How to change the homepage title tag and meta description in WordPress

In my step by step guide, I show you how to add a homepage title tag and meta description to your WordPress blog step by step.

Title tags and meta descriptions are essential for your site. Search engines read your title tags and meta descriptions to understand your blog. They are shown in search results to help searchers decide if your blog provides the information they need.

Let’s do this step by step.

• Add a title tag and meta description without a plugin
• How to change your title tag and meta description without a plugin
• How to add a title tag and meta description using the Yoast plugin
• Add a title tag and meta description using Yoast on a static homepage
• How long does it take Google to show changes?
• How to change your title tag and meta description in WordPress video tutorial
• Add titles and meta descriptions on WordPress using the Yoast SEO plugin video tutorial
• Conclusion

Add a title tag and meta description without a plugin

First, log in to your WordPress admin.

From your WordPress admin dashboard, hover your mouse over ‘Settings’ on the left and select ‘General’ from the popup menu.

In ‘General settings’, add your title tag and meta description without a plugin.

The ‘Site title’ is your title tag ‘Tagline’ is your meta description.

Here are the title tag and meta description for this website.

How to change your title tag and meta description

On the ‘General settings’ page, edit the ‘Site Title’ and ‘Tagline’ text.

I edited the information for this website.

After you make your changes, scroll to the bottom of the page and select ‘Save changes.’

Here is this site after I saved my changes.

That is how you change your WordPress website title tag and meta description without a plugin.

How to add a title tag and meta description using the Yoast plugin

If you don’t have the Yoast SEO plugin installed on your site, you need to do that first.

You can download Yoast from www.yoast.com. Or, you can install the plugin from the WordPress plugin library.

Once you have installed and activated Yoast SEO, hover your mouse over ‘SEO’ on your dashboard menu, and select ‘Search appearance’ from the popup.

On the ‘Search Appearance’ page, we can set the title tag and meta description.

When adding your title tag and meta description, keep it short and to the point. If your text is too long for the search engines, they will truncate the text in the results.

For the ideal length, I suggest you look at your competitor websites and look at how long their title tags and meta descriptions are without Google or Bing cutting them short.

Complete the title tag and meta description for your site, then scroll to the bottom of the page and click on ‘Save changes.’

Add a title tag and meta description using Yoast on a static homepage

If you have a static homepage, Yoast will direct you to add your title tag and meta description within the page.

Click on the ‘editing the front page itself’ link.

At the bottom of your homepage, click on ‘Edit Snippet’ and enter your title tag and meta description.

Once you have added your text, go to the top right of the editor and click on ‘Update’ to publish your changes.

How long does it take Google to show changes?

There is no set time Google scans your site then updates its databases. You can’t force Google to change anything, all you can do is submit your site URL and sitemap to your Google search console and wait.

How to change your title tag and meta description in WordPress video tutorial

Watch this video on YouTube.

Add titles and meta descriptions on WordPress using Yoast SEO video tutorial

Watch this video on YouTube.

Conclusion

If you haven’t set a title tag and meta description for your site yet, I suggest you do that next. You don’t want your blog to show in search results with information that doesn’t help your site get clicks.

A clear and concise title tag and meta description help search engines understand your site. Then they can serve your content to the right audience.

You can set your homepage information on WordPress without a plugin in the ‘Settings’ options. You can also set your information using the Yoast SEO plugin.

The Yoast plugin also allows you to set title tags and meta descriptions for all your posts and pages. There is an option at the bottom under the editor.

Google and Bing are in no rush to update websites, so you have to be a little patient. Once you update anything on your site, submit the URL to your Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster tools, it speeds up the process.

To learn about how Google indexes sites, check out my ‘How does Google discover new sites?‘ post. To submit an URL to Bing, check out my ‘How to submit a sitemap to Bing.’ post.

Before you go to update your site’s title tag and meta description, would you kindly spare one minute to leave me a comment? Did you find my post helpful? Would you like me to go into more detail? I love reading feedback.

I look forward to reading your comments.

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