A “title tag” is a headline. Make it a grabber!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rS912mHXv50

Good afternoon. Michael Byrd here with Home Services Digital, video number 16.

We are going to back up a couple of steps. I like to begin with the end in mind, let’s say. That’s a Stephen Covey-ism right there. In the last video we talked about what happens when somebody gets to your website they see the search result and they happen to click on your page. They choose to click on your page and they get to your page and they don’t end up calling you. They don’t convert. They end up bouncing. They end up leaving.

So I’m wanting to start there because that’s where I think you should start. I think you should make sure that if you’re successful in getting people to your website that something good happens after that. You don’t want to bring them to a website that’s not really ready to convert them, that is too old or is in some other way not gonna make a good impression about your business. You want to make sure it looks good. You want to make sure the words are good and that it’s going to entice somebody to pick up the phone and call you or to fill out the form.

Aha, wait, so you’re not getting clicks?

So we’re gonna back up a step from that because I’m going to assume that we covered that in the last video and you got it covered. Your website is good, OK. It’s going to convert. Now let’s go back a step and just consider why you might not be getting the clicks. You’re making lots of impressions you’re showing up on Page 1 so you have the search thing figured out. And your website’s good but they’re not making the connection right there in that one middle place and that is out of that 10. People are not clicking you. There’s a reason for that.

So we want to go to that first. Let’s start with common sense. We’re gonna go to the common sense reasons for why somebody might not click you. There’s a competition there also. The whole thing is a competition — competition to get there, competition to get them to click you instead of one of the other 10 (other 9) and a competition to actually convert them, to convince them and persuade them when they get to your website. But now we’re on the getting them to click part. And so we’re gonna get a little bit of a lesson in title tags today and I’m gonna demystify that for you.

All right, over to the screen. I’ve done a search for “Plumbers Wilmington NC” and I’m going to do the demystifying part. “Title tag” is what happens on the website — that’s the technical term term for it but what it results in is the headline so let’s call it the headline. Title tag is the headline that shows up here and this is an important part of getting somebody to click on you. You have to do the title tag right to get here to get good search results but you also have to write something that is persuasive.

You don’t have to be a geek. Just read

Let’s just look through some in a common-sense way of headlines that are compelling and headlines that aren’t. Now these are ads but they have the same components. They have a headline and they have body copy. When I say headline and body copy thats because that comes from newspapers. Roto-rooter Plumbing: OK, well that’s a name. It’s important. “Licensed and insured,” that is what they’re gonna use to persuade you in this particular instance. “Plumbing Services.” Here’s a real good one. “Call now in Wilmington” and you hear and you see Benjamin Franklin commercials on the television.

OK, now here’s an interesting one. When I did the searches, “plumbing,” but here’s a heating and air. They might want to tune up their AdWords campaign a little bit. “Plumbers dot com. Don’t accept just anyone.” This is a directory. It’s actually Home Advisor, and their headline is persuasive. When you’re doing an advertising campaign you really pay attention to the headline, and it’s easier to get this headline because it’s actually not a title tag. It is just a component of the AdWords ad campaign system and it’s probably called — I don’t know I’ll go back and correct this later — but it’s probably called the headline. It’s a great word for it because it’s a headline.

We’ll skip the maps because it doesn’t apply.

The directories are really good at writing headlines, because they have to be

Now I want to show you something about these directories that I’m so fond of telling you about the shortcomings. They do a lot of things right. They have to do a lot of things right because they’re at a disadvantage starting out. This is the common headline with directories: “Eight best plumbers.” You want to know which ones are the best, so there, that headline is gonna rate them for you. It’s gonna give you some advice. It’s gonna give you a ranking. Now here is one of the ones we saw before Benjamin Franklin Plumbing. They’re playing entirely off of their name. They’re really not saying anything else in the headline — Plumber; Wilmington NC plumbers. Here’s the ZIP code that’s a big “so what” headline but they’re probably getting clicks because of the name that they are advertising on television.

I mentioned this one in a few videos back — “Parlier Plumbing Repairs — and how they were wasting … they have some more characters they could use here. I can’t remember right I could go look up the number you can look it up it’s 50 or 60 what you should be using. They’re using less than half. Here’s another one where we put the name on. That’s kind of a “so what.” “Buddy Mintz Plumbing,” another “so what.” Here’s East Coast Plumbing and Drain Wilmington Leland. Yeah, you got at least a couple of locations in there.

So the directories are actually doing a better job in writing their headlines than the individual plumbers are doing. And that’s not all that surprising.

A title tag shows up on the web browser tab, but no one cares

So I want to show you just one other minor technical piece of this so it’ll make some sense — Why it’s called the title tag instead of a headline and when you click — I’m just going to click on this one for example. Well, I’ve already got one queued up. It might be this one. We’ll do this one. I think this is it, Buddy Mintz Plumbing. That thing that I just clicked is exactly what it says right here: Buddy Mintz slash Wilmington NC and you can read some of it up here. This little space and this space is as much as I’m gonna get in this Chrome browser. It doesn’t even display the entire title or headline so it’s really more important on the search page than it is on the website proper. It’s up there in the tab but most of us don’t even notice this.

Here’s the one I clicked on a second ago, East Coast Plumbing and Drain. I’ve got it queued up here as the second tab. If you hover over it you can see. I’m gonna try that again. You can see this little tag that’s coming up here, “East Coast Plumbing and Drain, Wilmington, Leland NC plumbers.” And if I go back to my search results page we can see that that is exactly — if I can find it — exactly what it said right here on the page. So let’s pay attention to this line right here you don’t have that many characters. You need to get them with the headline.

Get ’em with the headline, get them to your page, and get them to call

Again back to newspapers: You read the story because the headline says something, and then you read the first paragraph and decide to keep reading. You’ve got to hook them to begin with, so using strong words up here — something to evoke some curiosity or to convey some value. In other words, something to get them to click other than just your name. And that is our video on headlines, also known as title tags, and why you need to pay attention to them.

Michael Byrd with Home Services Digital. Please remember to subscribe and to ask your friends to subscribe.