The scene: Sally Jones sits down in front of her laptop and wants to find a service who can care for her dog during an upcoming trip she and her husband are taking. She heads to Google.com and enters what?
Dog boarding + her town?
Dog sitting + her town?
Pet sitting + her town?
Dog camp + her town?
It’s important to understand the basics of what SEO is before taking the next step to add SEO tags like title tags, meta descriptions, custom permalinks and keywords to your site. But knowing what SEO tags are versus how to use them are 2 very different challenges.
Creating an SEO Title Tag
If you are a small business owner who runs a pet sitting business in Sally’s town, you want to determine what the most common search terms Sally and customers like her would use to search for the type of service you provide.
One option for your site’s title tag would be: Pet sitting, dog sitting and cat sitting in YourTown, NY.
This option covers searches that use the general term of “pet,” along with specific (and popular) pet types.
Although there is some debate in the world of SEO as to the maximum number of characters search engines will allow for this field, you’ll find that many WordPress sites give their users the recommendation to not exceed 60-70 characters.
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If you want to add even more oomph to your title tag, try adding a pipe symbol “|” after your state and then include your business name.
For example: Pet sitting, dog sitting and cat sitting in YourTown, NY | We Love Pets
*Please note: You can add a title tag, meta description and meta keywords to your (overall) website as well as each page of your site. So if you have a page dedicated to your dog clients and another just for your feline friends, you can narrow down the focus of the SEO tags you use on those pages.
Creating an SEO Meta Description
When it comes to building your meta description, you have more room to breathe. Meta descriptions are typically written in sentence form, and up to 150 characters are allowed.
For this example, a possible meta description could be: We Love Pets offers pet sitting, dog sitting and cat sitting services to residents in YourTown, NY. We include a walk and playtime with each visit.
*Please note: Terms used in the title tags – pet sitting, dog sitting and cat sitting – are reused in the meta description.
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Choosing Meta Keywords
As previously mentioned, many in the SEO community find little or no value in meta keywords. A meta keyword SEO field is typically still available though, and some WordPress themes offer the option to use meta keywords as your post tags.
*Please note: If you use meta keywords on your website, do not use more than 10. Also, use a comma between keywords.
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Customizing a Permalink
A permalink is the direct website address for a specific page or post on your site.
For our pet sitting example, a permalink for their dog page may be: www.WeLovePets.com/YourTown-dog-sitting
*Please note: Dashes are used to separate words at the end of a permalink.
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While it is still best to include at least 1 word of your keyword phrase in your post title, this customization ability gives you some creative freedom to have a catchy post title while still having the important-for-SEO permalink. To customize your permalink in WordPress, click on the Edit button in the area beneath your page or post title.
Bloggers, and those small businesses and handmade shops who have a blog component to their website, will be choosing a title tag, meta description and meta keywords (if you choose to use them) for your home page, and title tags, meta descriptions, (meta keywords) and permalinka for all your additional website pages and blog posts.
Smart SEO tagging requires you to think like your customer, and then insert those popular terms into the SEO fields on your website. In a lot of ways, creating an effective SEO strategy is like playing a game of Family Feud. Your job is to determine what the survey says.
Liz is a 30-something marketer, social media consultant, blogger and mom. Originally from Chicago and currently living in the land of Dixie, she relishes in the flavor of fried pickles and BBQ, but longs for deep dish and a proper Chicago dog.
oh how I love all your brainy brains
Thank you!!
Wow, great tips!!! How do I make that happen on Blogger?
Unfortunately, you can’t. Not this anyway. In a future post, we’ll cover a few more tips on incorporating SEO into the main post content, but this is one reason why people move to WP.
You can add ALT tags to your photos, though. That is something anyone can do. We have a 5 Quick SEO Tips post to take a peek at.
[...] And if you are a mom blogger on a platform like WordPress, you can choose smart keywords for your permalink and SEO tags, [...]
I have always been so confused with all of this and you really laid it out for me to easily understand. Thank you for that!
That last paragraph is so very true. I’m still working on my SEO skills, but the one thing I try to do is think about what people are searching for – think like your potential reader.
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