One of the most common panicked calls or messages I get early on with a new client is,
“I updated the title tag and meta description just like you said, but it’s not correct in search results. What did I do wrong?”
With the exception of actually implementing incorrectly (which is rare because I train my clients where to make the updates), this is absolutely normal in the short-term. A lot of clients make the updates, click save, then worry that they did them wrong when they can’t see them immediately in search results. If you think back to SEO 101, search engines crawl/index/rank all of the content that exists (or they attempt to). If your title tags and meta descriptions haven’t yet updated, it only means that search engines haven’t crawled your site since you made your updates. Don’t panic, they have a lot of content to crawl/index/rank on a daily basis. I always recommend giving search engines 24 hours to crawl before we take manual actions. If you’re still not getting crawled 24 hours after you made your updates,, check a couple things:
- Does Google have my correct XML sitemap? You can submit it using Google Search Console (previously webmaster tools)
- Check the change frequency of your pages in your XML sitemap, it may be set too long
Still not getting crawled? You may have a larger technical issue or have asked Google not to crawl/index your page on accident.