- Joined
- Nov 20, 2015
- Messages
- 11
- Likes
- 14
- Degree
- 0
I see this far too often nowadays. Clients that I take on claim they had an SEO company working on their site prior to me. Who these SEO companies are? I am not sure because they are forgetting the single most important factor of their pages. The META TITLE!
Don't stuff your meta with keywords!
How does that look in the eye of a potential click? Absolutely terrible. You can't expect your next potential customer to click on a title such as "Supplement Co: best supps, best supplements, muscle building supplements". This is common sense. Sure you'll get a few clicks, but they won't convert into anything useful. This provides no valuable insight for the customer.
What you should do.
Include a long tail keyword. Grab your keyword tool (Googles keyword tool should suffice) and look at your targeted keyword. Check out the keyword idea section and find keywords with include your initial keyword. Try and combine 3-4 of them into one phrase that still matches your pages intent but also reinforces the searchers intent.
Brand Name or Keywords first?
This is a question I see very often. This really depends on your brand itself. Are you a known name in your niche? Do people recognize your brand already? Does your brand name provide any value to your page? If so, your Brand name could come first.
If your brand is new, unknown, or provides no value to your page whatsoever, then you should be putting your keywords/phrase in front of your brand name. The choice is yours, but this may help you rank quicker in the beginning stages of growing your brand. Come back to this when your brand has established more of a name for itself.
Increase your CTR
Are you not getting many clicks but a large amount of impressions for your ad? Apart from being on the bottom of the first page, you may just have a bad Meta title for said page (such as the example I listed above). Adding something along the lines of "Free Shipping", or another offer your site may be running could greatly increase your CTR rate. Note that this may sacrifice some space for your long tail keywords so choose wisely.
Utilize Character Limit
You have 50-60 words to use. MOZ goes over this well in this article but 55 characters should be ideal for your title to fully show. Are you at 20 characters and don't know what else to include? This is common with brands selling their own unique product. Make use of what I mentioned above. Include an offer inside of your title. "Free Shipping", "X% Off", "X$Off" etc. Including one of these can help increase your CTR and fill the character gap you may have. Make use of it and don't leave that free character space go to waste.
Research, Research, Research
I can't stress this enough. When I do my meta titles, A LOT of research goes into it. The Meta title is the bread and butter for your targeted keyword. You want whatever keyword you are targeting, to be placed strategically and to have good potential traffic. Well placed, long-tail keywords, researched with your favorite keyword tool, should give you great low competition, high traffic potential. This also goes hand in hand with hopes of future ranking for your big money keyword. Setting your Metas up like this is not only helping you in the NOW, but in the future as well.
Don't Be Sloppy
It's really simple. Don't have a sloppy meta title. Not only do you want to rank, but you want people to click! Sloppy meta titles may include a plentiful amount of keywords, but they look unnatural and uneasy to the eye. What you want is something clean, clear and clickable. The 3 C's.
Conclusion
I could get into a lot of other aspects of a meta title, such as when to use what kind of keyword, when to use offers in your keyword, and when to keep your brand name in or leave it out; But for now, this is the basic idea of what you should be trying to implement in your Meta titles. I'm sure when you go looking for yourself at what to do for your titles, you will learn to be more careful with how you create them.
The idea behind this article, was not to listen to me, but to get you to do more research when creating your titles. Don't just think of some keywords you want to rank for and then create a meta title out of it. Research EVERY meta title you create. How is this going to look to your potential audience? What are other companies doing that is helping them rank high and convert so well? What can I do to improve my titles? What should I use as my separator? Are all my separators matching throughout my site? Does my sites titles have a common theme upon them or do they all differ from each other? SHOULD they differ from each other? Research! Find what works best for you and your niche.
Don't stuff your meta with keywords!
How does that look in the eye of a potential click? Absolutely terrible. You can't expect your next potential customer to click on a title such as "Supplement Co: best supps, best supplements, muscle building supplements". This is common sense. Sure you'll get a few clicks, but they won't convert into anything useful. This provides no valuable insight for the customer.
What you should do.
Include a long tail keyword. Grab your keyword tool (Googles keyword tool should suffice) and look at your targeted keyword. Check out the keyword idea section and find keywords with include your initial keyword. Try and combine 3-4 of them into one phrase that still matches your pages intent but also reinforces the searchers intent.
Brand Name or Keywords first?
This is a question I see very often. This really depends on your brand itself. Are you a known name in your niche? Do people recognize your brand already? Does your brand name provide any value to your page? If so, your Brand name could come first.
If your brand is new, unknown, or provides no value to your page whatsoever, then you should be putting your keywords/phrase in front of your brand name. The choice is yours, but this may help you rank quicker in the beginning stages of growing your brand. Come back to this when your brand has established more of a name for itself.
Increase your CTR
Are you not getting many clicks but a large amount of impressions for your ad? Apart from being on the bottom of the first page, you may just have a bad Meta title for said page (such as the example I listed above). Adding something along the lines of "Free Shipping", or another offer your site may be running could greatly increase your CTR rate. Note that this may sacrifice some space for your long tail keywords so choose wisely.
Utilize Character Limit
You have 50-60 words to use. MOZ goes over this well in this article but 55 characters should be ideal for your title to fully show. Are you at 20 characters and don't know what else to include? This is common with brands selling their own unique product. Make use of what I mentioned above. Include an offer inside of your title. "Free Shipping", "X% Off", "X$Off" etc. Including one of these can help increase your CTR and fill the character gap you may have. Make use of it and don't leave that free character space go to waste.
Research, Research, Research
I can't stress this enough. When I do my meta titles, A LOT of research goes into it. The Meta title is the bread and butter for your targeted keyword. You want whatever keyword you are targeting, to be placed strategically and to have good potential traffic. Well placed, long-tail keywords, researched with your favorite keyword tool, should give you great low competition, high traffic potential. This also goes hand in hand with hopes of future ranking for your big money keyword. Setting your Metas up like this is not only helping you in the NOW, but in the future as well.
Don't Be Sloppy
It's really simple. Don't have a sloppy meta title. Not only do you want to rank, but you want people to click! Sloppy meta titles may include a plentiful amount of keywords, but they look unnatural and uneasy to the eye. What you want is something clean, clear and clickable. The 3 C's.
Conclusion
I could get into a lot of other aspects of a meta title, such as when to use what kind of keyword, when to use offers in your keyword, and when to keep your brand name in or leave it out; But for now, this is the basic idea of what you should be trying to implement in your Meta titles. I'm sure when you go looking for yourself at what to do for your titles, you will learn to be more careful with how you create them.
The idea behind this article, was not to listen to me, but to get you to do more research when creating your titles. Don't just think of some keywords you want to rank for and then create a meta title out of it. Research EVERY meta title you create. How is this going to look to your potential audience? What are other companies doing that is helping them rank high and convert so well? What can I do to improve my titles? What should I use as my separator? Are all my separators matching throughout my site? Does my sites titles have a common theme upon them or do they all differ from each other? SHOULD they differ from each other? Research! Find what works best for you and your niche.
