On 11 November 2026 I searched "blog post seo", "seo for blog posts", "blog seo" and "seo for blogs" in Google (US results) and took the articles on page one. That was 11 articles and 22 appearances across the four searches. For each appearance I compared what Google displayed with what the page wrote for itself in its title tag and meta description.
I did it because every blog SEO checklist treats those two fields as equally important. They aren't, at least not in how Google uses them.
Titles: kept 15 times out of 22
| What Google did with the title | Count |
|---|---|
| Showed the page's own title in full | 15 |
| Cut it short | 4 |
| Replaced it with something else | 3 |
All 4 truncations were on two pages whose titles ran to 90 and 57 characters. Google's title link documentation says titles are "truncated in Google Search results as needed, typically to fit the device width", and on mobile that can be well under 60 characters.
The replacements were more interesting. Two of the three were Yoast's article. Its title tag reads "SEO Friendly Blog Post Tips for Better Rankings and AI Visibility", followed by a bullet separator and "Yoast". Its on-page heading reads "Tips and tricks to write SEO-friendly blog posts in the AI era". Google used the heading in both searches. The third replacement just dropped a "| Fishtank" brand suffix and kept the rest.
So in this sample Google trusted the title tag unless the title tag and the H1 said different things, or the brand suffix was noise. The same docs list the H1 and other prominent text as sources it can pull from, which matches what I saw.
What I take from that for my own posts:
- Keep the SEO title and the on-page heading making the same promise. They don't need to match word for word.
- Put the searched words and the specific part first, so a cut title still reads. "How Long Does a Roof Last in Ohio?" survives truncation. "Our Complete 2026 Guide to Everything About Roofs" doesn't.
- Brand name last or not at all. Google already shows the site name above the title.
Meta descriptions: used 7 times out of 22
The other 15 times Google pulled text from the article itself, usually the opening definition or the first lines of a numbered list.
Orbit Media's description starts "Great marketers know that blog optimization is a continuous process..." In three searches Google never showed it and quoted the article's steps instead.
The same page also got different snippets for different searches. Six articles appeared for more than one of the four queries, and all six were shown with different snippet text depending on the query. A single fixed description can't do that, which is probably why Google prefers body text.
Google's snippet documentation says it "primarily uses the content on the page" and uses the meta description "when it describes the page better than other parts of the content." The sample lines up with that.
The practical result is that the first paragraph of a post is often what sits under the blue link. I think that's the field worth more effort than the meta description: two or three sentences that directly answer the search, before any background.
I still fill in the description. It showed up a third of the time, and most platforms reuse it as the preview text when a post is shared on LinkedIn, Slack or Facebook. One plain sentence about what the post answers is enough.
The rest of the per-post list
Once titles and descriptions are sorted, the remaining per-post decisions are short:
- Pick one search per post. Search the phrase yourself first. If page one is product pages or map results, a blog post will struggle. If it's articles and forum threads, the results show you the format readers expect.
- Set the slug before publishing. A few descriptive words, no date. Google's SEO Starter Guide says keywords in the URL path "have hardly any effect beyond appearing in breadcrumbs", so this is for readers. Changing it later breaks links unless you redirect.
- Link both ways. Link from the new post to one or two related pages, and add a link to the new post from one older post where it fits. Descriptive anchor text, not "click here".
- Alt text on images, plus a cover. Describe what the image shows. The cover is what shows up in social previews.
The sitemap, canonical tags, Article structured data, HTTPS and robots.txt are platform settings. Check them once, then stop thinking about them per post.
What I stopped spending time on
The same Starter Guide has a section literally called "Things we believe you shouldn't focus on". From it:
- Word count: "There's no magical word count target, minimum or maximum." When I measured 57 ranking pages for a different piece, typical length ranged from about 680 words for unclogging a drain to over 3,000 for choosing a CRM. It depends on the question.
- Keyword density. Use the searched words in the title and opening because they describe the post, then write normally.
- The meta keywords tag: "Google Search doesn't use the keywords meta tag."
- Heading count and order, for ranking purposes. Correct levels still matter for screen readers.
- SEO plugin scores. A green light measures how closely the post follows the plugin's rules, mostly keyword placement. It knows nothing about whether the post answers the search better than what already ranks.
Reading the result six weeks later
In Search Console, open Performance, filter by the post URL, and look at the Queries tab. Totals alone mislead. Two posts from the blog I run for JustBlogged, over the 28 days to 9 November 2026:
- A post about wrong site names in Google: 154 impressions, 0 clicks, average position 10.6. Top queries were "site name problems google" (31), "google site name problems" (28) and "site name is wrong google" (21). Right topic, bottom of page one. The fix is a better answer and more internal links, not a new topic.
- A post about AMP URLs after leaving WordPress: 1,468 impressions, 2 clicks. Almost all impressions came from people searching other people's blog addresses on an AMP blog host. Shares a word with the post, not a need. That number looks like demand and isn't.
If the queries match the post and position is between 8 and 20, I improve the post and link to it more. If the queries don't match, the title and first paragraph are what get rewritten first
The sample is small... 22 appearances on one day, one country. I'd like to rerun it in a few months and see whether the description rate moves
Top comments (1)
Nice to see the counts laid out instead of the usual "Google rewrites descriptions sometimes".
The title vs H1 finding matches what I'd expect on product pages too. A common setup is a title tag built from a short SEO name and an H1 with the full product name, and once those drift apart it's easy to end up with a result you didn't write. Making both come from the same field, with the title as a trimmed version of the H1, stopped that argument.
Your conclusion about the first paragraph is the useful bit for stores as well. On category pages the opening text is often a generic welcome line, which is exactly what you don't want sitting under the link. Two sentences saying what's in the category and who it's for usually does more than a hand-written meta description.