If you’ve done any research at all on how to effectively SEO your website you have most certainly heard of using Title and Description Meta Tags in the header of your page.  But it seems like what you don’t know and most fail to state is why?  The why is quite possibly the most important ingredient for creating effective titles on your page both for SEO and for your site visitation analytics, in essence your conversion rate. 

 Creating the Winning Title and Description Meta Tags

Let us not forget that although we are advertising for the search engines, using known tactics to potentially attract them with our keywords, this same text is placed in your listing for the world to see.  If your site listing appears within the first 100 search results it will be surrounded by thousands of others. In order to be noticed you need to create relevant, eye catching Titles and Descriptions that most closely match the users search. Your keyword  or what you are selling should most definetely be part of this Title, and stated more than once.  There are a couple different ways to do this.

Meta Titles VS. Article Titles

Believe it or not, writing a headline or Meta tag for organic search results is much different than writing a headline in an article where you create attention grabbing statements to get the viewer interested enough to read your article such as in a newspaper.  When making title tags for your web content you want to match what the user is searching for in the most clear and concise manner.  In addition, you want to describe, in the most accurate manner, what they will find if they click on your listing.  I challenge you here to pretend you are the internet user.  You are searching for purple widgets to add to your website and thousands of listings come up.  Because you know exactly what type of widget you are looking for, you quickly scan the ones that come up on the first page with your eye.  The purple widgets you are looking for are small and lavender in color.  This is where critical mistakes are made.  Many advertisers of lavendar widgets will list themselves under purple widgets instead of the lavender ones they actually sell in an effort to grab a larger part of the pool.  While you may increase your traffic this way, your chances of turning that click into a conversion are slim.  You will have effectively driven traffic to your site, but not the right traffic. 

The Effects of Poorly Written Meta Tags

Lacking specifics in your title and description has effectively used up your bandwidth producing nothing but frustration for the visitors when they arrived there and realized that wasn’t what they were looking for.  If you have bounce rates over 50%, I recommend taking a look at your Meta Title and Description tags.  Are they specific enough to describe exactly what your audience will see once they click on your listing? When it comes to Meta Tags, specific descriptions are more important than enticing ones, especially if you are an ecommerce site selling a specific niche product in a larger competitive industry.  My guess is, if you are selling small lavender widgets you have differentiated yourself in a niche market for a reason, so why wouldn’t you now advertise in that niche market.  You have a much better chance making a sale by advertising in your niche market than you do in the larger market where competition is high.  My guess is, this is probably the reason why you are selling this product in the first place.  Remember: advertise exactly what you are selling and you will get the best results.

Writing titles for your articles and writing Meta titles for them are two very different things and should not be confused.  Stay tuned for the next article focused on how to compose the most enticing headlines or titles for print media.  Equally important, article headlines serve a different  purpose and use a different method to attract their audience.