We get asked quite often... If we only got to choose 2 elements to optimize on-page, what those would be?
Well, wishing the answer was more technical than this, the fact remains that we would pick the Title tag and the meta Description.
Title tag - The most important one. This is what the searcher will click on to arrive at your site. And it is were all starts in terms of converting that visitor into a customer, member, affiliate, supporter, or whatever you want your site to accomplish. It should satisfy both your visitor and search engines in terms of relevancy. Therefore it needs to be "clickable". Target terms should be considered in terms of co-occurrence, prominence, and proximity. We recommend to include your target terms once in it, at the beginning (prominence) following with a call to action (click through). The last issues are length and separators. If your title exceeds 67 characters, it could be trimmed out in the SERPs, which not only does look bad, but also wouldn't allow the searcher to see your entire message.
Separators help increase visual relevancy of your terms.
Description meta - You need to optimize this. Not the "second most important" in SEO value, but probably for searchers... It should "describe" the Title tag further, detailing any additional information that would further increase the chances of being chosen as the most relevant and appealing search result. It should also include the target terms at the beginning, but branding terms are not necessary, instead focus more on why this would be a better listing to click on that your competitor's. Then you have achieved its goal.
Well, wishing the answer was more technical than this, the fact remains that we would pick the Title tag and the meta Description.
Title tag - The most important one. This is what the searcher will click on to arrive at your site. And it is were all starts in terms of converting that visitor into a customer, member, affiliate, supporter, or whatever you want your site to accomplish. It should satisfy both your visitor and search engines in terms of relevancy. Therefore it needs to be "clickable". Target terms should be considered in terms of co-occurrence, prominence, and proximity. We recommend to include your target terms once in it, at the beginning (prominence) following with a call to action (click through). The last issues are length and separators. If your title exceeds 67 characters, it could be trimmed out in the SERPs, which not only does look bad, but also wouldn't allow the searcher to see your entire message.
Description meta - You need to optimize this. Not the "second most important" in SEO value, but probably for searchers... It should "describe" the Title tag further, detailing any additional information that would further increase the chances of being chosen as the most relevant and appealing search result. It should also include the target terms at the beginning, but branding terms are not necessary, instead focus more on why this would be a better listing to click on that your competitor's. Then you have achieved its goal.
