My focus this week has been on SEO. There are many things one can do to improve his SEO. Good quality content, meta descriptions, alt attributes, good linking, etc. are all good things one can do to improve SEO. However, the one thing that stand out the most to me is writing a good title.
I think that page titles are by far the most important factor in SEO. Of course, everyone wants their page to rank high on Google’s search list. But realistically, how many of us click on the first search result every time? I would say that often I do not. After scanning the top five or so results, I click on the one with the title that most closely resembles what I’m searching for. The title of a website is often the first interaction a user has with your site. Before they even see it, they get to read what it’s about and make a decision. You’ve got less than a few seconds to catch their interest or they’ll never click. If your title appears fourth or fifth in the search results, but is catchier, more clever, or more relevant than the results preceding it, it has a great chance to be clicked.
Not only are titles key to how engines weigh relevance, they also dramatically impact a searcher’s propensity to click. Google weighs title tags very heavily when scanning websites, and ensuring that they are within 50-60 characters long helps them to fully display in the search results without cutting anything off.
My focus is to make that sure that at the very least, every page on my website has a good, descriptive title. After that, I’ll make sure I’m doing the other things to boost SEO.