set, with the text you wrote.
Key takeaway
A title and a description specific to each page are the summary you give search engines yourself. iPand checks every day that they are present, that their length fits and that the Open Graph tags are there.
