Not too long ago, I gave a talk to a service club about my services with respect to local search engine optimization (SEO) — helping local businesses to show up as high as possible in a Google search in their territory. 

At the end of the talk, one member asked me, “What is the most important piece of advice you would give to business owners about their websites?”

I replied, “Write your title and description tags.”

I stick by that. But it ain’t quite so simple.

This came to mind when a client asked me, “Can’t we just write the tags?” 

She wanted to skip all the other matters I had brought to her attention about her website.

Technically, the answer is “yes.” We could focus on her tags, but that won’t do her any good if the tags don’t match up with what’s on her page. 

Yes, if a company has a very well-developed website with excellent content, keywords researched and embedded on their pages, but hasn’t written their tags, they can “just write their tags.” And that will be a big boost to their SEO efforts. 

In most cases, clients who come to me don’t have the above, so we usually have to do more work than just “writing the tags.”

All this may sound daunting, but it’s not rocket science. It’s just taking care of business.

Easy Web Tip 312: Writing title and description tags is critical for local search results, but it’s not everything.