So let’s begin with number 1

Constructing SEO and Customer Friendly Titles

There are two good reasons for thinking about your titles, the first is whether anyone will search for it and the second is whether anyone will click on it.

Before you write a title for your content- this could be anything from a blog post to a sales page, you need to think about what your potential customer/reader is going to be searching for.

Lets consider for a moment that you are looking to purchase a belt buckle. If you put the term ‘belt buckle’ into Google, which one of the following results would you click on?

Both of these are front page results so neither are doing a bad job, but lets look a little more deeply. The top one is more customer friendly as it has a more professional feel. When people are in ‘buying’ mode they are more cautious about where they click and this title and meta description is your chance to shine.

You need to ‘sell’ the click – make the customer choose you over the next guy and there are various ways to do this. In the examples above you can see the use of pipes in the first title. This is a great way to showcase some products without looking like you are keyword spamming. Let me show you the difference without the pipes;

You might think it’s a subtle change and you would be right, but it makes a difference to your clickthrough rate as the version that is seperated with pipes looks more professional.

The bottom example isn’t utilizing keywords at all and whilst it’s good to get your brand out there, it won’t get you clickthroughs if no-one has really heard of you.

The Meta Description

The meta description tags are where you get to reinforce the customers decision to choose you. Again, if we look at the examples above, the top one has a far more enticing description, it gives me more confidence about shopping there and they have also managed to get their company name at the beginning of the description.

The main point, once you have established keywords and optimised pages and actually made it to the holy grail of Google front page (or close) is to now get that customer to click. These few words of blue and green are often a customers very first impression of you – heck – Google is giving you a priority ad space, so it makes sense to really utilise the opportunity.

Top Tips

• Keep your title tag to no more than 65 characters or roughly 8 words. If you go over that it will end abruptly like th…
• Keep your meta description to no more than 150 characters – around 25 words
• Use words that inspire confidence like ‘guaranteed’ ‘unique’ ‘best’
• Don’t fill your meta description with keywords, use this space to sell that page
• Consider adding words like ‘telephone orders welcome’ as it gives customers another way to deal with you but again – it builds the trust factor
• Test your results until you get it right
• Try to weave in your keywords but always write titles for the consumers not the search engines

In the next installment, we’ll dig in to the power of good images and as ever – please feel free to leave any comments below.

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