As a business owner, you have undoubtedly poured a great deal of effort into crafting the perfect website for your brand. You're excited to have an eye-popping website with all of the bells and whistles. Now, how do you make sure that potential customers get a chance to be wowed by your beautiful website?
The secret to driving traffic to your website lies in mastering the unique, and ever-changing criteria of the search engine algorithms. Don’t worry, this is easier than it sounds.
While search engine algorithms do change their requirements periodically, there are several tried and true rules of thumb that will help you keep your business at the top of the search results and ensure that visitors click through to check out that awesome website of yours.
Let’s take a look at some of the top tips for getting your business website the clicks that it deserves.
Fine Tune Your Title Tags
Title tags are one of the easiest search engine optimization items to overlook, but when used correctly these little powerhouses can make the difference between a flood of traffic and a trickle.
What is a Title Tag?
So, what exactly is a title tag? A title tag is a small snippet of HTML coding that provides a concise description of webpage content. Search engine algorithms use these title tags to determine what the purpose of a particular web page is, and what type of content is contained on the page.
Optimizing Your Title Tags for Maximum Clickability
Search engines use title tags to determine which pages are the best match for a search request. It is important that your title tags are not only highly relevant to your web page content, but also that they send a clear message to the search engine algorithms that your webpage is an authoritative and useful resource on your given topic.
Title tags are valuable for more than just appeasing the search engine algorithm, they are often used as a click-through link in the search results allowing searchers to click the link to visit the website. With that in mind, it is important to ensure that your title tags are not only highly relevant but also enticing enough to encourage searchers to click through to learn more.
Title Tag Pro Tips
While there is no hard and fast rule for crafting title tags, following these best practices will help make sure your title tags get you the maximum clicks.
- Aim for a character count between 50 - 60 characters. Title tags longer than 60 characters may be cut off by some search engines.
- Create a unique title tag for each page of your website. It is ok to re-use some words or phrases, but each title tag should clearly represent a unique page
- Provide as much detail as possible. Web surfers are more likely to click through the search link if they know exactly what awaits on the other side.
Write An Attention Grabbing Meta Description
While meta descriptions do not factor into the search engine algorithm ranking decisions, they do make a massive difference in the number of clicks that you are likely to receive from search engine results.
What is a Meta Description?
It is perhaps most helpful to think of a meta description as a mini-snippet of free advertising copy. Google search results often display a short preview text in each search result to give searchers a glimpse of what the web page contains. You can help give your business an edge by writing the ideal snippet in the form of a meta description.
It should be noted that there is no guarantee that Google will use your meta description in the search results, however having a well-crafted meta description in place helps to improve the odds that Google will present your website in the best light every time.
What Makes a Compelling Meta Description?
When crafting a compelling meta description, it is useful to think of this as a short pitch for your web page content. Your meta description should be highly relevant to the page content AND highlight the benefit of clicking through.
Meta Description Pro Tips:
Like title tags, there are no set rules that must be followed when crafting meta descriptions, but using these pro tips will improve the chances that Google will opt to use your meta description in the search results, and that clients will opt to click through.
- Keep your meta descriptions under 150 characters. Longer descriptions may be cut off by some search engines.
- Include a target keyword or phrase to help search engines accurately classify your page
- Use action words to turn your meta description into a compelling call to action
Get started optimizing your website for SEO
Optimizing your website’s title tags and meta descriptions is a simple search engine optimization that you can do now to make a big difference in your click-through rate. Are you interested in learning even more ways that you can use search engine optimization techniques to maximize your traffic? Get started with SEO for your business! Reach out to the team at Redwood Valley Technical Solutions. We would be happy to help you optimize your business website to start generating more clicks, and higher revenues.
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