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Lesson 5, Topic 29
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Tools For Checking Meta Descriptions

11.02.2022
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Meta tags are snippets of text that describe a page’s content; the meta tags don’t appear on the page itself, but only in the page’s source code. Meta tags are essentially little content descriptors that help tell search engines what a web page is about.

The only difference between tags you can see (on a blogpost, say) and tags you can’t see is location: meta tags only exist in HTML, usually at the “head” of the page, and so are only visible to search engines (and people who know where to look). The “meta” stands for “metadata,” which is the kind of data these tags provide – data about the data on your page.

The meta tags in HTML will look something like this:

meta tags

Why Is Metadata Important?

Metadata tags have a huge impact on how your website will appear on the search engine results pages (SERPs). They give users a quick insight into your page’s content, which helps them decide if it’s relevant to their search query. This affects whether they will click through to your website or not and can significantly impact your site’s engagement rates and traffic, as well as your SEO performance and rankings. You cannot have a solid SEO strategy without optimized meta tags.

What Are the Top Metadata Tools?

Here are just some of the best metadata checker tools that you can use.

Small SEO Tools

Small SEO Tools meta tags analyzer is a free tool that shows you everything you need to know about your meta tags. It can tell you if the length of your metadata is correct. It also lets you know if your meta tags are appropriate for your page and if they are positioned in the correct place. You can also use this tool to check the watchwords used by your rivals.

Yoast SEO

Yoast SEO is one of the best metadata checker plugins you can use on WordPress. This tool makes writing meta descriptions easier, as it gives you SEO analysis feedback each time you write one. It will provide you with a warning if the length of your meta description is too short or too long, as well as if the focus keyphrase is not included.

Counting Characters

Google doesn’t count characters. Instead, it uses pixels to check meta title and description length. The Counting Characters tool provides both the pixel and character count to make sure your meta tags don’t get cut off by an ellipsis (…) on the search results. So, it doesn’t just count characters—it also acts as a pixel checker.

Seoptimer

What is SEOptimer?

SEOptimer is an easy-to-use SEO audit and reporting tool. It aims to help you improve your website ranking. It identifies the potential problems that probably might hold your website back from its potential.

If you’re a small business looking for a tool to analyze and grade your website, SEOptimer is a good SEO checker with an also good feature set. 

SEOptimer

We’re talking about some of these features: keyword tracking, task and progress management, white label SEO audit, embeddable audit, SEO crawler, SEO audit API, DIY SEO, and more SEO tools.

SEOptimer Features

SEOptimer provides several SEO tools crucial to enhance user performance as well as the website’s ranking and reputation. This includes tools such as meta tag generators, keyword generators, sitemap generators, and more.

DIY SEO

If you own a new business and have less knowledge on how you can improve your website’s ranking and drive traffic into it, SEOptimer makes these tasks easy for you.

DIY SEO is a tool that scans and crawls through your website. This simultaneously checks hundreds and thousands of features. 

Website Audit

Your website’s ranking depends on which factors the search engines use to order a website. These include factors such as page loading time, keywords, broken links, and more.

SEOptimer checks all these factors and other essential contributors to provide its users with gaps that they can cover to further enhance their website functionalities and further improve their ranking.

SEO Crawler

You can crawl every page of your website to find SEO issues in bulk.

Task and Progress Management

Here, you can track progress on all your SEO issues and access walkthroughs and guides for how to fix these issues.

Keyword Tracking

This feature allows you to track your ranking position against your target keywords.

Customization Options

You can customize the reports provided by SEOptimer including several colors, designs, and fonts. You can even view these in multiple languages. 

SEOptimer offers a considerable 14-day free trial for new users. 

Meta length checker

Meta length checker is designed to help users make sure that their descriptions and titles look as good as possible. 

Meta description length doesn’t depend on the number of characters but on the width in pixels. 

How long can title tags be?

On the desktop, Google shows 600 pixels of <title> tags. Google does not set a character limit, but for an estimation, results tend to show the first 50–60 characters of a title tag.


How long can my meta-description be?

Google changes the pixel length of meta descriptions all the time. We keep our tool as up to date as possible, so your meta remains optimized.

In 2021, the meta description length is 920 pixels. This equates to 158 characters on average. Rather than cutting to characters, Google truncates long descriptions to the nearest whole word and adds an ellipsis.

This varies depending on devices.

On mobile, it’s 680 pixels, which is about 120 characters.


How long should my meta description be?

For the best results, aim for between 120 and 158 characters. This will give you the best-looking description across all devices and will not be cut off. Remember, if you see a description longer than 160 characters, Google does allow exceptions! However, it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Make sure you include the keywords you want to target, as these will appear in bold in the description if the searcher types them.

You also want to be inviting (shop window, remember!), so make it informative, eye-catching and engaging.

That’s a lot to squeeze into fewer characters than a Tweet, but you can do it.

 MetaTags.io

Meta Tags is a tool to debug and generate meta tag code for any website. With Meta Tags you can edit and experiment with your content then preview how your webpage will look on Google, Facebook, Twitter and more!

Do Meta Tags Help with SEO

The SEO community is definitive on this topic, the most important meta tag for ranking is your title tag. No other meta tags affect SEO rankings but…that’s not to say they’re unimportant!

  • Title – Very Important.
  • Description – Less Important.
  • Image – Moderately Important.
  • Keyword – Negative Importance.

Instead modern SEO strategies focus on ranking highly in Google with high quality content and are supplemented with meta tag tweaks.

Once you start ranking it’s important that people actually click on your site which is where other parts of meta tag data plays an important role especially the meta image and meta description.

Metadata.io Bot

What the Metadata.io Bot does

Use the Bot to supercharge your workflow automation experience. It speeds up in-team collaboration across all departments. It takes just a few minutes to set the Bot up and integrate it into your existing system without a single line of code.

When to use the Metadata.io Bot

Set up the Bot to connect business productivity tools, automate workflows, and boost performance. Use it for automating and connecting complex business processes. Manage all your projects, teams, and their data with a tool that reduces human-prone errors.

Title & Description Pixel Checker

What is this tool?

Pixel Width Checker is a tool for checking a pixel width of meta titles and descriptions. There is a common fallacy that Google has a character count limit for title tags and meta descriptions. In reality, there is a pixel width limit.

What is the pixel width limit?

Title tags typically get truncated at widths greater than 600px, although there does seem to be some variation between devices.

How do I use the calculator?

Use this tool to bulk check the pixel widths of title tags that you’re writing. Each title should go on its own line. You can even copy & paste a column from Excel. Alternatively, you can upload a CSV file. The CSV file must have a column with the header “Title” (case-sensitive). After each modification, addition, or change from title and/or meta description, you must click “Update Pixel Length(s)”.

CMlabs

The Importance of This Tool

SERP, which stands for Search Engine Results Page, is an important medium for the results of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) activities. This job demands special attention from every marketer, from junior to senior level. URL, Page Title, and Meta Definition are the three most critical attributes for SERP which are shown to users in SERP.

What’s new on cmlabs TITLE & META DESCRIPTION CHECKER

  • We added a bot feature on the new version. This feature update functions to check the meta title and meta description from any website. You only need to copy the URL link and place it in the column provided. It’s time to track down easier with our latest version update.
  • Now users can preview the meta title and description for mobile and desktop. We added this feature in the latest version so that you get the best experience to see how your meta title and meta description appear on search engines. You can learn more about this feature and feel the changes.

Free SEO Tools by CMLABS

  • Word counter
  • Tittle and length checker
  • JSON-LD Generator
  • Page speed test
  • Sitemap generator
  • Mobile friendly test
  • SSL checker
  • Robot.txt generator
  • Redirect chain checker
  • Technology lookup
  • Link analyzer
  • Hreflang checker
  • Keyword permutation

Site analyzer

Site analyzer features

  • Finding the content of Title tags, Keywords, meta Description and H1-H6
  • Site Crawl — One of the more appealing features in the suite, the crawler scans your website for broken links, errors, slow page speed, duplicate content and more.
  • Page Analysis — Though somewhat similar to the web crawl feature, page analysis gives users a deeper dive into the website—analyzing each landing page, one by one. The analysis covers all bases from keywords and SEO rankings to the design and accessibility. 

When you run a report, the page is assigned a number between one and 100—an average score composed of multiple sub-categories like accessibility, design and content.

site-analyzer-review
  • Rank Tracking — The rank tracking report is a pretty neat little feature. 

You’ll enter your own domain, plus up to five others, plus keywords, and Site Analyzer will generate a report. The report looks at where each domain ranks on Google SERPs for every keyword you enter. The basic plan looks at the first 100 results, but the higher tiers go a bit deeper. Rank tracking will help you identify content that’s performing worse than your competitor’s. 

  • Backlinks — The backlink reporting is standard fare. The report covers anchor text, domain influence, page influence, spam score and nofollow and follow links, and presents them in a simple list format. It does provide users with link authority, highlights problem areas and helps you see which links your competitors are getting.
  • Site vs. Site — Site vs. Site is quite a bit like SEMrush’s domain vs. domain feature. How it works is, you’ll enter two domains—yours and a competitor’s—and you’ll be presented with a look at the keywords both sites are ranking for. This includes overlapping keywords, plus a look at which search terms your competitors are using—and it’s integrated with a keyword research feature.