If you, like me, have become a lot more ‘quality focused’ towards your content since Google decimated a big chunk of the SEO world a few months ago, then you shouldn’t forget the importance of good quality meta tags.
It’s important to get them right for the following reasons.
- If spammy keyword-stuffed meta titles and meta descriptions are not yet being penalised by Google, I’m sure they soon will be as part of the “Google Cleanse”
- Good quality titles and descriptions not only increase your click through rate (CTR) from the search engine results page, they can also pre-sell or pre-prepare people of what to expect when they land on the page which can help the subsequent sale or lead conversion (if that’s the purpose of the page).
In this short video (Which I created recently for my content team), I show you an example of a bad meta title / meta description and a good meta title / meta description. I also explain why they are good or bad and how you can create good converting titles and descriptions.
(Justin Gilchrist also gets credit for giving me the examples)
There are various different meta tags (Kristine Schachinger describes them all very well here) but for the purpose of this post I just wanted to cover the Title and Description as these are important factors in the move towards search longevity.
IMPORTANT: Since posting this video I have discovered that Google no longer bases their title allowance on the number of characters and seem to have moved to a new method of allowance based on line- width.
Find out more here & get access to my free meta title & meta description optimisation tool which does the measuring for you.
I respond to all comments so please feel free to comment or ask any questions below.
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It’s 60-64 instead of 70. That title is probably 70 but they reduced the length when they shifted the results from the centre to the left.
Check your old content that has 70 characters as proof of the reduction.
Doh! Will need to check this out and amend video – thanks for the heads up.
Looks like it’s 512 pixels on its text width
Hi
Great post. SEO is something I’ve always struggled with and I’m sure other newbies have to. I do think though both Panda & Penguin us actually made things slightly easier by narrowing the playing field.One thing is certain though now it is more important than ever to concentrate on providing valuable thought provoking content that people want to share.
Again, thanks for the post.
Regards
Julian
Yep, Googles mass cleanse has certainly helped make the coin drop on the value of producing good quality content
Hi Kenny,
thanks for the article. Fortunately, I have stopped stuffing with keywords in meta titles and descriptions for a few month ago, however I realized that I haven’t used call to action in the meta titles. Not sure I can edit all titles now, but I definitely am going to use your suggestion for all new posts.
And thanks for a link to Kristine Schachinger’s article. I used to put tags in the meta keywords which according to that article can be considered spam by Bing. I have already asked my VA to remove all meta keywords.
I think if you are going to add meta keywords then just add 3 or 4 max
Hey Kenny…
Good, solid information. We all know that Google is becoming more “human” and is learning what is real, natural content. And that will certainly go for Meta Titles and Descriptions too… soon enough!
Plus many developers tend to forget we are dealing with real people searching for what they want. It DOES matter what they read in the search results!
~ Louie
Big time!
Hi Kenny,
I like the idea of adding an action word to your titles. I think it is important for very specific meta tags like these that your website or page should have the exact content you promised and is easily seen with 2-3 seconds when they got to your site or else expect a 100% bounce rate if they could not found it since you already given them a higher expectation when they click your link.
Ferdinand
Agreed
so putting a call-to-action in the description is good, right?
Yep, it tells the person what to do next.
Thanks for the nice tip Kenny!!! Didn’t realize the you can put a sort of “call to action” in the end of description meta tag. I will surely apply this. Thanks again!
You are welcome Vince
Hi Kenny,
I can not access the video as I think it is on youtube. As you may know youtube is blocked in Pakistan. Can you please put this video some where else also, like metacafe and put a link here.
Thnaks.
Hi Kenny
Damn, there was I getting a warning for my site by one of the google plugins for the Meta Title being too long, so I need to make it even shorter!!??!! lol
I agree with JulianMac’s comment that it has narrowed the field.
Thanks.
Hi Kenny,
Great post and video :) Love the examples!
Another tip is to use personalization in the title – Should You, Do You and instructional – How to, etc.
Rock on!
~Duru
Here is an interesting concept for true meta tagging: Try to capture the essence of what your content is truly about with somewhere between three to eight specific words or pairs of words (maybe even a short phrase) so that the people who really want to read the content on your website, they can find it.
What do others think, is this a good meta-tagging strategy?
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