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
Add titles and meta descriptions on WordPress using Yoast SEO video tutorial
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.
I setup the website (WP Sydney theme) completing the site title & tagline via the dashboard with what I thought would display suitably on the Home page of the website. (Static page not a blog) This worked fine.
I later discovered and installed Yoast and changed the Site Title & metadata for the Home page using what I though was good for SEO. It was different to that installed via the dashboard. Google Console cannot find the site now!
I assume that both inputs have to be the same so have made them so & am waiting for Googlebot to crawl the site again and find it this time.
If my assumption is correct it would appear that the Site Title and Metadescription serve one purpose displayed on the front page and another in SEO which are incompatible. I hope I am wrong & you can explain.
Regards Roger
Hello Roger, I have different text in my WordPress admin to my Yoast settings. My Yoast meta description shows for my site in Google searches and my WordPress admin text shows in the browser tab. I can see your site is new, and it does take time for Google to index and decide what it wants to show. I just had a look at your site in Google search results and I saw your phone number and email address as your meta description. I assume that is what you have in your WordPress admin settings. I wouldn’t have those details in there, put them on your homepage using your theme customization options. I am not familiar with your theme so don’t know if it has this option. Use Yoast for your site title tag and meta description. Make sure you submit your sitemap to your Google search console and submit each post or page URL after you make any changes to speed up indexing.