When someone is looking for a business like yours online, they'll load up their favourite search engine and type in a query. For example, they might search for "accountant in Jakarta", if they were looking for help with their business accounts.
The search engine will then return a list of results that they believe are most relevant to the user. The order of these results is determined by the search engine algorithm as well as the user's location.
You'll have seen this type of thing yourself when you've loaded up Google or your search engine of choice and performed a search.
One of the main features in the search engine results is the titles and short descriptions presented with each link. This content can be used to help encourage a user to click-through to the corresponding website.
These titles and descriptions are controlled by metadata that can be added to your website. Specifically, these are known as a "title" and a "meta description".
If you've carried out SEO work on your own website or had someone work on this on your behalf, these are two of the elements that should be added to each page.
Each page of your website should have a unique title and meta description. They should accurately describe what the page is about and encourage someone reading to click-through to learn more.
There is a character limit that the search engines can display for your title and meta description.
Your title length can be up to 60 characters, with a sweet spot being between 50-60 characters.
Your meta description should be between 50-160 characters. It's definitely worth using as much of those 160 characters as possible, as the meta description is the perfect place to capture the interest of a user.
A top tip to consider would be to keep an eye on what your competitors are doing. To do this, carry out a search that a typical user would make when looking for your products or services.
Make a note of the titles and descriptions that you see in the search engines from your competitors' websites. You might find that this gives you some tips to help optimise your own site.
When you take the time to make sure you've got well-crafted unique titles and meta descriptions in place, you'll be helping users to find your business more easily in the search engines.
P.S. If you want to learn more about digital marketing and how you can create website more effectively for your business, I’d be happy to discuss this with you. Please book a meeting with me using my calendar here.
