It’s not enough to simply rank well in the search engines, you also have to make sure the listings you get actually bring you traffic. It doesn’t matter how high you rank or which terms you rank for if your competitors are still getting most of the traffic.

Fortunately, there are some things you can do to ensure that you get more traffic from the listings you get. We’re going to look at the top three ways to make sure you get your fair share of the traffic whenever your site appears in the SERPs.

1. Choose your title carefully. You should never use your main keyword phrase alone as your title. Not only is this unlikely to get you much traffic, it’s also possible that it will (when combined with other factors) get your site hit with an over-optimization penalty. Instead, make sure your title makes sense. For example, the title “Buy Green Widgets Here – Free Shipping!” would probably pull more clicks than simply “Green Widgets”.
2. Don’t forget to fill in the meta description field. While most search engines ignore the meta description and keywords fields for SEO itself, they do actually use the meta description information as the description users see in the listings. So make sure your description is something exciting that will get people to click!
3. Try to make sure your main keyword phrase appears at least once in your title and your description. Whenever someone searches on Google, the words they searched for appear in bold. This helps draw attention, so use it to your advantage. Be sure to use the keywords you anticipate ranking for in both the title and description. If possible, also use those words in your URL. If you can’t use it in the domain name itself, you can name the HTML file after that keyword phrase.

Just these simple steps do help you gain added traffic from SEO listings. It is essential to get the maximum amount of traffic as it can all eventually build up and it will be a key factor in your site’s success.