The SEO industry contains a world of its own with technical terms and lingo that can leave you scratching your head. No doubt, plunging into the SEO universe forces you to overcome a steep learning curve, but it gets easier after you understand the system and the industry terms.
Skyrocket to success by learning how to craft the perfect meta tag with the help of a character counter.
What Is A Meta Tag?
Meta tags actually contain three components: title tags, meta descriptions, and keywords.
The title tag is what most know as the title or headline of an article. It summarizes what the content is about and shows up in three places: search engine result pages, browsers, and external social media pages like Twitter and Facebook.
Meta descriptions are snippets of your content. While title tags can only contain a handful of words, meta descriptions provide more space to pique your reader’s curiosity. The meta description is the space where the writer persuades the user to click through their page, so they make it count. Be mindful of the length of your meta description because the text can get cut off in search engines if it’s too long.
Lastly, keywords are the lifeblood of the writer’s content. Having a relevant and unique keyword can help boost your ranking in Google, allowing your site to show up in their top ten or the first page of search results (because let’s face it, no one goes to page two of Google results.)
Title Tag
To come up with the perfect title tag, you need to get your creative juices flowing.
Come up with a catchy title because you’ll need to get the attention of the people searching Google. Catchy titles can include puns, wordplay, and popular references that won’t be hard to understand.
Your potential title needs to include your keyword/s because search engine algorithms take that into account when ranking sites. It shouldn’t exceed 60 characters (you can keep track of them using a character counter) because any longer would cut it off from the results page.
Here are some known techniques and formulas in crafting SEO-friendly titles:
- Using exclusive insider information (“Waze CEO Shows Us a Hidden Feature in the GPS App”)
- How to do this without doing that (“How To Fix a Car Dent without Going to the Shop”)
- Controversial standpoints (“Why Going Zero-Waste isn’t a Practical Solution to the Climate Crisis”)
- Potentially changing the reader’s life (“This Life Hack will Change the Way You Clean Your Room”)
You can read more title-making techniques here.
Meta Description
Your meta description is longer than your title tag, which gives you more space to describe what the user will find in the content.
Don’t get too carried away, though, because the ideal length of a meta description is from 120 to 158 characters. So keep it concise, but convince the reader that your content is worth their time.
Insert your keyword near the beginning of your meta description to avoid it from getting cut off, but don’t overstuff. Keyword stuffing looks like this:
Keyword: Puppy grooming
Title tag: Puppy Grooming Services that Use Top Puppy Grooming Techniques
Meta description: “Need puppy grooming services? Our puppy grooming techniques are topnotch, so you’ll never have to worry about puppy grooming again!”
When crafting your meta descriptions, opt for action words to evoke emotion and bring your content to life. Active verbs like “enhance,” “inspire,” or “alter” create a more persuasive effect. Check out a thesaurus, and you’ll be surprised at the more colorful alternatives for everyday words!
Keyword
Google gets more than 60,000 searches per second at any given time, amounting to over four million searches per minute. In a single day, Google processes nearly 6 billion searches. That’s a lot of data! That is why finding the right keyword is paramount to creating the perfect meta tag. Inserted in both your title tag and meta description, the strength of your keyword will determine how much traffic your website can get.
Once you’ve brainstormed a list of potential keywords that are relevant to your industry and readers, use SEO tools like Ahrefs to know which keywords are most effective and profitable.
Evenly spread out your keywords for maximum optimization throughout the article, but as previously advised, don’t overdo it. A good rule of thumb is to organically integrate your keyword once in the introduction, body, and conclusion.
Continuously research and practice creating your own meta tags with your own character counter, and you’ll be coming up with evergreen ideas left and right in no time!
Published on November 13, 2019 under keyword, meta description, meta tag, title tag.
