Easy, Easy, Easy Website Evaluation
Google is critical for most small businesses. So how you appear in Google may be the single most critical factor in your marketing.
At the very least, it is very important. Here’s a super-easy way to check and evaluate those search engine entries.
1. Go to google.com or google.ca
2. Put this in the search field — site:yourwebsiteaddress
or, to say it another way… the word “site,” followed by a colon, followed by your website address.
E.g., site:apple.com
This will give you a list of just YOUR website’s search engine entries.
TO EVALUATE THOSE ENTRIES
Your website entries have two jobs to do:
To gain search engine rank, so your website will be more frequently visible to searchers.
To give people information that will inspire them to click through to your website.
Now, from the perspective of those two jobs, let’s check yours.
1. The TITLE
The first, largest line of the search engine entry - the Title - is the most critical optimization location. This will be up to 70 characters, including spaces. You need to have three components:
i. The primary keyphrase for what you offer, e.g., “Organic Skincare” or “Hand Pump for Wells” or “Online Marketing”… whatever that is for you.
ii. Then you can have your company name, but best if it’s just one word, or two at the most. E.g., Fuca Cycles… and NOT the full formal legal name of the company, like Michael’s Cycles: Sales and Repair, Canada LLC.
iii. Lastly, a part that varies that is SPECIFIC to that page, e.g., Contact Us, About Us, Clients, Testimonials, Services, Blog, Library of Articles, and so on.
Ask yourself:
- Does your Title fit this three component format?
- Does the Title seem informative and likely to get someone to click through to your website?
Common problems:
- The same Title occurs on multiple pages.
- Using less than those 60-70 characters. Every space in the Title is gold. Use all of it.
- No keyphrase.
- Not very informative, or not about YOUR company, e.g., will someone click on a search engine entry that says just, “Reviews… Great Products”? Not likely!
2. The DESCRIPTION
After the Title is a longer description. This should be up to about 160 characters, including spaces.
Each page’s description MUST BE UNIQUE to that page.
And each description must give compelling information that will (we hope) inspire people to click through to your website.
Ask yourself:
- Does the Description seem informative and likely to get someone to click through to your website?
Common problems are:
- The same description on multiple pages.
- Descriptions that are way too short. Make use of those 160 characters.
- Descriptions that are vague, general, and not very informative, e.g.
“Join us Date/Time - April 3, 12:00 pm. Library, blog, toolkit. Planning collaboration with stakeholders.” Again, this is not something a searcher will click on.
HOW CAN YOU ENHANCE THE TITLE AND DESCRIPTION?
Usually, Google will take the search engine entry from the Title and meta-description in the HTML code of your site, IF they are WELL FORMULATED. Otherwise, Google may just extract some content from your page and use that. Content picked by Google may or may not be a good representation of your page and company.
So two things you can do:
Work with your website person to write clear and powerful Titles and meta-descriptions.
Or ask us for a free, no-obligation evaluation of your website… where we look at all this much more thoroughly for you.
And, of course, please let us know if you have any questions.
Contact us today if you would like a free SEO website analysis that will show you where your site ranks for the most important SEO factors.
