Tag - You're It - Don't And You Are NOT!

Want to know how to make sure Google lists your page titles and descriptions correctly in their search results? Tags is the first step! The title and description that gets displayed in the search results can have a massive impact on how many people click on your listing. And these will best be determined by your title tag and your description tag.

Now what will inspire people to click on your listing? Well first and foremost use your keywords in your title tag. Not only does this help you rank better, but Google uses your title tag as your page's title in their search listings and people are more likely to click on a listing containing the keywords they're searching for. What's more, those keywords will be automatically bolded in search results, further increasing the likelihood your listing gets clicked on.

Your search listing's description comes from your meta description tag, unless you don't have a meta description, or if your meta description is a poor match for the keywords used in the search query which brings up your listing, and there's other text on your page which matches the query better. You should incorporate your most important keywords in similar fashion to how you would carefully craft a PPC ads to maximize the number of click-throughs. So, while it's true that meta description tags are not a major ranking factor, they certainly do play a big role in getting people to actually click your listing.

And since they don't have as big an impact on rankings as title tags do, they can be a great place to experiment with different copy. You can rotate different features, benefits, solutions, etc. This way you can see how they impact the number of people who click on your listing and see how those different descriptions impact your conversions—all without having to worry about the effect it would have on your rankings.