It’s like playing every child’s favorite recess game, tag, but online. In the game of tag, strategy and speed simultaneously work together for the advantage of either the tagger or the one being chased. The playground is Google and let me tell you, competition is fierce. Google likes to throw in some curve balls to make the game a little more interesting and fun for us who are chasing each other and brainstorming ways to make it to the top. After all, Google is the referee and they ultimately make the rules and decide the penalties. The goal of everyone in the game is to have their website featured on the very top of the search page.
Yes, there are many techniques that one can use to get ahead of their peers. These techniques are commonly known to us internet gurus as SEO, which stands for search engine optimization.
The most common way to increase your presence online is through the use of link building. Google has made it more difficult to obtain such links over the past recent years by dropping bogus random sites that pop up on the web daily, and by giving more attention to credible websites with high traffic.
Although establishing high quality links is still very important in obtaining your online presence, there are other tricks that you can use to get ahead in the game. A very important technique for a website can use to give them that extra energy boost online is the use of Title Tags and Meta Descriptions.
A Title Tag is essentially the name of a specific page. Every page on your website has a name, and you have the option to customize the name. When you find yourself running against someone at the same speed, this technique may be useful for you to help you get ahead of the competition. Why is it useful? The big referee, Google, will notice your pages name by the label you give it through the process of indexing your website. Every referee has an assistant right? Well, Google has one called the googlebot. This little guy sneaks around on the websites, collects information, and adds it to Google’s searchable index. With this knowledge, you can help the little googlebot by telling it what to read by labeling your webpage and creating a short summary text of that page in the meta description.
The words: It is important to use keywords in the title of the page, place the keywords towards the front of the title and place the brand name at the end.
The length: Just like it takes 30 seconds to make a great first impression, it takes between 50-60 characters to grab the attention of someone browsing online.
The secret: Create a compelling title tag that will lure in more visits from the search results through the combination of keywords, brand name, and length.
The race is fast, the game is complicated, and some are stronger than others. This is what makes marketing much more interesting and fun!
Tag, you’re it! It’s now your turn.