Meta Descriptions

Write good meta descriptions

The meta description is generally used by search engines to show a descriptive snippet of your site to users in search results. Unlike a title, which should be concise, a good meta description can be a couple sentences long. The sentences should accurately summarize a page’s content. They should not be generic, filled with keywords, or contain an entire page’s content. If Google thinks the meta description of your page is relevant, it will often use it as the search result description found below the title.

Describing Content On Your Site

Write unique and descriptive titles

Titles affect how your pages are displayed and whether a user wants to click on your site in search results. Compare them to titles of a book or chapter. They should be descriptive and concise. Long titles can confuse people and may not fully display in search results. Generic titles like “Home” don’t describe a page’s content either. Its important to learn how to create descriptive page titles since is one of the main signals Google uses to determine the title of a page in search results.

Write different titles for different pages on your site to help users and search engines know which page would be the most useful for a particular search query. Example: BASEBALL CARD …is a generic query, so Google shows the homepage as a search result. The RAREST BASEBALL CARD example is a more specific query, so Google shows a deeper page that’s relevant to the query. These titles are unique to their pages.

 

 

Organize Your Site Structure

You want your users to quickly and easily navigate your site to find the content they are looking for. You also want search engines to easily crawl your site and understand the content that you consider important.
Its important to create a clear and logical structure using a navigation bar.

All sites have a home or “root” page. It’s usually the most visited page on a site and the starting place of navigation for visitors. From the home page, help visitors will find other pages on your site by creating a navigation bar. A good navigation bar calls out important sections of your site, is clear about where it’ll take visitors, and follows a logical structure. Intuitive and organized navigational categories include ‘Home’, ‘News’, and ‘Contact Us.’ You can place the navigation bar on the top or side of each page for easy access.

Use informative URLs
When users search for a term or phrase, the URL (also called the web address) can help them determine if there is relevant content on that particular page. Which URL do you find more informative?

http://www.onadivabaseballcards.com/article210.htm

vs

http://www.onadivabaseballcards.com/articles/ten-rarest-baseball-cards.htm (…more informative)

Create Valuable Content

The key to creating a great website is to create the best possible experience for your audience with original and high quality content. If people find your site useful and unique, they may come back again or link to your content on their own websites. This can help attract more people to your site over time.

 

As you begin creating content, make sure your website is:

  • Useful and informative: If you’re launching a site for a restaurant, you can include the location, hours of operation, contact information, menu and a blog to share upcoming events.
  • More valuable and useful than other sites: If you write about how to train a dog, make sure your article provides more value or a different perspective than the numerous articles on the web on dog training.
  • Credible: Show your site’s credibility by using original research, citations, links, reviews and testimonials. An author biography or testimonials from real customers can help boost your site’s trustworthiness and reputation.
  • High quality: Your site’s content should be unique, specific and high quality. It should not be mass-produced or outsourced on a large number of other sites. Keep in mind that your content should be created primarily to give visitors a good user experience, not to rank well in search engines.
  • Engaging: Bring color and life to your site by adding images of your products, your team, or yourself. Make sure visitors are not distracted by spelling, stylistic, and factual errors. An excessive amount of ads can also be distracting for visitors. Engage visitors by interacting with them through regular updates, comment boxes, or social media widgets.

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Be careful of things that can make visitors not trust your site or leave:

  • Errors such as broken links or wrong information

  • Grammar or spelling mistakes

  • Excessive amount of ads

  • Spam such as comment or forum spam

Identify Your Audience

Before you create content, you should identify your site’s audience. These are the people you want to visit your site. For example, the audience for onadivabaseballcards.com include people who are interested in baseball cards. Once you identify your audience, you can create content that is useful and relevant to them.

You can use a powerful tool called Google Trends to explore trends and related keywords your audience might be searching. A search for “baseball” shows variations and related terms that people have searched in addition to “baseball”. You can see when and where these searches come from, along with search volume for different terms. It also shows interesting trends over time associated with search terms. Understanding related terms to your site’s content helps you to create more relevant content for your audience, leading to more people finding your site.
Gather a test audience
Once you have plans for your website written down, show your friends and family to gather feedback. Ask them what they think of your site as a potential visitor. You can also conduct surveys or usability tests. Ask insightful questions: What would they expect to find on your site? Is there missing information that they would find useful? Hearing what others have to say about your site can help you relate to your audience better.
Now that you’ve identified your audience, you can begin creating content with them in mind.

Choosing a domain name

The domain name is your website’s address on the web so choose a good one that is:

  • Descriptive: Think about the name of your company and the content you’ll put on your site. The domain name is one of the first things people notice about a site so it should provide a good idea what your site’s about at a glance.
  • Easy to remember: Keep the domain name short and simple. If it’s long and complicated, it’ll be hard for people to remember.
  • Adaptable: A domain name is likely be tied to your site for a long time so choose one that will work if your site’s content changes over time. If Onadiva eventually plans to include other collectibles, onadivacollectibles.com would be a better domain name than onadivabaseballcards.com.