If you want your website to be found, search engine marketing is essential. A functional website – one that’s designed to rank on Google – structures its content in the most efficient, most practical way possible. But, a lot of this content is buried in your website’s backend. When launching a new site, you’ll need to define meta descriptions, title tags, alt text, and other ‘hidden’ attributes. Without these things, your site may struggle to index properly, causing it to lag behind your competitors’ in search results.
While newly launched websites should focus on fresh, original, and authoritative content, there are other things – equally important – that need to be configured. Your site needs meta descriptions to concisely outline the content of every page. It needs a complete sitemap to tell search engines how to crawl it. It needs title tags, alt text, image captions, and well-written HTML headings. Ensuring that all of these items work in concert can be challenging, which is why it often pays to enlist the help of a professional with experience setting up search engine marketing.
A sitemap tells search engines where to look
When building a new site, most web design agencies start by creating a sitemap. Your sitemap tells Google, Bing, Yahoo, and other search engines the location of all of your site’s pages. As a general rule, a good website will grow to contain enough internal links to render a sitemap unnecessary. But, on new websites, those links often haven’t been established yet. So, if you’re launching a new site, a sitemap is crucial as it’s the only way that search engines can discover all of your site’s pages.
You probably don’t need to be told why it’s important for search engines to index all of your pages. But, just in case, here’s the gist: as a whole, your website integrates pages that focus on a collection of keywords. Independently, each page may not contribute much to your ability to rank for any specific keyword. But, together, your pages work to convince search engines of your keyword priorities. If half of your pages aren’t indexed, your entire keyword strategy is undermined. And, with no way to accurately determine which keywords are your priorities, search engines may position you incorrectly. Or, worse yet, they may not rank your website at all.
Title tags capture attention in search engine results
Your site’s title tags are its first opportunity to convert searchers into visitors. When you search on Google, the title tags are the large, linked headings at the top of the listing. When you’re optimizing for search engines, your titles need to contain at least one keyword relevant to the page. But, more importantly, they need to focus on conversion.
A Google search result highlighting an optimized title tag.
Make sure that your title tags are aesthetically pleasing and, above all else, ensure that they appeal to what you think searchers are looking for. Is the page about your affordable office supplies? Try: ‘Affordable Office Supplies – Fast, Free Shipping.’ Is it a list of tips to improve your side hustle? Try: ‘5 Ways to Supercharge the Income from Your Side Hustle.’ No matter what you do, always ask yourself, ‘If I saw this title in the search results, is it something that I would click on?’
Meta descriptions crafted for search engine marketing
In search results, meta descriptions are the text beneath your page’s title tag. A short description of the page’s content, they are the second – and perhaps most important – thing that searchers will read about your site. Your descriptions need to distill all of your page’s content down into a single compelling sentence.
A Google search result showcasing an optimized meta description.
With only 160 characters to work with, you need to consider every word. Of course, you’ll want to include the primary keyword of the page. But, you’re going to want to frame that keyword with text that convinces searchers that, yes, this is the page they were looking for. To reiterate our previous example, if your page is about affordable office supplies, you might try, ‘With thousands of items in stock and ready to go, Jack’s Paper is your source for the most affordable office supplies in Kalamazoo.’ In an attempt to convert searchers, you’ll see that this description contains the keyword, ‘affordable office supplies,’ as well as several value propositions, ‘thousands of items in stock’ and ‘affordable.’
Want to improve your website’s search engine rankings?
Creative Marketing Group has assembled a team of the most experienced, proven search engine marketing experts in Kalamazoo. Having worked with hundreds of companies – local and national, large and small – we have what it takes to get your website found. Taking a comprehensive approach to search engine marketing, we employ safe, risk-free tactics that will improve your rankings without the risk of being penalized by Google. So, if you’re looking to drive more traffic to your website, contact us today to start boosting your company’s presence on search engine results pages.
