In any form of marketing campaign, it’s essential to know exactly what your target audience is. Without this, you cannot properly focus the campaign. This is as true of SEO as it is of any other form of internet marketing.

A small but significant part of your search engine optimisation campaign involves tempting users from the search engine results pages to your site.

Enticing new users: title and description

After you manage to get your site where you want it in the SERPs, your next step is enticing new users to click on your link. Being in the top ten of the results does not guarantee that you’ll be chosen. After all, you are competing against nine other sites, two of which have prime positions. This is where your title and description tags come into play.

A good title tag is vital to search engine success. It doesn’t matter if you manage to get the search engines to give you pride of place for your main keyword; if your title comes off looking uninteresting, clumsy or badly written, you’re not going to get the traffic you want. Capitals are rarely a good idea, but check your title against the other titles on the page for hints. You can talk to us at SEO Consult Australia about writing titles for search engine optimisation.

The next thing to catch the user’s eye is a well-written description tag. This needs to hook the user further in, convincing them that your site is the absolute best option on the page. It can be helpful to get a professional writer for your description tag.

Don’t forget about your returning users

It’s a lucky site that gets all of its return traffic through direct type-ins. With people using so many websites on a regular basis, you can’t guarantee that users will remember your site address when they want to visit again. Returning users are just as likely to take the roundabout route of searching for you in the search engine, and you need to ensure that you are still recognisable to them when they do.

Your existing group of frequent users may seem like a sure bet, but it’s very easy to scare internet users off with too many changes. If the way you present your site changes too dramatically during your optimisation campaign, it’s possible that you will lose some of your recurring traffic. For this reason, it’s important to make small changes over a period of time.

Although it is a good move to review your existing description and link text as they appear in the search engine results, it’s not a good idea to alter either your description or title tag too drastically. It can be very off-putting to users if a site changes the tone of its description tag, making them suspect that the site has been hijacked. Similarly, if you change your title tag completely, it’s possible that your regular users won’t even recognise you as they scan through the listings.