Archive for the ‘Search Engine Optimization’ Category

Search engine optimization (SEO) is not a static practice. Instead, it changes over time and your website should mold and adjust to these changes if you want to maintain good rankings. You have to be able to keep up with the changes that take place each year.

The world of search is changing and many people believe it is taking a large transformation in 2009. The main search engines like Google are starting to value your choices and clicks as a way to reference you relevant results for your search queries. There are a lot of predictions about how the search world is going to change in the coming months and years but most believe it will take on a more personal touch.

One thing that most gurus agree upon is that content is still king. Your content will rule over any other tips or tactics that you try to use to get rankings. Let’s face it; when you have great content, people will come.

Web 2.0 is no longer considered a trend since nearly all new sites support Web 2.0. Blogging and micro-blogging, however, are growing in support. With the attention of blogging, it’s very useful in your SEO plan. Less emphasis is being put on Meta tags and targeted keywords.

Instead, relevancy of the content is more important. Videos and podcasts are gaining importance through Google and other search engines and can greatly help you increase your SEO worthiness.  Rich media content can also help you get fast results. Videos placed on YouTube can rank within Google search results within days.

Social marketing and social media sites are some of the most effective ways to keep your content visible in the major search engines. Learn to participate in conversational social marketing techniques. Create a solid presence amongst diverse media outlets. This also shows that you are keeping up with the trends and that you are comfortable being a part of them.

For 2009 SEO, learn who your most valuable customers are and take time to discover what attracts them. Focus on these prospects as opposed to trying to appeal to the masses. Narrow your focus and get more targeted results from people who actually want your product or service. The main point to take away from this is to pay less attention to ranking and more attention to your conversions from traffic.

Make use of the tools available to help you track your traffic and conversions. Web analytics tools will help you identify important information about how is coming to your site and you can use this to better optimize your site in the future.  Remember that it does little good to be ranked number one when those visits aren’t converting for you.

When it comes to SEO, it seems there are a lot of people trying to tell you what you should do but fewer people telling you what not to do. Proper search engine optimization is a process. It’s not enough just to do a list of things and have perfect SEO. It’s a process of doing some things, avoiding others and tweaking over time to get the results you want.

Here are some top 10 SEO don’ts to use as guidelines:

1. Don’t randomly pick keywords- some people haphazardly pick the keywords that sound good to them but this will not generate good results in search engines. Choose your keywords properly and more technically than just randomly making them up.
2. Don’t take shortcuts or use “tricky” tactics to try to get a higher ranking- Black hat SEO strategies and shortcuts to higher ranking can actually get you banned from search engines for illegal tactics.
3. Don’t use flash- flash websites look pretty but they can hurt your ranking.
4. Don’t use multiple domains with identical content- If you have several domains, all the content on each site must be unique. Even if you own full rights to all the content, you can be flagged for duplicate content when you publish it on multiple domains.
5. Don’t participate in link farming or other schemes to get high ranking- there are many schemes and scams out there that promise you they will get you to the top of the search engines but usually they are very expensive and often use illegal strategies.
6. Don’t over-think your Meta tags- While it’s true that Meta tags do make a difference, some people mistakenly spend too much time on them. While it does have value, you shouldn’t spend too much time focusing on them.
7. Don’t use hidden text or cloaking- This is considered a type of spam and while it often tricks the search engines at first, it will eventually get you banned.
8. Don’t underestimate the URL- This is much more important than most people realize and can make a big difference in your search engine ranking. Place strong keywords in your URL when possible.
9. Don’t use images as your headlines- While this might look nice and interesting on the site, it can hurt your ranking.
10. Don’t ignore your title <title> tag- Having a keyword in the title tag is very important. Many people skip this or leave it blank but it can make a big difference in your ranking.

One final important note is not to neglect your website. Once you have things set up the way you want them, you will still need to keep up with it on a regular basis. Remember that SEO is a process and you have to continue to make changes when necessary to keep your ranking.

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.