Want To Double Your Search Engine Traffic? Think Like A PPC Expert

Every click counts. That means it’s definitely worth 2-3 minutes of your time (or someone else’s time) to write accurate, concise, and enticing title tags and meta descriptions. That little bit of extra time could easily end up getting you two or three times the traffic you’re getting now.

How much is a click worth to you? If you do pay per click advertising, like so many small businesses do, you’ll know the answer to that immediately. Odds are good, too, that what you’re paying for a click is higher than you’d like. Many companies are paying $2, $5, even $10 or $20 just to get people to click on their ads once. And that’s without the guarantee of generating any business just for the privilege of making the pitch.

While we pay big bucks for clicks on ads, we tend to neglect the free clicks. The title tags and descriptions of our pages are showing up right next to those expensive ads, yet most of us are spending almost no time on the “ad copy” for our free, organic search listings. Often, those title tags we use aren’t even unique, or they’re written as an afterthought.

We know small businesses tend to underinvest in search engine optimization. When we surveyed over 1,100 small businesses earlier this year for the Wasp Barcode Technologies State of Small Business Report,we found that only 25% – about one in four – are doing any search engine optimization.

Wasp Barcode Technologies State of Small Business Report, found that only 25% – about one in four – are doing any search engine optimization.
Wasp Barcode Technologies State of Small Business Report, found that only 25% – about one in four – are doing any search engine optimization.

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That was a disappointment, but neglecting these title tags and page descriptions is a huge missed opportunity. Once you view your web pages’ title tags and meta descriptions like they were ad copy, you’ll immediately want to improve them. As you pay per click advertisers know, it’s quite possible to double or triple the click-through rate on a pay per click ad. Sometimes all it takes is using the right word or phrase.

Two massive upsides of better title tags and meta descriptions

If you start applying ad copy thinking to the title and meta description tags of your pages, it means you can probably double or triple the click-through rates for your organic search listings. This has two massive consequences:

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You can double or triple your organic search traffic without any other changes. No link building, no content development – nada. Just rewrite those title tags and meta descriptions so they’re more enticing.
Increasing the click-through rate of your organic search listings is widely believed to affect the ranking of your pages. In other words, the higher the click-through rates are for your organic search listings, the more the search engines will interpret that as a signal your pages are more relevant to users. So your pages will rise in the search results.
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These are the results of the Searchmetrics’ 2015 Google U.S. Ranking Factors study.

Now is a particularly good time to try this

Google GOOGL +0.74% (and Bing) appear to be testing longer title tags.

The implications of this are significant, but they vary a lot from page to page and search to search. For instance, some letters take up more space than others, so I can’t tell you “use up to 77 characters,” because some title tags will get cut before that.

There’s also evidence that Google is appending brand names to title tags, which could use up even more space. This appending move by Google is interesting, because some companies have been adding their brand or company name to their pages for years. Hopefully we won’t start seeing duplicate company or brand names in title tags.

Testing your title tags and meta descriptions

The best news about thinking of your title tags and meta descriptions as ad copy is that you’ve already got the information you need to make improvements. Your Google Search Console account (previously known as “Webmaster Tools”) has a report that shows the click-through rates for your pages.

Take a screenshot of this report and then make your title tag and page description copy changes. Circle back about two weeks later to see if your pages are performing better. That’s it. It’s not the slickest system, but it is enough to double your traffic.

Google Search Console account (previously known as “Webmaster Tools”) has a report that shows the click-through rates for your pages.
Google Search Console account (previously known as “Webmaster Tools”) has a report that shows the click-through rates for your pages.

Conclusion

If you’re paying for traffic, you already know how competitive, and expensive, it is to get clicks. So it’s time to stop taking the free traffic you are getting from the search engines for granted.

Every click counts. That means it’s definitely worth 2-3 minutes of your time (or someone else’s time) to write accurate, concise, and enticing title tags and meta descriptions. That little bit of extra time could easily end up getting you two or three times the traffic you’re getting now.

Actually, I recommend you calculate the value of that extra traffic, based on how much you’re spending on paid clicks now. You may have just found a way to nab $10,000 or more in free traffic.

Source: Want To Double Your Search Engine Traffic? Think Like A PPC Expert