Housekeeping to improve SEO

We’ve lost track of the number of brands who have built a beautiful website with wonderfully curated content, only to be disappointed by the scale of traffic. Just as hidden beauty spots need signposting, websites rely on good Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) to make them visible. 

It makes sense then that you need to put effort into making your site rank as highly as possible; regular technical housekeeping duties will help keep your website running at its peak performance, and that means optimum SEO too.

Page titles and meta descriptions are two of the most significant ranking factors, meaning it’s important that every page of a website has a page title and meta description which is both unique and keyphrase-rich. Each page should have a single keyphrase focus, and the target keyphrase for each page should be present and include unique selling points.

Here are our top tips for getting the most from your page titles and meta descriptions.  

1.  GET THE FORMAT RIGHT

Page titles are indexed from left to right, with keyphrases towards the left having higher priority than those on the right.

Use the pipe character "|" as a separator of keyphrases.

The optimal format for page titles is:

Primary Keyphrase |

Secondary Keyphrase |

2. OPTIMISE THE LENGTH

Page titles should be no more than 60 characters in length, to avoid truncation.

Meta descriptions should be between 150-160 characters. As with page titles, Google usually truncates snippets that are longer than 160 characters in length.

3.  INCLUDE ESSENTIAL INFORMATION

A good meta description includes product or service attributes, branding, slogans and company boiler plates.

Incorporating a call to action will help encourage a conversion rate from your meta description.

4.  AVOID BOUNCE

Do not include key phrases in a page title or meta description you do not have specific content for and instead include descriptions accurate as possible.

Enticing a user to a page without that content will only result in high bounce rate and this can directly affect rankings.

Best of luck writing your meta descriptions and page titles. And if you’re looking for more support in digital and growth marketing, get in touch.