Until you understand what it does, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) remains a digital marketing buzzword. Your friends might even bring it up when you mention the words digital marketing. Everyone understands that you need to consider it when building your business online or through social, but not everyone knows what it means. The companies ranking at the top of search engines are the ones that know how to use this system to their benefit. If you’re not adapting your website for SEO, it’ll be tough to compete in the industry. However, just because you’re not a specialist doesn’t mean you can’t learn a few simple steps to boost your website rankings. Discover what optimizing for search engines entails and watch how much easier it becomes to get your company in front of your desired audience.
SEO Page Titles
Take a second to perform a quick search through google. After you hit enter, an entire list of options becomes available to you. What do you read first? Most people will describe what is known as the SEO page title. It’s not the internal title to your website page. Search engines like google and bing use it to identify and present your page to the searching audience. If you’re trying to boost traffic to your website, you’ll need your SEO page title to include a keyword. It allows search engines to match searches to your page by using the SEO title to determine your page material. Just like using keywords and key phrases to describe your website page, you’ll also want to include the name of your brand. When people know who you are, they’ll search for you by name. If you don’t match their search, you’ll stay hidden from potential customers. Think like your audience!
Keywords/Key Phrases
Keywords and Key Phrases are crucial to the search engine page titles. They are the words people will use to search for answers. If your content matches their words (keywords or key phrases) through a specific match or close relation, your page gets presented to the searcher. Only writing keywords for the title will hurt your chances of being discovered, though. Search engines like to rank websites higher the more closely the content matches the audience’s search. The SEO page title must contain a keyword phrase, but if it has nothing to do with the content itself, the search engine crawlers will recognize this and rank your website lower on the results page. When writing content, think about who the content is serving. Who would be searching for this kind of information or service? What things would they be asking when looking for their answer? Within your industry, the most important keywords will be the words people most commonly use in their search. Remember, the competition for generic keywords is fierce. Try to be as accurate as possible when describing your products or services, add a few common keywords into your content, and cover more bases than your competitors. It’s important to note that you shouldn’t overstuff your content with keywords. When a site is jam-packed with keywords that don’t relate to the content, search engines will recognize this and give you a lower ranking. Stay on topic!
Meta Descriptions
Once you finalize your content with keywords and resources, you need to pre-emptively let your audience know what they’ll get from clicking on your page. It’s the summary before the book! The Meta Description, or Meta Tag, is the text right underneath the SEO Title. These should serve as short descriptors to let your audience know they’re in the right spot to get the answers they’re seeking. You’ll need to make sure that your meta description accurately represents what your page is about, making sure to include some key phrases along the way. Be specific and accurate!
SEO doesn’t just stop here. Rules and updates are happening to search engines all the time, making optimization a pretty convoluted and frustrating process. Give us a call if you’re worried about growing your digital audience and increasing your website traffic using SEO! Michigan Creative is more than happy to help give your website the boost it needs. Contact us today or subscribe to our monthly newsletter, The Creative, for more information.