Make a Strong First Impression with Quality Meta Tags
Getting people to your website is half the battle when it comes to converting leads into customers. While there are many paths a visitor can take to arrive at your website, the typical routes include:
- Typing your-company-name.com in a browser
- Clicking on paid advertisements
- Links in Social Media posts
- Links in Marketing Emails
- Clicking on organic (non-paid) search engine results
In this post, we focus on arriving to your website from organic search engine results.
When your website shows up organically in search engine results, the content people see is (usually) made up of information contained within the Title and Meta Description Tags for a specific website page.
Now, “Meta Tag” sounds like a techie term that business owners don't need to be concerned with, but only half of that statement is true. Meta Tag is definitely a techie term, but these are techy times, and business owners should be aware of the reasons they're so important.
What Are Meta Tags?
Meta Tags are elements in website code that serve a variety of purposes. There are many different tags, but the two that are relative to what people see in search engine results are:
- Title
- Meta Description
The information contained in these tags are what appear in organic search engine results.
These tags are important because they're what visitors first see before arriving to your site; it is their first impression of your company. When written well, these tags help you stand out from the other search results and increase your chances of attracting new customers. On the other hand, poorly written title and description tags stand out for the wrong reasons, and are usually disregarded.
What Meta Tags Are Not.
You may have heard that Title and Meta Description Tags are important factors that search engines consider when it comes to ranking your website. This may have been the case at one time, but they are no longer part of search engine ranking algorithms. Title and Meta Description Tags are purely informational elements used to describe the contents of a website page in search engine results.
Tips
When writing content for your Meta Tags, keep the following in mind:
- Every page of your website should have unique titles and descriptions
- Make sure descriptions are well written and describe each page accurately
- Keep titles under 60 characters
- Keep descriptions under 160 characters
- Write your descriptions with marketing and sales in mind
Test Your Website
To see how your title and Meta description tags look in search engine results, go to Google.com and enter site:your-website.com (make sure there’s no space after ‘site:’). The results will include every page within your website that Google is aware of. If you’re not satisfied with the wording for any of the results, it’s time to update. Your website design firm should be able to quickly create quality content that makes a strong first impression in search engine results.
