Are you curious how to find and check the title tag, meta description, and other meta tags on your website? Look no further.
If you’re like most business owners we talk to, you’re not fluent in HTML, and you’re not exactly sure where meta tags like the title tag and meta description are located on your webpages. That’s why SEO can often feel like trying to cook dinner using directions written in a foreign language. Unfortunately, a lot of important details can get lost in an incorrect translation.
Even if you’re outsourcing your SEO, it’s important to understand what your consultant is doing. For example, we recently completed an SEO Tune-Up project for a client and at first he didn’t think anything was actually changed on his website. That’s because webpage titles and meta descriptions are not obviously displayed on your website. So in this post, I want to explain how you can easily find your titles, meta descriptions, and headers to verify they are set up properly for SEO.
Prefer to watch? Here’s a quick video walkthrough:
How to Find Your Webpage Title (Title Tag)
The webpage title is displayed in the browser tab at the top of your screen. In Chrome, Edge, and Firefox, you’ll see it in the upper left corner of the browser. See the image below.
This can be confusing because the webpage title is not displayed on the actual webpage. It’s displayed as part of the browser. And as you can see in the example, the title can get cut off in the tab, so the best way to get the exact title is to view the HTML code. Don’t get freaked out. I promise this is super easy to do, and this skill is critical for analyzing your on-page SEO.
Here’s how to find the title in the sea of HTML code on your webpage.
First, go to the page in your browser. Right click anywhere on the page and select “View Page Source.” Source code is just a fancy way to say you want to view the raw HTML code on your page.
Once the browser loads the source code, you’ll see something like the image below. The webpage title is everything between <title> and </title>.
If you have trouble finding the <title> in the sea of HTML, use the Find function. On Windows, press Ctrl + F (on Mac, Command + F) and type “title” to quickly find it. That’s all there is to it. Now you can easily find the webpage title for any page on your website.
How to Find Your Webpage Meta Description
The webpage meta description is what search engines display in the search results below your title. This is a critical element because your prospects will use your description to determine whether or not to click on your listing. A compelling description will earn you more clicks, which in turn can help improve your rankings even further.
But there’s one little catch. It’s impossible to see your meta description by simply visiting your webpage. Browsers do NOT display the meta description. Only search engines read and use this information.
So again we need to view the source code just like we did to find the title. But instead of searching for <title>, we’re going to search for <meta name="description". See the image below for an example.
In the example above, the word “description” is highlighted because I used the Find function to quickly search for the meta description. That’s how I recommend you find the description in your source code.
How to Find Your Webpage Headers (H1, H2, etc)
Finally, there is a lot of confusion regarding webpage headers versus titles. The webpage title is displayed by your browser and search engines like Google use it as the title of your listing in the search results.
Webpage headers are key headlines on the page (think of newspaper headlines). The top header is between <h1> and </h1>. Then lesser headlines are between <h2>, <h3>, <h4>, etc. Since headers generally include important information, Google and other search engines use them to determine if your webpage is relevant for certain keywords. That’s why it’s important to use your target keyword and variations of your keyword in your webpage headers.
We already walked through how to find your webpage title and meta description, and finding headers is no different. Simply view the page source and find the <h1>, <h2>, <h3>, etc. That’s it.
The Easier Way: WordPress SEO Plugins
If your website runs on WordPress and you have an SEO plugin installed (like Yoast SEO or Rank Math), there’s an even simpler way to find and edit your title tags and meta descriptions. Open any page or post in the WordPress editor, scroll down below the content, and you’ll see a section from your SEO plugin where the title tag and meta description are displayed in editable fields.
This is the fastest way to check and update these tags on your own site. The view-source method above is still useful when you want to verify what’s actually rendering on the live page, or when you want to check the meta tags on someone else’s website, like a competitor’s.
Now That You’ve Found Them, Are They Any Good?
Now you can check your own pages to make sure you, your team, or your outsourced consultant is doing a good job with your on-page SEO. But finding your title tags and meta descriptions is only the first step. The next question is whether they’re actually written well enough to earn clicks in the search results.
Your title tag should be 50 to 65 characters, include your target keyword, and clearly communicate what the page is about. Your meta description should be 100 to 155 characters and give searchers a compelling reason to click on your listing instead of the others on the page.
For a deeper dive into writing effective title tags and meta descriptions, read our guide on how to write title tags and meta descriptions for higher click-through rates.
Need Help with SEO?
If you’re not sure whether your title tags, meta descriptions, and on-page SEO are set up correctly, we can help. Request a free SEO quote, and we’ll review your site and identify the biggest opportunities to improve your rankings.
