I can manage my own website but feel with additional services on offer it was time I tweaked my meta (title, description, keywords). Can anyone explain the difference between these three descriptions? I can then get on with tweaking it; and then have a bash at search engine optimisation.

I`m in the process myself and slowly learning it.

You`ll need to register for google analytics read it here and register on the home page.

http://www.google.com/analytics/index.html

http://www.google.com/analytics/features.html

Having said that in my industry its easier to pay ?9.99 to google and when someone googles the search terms, you get listed for that area there in, its not to bad and far cheaper than paying an expert. You`ll always be top of the search, if you do it yourselve it needs to be constantly updated, as others are also competing for top spot.

Title- This is the title of your site, can either be in www. format or just the name of your business

Description-This is the description of your business, products and services etc. You need to make this section relevant to the content in your pages otherwise your site will be penalised when it comes to search engine submission. E.g. if you have a page full of bikes, don’t make the description about flowers. I know this sounds obvious but it really is easy to go off on a tangent when describing your services. It needs to be concise, straight to the point and short in length.

Keywords- These are again relevant to the content of your site, YOU DON’T NEED ANY MORE THAN 20! I know it’s tempting to put hundreds in there but it will SERIOUSLY affect the performance of your site if you have too many keywords.

This is particularly relevant if you use or are planning to use adwords. You need targeted traffic or you will pay for wasted clicks. Remember that there are window shoppers and buyers, you need to target the buyers otherwise it will inevitably end up costing you an arm and a leg.

An example of poor keywording is if you sell bikes but not bike parts, don’t put tyres in your keywords. People do this in order to access a wider audience thinking that they might, by chance like their products and buy them. Unfortunately it doesn’t work like this.

Think of it this way, unless you are SEO’d to the nuts, pay out 10,000’s to Google each month and have an advertising campaigh better than ALL of your competitors, the likelihood is that by the time the buyer reaches your site, they have already visited 100 other sites with RELEVANT content and are now looking for a bargain. On that basis, if your keywording is innaccurate, are they going to buy from you? NO! They will be peeved that they’ve sat at the computer for hours searching for a budget product and have just spent more energy than is required clicking on a site that has no relevance to their search. Worse still, if there comes a day where they DO need your product, they are unlikely to buy from you.

I can’t stress enough how important META tags are, if you need help give me a shout and I’ll take a look at your site and advise you what would be best. Same goes for you if you need it Santi.

Hope this helps

Emma

To learn more about this why don’t you do the Thirty Day Challenge (Google it) Then you will know everything about it and best of all it is totally free.

Regards
GH