Eight Dos and Don’ts for Driving Clicks and Traffic

In my last blog post, I discussed how to develop the right list of keywords – that is, keywords that people are actually using in their searches. Once you have your keywords in hand, you’re ready to incorporate them into your Title and meta tags. A significant part of your website is each page’s HTML source code, which includes these tags and which give the search engines information about your site.

From a search engine optimization (SEO) perspective, the Title tag is most critical because it’s where you add your important keywords that describe what your Web page is about. (Some people call this tag the Page Title Tag for this reason.)

You see a Web page’s Title tag every time you open your browser as the Title tag is located at the top of browser window. For example, in the screen shot below, you can see that the Title tag for our Home page is “Powerful, Automated Search Engine Marketing | Yield Software.”

The Title tag is also what appears in the search engine results pages as the clickable link for each listing on the page.

Web searchers like you and me use these links – and the keywords in them! – to help us find what we’re looking for. Google, Microsoft’s Bing, Yahoo! Search and other search engines use the keywords in your Title tag (and in your page copy, which we’ll talk about next blog post) to help it determine what your page is about and index it accordingly.

This is why it’s critically important that you use the right keywords in your Title tags. You want your site to show up in the search results and you want people to click on your link. And, as you can see in this example, Google bolds the keywords from the search phrase.

The meta description tag also plays a key role with regard to SEO, except that unlike the Title tag, the major search engines don’t give it any weight in their algorithms. Google often displays the contents of the description tag as the “snippet of info” beneath the Title tag. In the screen shot above, Google pulled part of the snippet from our description tag and part from our home page copy.

Although there’s no guarantee that Google or others will use your description tag as the snippet, it’s still a good idea to develop compelling description tags that prompts people to click on your link when confronted with nine other links on the search engine results pages.

When developing your Title and description tags, keep in mind the following dos and don’ts:

Do focus on two to three keywords per page – People mistakenly believe that they can add a half dozen keywords to a Title tag. SEO best practices dictate, however, that you focus on only two to three keywords per page.

Do Develop unique tags for each page – Every page on your site, and especially your products and services pages, should have a unique Title and description tag.

Do “match” your Title and description tags – The keywords you use in the Title tag should also appear in description tag. This helps your listing stand out more as people see the bolded words in the link and the snippet – a visual double whammy.

Do limit Title tags to approximately 70 characters – Google cuts off longer Title tags, so keep your Title tags brief. The character count includes all characters, such as dashes, and spaces.

Do limit description tags to approximately 150 characters – The same holds true for this tag as well.

Don’t put your company name first – Google gives more weight to the keywords at the beginning of the Title tag, so add your company name at the end of the Title tag.

Don’t ignore word order – If one of your best keywords is “romantic hotels in san Francisco,” your Title and description tag should include this exact keyword phrase.

Don’t “set and forget” – Monitor your search engine rankings and conversions. Which keywords drive the best traffic that converts into sales? Which keywords aren’t working? Constantly monitor what’s working and make changes as necessary.

You can reduce the amount of time you spend tediously monitoring and tweaking your keywords by using Yield Software’s fully integrated suite of automated Web marketing capabilities. The system checks your website regularly against our library of SEO best practice to ensure your Title and meta tags are up to snuff, among many, many other variables. When the system identifies problems, it offers a clear explanation of the problem; a solution for fixing it; and even offers auto-fixes for many common issues that crop up.

See how easy it is to automate your SEO by signing up for our free 30-day trial offer.