Titles & Meta Descriptions 101: Connecting with Your Audience

As an SEO, one of the questions I get asked the most is “how do you come up with keywords,” whether it’s for titles, meta descriptions, or anything else. It’s really not as complicated as everyone makes it because whenever I hear that, what I actually hear is “how do I connect with my target audience?” Well, the first step is to learn who they are, which means you have to figure out where they congregate, i.e. social media, meetups, etc., study their behavior and how they interact with one another, then create a profile based on that data in order to fill a niche in the community.

Cross-reference Field Findings with Keyword Research

Within every community lies a need, or rather questions that have not been answered yet. Once you understand who your target audience is and what need you could fulfill within the community, you can then perform keyword research using free tools available at Moz, Ahrefs, and more. This research will give you the actual number of global monthly searches for specific keyword phrases, from which you could then make informed SEO decisions for your campaign.

The Importance of Optimized Titles and Meta Descriptions

When crafting titles and meta descriptions, it is all a matter of working within the confines of Google’s pixel limit for both, which is ~60 characters for titles and ~150 characters for meta descriptions. This means the keyword focus should be intentional but not stuffy as to avoid Google’s wrath, and while meta descriptions are said to carry no technical SEO value, they are one of the first things would-be visitors see when deciding whether they should click or not. Be sure to write clear and concise copy that would entice users to visit your site and potentially convert.

Whenever a title or meta description exceeds the allowed display character/pixel limit, it will add an ellipse (…) to a truncated version of your URL in the SERPs. However, when operating within the acceptable bounds, viewing the content on both desktop and mobile will likely result in little to no truncation, improving the user experience.

When crafting titles, be sure that your intent is clear and that your keyword phrase at least appears in the first half of the title.

How Little Egg Solutions Can Help

If that all sounded like a bunch of obtuse nonsense, it’s because white hat SEO is not an exact science. Add on top of that learning about an entire subculture, and it can be downright overwhelming. Our job is to help create the content that helps you reach your target audience easier and keeps your business on page one longer, the white hat SEO way. If you are interested in learning more about our products and services, please give us a call. We’ll help your little egg grow.