The Watering Hole : Marketing Tips & Stories

• SEO Series, Part 1: You can't handle the truth about SEO!

• Different on every page on your website.
• Concise and keyword-rich. In the image, you'll notice long title tags get cut off (see the "..."), so keeps yours 7-10 words and 80 characters max. Make sure it's keyword-rich (more on this next) and -- if you're a local small business -- includes your location or service areas.  
• Example: In the photo above, the words circled in orange = words that match the search query = relevance. So if your title tag contains keywords that match the user's search query, chances are it will come up on the search results page.

• Accurate, specific and actual terms that people search for. You can use the Google Keywords Tool to figure this out.
• Limited. It's best to decide on two or three keyword phrases to optimize your website for 2-8% of your body text. Keyword density is highly debated, but even so, it's common sense that your keywords should appear every so often so that search engines can pick up on your keyword themes.
• Example: If you’re a sushi restaurant aimed at sushi “beginners,” your keywords might be sushi, California rolls, and teriyaki chicken rolls. But if you’re a fancy, authentic sushi restaurant, your keywords might be sashimi, sea urchin, and authentic sushi.

The meta description
The meta description for your website doesn't actually appear on your website anywhere, but as the page’s description in search results. Thus, it kind of serves as your free ad on the search results page. Your meta description should be:

• Keyword-rich. Search engines examine your meta description to see if it matches the search query, so it should accurately describe what your website is about.
• Catchy so that the user who sees your meta description will want to click through to your website.
• 150 characters or less. Anything longer than 150 characters will be cut off on the search results page.

• Actual headers on your web page that serve to break up content. Search engines don't like sneaky, hidden H1 tags.
• Ideally containing some of your keywords.
• Example: For an educational website about sushi, your H1 tags might be:

    <h1>About Sashimi<h1>
    <h1>About Japanese sushi<h1>
    <h1>About American sushi<h1>
    <h1>Find sushi near you<h1>

• Example: Let's say your sushi restaurant has FoodNetwork.com (PR=7) linking to it. Since FoodNetwork.com is a high-quality site, that’ll raise your Page Rank. Conversely, if your restaurant has seven tiny food blogs with Page Rank 1 linking to it, Google isn’t impressed. That said, a few unimpressive links are better than none, so the best strategy is to reach out to sites with low PR scores and work your way up.