SEO Tip 4: Optimize Your Title and Meta Tags

HTML titles and meta tags should be different on every page of your website if you wish for most search engines to store and list them in the search results. Us SEO Expert's have experimented with these two pieces of code to help us reach an accepted conclusion about how best to use them and what happens when you optimize them.

The meta "keywords" tag won't be discussed in to much detail here, since Google has announced that they do not use the meta keywords tag in their ranking criteria. Because Google has 64 percent market share in search, that should be enough to convince you to not spend a lot of time on this attribute.

Optimizing Your Homepage Title

There are different theories about how long your homepage title should be. Since Google only displays the first 66 or so characters (with spaces), my Top 10 SEO tips for the title on anything other than the homepage would be to keep the title under 66 characters and relevant to the content on the page. However, some (including myself) argue that the value of the homepage title may warrant additional search term inclusion. Let's take a look at Amazon and Ebay homepage titles:

eBay - New & used electronics, cars, apparel, collectibles, sporting goods & more at low prices
Amazon.com: Online Shopping for Electronics, Apparel, Computers, Books, DVDs & more
Local SEO Services, Local Search Engine Optimization, Mobile Search, Online Advertising for Local Businesses | LocalSplash.com
Buy.com - Computers, Electronics, Digital Cameras, Books, DVDs, Music, Games, Software, Toys, Sports
Optimizing Your Homepage Meta Description

Same best practice applies here. Get those top terms into a description that isn't spamy and is a clear indicator of what your website is about. Below are the meta descriptions from eBay and Amazon.

Buy and sell electronics, cars, clothing, apparel, collectibles, sporting goods, digital cameras, and everything else on eBay, the world's online marketplace. Sign up and begin to buy and sell - auction or buy it now - almost anything on eBay.com.
Online shopping from the earth's biggest selection of books, magazines, music, DVDs, videos, electronics, computers, software, apparel & accessories, shoes, jewelry, tools & hardware, housewares, furniture, sporting goods, beauty & personal care, broadband & dsl, gourmet food & just about anything else.
The rule of thumb here is to get your most important keywords into your homepage title and meta description.

Optimizing Subpage Titles and Meta Tags

Let's take a break for a moment and discuss Click-Through Rate (CTR) and Bounce Rate. When you perform a search in a search engine, what shows up in your web browser is called an impression. When you make a selection, that selection is called a click. Google and other search engines record each impression and each click to help them understand which listings are being clicked on the most. They also record patterns (so stop thinking about getting all your friends to search for and click your listing). If the majority of normal search volume selects your listing, you'll have a higher CTR and higher ranking; same applies for Sponsored Ads by the way.

That being said, if a healthy percentage of searchers return to Google's search results (called a Bounce) and select a different listing, your CTR value will be reduced and ultimately so will your ranking.

This one SEO tip could make or break your SEO campaign. Click-Through Rate (CTR) plays an instrumental role in how relevant Google thinks your website is. By compelling users to click with clear call-to-actions (buy, order, download, beat, fix, etc) and by using value propositions (guaranteed, on sale now, etc), one can improve their CTR and search engine ranking. Oh, don't forget to squeeze your keywords in there as well.

If you ever forget this SEO tip, just perform a search in Google for "title tag principles", where you'll find my listing invoking these principles. Told ya I was good at this stuff, didn't I?

Here's some sample syntax: