Ah, SEO. Getting all of the keywords, links, tags (and much more) perfectly right to boost your website to the top of Google. It’s no easy task, but something to which a growing number of individuals and companies devote their entire scope of work and capabilities.
For those of you who don't devote your livelihoods to SEO, but still need it to work for you, I've compiled some key points to clarify what all of that backend tagging means (what’s the difference between a title tag? Meta description? Meta keyword?). Working on your backend tagging is something you can do right now to make your site a more viable candidate for top search engines. So let's get started:
Title Tags
The text used in the title tag is one of the most important factors in how a search engine may decide to rank your webpage. The title element of a page is meant to be an accurate, concise description of a page’s content.
All major crawlers will use the text of your title tag as the text they display for your page. For example, if you search for “help seniors move” you’ll see that one of our clients, Transitional Assistance & Design, appears as “Experts in Senior Relocation and Moving | Transitional Assistance…”. The words “Experts in Senior Relocation and Moving” make up the title tag that we input for the homepage. These title tags also become the default title if someone bookmarks your page.
Important tips –
- Be mindful of length: 70 characters is the maximum amount that will display in the search results.
- Place important keywords close to the front: The closer to the start of the title tag your keywords are, the more helpful they’ll be for ranking and the more likely a user will be to click them in the search results.
- Consider readability: Creating a compelling title tag will pull in more visits from the search results and can help drive visitors to click on your site. It’s important to not only think about optimization and keyword usage, but the entire user experience.
Meta Description
The meta description tag exists as a short description of a page’s content. Search engines do not use the keywords or phrases in this tag for rankings, but meta descriptions are the primary source for the snippet of text displayed beneath a listing in the results.
The meta description tag serves the function of advertising copy, drawing readers to your site from the results and thus, is an important part of search marketing. In the above example, “Senior move management services for those relocating or downsizing homes. Sorting, packing, unpacking. Partner with accredited movers” is the meta description.
Important tips –
- Crafting a readable, compelling description using important keywords (Google will “bold” the searched keywords in the description) can draw a much higher click-through rate of searchers to your page.
- Meta descriptions can be any length, but search engines generally will cut snippets longer than 160 characters.
Meta Keywords
The meta keywords tag had value at one time, but is no longer valuable or important to search engine optimization. So forget about it!
Optimizing Content
Now you know what the tags mean, so what do you put in them? The keywords you choose must be true to your organization, readable and compelling.
Unfortunately, Google doesn’t really care what you think is compelling. What's more important than using SEO terms that you think are key to your organization is getting SEO terms by which people are actually searching into the site. In other words, it's all well and good if you’re the number one for the search term "SEO tools for nonprofits in the art space in DC" but if no one is searching "SEO tools for nonprofits in the art space in DC" they're not getting to your site.
One tool we use is Google AdWords, which allows you to enter one keyword or phrase to see what related word searches an ad would show -- and in turn clues us into what other popular search terms people would use.
For more on SEO, check out these useful links:
- The Beginner’s Guide to SEO specifically this chapter: The Basics of Search Engine Friendly Design and Development
- How To Use HTML Meta Tags
- HOW TO: Optimize Your Site for Search Engine Marketing
Good luck!
