Everyone talks about using keywords in title tags to help to provide signals to search engines as to what a page is about. Far-fewer people discuss the impact of title tags on click-through. Gaining visibility in search results is only one dimension of turning search engine users into new potential clients, and eventually, new clients. Take the following example:
Imagine that you were trying to research medical malpractice law firms in Seattle. You might type in keywords like medical malpractice, medical malpractice attorney, or, if you live in Seattle, WA, perhaps Seattle medical malpractice law firms.
Which result would you be most likely to click? The ones that merely read like directory listings. Or the one that communicates national recognition?
How you write the titles and meta descriptions of your law firm web pages matters greatly. Merely writing for search engines won’t motivate searchers to click. Which means they’re not becoming visitors. In fact, writing titles and meta descriptions strictly for search engines may even hurt your visibility within search results.
Further, you might be surprised by how much click traffic you can “steal” from sites ranked above your site by using more effective titles and meta descriptions.
While achieving visibility for relevant, high-volume search queries is undoubtedly a big piece of the online puzzle, it’s still just one piece. Don’t become fixated on keywords, on-page optimization techniques, and rankings at the cost of delivering web pages that motivate people to read them, link to them, and share them.