So I had to make a pie. My Pie Poll called for apple.
Though I am practically surrounded by cookbooks, my pie-making history has not been the best so I headed online.
When you put “pie” (or any search) into Google, a few things happen.
First it checks domain names for your search term(s). So if there was a pie.com (if only), that would show up at the top of the list because the domain name scores high in search results.
Then it checks page titles. And meta descriptions.
And page content, and h1, h2, etc. tags, and links, and image alt tags. And so on.
But to start – after the domain name, page titles and meta descriptions offer a lot of SEO impact and are both easy to edit. They are the low-hanging fruit to get your SEO started.
Overly simplified – here’s how they work.
Those blue links? Those are your page titles. The words under them? That’s the meta description.
As you can see – the page titles and meta descriptions are directly related to enticing people to click through to your site. And make a pie.
I clicked the first one. And look – the page title also turns into the tab label. And the meta description is also repeated in the first paragraph, though you can also have separate page content and meta info.
And checking the code – you can see the title and description the way Google sees them.
Updating your page titles and meta descriptions with words that help make people want to click to your site can have a big impact in where your site and pages show up in search results.
Knowing which words to use, of course, is another thing entirely, and I will talk about that more in part 2. But – you can certainly see how a title of “home page” would not be as clickable or searchable as a title like “easy and delicious holiday pies”.
PS. I gave up on pie and went with an easier/simpler apple galette. It was quite good! I should have got a picture. https://food52.com/recipes/81985-easy-apple-galette