Archive for web site optimization
Subdomains or Subfolder – Does it impact SEO?
Posted by: | CommentsSearch engine optimization is critical to a website/blog’s success. When building a site and creating the infrastructure you are able to create elements such as a blog incorporated as part of a site on either a site’s subdomain or the subfolder. For example you can set up a blog as a sub domain (http://blog.website.com) or as a sub folder (http://www.website.com/blog/
Subdomains are seen by search engines as a separate site bringing no search juice to your parent domain. A sub folder is a part of the parent site, any content added on that folder contributes to the value of the parent domain, and it all works together to add to a site’s pagerank. That content if keyword rich and relevant to the rest of the site will make your site appear in the SERPs of more keywords. Those sub-domains of your site will not get picked up for SERP unless all your subdomains are super relevant to the keyword(s) searched.
Sub-domains do have a purpose if they are to act as a “new” site with a different purpose than the main site. But that requires a significant time investment in additional SEO efforts. So plan carefully and know what the reason is for each individual structure on your site and its target purpose. When in doubt build a sub-folder.
Is Your Web Professional a Poseur or Pro Pt 3
Posted by: | CommentsWebsite Grader is a great tool to check out any site and see how effective it is at SEO. Good SEO gives your site the chance it needs to be found by an Internet search. Take the time to evaluate a potential designer or developer’s site. If they don’t score well on their own site then imagine what they’ll do for you.
An important point to remember is that generally SEO is straight forward and takes little time to implement. Effective keyword research is required ahead of time though. Building backlinks will take time, effort and likely money. However, this effort pays big dividends over time. If you take the time to work on the issues Website Grader highlights your site and your business will benefit. Know where you stand, know if your designer or developer can deliver.
SEO Poseur or Pro- Is Your Web Professional Competent Part 2
Posted by: | CommentsMeta Tags
These are your title, description and keyword fields. Using your selected keywords these fields should be completed for every page on your site. This is basic SEO, is easily performed, yet seldom done. Low hanging fruit here!
Domain Information
Search engines like to see stability from your domain name. Some sites score well, but have lousy SEO otherwise because they have an old domain name. Consider registering your domain name for two or more years at a time. That helps and is cheap.
Google Statistics
When was the last time your site was crawled? The more often the better. Frequent crawling helps your ranking and means you have new content. Stop adding content and they come back less frequently and you slide down the charts.
Google Page Rank
Page Rank (PR) is a measure of your popularity among other sites. While your PR as a stand alone value does not matter all that much, comparing it to your competition is important. You definitely want to out rank them. As a general guide here is how you can consider PR.
- 0: Google doesn’t think the site is very important. It doesn’t get much traffic or doesn’t have much useful information on it.
- 1-2: Google has noticed this web site and thinks it is worthy of some recognition
- 3-4: Google gives this web site a fair amount of authority and sees it as a decent source of information
- 5-6: This site is a very established source of quality information
- 7-8: Google says this site is a major player
- 9-10: These rankings are reserved for the big dogs
Alexa Traffic Rank
This is a measure of traffic starting with number one, Google and measuring up to 25 million. Of course there are far more sites than this but they stop at 25 million. Again, don’t take this rating to the bank; it is a good barometer and a useful comparison. To know where your site fits in look on the chart.
· 1,000,000 and higher — You’re basically invisible
· 500,000-1,000,000 — On the radar
· 100,000-500,000 — Not a major player, but worth some recognition
· 10,000-100,000 — Getting some really good traffic…watch these sites
· 1,000-10,000 — These guys are the professionals
· < 1,000 — Don’t try beating them…see if you can join them
Inbound Links
Also called backlinks, these are a key measure of success. In fact the entire site can be terrible SEO wise, but with enough backlinks it will rank well. Backlinks show that other sites find yours interesting. Obtaining quality backlinks is the difficult part of SEO, the processes above are easily done by most anyone after you have done the keyword research.
Getting backlinks is time consuming and involves a lot of research and in many cases using software tools or a contractor. Be cautious when using a contractor, you want your backlinks to be appropriate. If you are a building contractor you don’t want your link on a Viagra site (don’t laugh, you’ll get offers for links like that). Normally you’ll be asked to have a link to the other site on your site. As long as it’s compatible then do so. If you can manage a few hundred backlinks you will have done a good job.
False Readings
There are a few warnings when reading the results of Website Grader. Well done sites that are fairly new need some time to be indexed and get some traffic. If you see the basic SEO work done right but the site is fairly new it might have a lower score. Conversely a site with relatively poor SEO work, but with a long history might be rated higher than it ought to be.
SEO Poseur or Pro- Is Your Web Professional Competent Pt1
Posted by: | CommentsSEO and Web Design are critical to the success of your business’ website. If you can’t be found (SEO) you might as well not have a web site. If your website is not user friendly once you get traffic you will not have any sticky readers who come back again and again to find your great content. A new website can cost thousands of dollars and can be a major investment for a small business owner. How do you know if your designer is a poseur or a pro? What can you do if you have already been burned and now are left with the mess to fix or clean up? Shannon Evans and Rich Geasey authors of Get Found Now Local Search Secrets Exposed are thrilled to announce that their second book in the series Get Found Now Search Engine Optimization Secrets Exposed is expected to release Feb 15. The following excerpt is designed to help you filter out the poseurs and uncover the real professional who can help you and your business get found on the internet!
Your personal or business website is likely your primary medium for providing information to potential and current customers or clients. Today, an Internet search is typically the primary way someone begins their search for goods and services. Therefore, your website needs to be on the first page of a search engines’ results (for most of us that’s Google). Not on page one? Well, less than 10% of searchers ever venture any further.
Despite this fact, most business and professional websites are essentially useless in delivering first page search results, even in the case of very specific keyword searches. Why is that? For the most part nearly every small business website is not search engine optimized (SEO) in the least. Is this the fault of the site owner? No, it’s the fault of the designer or developer of the site. A competent web designer or developer takes the time to research the keywords a site owner needs to use to have success on the search engines. Next, the designer or developer needs to use those keywords and the process of SEO to give the site the opportunity to appear on the first page of the search engine.
How do you know if your site is optimized, or more importantly if your designer or developer has the skill to achieve this? Well, a great tool is available to assist in this process and it’s called Website Grader (www.websitegrader.com). While Website Grader is not the definitive answer to how good a website is, it is a great tool to compare sites and see how you, and your designer or developer stack up.
Website Grader analyses your website for completeness of SEO efforts. After the analysis it compares the site with their database of nearly two million sites and provides it with final score of 1 to 100. A score of 90 or better and you are doing all the right things as far as SEO is concerned. A score in the 80s shows you are working it hard and with a bit more time and effort you will be doing great. In the 70s you have some work to do but you are getting there. 50 to 70 is OK if there are no serious issues the report highlights, it may simply be you have a new site and it needs time to be searched. Less than 50 and the site is poorly done and simply is not visible to search engines (or very, very new).
The Perfect SEO-Friendly HTML Head
Posted by: | CommentsThis is a post from Zeke Camusio on LinkedIn. He has a great website for Internet marketers anyone should see if they are serious about Internet marketing and creating effective websites. -Editor
When it comes to designing SEO-friendly web pages, it’s all about creating a powerful SEO head section. The HTML head is what will make you or break you in the search engines, especially if you don’t follow SEO guidelines.
The Basics of HTML Head
Document type definition (DTD statement)
This is the first tag on your web page, and helps load and index pages faster. It helps spiders efficiently “deep crawl” your pages. Make sure you use the correct tag.
Software such as Dreamweaver automatically inserts the proper tags. If you are editing older pages, you will need to manually insert the correct tag. Consult with the HTML validator at W3C, or consult with a web designer for more information.
Character Set Tag
SEO gurus recommend listing the character set tag before the title tag. The character set tag displays text character in browsers.
Title Tag
The title tag is very important – you need to grab visitors’ attention IMMEDIATELY. The Title tag is displayed at the top of the browser’s window and displays text in search results. You want to stir their emotions with titles and create curiosity so your site will get those CLICKS!
The SEO standard for title tags is 65 characters or less. Remember to be succinct when writing title tags – do not stuff with too many keywords (looks unnatural and will get you booted out of search engines).
Meta Description Tag
Meta description tags work with the title to attract visitors to your pages. The standard SEO rule is to keep your meta descriptions to 150 characters or less.
You should spend the same amount of time and effort creating powerful meta descriptions just like you would with creating your ads (and titles tags!)
Remember your call to action and work in that “offer” to boost click rates.
Don’t be lazy – if you don’t include meta description tags, search engines automatically use snippets of your copy text as your description tag. This isn’t good SEO practice!
Meta Keywords Tag
It’s still recommended by SEO experts to utilize meta keywords tags. Keep keywords to a minimum (6-8 keyword phrases). Leave out your money phrases. Keep keywords general.
If you are too specific, your competitors will scrape your content. A powerful keyword list can be built VERY quickly that way! Don’t spend all that time researching keywords just to give them away.
Keyword phrase you use in your meta keywords tag need to be used in your body content.
Meta Robots Tag
Meta Robots Tags allows content to be kept out of search engines in the following ways:
• <META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOINDEX, FOLLOW”>
Pages aren’t indexed but still followed.
• <META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”INDEX, NOFOLLOW”>
Pages are indexed but not followed.
• <META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW”>
Pages are not indexed or followed.
Meta Author Tag and Image Toolbar Tag (Optional)
The Meta author tag isn’t a SEO requirement. It places your name on your home page (make sure to follow WAI validation).
The Meta image toolbar tag isn’t always used, but is extremely useful if you have large images on page. It also makes your site look cleaner. The meta image toolbar tag is recommended for images with a height/width greater than 100 pixels.
XML Mapsite Verification Tag (Google)
Google’s Sitemap is the best way to get crawled by spiders. It allows your pages to be easily found and indexed.
Tips and Tricks – How to Create Dynamic Meta Tags
• If you use more than 65 characters in your titles, Google automatically displays ellipses which drops click-through rates to 9% fewer compared to titles WITHOUT ellipses.
• Ask questions, use active verbs and list exactly what visitors will receive (body content follows up by answering questions and providing further information)
• Utilize unconventional techniques– make meta tags LOOK different so will people are curious to click on it (use a quote, etc).
• Don’t keyword stuff. Do NOT use keywords of competitors’ products or brands (you could risk a lawsuit!) Keep keywords to 6-8 phrases minimum.
• Avoid hype in meta-descriptions – limit characters to 150 and use 2-3 sentences for your hook.
