A Lesson from Page Titles
At a recent Interactive Marketing Summit conference held in St. Louis, I attended a session on SEO. Of the many topics discussed, one of the basics is the Page Title of any web page. The presenters stressed the importance of having unique Page Titles for each page on the site and that the title contain key words - not the company name - although the company name could be included at the end of the Page Title. This is important because search engine robots read and index, at least in part, web pages starting with the Page Title and they look for key words or relevant terms. Company names are not generally searched by people. So, if the Page Title begins with the company name, it will not index well. Again, this is basic but, it triggered a thought.
If you pick up any paper or directory (Yellow Pages) you’ll find that most ads will have the company name in a prominent position at the top of the ad. In fact, many ads devote 20% to 30% of the space of the ad to the company name. This is a mistake, just like having the company name dominate the Page Title of a web page. People searching for anything generally will search based on specific context, such as “interactive marketing” or, “Plumbers” (just for fun, look up “Plumbers” in the Yellow Pages - you’ll see mean about company name dominating).
The lesson here is whether you’re promoting your business online or offline, or both, begin the ad (or web page) with something relevant to the reader. And, the more relevance to the emotions of the reader, the more likely you’ll grab their attention. After all, if you don’t grab their attention at the beginning, you’ll likely never get them to read the rest of the ad. This could waste a lot of money. This concept applies to most all marketing material -not just ads.
Then, once you get their attention, then…well… maybe that’s a subject of another article.
Tags: advertising, lead generation, Marketing, relevancy, SEO
