SEO 101 - Understanding Search Engine Optimization
Last week I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Scott Abel (@scottabel), the Content Wrangler himself, on the topic of search engine optimization, or SEO. The purpose of SEO is to drive targeted traffic to a website from search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo. It‘s a multi-faceted discipline that requires development of a strategy to ensure success and it’s important that activities like keyword research be integrated directly into content authoring processes.
Scott and I discussed key considerations for optimizing organic website visibility and we walked through an example of potential opportunity lost when a site fails to obtain a high ranking for a specific keyword. The webinar provided the more than 160 attendees with practical and useful information that can be used to kick start any SEO program. Feedback was great and many questions were asked including:
Question: What are your thoughts on long-tail keyword searches?
Answer: Personally, I am a big fan of optimizing for long tail searches. The amount of organic traffic that can be captured is often significant and can eclipse what you might get from targeting a single keyword. Long tail searches are also often more detailed meaning that the searchers themselves are pre-qualifying their relevance. Successful long tail strategies however do require more effort in terms of keyword research, prep and content authoring but are well worth it in the end.
Question: Simple question: Are there recommended character limits when developing content? Specifically, what are the character limits for titles and meta descriptions?
Answer: Different search engines display a different number of characters in the search results for Titles. Google is usually somewhere around 60-64, sometimes as high as 66 whereas Bing may go up to 70 or so. My suggestion would be to stay around the 64 character range and for the Description around 150 or so. Keep in mind however that usability and readability should be the #1 priority as both the Title and Description are your opportunity to speak directly to searchers.
A complete list of questions and answers is viewable on the MindTouch website, sponsors of the webinar. The full 60 minute recording of the webinar is available below.
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