Before someone visits your website, they see two things in search results: your title tag and your meta description. These are the words in the blue link and the grey text below it. They’re your first impression — and for most local service businesses, they’re doing more harm than good.
In our audits of Greater Vancouver service businesses, we find some version of the same problems on almost every site: titles that are too long and get cut off mid-sentence, titles that don’t include the service or the city, meta descriptions that were never written at all (so Google pulls random text from the page), and descriptions so generic they give a searcher no reason to click.
None of this is about keywords in some abstract sense. It’s about what a person sees when they’re deciding who to call.
What title tags and meta descriptions actually do
Your title tag is the clickable headline in a search result. It’s also what appears in your browser tab. Google uses it as a primary signal to understand what a page is about — but more importantly, it’s the headline your next customer reads before deciding whether to click.
Your meta description is the short paragraph of text beneath the title in search results. Google doesn’t use it as a direct ranking signal, but it directly affects click-through rate — whether someone clicks your result or your competitor’s. A well-written meta description is an advertisement for your page.
Both have character limits. Title tags display optimally at 50–60 characters. Meta descriptions at 150–160 characters. Go longer and Google truncates them with an ellipsis mid-sentence. Go shorter and you’re leaving space — and persuasion — on the table.
The mistakes we find consistently
Missing location in the title. A title like “Plumbing Services | Coastline Plumbing” tells Google and the searcher almost nothing specific. “Emergency Plumber in Vancouver | Coastline Plumbing” is a fundamentally different signal — it names the service, names the city, and matches how people actually search. The city name in the title is not optional for local service businesses.
Keyword stuffing. Some businesses or the agencies that built their sites overcorrected and went in the opposite direction: “Vancouver HVAC | HVAC Vancouver | Best HVAC Company Vancouver BC.” This reads as spam. Google’s algorithms have understood keyword stuffing since at least 2012 — it doesn’t help, and it signals low quality to the searcher.
Duplicate titles across pages. We regularly find service businesses where every page has the same title tag — usually just the business name. Google interprets this as each page covering the same topic. Your homepage, your furnace installation page, and your AC repair page should have distinct, specific titles.
No meta description at all. When you don’t write a meta description, Google picks one for you — pulling text from wherever on the page it thinks is relevant. This is usually a sentence fragment from your navigation or a generic opening paragraph. It’s almost never the most persuasive text on the page.
Generic descriptions that say nothing. “We provide quality HVAC services to residential and commercial clients in the Greater Vancouver area. Contact us today.” This is the description equivalent of saying “we’re a good company.” It tells the searcher nothing they couldn’t assume about any HVAC company. Every word should earn its place.
What correct looks like
A well-optimised title tag for a local service business follows a simple structure:
Primary Service + Location | Business Name
- “Furnace Installation Vancouver | Pacific Heating”
- “Vancouver Auto Body Repair | North Shore Collision”
- “Electrician Burnaby & Coquitlam | Apex Electric”
For service-specific pages, the title should match the page’s content exactly. Your furnace installation page title should reference furnace installation — not just “HVAC services.”
A well-written meta description does three things: names the specific service and location, gives the searcher a reason to choose you (years in business, warranty, response time, something concrete), and ends with a clear action.
“Licensed furnace installation in Vancouver since 2008. Free in-home estimates, same-week scheduling, and a 10-year parts warranty. Call or book online.”
That’s 159 characters. It answers: what do you do, where, why should I trust you, and what do I do next.
How to check yours in five minutes
Step 1: Google your business name and your main service + city. Look at your own search result. Read the title and description as a first-time searcher. Does the title get cut off? Does the description feel generic? Would you click it?
Step 2: Check for truncation. If your title ends with ”…” in search results, it’s too long. The full title still exists on the page — Google just doesn’t show all of it. Aim for under 60 characters.
Step 3: View page source. On any important page, right-click and select “View Page Source.” Search for <title> to see your title tag and name="description" to see your meta description. If you search for meta name="description" and find nothing, you have no description set.
Step 4: Check for duplicates. Open your homepage and one service page in two browser tabs. View source on both. If the title tags are identical, you have a duplicate title problem.
Step 5: Run a crawl. Tools like Screaming Frog (free up to 500 URLs) will crawl your whole site and flag missing, duplicate, or truncated title tags and descriptions across every page in one pass. This is faster than checking pages one at a time.
The compounding effect
Title tags and meta descriptions sit at the very top of the SEO hierarchy — before any content quality signal, before any backlink, before any schema. If your result looks indistinct in search, fewer people click. A lower click-through rate tells Google your result is less relevant. A less relevant result ranks lower over time.
The same is true in reverse. A well-written title and description that matches search intent and converts searchers into clicks sends a positive engagement signal — one that compounds with every additional click your result earns.
For a business that has been operating for years and has real differentiators — longevity, reviews, specific services, a service area — the title tag and meta description are the place to say so. Not buried in a service page that Google may or may not have read. Right there, in the result, before anyone has clicked anything.
Title tag and meta description audits are included in every Arara SEO site review. If you’d like to know how your pages are presenting in search results — and what a corrected version would look like — the audit is free.