7 Ways To Supercharge Your SEO

Meta tags in terms of SEO, are in a great way for you to showcase your website to potential visitors even before they visit your site from a Google search.

For example, let’s say I am looking to buy candles and that’s all the information I have right now, I want to buy a candle. I don’t know what colour, what scent, what candles are out there, I am right at the beginning of my user journey.

When I do search in Google the only information, I have is what is presented here. A glance down the SERP (search engine result pages) listings above and I can see straight away, “scented candles set:” – nope, not interested in that, no idea what that even is, below that “30 best scented Candles to buy online” – that would be great for information but right now I want to browse and don’t want to be influenced by someone else.

You see, these two bits of information (the title tag and the meta description tag) are helping me make a mental decision about which site to click on the search engine results page. This is why it is vitally important you pay attention to these because it could be the difference between you or your competitor getting a click from a potential customer.

To optimise your meta tags effectively you need to pay attention to some best practices. Here are 7 ways to Supercharge your meta tags

1. Title tag length – The first bit of our example above for Yankee Candle is the title tag “Yankee Candle – Candles, Candle Accessories” This needs to be no more than 64 characters long or 512 pixels if you want to get technical. Any longer than 60-64 characters and you will see they truncate it at the end with … as above. So don’t stuff this tag with lots of words.
2. Google always uses a default font, so you won’t be able to alter this and you will find that they put the brand name (if you mention it in your title tag), at the start of the tag.
3. Be descriptive – This is like a header to your ad. Make it pop! Whilst including your important keywords, in my opinion, this is still a VITAL part of SEO. Use terms like “best”, “affordable”, “quality”, “trusted” have been known to include CTR (click-through rates) to your website. Conduct thorough keyword research to identify the most relevant and effective terms to use.
4. Don’t spam – Don’t repeat the main phrase too many times, not only could Google frown on this, it could be a turn off to potential visitors. Once or twice max.
5. Make sure your main keyphrase is at the beginning of the title tag as possible.
6. Meta Description – This needs to be more than 158 characters long.
7. Unlike your meta title, it needs to contain a sentence or two with a good call to action. Whether it’s your telephone number, buy now, contact us to arrange. This is your chance to shine. Use it to advertise why people should click on your site, rather than others. Include your USP whether it’s price, quality or any other feature or benefit.

• If you don’t fill in this tag Google will choose something from your page, and it may not be the best way to promote what is you do or are trying to sell.
• Make them unique!!! – If you don’t edit these, you could find your website has “Home” as the word you want to be found for, or your meta description is the same across all pages. This is especially bad for E-commerce sites, where every product has the same description throughout. Putting effort in here can pay off in terms of ranking increases.
• Make sure you highlight the keyword you want to be found for in the meta description. Including relevant keywords in your meta descriptions can significantly enhance search engine visibility. If we look at the example below “What is a canonical tag”

We will see that Google has highlighted the phrase within the meta description tag. Again this a great way to increase click through to your website as bolding the text, reinforces these are the right websites according to their website search.