Welcome to the second part to my 4-part series on SEO for your Small Business. In today’s post I go over how to write good metadata including titles, descriptions, and alt text.
In my four part SEO series I will teach you:
- A basic introduction to SEO for Small Businesses
- Writing Meta Titles and Descriptions
- How to Do Keyword Research (coming soon)
- Writing Blog Posts with SEO in Mind (coming soon)
What is Metadata
Simply put, metadata is what Google will display for your blog posts, products, landing pages, etc. If you have a WordPress or Shopify site you can easily edit the metadata towards the bottom of the page.
I like using the ZEO SERP Preview Tool to write out my meta information. This will give you a good idea on how your metadata will appear on mobile or desktop SERPs (search engine results page).
Keep in mind that Google will sometimes choose different text to display here, depending on the query and if it thinks there’s a better part of your post to display. With that in mind, I still advise updating all metadata for your posts/products.
I have seen first hand the positive results of what having no meta to writing well thought out metadata does for pages!
Writing Meta Titles
Optimal Length:
Keep your titles between 50-60 characters so that they don’t get cut off on mobile search results. By using a SERP preview tool, you’ll be able to see how your post will appear on mobile devices.
If you have the room, you can add your brand name to the meta title. This is recommended by many experts, but sometimes I just don’t have the space for my brand name so I often leave it out. I mean, “Jordyn Alison Designs” is 21 characters already!!
Target Keyword:
As with the meta descriptions, you’ll want to put your target keyword at the beginning of meta titles.
Writing Meta Descriptions
When writing meta descriptions you should think about what it is that you are selling/posting about and why the user would want to click on your post over a competitor. What do you have to offer? What are your selling points?
Optimal Length:
It’s recommended to keep your Meta Descriptions between 150-160 characters. This doesn’t give you a ton of space to write, so you’ll want to be straight to the point.
According to Google, updating meta descriptions doesn’t increase your search rankings, but it can improve your click through rates. And improving click through rates can improve your rankings.
To save some space, I’ll sometime do things like “Made in USA ✓ Eco Friendly ✓” for a product or “Step by step tutorial ✓ Beginner friendly ✓” for a tutorial post. This allows me to write important information, that’s easy to read when scanning, without having to write full sentences for the selling points.
Target Keyword:
If possible, I would always try to put your Target Keyword at the beginning of the meta description. It doesn’t have to be the first word(s) but it should definitely be towards the beginning of the first sentence.
When you share on social media, meta descriptions are the snippet that gets shown with the link.
Avoid Duplicate Content:
As with most SEO things, duplicate content is a no-no. When duplicating products on Shopify, make sure you edit the metadata or else you’ll end up with lots of incorrect information being displayed. Ask me how I know… oops!
Using Alt Text
In recent years there have been many “marketing experts” tell you to put all your keywords in your alt text. But I disagree with this thought process. Alt Text is the information that screen readers will read. Visually impaired folks don’t want to hear a bunch of random keywords, they want to know what the image is about.
In my opinion, I’d rather have a descriptive alt text without any keywords than having alt text that is keyword stuffed.
Metadata Examples
Example 1: Greeting Card
Now, let’s put ALL of that information together into an example. I’ll be writing the meta information for my Best Selling Sending You Sunshine card. In the next post, I’ll go into full details on how I do keyword research. But for now just know that my target keyword is “encouragement card”
Let’s break this down a bit.
- Meta Title: within 50-60 characters, has target keyword ✓
- Meta description: quickly tells user why they should buy this card: it’s a best seller, who it’s for, it’s eco friendly, and it ships fast ✓
- Target keyword: “encouragement card” is used in the title and used in the description ✓
Example 2: Scrunchies
- Meta Title: Mustard Yellow Scrunchie | High Quality Hand Sewn Scrunchie
- Meta Description: This Mustard Yellow Scrunchie is a must-have in your closet. This Scrunchie will keep your hair secure all day long! Marathon tested ✓ Hand-Sewn in USA ✓
- Target Keyword: Mustard Yellow Scrunchie
- Product used in this example: this Mustard Yellow Scrunchie
Example 3: Blog Post
- Meta Title: How to Write Metadata: Titles & Descriptions
- Meta Description: Learn how to write metadata, including meta titles and meta descriptions (like what you’re reading now!) Real world example shown ✓
- Target Keyword: how to write metadata
- Blog post used in this example: this one! 🙂
I hope you found the examples provided helpful to bring it all together! What do you think, is writing metadata a lot easier than you were expecting?
Favorite SEO Tools: Keywords Everywhere | SEMrush | Google Analytics | Google Search Console | Yoast SEO
Have any questions on how to write metadata, or SEO questions in general? Leave a comment below! 🙂