Another Monday morning, another set of 5 tips to improve your SEO. This week is all about creating good metadata. I covered this briefly in an SEO post back in March, but it is worth noting that Google has recently had a change to the way it displays meta data so the info there is now out-of-date.
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Use the right Meta data.
You may have heard of this mystical thing called metadata. It is part of the background code of a website, but also appears in the bar at the top of your browser, and in your result snippet on the search engine page. It is valuable marketing space, and one of the key things the Google spiders look at, so make sure you include your company name and target keywords, but in a way that humans won’t feel alienated and ‘put off’. A title is essential, a description is highly recommended and meta keywords are pointless.
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Use a different tag and description on each page.
Each page on your website presumably focuses on a different aspect of your business, so ensure your tags reflect this. Each page should ideally have its own unique title and description.
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Meta Title tips
Keep a length of you title tag to 55 characters – you may see older information recommending around 70 characters but Google reduced the length of its snippets in an update earlier this year. Keep your main target keywords at the start of the title, and try to keep your company name in there too. Though you want to pack in the keywords, always make sure it makes sense and sounds appealing to real people too.
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Meta Description tips
Keep the length of your description tag to 115 characters. Again, you may see outdated information recommending 165 characters but this to was slashed in the update. Advice for this runs much the same as it does for title, as you should still keep keywords to the start and ensure the description makes sense to humans too. However, you have a little more room to play with so if you target a specific local area this is a good time to include some place names too.
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Don’t use keyword tags.
You may see older advice saying that keyword tags are good to use – this is now outdated practice as Google itself has admitted it doesn’t take into account keyword tags. The only thing keyword tags do is allow savvy competitors to see which keywords and phrases you are targeting, and allow them to do the same!
Hopefully now you have plenty of tips to get your SEO rolling, but if you need a little extra help then don’t hesitate to get in touch with the team at Creating Media by calling 01291 423 234 or emailing info@creatingmedia.co.uk for a website review!
