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I have mentioned Google quite a bit already, but obviously Bing is quite widely used as well, and both Google and Bing have a very similar tool. So, Google calls it Google Search Console and Bing calls it Webmaster Tools. So, you can get access to both tools either by asking a colleague, or you may need to ask your web developer to upload a file just to get access that way.
This is probably my favorite feature in Google Search Console, and it's really aimed at marketers. What it does is it gives you an insight as to what keywords Google thinks your website is about, and also what landing pages on your site are actually doing the business for SEO.
What we've done up until now with Search Analytics within Google Search Console is we've looked at queries, but if you move onto Pages and Google starts to give you similar data or metrics that we looked at before, but it's looking at it at a page level. And as I mentioned, we know that rankings has a bearing on your clickthrough rate, but another thing that has a big bearing is how you actually structure your title tag, which is the blue clickable link that you see in Google in the search results, and the little snippet of text which is the meta description that shows under that title tag.
Now, if you write a fairly boring title tag or meta description, you're probably going to get a lower clickthrough rate.
So, let's put that into context. I've used a tool called the SERP Preview Tool, and with the first marker, what we can see is how the title tag and meta description currently looks.
And I feel the title tag is actually good. It's the right length, it's got a good use of keywords and that particular PageRanks well. So, I'm not going to think about changing the title tag too much. But in terms of the meta description, we can see that it's truncated, it's cut off because it's too long, and reading it, it's rather dull. It's not that interesting.
So, using this SERP Preview Tool, I've created another meta description that we can see with marker two, and it's a little bit more engaging. We start off by asking a question, and then we start to give some benefits as well. So, “Have a calf strain or want to know what causes them? Get expert advice on the treatment exercises and rehabilitation so you can heal faster”. It has a benefit at the end.
So, the chances are, this will improve the clickthrough rate, which will mean the webpage will get more traffic. And that for me, is quite a low hanging fruit. There's a lot of work involved to get these rankings, so we want to make the most of them from the search engine results.
We're just going to look at three things for now.
Managing Director and SEO Trainer at Zen Optimise
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ABOUT THIS DIGITAL MARKETING MODULE
This module covers the basic concepts that underpin SEO. It introduces methods for improving technical SEO and on-page optimization of a website. It explains how to plan and implement a strategic SEO campaign and also covers the best practices for successfully building and maintaining backlinks to a website.