Meta Tags: Don’t leave your click-through rate up to chance

Many folks concentrate all their SEO efforts on ranking highly with the various search engines, but this does you little good if nobody clicks through to your site. If you rushed through the effort to create Meta Tags (or did not write them) for your website you are leaving your click-through rate up to chance.

Meta Tags are important because they serve to drive traffic to your web site from the search engines. They may not help with helping you rank higher, but they definitely help with conversions.

Many people have lost focus on Meta Tags since stuffing them full of key words no longer works to increase your page rank. Please don’t get misty eyed about the good old days just yet, you can use Meta Tags strategically, since they allow you to control how you web page is described by many search engines.

By investing some time in nailing a truly descriptive tag, you make it easier for humans to know what content to expect from your site, from the many listed on search engines. This will help you dramatically increase your click through rate.

The added information in the Meta Tags allows humans with varying search motivations to get to the site they need faster, with less frustration. By providing clues to the content on your site through these mini text advertisements you provide a valuable service to searchers and start off your relationship with them in a positive manner.

If you are having a hard time coming up with an interesting Meta Tag, your problem may lie upstream with your website content. Avoid the temptation to try to drive business to an uninspired site with an overly ambitious description.

Since various search engines have not standardized on the lengths of Meta Tags, play it safe and try to stay under 160 characters to avoid an awkward truncation. Keeping them short is tough, but like any good ad copy, shorter is usually better.

Whatever you do; don’t pass on this critical link to driving traffic to your website.