You've probably searched for an item, be it a new hard drive, a cable for your HDTV or maybe you were trying to find an energy saving bulb to lower your bills. You likely saw a alot of technical jargon in the search results. That's great if you know exactly what you are looking for, aka a 1TB Seagate external hard drive, etc. But if you are trying to find which bulbs are more energy efficient or environmentally friendly often all the technical jargon in the search results are useless to you.
Turning the tables a bit, if you're the owner/marketer of a site what should you write in your title & description tags when trying to get rankings for your product or service- the technical specs or ad copy and keywords that are less technical and more targeted to solutions? Really, which is best? This post is about the keywords that are used in the meta keywords, especially the title tags as far as more technical terms vs. non technical.
The object of the title tag is twofold:
1. to rank as high as possible for relevant keywords that convert and
2. to get a searcher, really as many searchers as possible, to click on your search result instead of your competitors. This may include a feature/benefit and a call to action.
The keywords that are included in your title tags are the ones that have been proven to not only drive traffic but result in sales in your PPC campaigns. The wording of the title tag is also designed to get the searcher to click on your search result instead of your competitors. Both of these goals including a feature/benefit and call to action all have to be fit into only a 67 character title tag limit. The keywords you include from your research doing PPC may seem a bit more generic than the actual technical specs of a product there are couple of things to keep in mind:
1. As the business owner, you have a much more in depth knowledge than most searchers as you are the product expert. It may seem tempting to put in all technical specs. However the person who types in a search is often trying to either get information or solve a problem such as "which bulb replaces the bulbs in my living room?" or "How can I save money on my energy bill?" or "What green options are out there for lighting?" . Having a title tag that speaks to them may cause them to click on your ad instead of all the others that have technical specs, even if they are in positions 1-3 and you may be in position 6.
2. You will have plenty of opportunities to speak to those searchers who are interested in technical specs in two places if you want to: 1. Your description tag. 2. (More importantly) The page they land on after clicking on your result.
Another thing to keep in mind- Even though they work together, there are significant differences between PPC & SEO:
1. Unlike PPC you aren't spending any money on people who click on your result. So you want as many people to click on your result than your competitors. Get them to your site, then let them decide if what you have fulfills their needs. If it does, great. If not, they click away and you don't pay a dime. This is very different from PPC where you want to encourage the right person to click on your ad but discourage others who may not be your target audience because you're paying for all those clicks.
2. PPC is directly related to the keywords and ad copy you choose. Your search result includes your title & description tags along with Google crawling the entire internet (including your site) to find the answer to the searcher's query. So if a person searches for a more generic term such as "led replacement bulb" you may rank for that. But if a searcher types in "Nexxus - Array Quantum LED R30 Medium Base Lamp 50w replacement" you can also rank highly if the page you feature this product on your site has this info on it because Google will crawl this page.
It may be for certain items having technical details is relevant. For instance if you sell well known products such as hard drives having a title of 1TB Seagate external drive with automatic backup- free shipping! may be perfect. But if your product is not as well known frankly the majority of searchers may not yet know what to type in so their searches will be more generic.
Bottom line:
With a limited amount of space for your title & description tags a balance is needed. Balancing the goals of your title tags and achieving maximum results for your business should be the decision maker in this process.