Katie Mitchell Blog Posts

What Is the Best Content for Facebook?

June 7, 2018 by Katie Mitchell Leave a Comment

You may believe a Facebook page is a must-have for your business, but do you know what types of content are must-haves for your brand?

Let’s take a look at the most popular posts on Facebook, and see what kinds of content you should be posting on your business pages.

Keep Your Facebook Content Mix Balanced

First, ensure your Facebook content is balanced. This is a social network, after all, and you can think of the content mix as a matter of etiquette.

Within its step-by-step Facebook marketing plan, Hootsuite discusses the mix of content that businesses post. Hootsuite recommends either the 80-20 rule or the social media rule of thirds:

The 80-20 rule says 80 percent of posts should inform, educate and entertain while 20 percent may be self-promotional. If the 80 percent side provides enough value, businesses can build the relationships that make audiences more open to the 20 percent.
The rule of thirds says posts should be three equal parts ideas/stories, personal interactions with followers and self-promotion. Again, the idea is to build relationships that make sales-focused content more acceptable to audiences.

Whichever you choose, these rules of thumb can help keep your content mix balanced between fun/informative and self-promoting, keeping your audience more receptive to everything you post.

Keep in mind that your content spans both organic and paid social, and the next sections will touch on both.

Focus on Visual Content

As I said, video is a top format type on Facebook, and photos are also widely popular. In fact, according to Hubspot, visual content is 40 times more likely to be shared than other content types on social media.

Let’s check out what Facebook itself has to suggest when it comes to videos and photos for businesses.

Video

In January, Facebook published a blog about keeping video ads short. No surprise here–users have endless options for what to watch, and to be effective, video ads must be short and relevant. At the moment, 6 seconds is the sweet spot, meaning people watch and recall them more than 30-second ads and are more likely to convert after watching them.

The very next day, Facebook talked about vertical video, which works better than horizontal video on the mobile phone screen:

People are experimenting with creating vertical videos with concepts like:

Panning up and down to direct viewers’ eyes.
Splitting the screen into halves or differentiated sizes.
Animating in 2D, 3D, stop-motion or motion graphics.
Playing with text and texture to add dimension.

According to Agorapulse, creating video on Facebook Live is also worth considering. It appears to do better in reach, engagement and shares than uploaded video.

Photos

Facebook offers eight tips on what makes great photos on a business page. Consider these whether you’re presenting store shelves, a model in your clothing designs, plated meals or tech devices:

Check to see how the image looks on mobile.
Keep it simple – not too many people or props.
Follow the rule of thirds (a different one), placing the subject to one side or at the top/bottom.
Try different perspectives and mix large and small items.
Experiment with interesting layouts and aerial shots.
Put subjects in the foreground to create a focal point.
Create contrasts with light and shadow.
Use attractive color combinations.

Focus on Ad Copy

If you’re thinking about paid social, Facebook ad copy should be short and relevant. Here are the major areas to consider:

Tone of voice – Is your brand funny, adventurous or all business? Pick a voice and stick to it.
The most important message – Lead with whatever you need the audience to know. Consider character counts and text truncation when crafting your copy.
Writing with the customer in mind – Put yourself in your customers’ shoes and try to think what would appeal to them the most.
Compelling headlines – Drive awareness by being clear at the get-go. Use a headline to tell what you can deliver.

When you’re creating content for your Facebook page, look to current trends to learn what people enjoy. Ensure your content mix strives to build relationships before self-promoting, and cater to the desire for visual content. Top it all off with well-written copy, and your Facebook content will be among the best of the best!

What content has worked best for your Facebook business page? Let me know in the comments. While you’re here, check out bizbuzzcontent’s managed services if you’d like help publishing your content, including social media updates.

Content vs. Journalism: The Differences and Opportunities

May 31, 2018 by Katie Mitchell Leave a Comment

It seems like we hear the word “content” all the time—more so in the past five years or so. Perhaps this is because, with the rise of the internet and devices, anyone can create content and share it. And a lot of people do.

The result is that a lot more content exists. Further, since we all have computers in our pockets, we consume that content at an astounding rate. We spend hours of every day absorbing what others share online.

While we might first think of content as text, the definition is actually much broader than that. Content is basically any substantial material on a website, such as text, images, music or video. Many sites produce all of these media types, and so need a crew of content creators and managers to ensure quality presentation.

The thing is, some people take issue with the way we use the word “content,” and how its connotations impact traditional journalism.

Does “Content” Degrade Journalism?

People are talking about a problem that the proliferation of content creates in the realm of journalism. Jon Christian of Slate bemoans the demand for “content” from publications such as Politico and Fortune, both of which mentioned the word in job postings for reporters and editors.

The problem seems not so much about the existence or definition of content—indeed, journalism is a type of content—but the lumping in of journalism with its numerous other categories.

Christian discusses the content spectrum, which ranges from hard journalism and quality satire all the way down to ridiculous quizzes about which cartoon character one identifies with. His opinion is that referring to journalism as content waters it down, and reduces it from an entity of sources and facts to one of interchangeable units and page views.

He goes on to suggest that the journalism-as-content approach leads to sloppy research, and thinly sourced pieces that lack context and originality. Pressured by management, journalists scramble to cover the trending stories, thinking about traffic more than serious investigation.

Ultimately, Christian says, established journalism is taking the hit, with veterans being laid off at rapid rates and coverage scaling back as a result.

Not only is the idea of journalism changing while we see a rise in mid- to low-quality content—many pillars of true journalism are forced to play along, and pander to the masses of listicle clickers and meme sharers.

A Darker Side of True Journalism

There’s more to the difference than quality, however.

Back in 2014, Danny Crichton of TechCrunch reminded us of a significant distinction between journalism and other content:

This distinction between content and journalism matters, because journalism often comes with serious side effects. Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, the reporters at the heart of the Snowden leaks, have faced one confrontation after another in transiting across borders from their work. Such treatment doesn’t exist for Hollywood movie producers, BuzzFeed cat picture caption writers, or bloggers writing about how journalism is not content production. We shouldn’t necessarily consider journalism a more honorable profession given this fierce opposition, but neither should we equate it with simply placing words or pictures online.

Sobering, especially when we remember that more than 100 journalists were killed around the world in 2015.

While most content creators can sit safely at desks, and approach their work from a marketing standpoint more than an investigative one, true journalists aren’t afraid to spark controversy. Crichton talks about how journalists need the freedom to investigate and get to the truth of matters, even if that means taking a hard look at a news organization’s own advertisers or sponsors.

Unfortunately, the influence of corporations on the news media makes it harder and harder for journalists to maintain that freedom. But that’s a story for another day.

Google Favors Quality and Relevance

If Google has anything to say about it (and it does, of course), quality content and serious journalism are probably going to win out in the end anyway. The Google Algorithms get frequent updates, including some aimed at surfacing the highest quality and most relevant content in the search results.

Google also maintains something called the “Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines.” We emphasized the relevance of this internal Google documentation back in 2014, and the company has since updated the manual.

An item of note in the newest version of the quality rater manual is the Overall Page Quality Rating Scale. This is a five-point scale for overall page quality including lowest, low, medium, high and highest.

Here’s a breakdown of what it takes to get top ratings, mid-level ratings and low ratings:

Highest Quality Pages: the highest level of expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness (E-A-T) in the main content and the publishers/individual authors behind them, as well as a very high customer service reputation.
High Quality Pages: a high level of E-A-T in the main content, as well as satisfying information on the website, who’s behind it and how it serves customers.
Medium Quality Pages: achieve their purpose with a relatively neutral level of E-A-T, often exhibiting both high and low quality characteristics.
Low Quality Pages: unsatisfying and do not achieve their purpose, and show no true level of E-A-T in the main content.
Lowest Quality Pages: created to harm, mislead or misinform users or make money without meaning to be of any service, as well as pages that promote hate or violence toward certain groups of people.

Promoting quality and relevance is also supported by things like the Panda algorithm, which was a change to Google’s search results ranking algorithm that was implemented in 2011. The point of Panda is to lower the ranking of low-quality sites, returning solid news other content to the top spots.

Today, Panda is part of Google’s core ranking signals, and continues to promote quality search results.

Create Better Content, Support Serious Journalism

Serious content writers appreciate quality, not to mention the blood, sweat and tears that go into creating it.

One of the best ways to support excellent content across the board is to make it better yourself. If you have the opportunity to share something on the internet, take the time to make it worth the time of those consuming it.

The Content Marketing Institute has a few tips on how to do that, and they come from—you guessed it—traditional journalism.

Included are:

Write attention-grabbing, informative, genuine headlines.
Know your audience and what they’re looking for.
Check your facts and go directly to original sources when possible.
Avoid distractions, such as flashy ads, poorly placed forms and too many images or links.
Be honest and transparent about potential bias.
Look for the bigger picture about industries and issues.

Our content creators at bizbuzzcontent Inc. take certain, specific steps to ensure the quality of the pieces we write:

We work with a lot of reports, and while plenty of sites refer to them in reliable ways, we always try to find the original report itself to verify data during our research.
We avoid filler words like “that” and excessive passive voice. Ultimately, these fillers counter concise writing.
We don’t simply rephrase other writers’ words (to avoid plagiarism), but pull out the details we need and cite the source. Creating a truly fresh article requires using multiple sources to support an original idea.
In general, we strive to answer the “5Ws” and the “H” (who, what, why, when, where and how) to cover all the details and questions readers might have.
When we encounter buzzwords or jargon, we explain them to keep the writing basic and accessible to all readers.
We implement multiple levels of editing, where multiple people read a piece of content (sometimes multiple times!) before it goes to the client.

As content creators, we have an opportunity to take responsibility for web content for the businesses and brands we write for. Unlike journalism, online content has no real guidelines or “policing” (except from Google, of course).

Content creators can be part of the white noise, or we can create something that deserves to be singled out. Whether you’re making videos about cute kittens or writing about conflicts in the Middle East, you have the chance to vote for quality.

How to Organize Your Content from Start to Publish

April 27, 2018 by Katie Mitchell Leave a Comment

I don’t know about you, but I can’t get to work amidst clutter – whether it’s on my desk or in my computer.

Your approach to content creation can get cluttered, too. From disconnected ideas to disorganized files, a messy approach can slow and disrupt the writing process. This season, set yourself up for efficiency and success by “spring cleaning” these aspects of your content creation.

Project Management and Content Creation Tools

First, let’s talk about how you’re going to manage content creation with your team. Remember, the tools we use in content creation are as much a part of the process as the content creation itself.

Numerous tools exist for organizing professional tasks. If you’re using one for content project management that doesn’t suit your team, it can create more problems than it solves.

The last thing you need is confusing project management that leads to lost drafts or skipped editing. At bizbuzzcontent we use Asana, which makes us more efficient with:

Daily, weekly and monthly task views.
Project subtasks, which can each be assigned to different team members.
Recurring scheduling for repeated tasks.

Now, for the digital tools and resources we use for actually creating the content. Personally, I like to keep my arsenal slim but powerful; it means I spend more time with the programs and get to know them better. It also keeps my browser’s bookmark menu easily navigable.

Document Creation

Google Drive is great for document collaboration with team members and clients. It also reduces the issues of file incompatibility that can occur when team members use multiple word processors. As you create folders and subfolders for storage, it’s essential that you keep your Drive neat and tidy so everyone can find what they need. Spend some time with Google Drive this season, ensuring:

Each client/project has the appropriate folders and subfolders.
Documents are shared with the team members who need them (and not with those who don’t).
Important documents are in the right folders.
Unneeded and duplicate files aren’t cluttering the folders.

Image Creation

If image creation is part of your content services, use resources that support a consistent look for your brand. Different stock image resources feature a wide range of collections, and can create specific looks for the blogs and websites they populate.

Rather than grabbing legal-to-use images from wherever you and other team members find them, use one or two stock image sites offering collections that truly reflect your brand. At bizbuzzcontent, one that we like is Pexels, which provides a sizable selection of very professional looking photos.

As with document creation, image creation is more organized and efficient when team members can access and edit the same files. Check out Canva if you’d like to share image content with your colleagues and/or clients (think Google Drive for images).

Editorial Calendars and Outlines

Look at your process for content creation. Do you dive in blindly, or follow a marked path of topics, outlining, writing and editing?

To step back and get a big picture view of your content (and to see if your overall messaging is goal-oriented), maintain an editorial calendar. Imagine a shared spreadsheet that includes:

Titles/topics/ideas
Content types (blog, social, e-book, etc.)
Draft due dates
Publish dates

Add whatever detail you need to get a snapshot of the company’s content schedule. Store the editorial calendar in a shared file (like the Google Drive files I mentioned earlier) so that everyone who needs to can see and edit it. We use editorial calendars for many clients here at bizbuzzcontent, and I can’t imagine functioning without them!

Goal-Driven Content Creation

Now that you’ve got the tools in place to make the process efficient, it’s ready to start thinking about what type of content you’re going to create. Rule No. 1: Content should be created to help businesses meets their goals, whether those goals are about awareness, engagement or sales.

When content creation stops working toward those goals, it can feel chaotic and directionless. Just because a topic is trendy doesn’t mean it will fit with your brand; at the same time, a conversation you’re not seeing in the headlines might be just the thing that makes you stand out.

If you need some guidance to keep your content aligned with business goals, start by asking if your content addresses:

Who you want to reach.
Why they need your content.
How they’ll use it to interact with your brand.
What the content says about your brand.

You’ll also want to find ways to measure what the content is doing for your goals. Common key performance indicators (KPIs) include traffic volume, engagement, brand awareness (thought not always easily measurable) and conversions.

Jessica wrote a great piece at the beginning of the year in which she provides a content strategy blueprint for 2018. If your goals and content feel chaotic, it will help you get organized for the months to come.

If blogging is a major part of your content creation, check out my post on creating an organized blog strategy. From time management to metrics, we’ve got you covered.

Thoughtful, Controlled Writing and Editing

You’ve got your tools, you’ve got your goals and you’re ready to write. Even the best of us occasionally feels disorganized at this point. Starting a sentence, let alone an entire article or e-book, can be more daunting than expected. As the author David Levithan says:

“The first sentence of the truth is always the hardest.”

Where to begin?

For individual pieces of content, begin with an outline. Find primary sources and determine what the major sections of the piece will cover. Don’t get overly detailed with the outline, as certain aspects may change as you get deeper into research. But having a starting point and sources to consult make it much easier to get started.

During the actual writing, mental organization is key. For tips on keeping the main point in mind and writing concisely, check out Carrie’s post on writing clear, organized content. Her major pointers include:

Following the traditional outline format for a 5 paragraph essay.
Creating working titles to drive the main point as you write.
Trimming unnecessary words and flowery language.

To keep files organized, and know where content is in the writing-editing-submitting process, name them appropriately. A first version might simply be named with the title:

How to Write Clickable Titles in Just a Few Minutes

If a team member returns it for edits, perhaps add a “V2” at the end to indicate that it’s the second version:

How to Write Clickable Titles V2

Final versions, which are ready to be published, might include “final:”

How to Write Clickable Titles FINAL

During editing, tack editors’ initials onto the file name, so you know how many times the content has been seen and revised:

How to Write Clickable Titles_AB_CD_EF

A finished piece of professional content begins well before the actual writing. If your content creation process feels disorganized, freshen it up with a good spring cleaning. From aligning ideas with business goals to naming files more informatively, you can bring order to the chaos – from start to publish.

Looking for expert guidance as you organize your content? Check out our services and get in touch!

How to Create an Organized Blog Strategy with These 6 Steps

November 29, 2017 by Katie Mitchell Leave a Comment

Does your business maintain a blog? If not, you should consider changing that. According to stats and studies from Hubspot:

Companies that blog have 55 percent more website visitors.
The more frequently a company blogs, the greater its blog-related customer acquisition.
B2C companies that blog generate 88 percent more monthly leads than those that don’t. For B2B companies, it’s 67 percent.

You get the picture. A company blog can serve you well, and it will show in everything from your SEO to the bottom line. Of course, this doesn’t mean you can throw together a few paragraphs and toss something up at whim. It’s worth the investment of time, talent and money when developing your strategy for a blog that is both attractive and effective.

1. Figure Out Who Should Blog

Organizations in just about every industry and sector can benefit from blogging. It’s a way to increase your online content library and visibility without constantly updating your regular website.

We recently explored the content marketing practices of B2B companies, learning that 60 percent of the most successful ones use blogs to distribute things like white papers, case studies and e-books.

2. Dig for the Content

Worried there isn’t enough to write about? With a little thought and practice, you can come up with something that someone will want to read.

For example, an accounting firm might not feel they have much to say. Yet, basic accounting is something a lot of people deal with on a regular basis, and they probably have questions that a blog post could answer. Accounting bloggers could address common questions from clients, or share updates that affect accountants and their clients from legal standpoints.

In reality, many companies and other organizations likely have a wealth of content in a range of content forms. So this step of the process could be about taking stock of what your already have, and how it might be repurposed into a digestible blog.

3. Find the Time

Business owners and leaders may feel they don’t have time to blog, and we understand this. Creating a quality piece of content takes time. Still, don’t let that stand in your way. There’s no rule saying every blog has to be written by the CEO or marketing department.

You have a few options. If your budget allows for it, hire a writer or agency to take on your blog. Or, you can recruit people in-house to be regular contributors—brand journalists, if you will. Both options let you spotlight different voices and departments of your industry, which can further enrich the content.

Recruiting those voices might be challenging at first. Especially if they aren’t already in creative or marketing positions, some employees might balk at the idea of writing blogs. Try getting them involved in simpler ways at first. Some ideas include:

Creating a simple form or survey in Google Docs where team members submit ideas as they come to mind
Bring together shorter pieces from multiple employees (on one topic) to create longer pieces with a range of thoughts and perspectives.
Develop an editorial calendar with rotating categories, and assign those categories to various departments so they can plan well in advance.

Whatever topics and writers you feature, your company blog needs goals and a purpose, whether that be for the bottom line, exposure or just a conversation. Let’s look at that next.

4. Know Your Audience

To get a handle on your blog’s purpose, you need to know your audience. This will guide your writing, helping you speak to a specific group. One way to approach this is by creating personas.

A persona is a representation of an actual customer. It’s a relatively detailed description of one person (age, occupation, income, gender, goals, family, challenges, etc.) who is likely to buy from you. Writing directly to this one person keeps your content focused and helpful rather than watered down and generic.

For example, if you’re writing to Millennials, don’t talk to them under the stereotypes of phone-addiction and aimlessness, speak to them about one of their interests, such as corporate social responsibility or authenticity.

Begin with actual customer data. Glean common traits of your best customers (or your competitors’ customers; read competing blogs and their comments), take advantage of the information on social media, and record what you know.

Write up a description of a person with a name and specifics on age, family, interests, etc. Include where you might connect with them (Facebook? Text?), and promote your blog accordingly. Then, listen to the feedback they offer.

5. Commit to a Plan

Once you have a plan for the content and whom it’s written for, address the logistics. How often are you going to blog (daily or weekly) and when will you publish (which days and at what time)? You can run a special script in Google Analytics to see which days and times give you the most traffic, and align your content publishing with that. Eventually, you’ll find the traffic will peak on your blog publishing days. For more, check out these stats on timing and blogging.

Taking that a step further, what categories will you feature? For example, a software as a service (SaaS) company that offers employee productivity software could blog once a week about workplace efficiency topics, such as meetings, working smarter, etc.—each could be a category on the blog.

Then, combine your schedule and category ideas into an editorial calendar to ensure that you are consistent and share varied content. You could create your own spreadsheet, use a plugin on a platform like WordPress, or free solutions from sources like Google and Hubspot.

In addition to your schedule and categories, commit to quality. This may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s surprisingly easy to become lax, especially if you aren’t significantly financially invested in the blog.

Keep your quality high with multiple reviews and serious editing (not just proofreading). Develop an “assembly line” of sorts to ensure checks and balances:

Writer sends draft to editor
Editor sends changes and suggestions back to writer
Writer updates and sends back to editor (or a second editor)
Writer’s updated draft is finalized and entered into the content management system

6. Check Your Metrics

Most likely, you’ll want a sense of how much money your blog is making. Determining how the practice impacts your bottom line can be tough, however.

Knowing the financial value of your blog involves a lot more than the number of views, or how much revenue has increased since the blog’s implementation. You have to consider how much you’re spending (on in-house or external labor as well as maintenance fees), and weigh that against the data from your preferred analytics. Jay Baer goes into great detail about how to do this over at Convince & Convert.

When you have a sense of what’s best for your bottom line, you can target your blog to keep moving in that direction.

Of course, blogs aren’t always just about the bottom line. Blogging can bring more traffic, increased online visibility, shaping of your brand voice and thought leadership, personal branding and so much more.

If you take the time to develop a solid blog strategy you’ll already be ahead of much of your competition. Know what you’ll say, whom you’ll say it to, when you’ll say it and how you’ll measure it, and you’ll be on your way to a quality, lucrative blog.

How to Write Compelling, SEO-Friendly Meta Info for Your Content

September 27, 2017 by Katie Mitchell 2 Comments

If you’re in the business of content creation for the web, you may have heard of Meta data, also called Meta information or Meta tags. In a nutshell, Meta data is a concise explanation of the content on a web page (or in an image, video or spreadsheet). It appears on search engine results pages (SERPs) as your web page’s title and snippet, like so:

Search engines use Meta data to “understand” what web pages are about, and then display that information for users in the search results. Content creators should view Meta data as a marketing opportunity, using it to grab readers’ attention and encourage them to click through to the site. Think of it as an advertisement that gives a clear and compelling picture of what’s on a web page.

Sure, it’s not the most glamorous part of writing, but it’s a key point in your online marketing strategy. If you haven’t encountered it yet, you will.

The Basics

If writing Meta data is new to you, here are the basics for doing so effectively:

Meta data for a web page has two major components: The Title tag and the Description tag. Every web page should have unique information for each.
Meta data lives in the source code in the Head section of a webpage. You want it at the top of the page as it’s among the first pieces of code search engine spiders encounter (many platforms do that automatically).

Title and Description tags get compressed on SERPs. At the time of writing, Google limits Titles to 70 characters and Descriptions to 100 characters per line (though the actual measurements are in pixels, not characters). However, Moz currently recommends keeping Titles between 50 and 60 characters and Descriptions to 300 characters or less. Keep in mind that these limits may change – we’ll get to that later in the post.

Some additional tips:

Incorporate important keywords naturally, closer to the beginning of the tags. Use keywords only once in Titles and no more than twice in Descriptions.
There is a third component, the Keyword tag, though it has little use these days and can generally be omitted.
Brand names do not have to be included in the Title tag. Of course, if the recognized brand name will entice a user to click through and maybe convert, it’s well worth including. Decide whether or not to do so on a case-by-case basis, ensuring you always use natural-sounding language.

Title Tags

Title tags should give search engines and users the main theme of a page and prominently feature the most relevant keywords, which are naturally related to the topic on the page.

Some tips and guidelines:

The Title is the link users click on to go to a page from the SERP, and sits right above the URL and Description.
Search engines limit the character count they will display on the SERPs, so keep your Title within that number (about 60), or it will be compressed.
Create natural-sounding and appealing Titles within the character count, never repeating a keyword more than once.
When user searches match the keywords in your Title tag, those keywords will be bold so the users see what they’re looking for.

Description Tags

Description tags should be like an answer to a user query. They appear under the Title tag on SERPs and give a glimpse into what’s on the page. If the brand name doesn’t fit easily into the Title, this can be a good place for it.

Meta Descriptions won’t necessarily help your ranking within Google, but a good one can catch the eye of users when their search terms are bolded (as in the image above).

Be aware that, even if you carefully craft a Description, Google might not use it. The snippets shown on SERPs are generated through a fully automated process, and Google displays what it thinks best represents the content and relates it to the user’s query.

Some tips and guidelines:

Descriptions should be complete sentences with the most important information and keywords at the beginning.
You can reuse Title tag keywords in the Description, as it will show the reader you truly focus on what they’ve searched.
Limit the character count of your description to about 300 (including spaces) so that the search engine doesn’t cut it off.
Don’t use a keyword more than twice in a Description. If important keyword phrases use some of the same words, combine them to keep things succinct. For example, if you want to use “preschool songs” and “preschool lessons,” put them together for “preschool lessons and songs.”

Quality Meta Data That Stands Out

To make yourself a little more competitive, do a quick search of your keywords to see what your competitors’ Meta data looks like. Think of ways to make yours stand out, like including your phone number in the Description of your contact page.

Use natural language throughout and “stemming” when it comes to keywords. Stemming is including different forms (plurals, changed tense) of keywords because search engines understands that they’re related.

Be wary of creating duplicate content. Every single web page should have unique Meta data (especially Titles) to reflect its unique focus. If some of your pages contain very similar Meta data, you risk search engines filtering some pages out as “duplicate content,” even if the pages are quite different.

Let’s bring it all together for an example of how your Meta data might look. We’ll use the keyword phrase “kitten sweaters:”

Meta Title: Kitten Sweaters for All Ages!
Meta Description: Show your love for crazy kitties with kitten sweaters in a range of styles and colors. Find gift ideas for friends of all ages!

Possible Changes to Meta Data Character Limits

We’ve stressed a few times that keeping your Title and Description under a certain length means the search engines won’t cut them off, altering how users first encounter your page.

Early in 2016, people started noticing longer Meta titles on Google SERPs, some with as many as 70 characters (78 on mobile!). Some expansion to Descriptions was also noticed, with a few showing three lines instead of two and 100 characters per line. By the end of 2017, Moz is regularly seeing descriptions as long as 300 characters, though video content seems to have its descriptions snipped by 200 characters (see “Descriptions” link in “The Basics” section).

It’s important to understand that Google measures Title length and other search results factors by pixels, not number of characters, as we mentioned earlier. Characters are a more practical measurement for marketers, though an approximation. Not displaying right-hand-side ads—a change also made in 2016—may have been one reason for that change.

We bring this up because guidelines, just like search engines, will update at the drop of a hat, and you want to ensure you’re always up to date.

Understanding Meta data, what it does and how to create it are vital for a content marketer. Hopefully, the basics and tips we’ve shared here will help you make the most of this tool.

Have comments? Share them with me below!

This post was updated in December of 2017 to reflect new Moz recommendations.