subject: Increase Traffic to Your Website by Using the Title and Description Tags Effectively [print this page] The aim of the game with a website is to get plenty of traffic. The more you can increase traffic to your website the better, because you have a better chance of converting some of those visitors into clients.
You can get more website traffic by using the page title and description meta tags effectively. These are displayed by the search engines on their results pages, and together they form a kind of advertisement for your web page.
Think about when you do a search. You type your keyword into the search engine search box, the results page comes up so you scan it looking at the title and description to decide what pages you're going to visit. You'll find the title and description that seems to answer your needs best and you'll visit that page. If that doesn't do the job, you'll look at the second best result and so on.
So if you improve the "ad" for your web page, you can increase traffic to your website. In fact, a good title and description could give many times more traffic than a poor one.
Of course, often on the search engine results page you don't see a proper meta description. The search engine will take a snippet from the page that contains the keyword that was searched on and use that for the description. However, Google states that they often prefer to use the meta description when it's available because it gives a clearer picture of the page's content.
Just how do you write enticing ads to increase traffic to your website?
First of all you need to have done your keyword research so you know what phrases people are typing into the search engines to find sites like yours. Each webpage should be optimized for just one keyword.
Then:
- Use your page keyword near the start of the title and in the description. The search engines will make those words bold in the results, and that will make your website stand out more.
- Capitalize the page title, but don't use all caps.
- Don't just repeat the title for the description.
- Tell targeted surfers your site has the information they need. Let them know why they should click to your site.
- Describe your page accurately. A misleading description puts people off, and it won't bring targeted traffic.
- You don't have to write in complete sentences. If a list of the main points works better, use that.
- You have around 150 characters (20-25 words) for the description and 80 characters for the title, including spaces, to work with. After that your title and description can be cut short.
- Use a unique title and description for each page.
- Check other sites in your niche for ideas, but don't copy. You'll get an idea of what looks good and what doesn't.
- Write down a few possible titles and descriptions. That way you have the best chance of getting the best ad to increase traffic to your website.
Once you've come up with your title and meta description you need to put them into your web page.
Your web page editor should have a dialogue box that lets you enter the description and title. For example, In Kompozer and Nvu, click on "Format" in the menubar at the top of the page, then on "Page Title and Properties". A dialog box will pop up that lets you enter the title and description.
Check the help for your web site builder to see how to put the title and meta description in it.
It's quite easy to enter the title and descriptions so don't waste all that effort you've gone to to get a high search engine ranking. Do a bit of thinking, jot down a few titles and descriptions and use the best on your web page. It could increase traffic to your website dramatically.
Increase Traffic to Your Website by Using the Title and Description Tags Effectively
