GPWA Times - Issue 20 - March 2012

Is your aim for a Google top spot hurting your business? By John Ekman Y ou’re a gaming affiliate and you live and die with your Google rank. So you will do anything and everything to stay on top of that Search Engine Results Page (SERP). But as you do, you might be hurting yourself. The Conversion Optimization of Google Organic Ads (yes, I call them ads) is hugely ne- glected and a rank-only strategy might actually send you LESS visitors. Optimizing the Title and Description meta tags for rank is one of the key components of successful Search Engine Optimization (SEO). A well- crafted Title tag will greatly increase your chances of reaching top posi- tion, BUT if you’re designing your tags ONLY to achieve a top position the end result might actually be less traffic to your site. Why? Because when meta tags are optimized for ranking position you often sacrifice an effective call to action and your clickthrough rates will suffer as a result. Put too much weight on Ranking and your Conversion will drop (off). The mechanics of meta tags ............................................................ (Skip this section if you already know how the meta tags work.) The Title and Description tags are used in two different ways: First, by the search engine ranking algorithms, which use the content to influence your position SERPs. It’s one among several other factors. Then the Title tag will be used as the blue “heading” and the Description tag as the “body text” for your placement on the search results page. This second use tends to be overlooked. Your Title and Description tags actually make up an “ad” which is displayed in direct competition with other “ads.” And ads should be designed to create interest and be persuasive. But if you only optimize them for the search engines and forget the human looking at the results, you’re not getting the best out of your SEO efforts. The anatomy of the Title tag ............................................................ The Title tag carries huge weight in terms of rank so your keywords(s) sim- ply MUST be there. And they should appear in the beginning of the Title tag. Second, the Title tag should have one element of persuasion or call to action in order to make it “irresistible” to click. Third, the Title tag can also contain your brand name/site name if: 1. It is well known and will increase clickthrough rate by its familiarity. 2. It is closely connected to the keyword you are optimizing for (this in- creases the relevancy of your “ad” to the user and the search engine). This is an awful lot to fit into just 70 characters! Unfortunately, many try to stuff the Title tag with just keywords, key- words, keywords. Just look at this ad – is this compelling to you? They have sacrificed all persuasion and call to action for the sake of key- word stuffing. The only imperative is the word “Chose,” which is almost at the end. (And it’s misspelled, too!) The anatomy of the Description tag ............................................................ The consensus among SEO experts is that keywords in the Description tag have almost no impact on rank. Nevertheless they can be valuable because of the way that they are bolded/highlighted in the SERP. As you can see in this example the search term Online Casino appears twice in the Description tag and the highlighted appearance gives the users the opportunity to fixate their gaze twice on the Description tag. Lucky Nugget probably could have moved the second appearance to the second line so that searchers would be induced to explore both lines of the Description tag. Is your aim for a Google top spot hurting your business?