Having a perfectly optimized site for SEO is a beautiful thing.

• The search engines have no problem crawling it
• Your site has no baggage like duplicate content or missing title tags
• Your pages are ranking for the right keywords
• And your users are not leaving in frustration because your site renders quickly on a mobile device.

So why aren’t more visitors flocking to your site?

One possible overlooked reason is that you are just not getting the click.

Is your front door scaring visitors away?

There is a reason that realtors like to see a nice front door for the house they are selling. It sets the tone for the rest of the house and leaves a lasting first impression.

A ugly front door? Not a great first impression.

A freshly painted door that has a nice design? The potential buyer starts dreaming of living there even before opening the door.

Each of your site’s web pages has a front door. Called snippets, these are the listings in the search engine results pages.

If you are familiar with SEO, you know that, that in most cases, the snippets are created from the title tag and meta description tag.

You also probably know that it’s important to have your keywords in both of these tags. While the meta description tag doesn’t help you rank, when it comes to your title tag it is the most important element of your HTML for ranking.

Neither the title tag or the meta description actually show up on the page. They live in the “HEAD” section of your html along with other meta information that describe the page and its characteristics.

You can see your title tag in your browser tab just like in the screenshot below.

As a SEO consultant I work everyday with clients to help their sites get more organic traffic by ranking highly in the search engine results pages. I’m often surprised at how often my clients don’t look at their “front doors” for their site.

It’s like dressing up the bathrooms with pretty towels but not doing anything about your dingy front door. If your prospective buyer drives by your house and crosses it off the list due to poor curb appeal, then those pretty towels haven’t helped you make your sale one bit.

Seeing a list of your “front doors”

Both Google and Bing have a handy command you can use with search to get a list of your pages snippets.

Simply add “site:” in front of your domain name and you should see a list of your website’s pages. If you have a larger site you likely won’t get a full list but you’ll see a sample.

The first thing to check is to make sure you have keywords in your snippets.

The second thing is to put yourself in the shoes of your ideal prospect and for each of your important pages ask yourself the question:

“Would I click on this?”

If the answer is “no” or “maybe” then you have some work to do.

And this is where SEO copywriting comes in.