Archive for May, 2009

When optimizing your website for search engines, your website title tag, header tag and Meta tag content are important. These sections of your website are very important from an SEO perspective and can make a big difference in the overall optimization of your site.

Often people will use a welcome line or paragraph for their site. This seems the natural thing to say but in most cases this headline is actually not optimized (unless your company name is a keyword) so this actually diminishes the power of your SEO title for the page.

This is especially negative if your company name or website name are not relative to your subject area. It’s important to think about what someone would naturally type into a search engine to find your site.

Heading- the heading <H> tag is an HTML tag which contains the headings or subtitles that are visible on a page. These headings work to provide a summary of the page content. From an SEO perspective, they should contain the keywords you need to be picked up by the search engine spiders. There can be multiple heading tags on a page such as H1, H2, H3, and so on.

Meta tags- The Meta tags <Meta> contain information specific about the page and it is placed in the HTML header of the Web page which is not actually visible through web browsers. This means visitors to your site will not see this information, however, it can be an important part of SEO. Search engine spiders will pick up the keywords contained in your Meta tags. Meta keyword and Meta description tags are the most common Meta tags used for SEO.

Title- The title tag <title> is the HTML tag with text that describes your Web page. The title should have strategic keywords for your page and should be constructed with humans and search spiders in mind. Search engines pay more attention to this title text when they are indexing pages on the Web so this can help your page get higher rankings.

In addition to choosing the right keywords, here are some other tips to help maximize the SEO of these sections of your website:

• Have the most important words or main keywords in the beginning of your title
• Keep the title tag between 60-90 characters
• Use your Meta tags correctly and with properly chosen keywords
• Don’t try to trick the search engines with irrelevant tags
• Incorrectly coded Meta tags can show up as garbled text to search engine results
• Broken or incorrect code can make it more difficult for search engine spiders to crawl and rank your site

When creating and optimizing your site, remember the importance of your website title tag, header tag and Meta tag content and utilize the tips mentioned above to improve your chances on getting higher rankings for your keywords.

Do you know how local SEO can help you increase traffic to your website? Many businesses are intrigued by the idea of reaching a global audience. While this is a respectable goal for many businesses, it’s important not to underestimate the potential that lies in a local keyword search. When you optimize your site for local audience, you can take full advantage of these opportunities for your business.

A local search, or regional search, works for online retailers with numerous locations or also for a service provider. When you optimize for local keywords, you can bring in targeted customers which results in higher conversion rates and increased sales. If the visitor knows you’re in the area and you are convenient to them, they will be more likely to try your product or services and more likely to return as a repeat customer.

So how can you increase traffic by optimizing with local keywords? First, you need to know where to be listed. It’s helpful to get listed in Yahoo Local, Google Local, Merchant Circle, Yelp.com and similar local search engines that target local audiences.

Once listed in these local search engines, you can help increase your ranking with local keywords by location, keywords and reviews. The closer you are to the center of the map, the better it seems to be. The more targeted your keywords are in the local search, the better your ranking will be and the more positive reviews you can get for your business, the better you will be.

There are different tactics that work and a specialist in SEO will be best able to help you choose your keywords but here are some general things to know about local SEO:

• Avoid keywords that are too generic- you won’t rank high for general terms. There is also the problem that with generic terms, the person may not be looking to buy. Use words that specify what you want the visitor to do- buy a product, submit their info, request a consultation, etc.
• Use caution when choosing your keywords- for local SEO, you need to be specific with your keywords. It’s often best to consult with an SEO expert before choosing the keywords you want.
• Keywords should indicate an action- What is your “call to action”? Your keywords should reflect what you want to visitor to do when they come to your site.
• The goal is not to get the most traffic possible but the most targeted- Getting tons of visitors to your site will mean nothing if they are not interested in what you have to offer. Large amounts of traffic that doesn’t convert leads to wasted time and money.

Remember that with local SEO you need to include keywords along with a city and state to show up locally. For example, if you are an electrician from the Detroit area, you might use “Detroit electrician” or “hire Detroit electrician” as local keywords.

Local SEO can keep you focused on specific targeted visitors who will be interested in what you are offering. This results in higher conversion rates which makes your time and money spent well worth it.