What To Write In Your Meta Tags For Your Small Business Website?

What To Write In Your Meta Tags For Your Small Business Website?

I might go on about meta tags, but it is because they are so very important if you would like more people to contact you about engaging you for your services. How you write your meta tags, and what you write about, is one of the most important things that you do on your small business website, which is why I find it so incredibly frustrating that so few people give them any thought.

It is like having one of your services that steadily produces 50% of your profits, month after month, yet never giving it any attention. Interestingly, I know a lot of businesses where this happens. They just get used to the income coming from this part of their service, but another part of their service gets more of their time and attention because they find it a bit more interesting.

Please do me a favour; if this is happening in your business, get someone else in to run the sector producing the 50% of your profits, before it drops away to 10% as it will without any love. As with so much of my advice, I have very much learned this lesson the hard way. Lessons learned, scars earned, I move on.

So back to the unsung heroes of your website; your meta tags.

Forget the word meta tags, these are actually the advertisement you write that will decide whether someone clicks through to your website or not. Yes, an advertisement. Now imagine you are going to spend £10,000 putting an advertisement into the Sunday Times to promote your small business, would you give that a modicum of thought or just throw a few words onto the page and hope for the best?

I think it will be the former. It must also be the case for your meta tags. Remember when you search on Google the results you see 9 times out of 10 are taken straight from the meta tags on your website.

Here is an example from my website. Here are the meta tags for a certain page:

Marketing Ideas For Estate Agent

And this is what Google Displays when it puts my website in the top 10 search results:

 

Estate Agent Marketing Tips Google Search Results

 

Is that starting to make more sense now? You see how exactly what I have put on the page in question in my meta tags is presented by Google when anyone searches for Estate Agent Marketing Tips or Marketing Ideas For Estate Agents in Google.

So what do you notice?

  • I use leading capitals. I mentioned in detail why this works in my last post – here it is if you missed it: http://www.smallbusinesssalt.co.uk/blog/how-to-write-your-meta-tags-to-ensure-more-clicks-to-your-website-from-google-search-results/;
  • I use the keywords I am targeting in my title tag: Marketing Ideas For Estate Agents (I am then listed for searches for marketing tips too which is a bonus);
  • I make a bold statement in the description tag to encourage people to choose to click through to my website rather than the other websites listed in the search results: “Most Estate Agents Seem Stuck In A Rut…..”
  • I offer something free as an enticement to get them to click through to my website: “Read This Estate Agents Marketing Guide…

So, there you have it.

Your meta tags are solely responsible for attracting new visitors to your website if they find you in the search results. They deserve some of your time and attention. If you haven’t yet given it to them, now would be a great time to start.

In summary, when writing your meta tags, try these ideas:

  • Use Leading Capitals
  • Include the keywords that you are targeting in both the title tag and description tags
  • Make the description tag stand out. Offer something free, make a ballsy statement, challenge the status quo. Just don’t talk about your business at all. Nobody cares at this point. It must be all about your potential client and enticing them to click on your displayed search result to land on your website.

 

Please do me a favour. Go and look at your meta tags and if they are not working hard enough for you, change them. When you see more people on your website next month compared to this month, please share your results with me.

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