Many of my photography marketing posts talk about SEO – the simplest form of affordable advertising where the only cost is your time spent. This post talks about the importance of titles and meta descriptions, and why the keywords in the meta description don’t matter!

Titles First

A webpage title appear at the very top of the browser window, above the URL bar. Keywords here accurately describe the topic of the page. You’re not going to find Charlie Sheen content on a page titled “Best Atlanta Wedding Photo Albums”. You know what you can find on that page I just mentioned without even looking at it. So does Google and so do your potential clients. Keywords in the title not only match your page to search queries, but more importantly show on the search results page. That’s right, the list of links you see in the top 10 of Google are all page titles, and are the deciding factor for whether a searcher clicks to your site, or chooses someone else’s.

Below is a sample search result for “Best Atlanta Wedding Photo Albums”. The title of the page appears as a blue link. Notice that the words in my search (best, Atlanta, wedding) become bolded. It even bolds “photography” which is not what I searched, but closely related.

These factors align searchers to your page and act as cues for them to click you.

The meta description for a page or post appears as the black text below the blue link on a search result. This is the only place it appears, thus is often forgotten, but has a tremendous impact on how many people click on your link. The keywords in a meta description don’t necessarily help a page/post rank better, but will stand out as bold to help convert users to click. As a user, I’m likely to choose the above website because the photographer is the best, award-winning photographer in my area (or so the claim goes). Does your homepage description speak to your strengths and encourage users to choose you over someone else? Read More→