Search Engine Optimization Tips Blog

Now however, as search engines have shifted their attention to other avenues and methods of proving relevance, the meta tag is widely ignored.

This is a mistake; meta tags still can have a great value to your site if utilized properly. They might not be the catapult to the SERPs they once were, but once you finally get there meta tags can be an incredibly useful tool.

Some major search engines will be displaying the meta tag descriptions of the search results, which is why it is still so important to pay attention the wording of your meta tag. This doesn’t mean stuffing it with keywords; this looks like spam and doesn’t encourage consumers to click on your result.

Nor will simply repeating your title tag do you any good. Your title tag is automatically displayed as a hypertext link, so why waste your chances to attract attention on boring repetition?

Try providing a secondary keyword phrase that might define your site a little better to the searcher. This could be a localized piece of info, an intuitive guess at what searchers are really looking for, or even just a ’Best’ or ’How To’ hook.

You can also use the meta tag top include your call to action, but the important thing is to compose a sentence which is short enough to not cut off mid word and which delivers a valid reason why the searcher should click on your site.

Various search engines have slightly different methods of awarding relevance and ranking your site, but the same thread holds true no matter where the search for your product originates. Search engines want people to be able to find what they are looking for quickly and easily.

If you set up your site, your SEO and your tags to provide the most accurate description of your company as possible, you will be hitting the most important goal. That is not to say that your site will simply sell itself, but if you have a great site that just needs some interest then pointing people in the correct direction should be enough.

Meta tags can hurt you or help you. Your job is to make sure they improve your chances of getting the consumer’s attention, not the search engine’s. Once you have made it up the SERPs, it is a battle among the top spots as to who can present the more convincing argument for a click through, and hopefully a sale.

Utilize your meta tags for the correct purpose – for consumer information, not useless courting of the search engines – and you may be surprised at the sharp increase in traffic you can receive!

Googlebot will crawl your pages, as long as they have a link that is known to Google. Then Google will update their index, rank you, and include you at the appropriate spot. Sometimes they will crawl you fairly often; sometimes it takes quite a while.

If you have spent considerable time and resources updating and adding content to your site, you might want to consider a Google SiteMap. This won’t replace the spiders’ visits and any other modes of communication, but you can bump yourself up the list to get your improved site looked at.

You want to provide Google with the easiest, clearest route to what you want them to look at, so don’t clutter up your sitemap with stuff they don’t need. Leave off your doorway pages, any duplicated content and of course any pages you’ve blocked off in your robot.txt.

Use clean urls, and make sure to include a <lastmod> tag to let Googlebot get to the newest stuff first. You can prioritize this way, so when you have a large overhaul and a lot of new content you can get your most important pages indexed first.

Your text should look something like this:

<url>

<loc>http://www.PetsStyles.com/html</loc>

<lastmod>2007-04-04T10:04:15+00:00</lastmod>

</url>

If you are not enough of a code monkey to tweak this yourself, you can always go to Google themselves, or various other places on the Web, and have your site crawled and a map generated to submit to the search engines.

You can add a few more tags if you like, such as a <priority> tag if you feel that the <lastmod> tag will mislead the crawler, or a <change freq> to encourage the crawler to return daily, weekly or monthly. Don’t make up a number that’s fake, as they will consider that a reason to ignore you completely!

If you are using a sitemap generator, you will need to download the finished map to your computer and upload it into the “public_html/” folder of your site. Then you can go into your account and add your sitemap’s url.

Once Google has your map, they should crawl you soon and frequently. Just keep in mind that they have thousand on thousands of sites to crawl, and won’t waste time on something they can’t trust to give accurate information. Make sure all of your tags are accurate, and that you closed all of your tags with a [ / * * *].

There are many important things you can follow up on as often as possible, but keeping the attention of Google is a main necessity. Keep accurate, fresh content on your site at all times, and resubmit your site map if you feel you have been waiting too long.

Sitemaps can be invaluable to you when you are first setting up your site, and for years afterward. Whenever you update or change your content, you can rest assured that the search engine will index it quickly and accurately. This will encourage your rise through the SERPs.

You have beefed up your site, and instituted a blog. You have widgets and gadgets, and a partridge in a pear tree. Now you basically have to keep pushing the link building and the content!

Having fresh new content is the number one way to keep pushing yourself under the search engines’ noses. Your title needs to reach out and grab the consumer, though – and there are a few ‘hooks’ that never grow old.

Top Ten, Twenty, etc Lists

People love lists. They actually go online and search for lists, especially if they want to find a lot of good information all in the same place. The words ‘ways to’ or ‘best’ are helpful to target your audience:

“Top Ten Ways to Dress Your Pet this Season” could be one, or “Top Twenty Best ‘Celebrity Pet’ Outfits”.

How To Articles

Searches on ‘how to’ do things or find things or make things are a favorite. Don’t know how to fix that leaky faucet? Go online. Wondering about finding a career moms club in your area? We can help with that, too!

“How to Make Your Own Dog Bandana Collar”, “How to Grow Catnip”, “How to Find a Reputable Groomer”…see what I mean?

Do…? What…? Why…? Should…?

Answer questions. Surfers are often looking for answers about topic in the field, and here is your chance to make your content the valuable resource they are looking for.

“Do Cats Sweat?”, “What Kind of Material Should My Dog Bed Be Made Of?”, “Why Do Hamsters Get Active At Night?”, and “Should I Buy a Leash for My Ferret?”

Funny Stories

Humor, humor, humor. If you can make a person laugh, you can get them to come back, to link in, to tell their friends. Tell a true anecdote, make up a funny joke, offer to print readers’ contributions. Combine the other methods listed above with a humorous twist.

“Top Ten Things NOT To Do With A Rabbit”, “How To Make a Cat-Feeding Bird Feeder” or “Why Shouldn’t You Take Your Pet Snake to Wal-Mart?”

Graphics

The title of and text surrounding your graphics, whether they be pictures or videos, can really pull visitors to your site. All of the above hooks can be used for graphic content too: Instructional videos on how to do things, pictures of curious or hilarious things or funny video clips can always bring people flocking.

Don’t forget, you can always move things around, and make your website new and interesting. Your blog is a terrific place to start discussions, and find out what draws attention. You can use it for a testing ground. If something really takes off, try to direct it towards your site, and take advantage of the interest!

Keep your finger on the pulse of ‘what is hot’ and try to figure out how it links in to your topic. Here is another way you can use your blog to pull people in; you have a lot more leeway there. Make sure your content fresh, and update as often as you possibly can; you will see it pay off in links, traffic and rankings!

When you are building your site, you are trying to utilize so many components that it is easy to lose sight of the goal – customer usability. After all, if they can’t use your website, what is the point of them visiting it? All the links in the world won’t help if they are broken, and content is only as good as you personally make sure it can be.

Content. If you don’t have good content, you are never going to get anywhere. When someone clicks on your site, nine times out of ten they are looking for information, whether to buy something or for research. If you are able to provide clear concise information with a humorous twist, your battle is half won.

Contact information. If the customer has a question, and merely providing the answer could mean the difference between a sale or no sale, wouldn’t you rather have the sale? Have a clearly marked “Contact Us” button with address, email and phone or fax information posted prominently, and business hours, too! Also have a ‘home’ button on every page to assist your clients in finding their way back to the main page.

Links. Don’t have unusable links on your site, or pointing to your site! This is the fastest, most sure fire way to lose customers there is. Most won’t even give you a second thought if they run up against a ‘page not found’ error – they’ll move on down to the next listing. Check and update your links regularly; both the internal and external ones. This will ensure that your site can be reached every time from anywhere.

Hooks for your target audience. You want your home page to welcome all comers, but your specific demographic could benefit from a specialized greeting. Have a special link to a subsequent page for aficionados, and lead the rest into the main portion of your site. You can shape the site like a castle, with a hallway leading away from the main entrance and various doors opening off the hallway.

FAQs. If you devote a page to frequently asked questions, you would be surprised at how much interest you get. You might even be able to subsequently rank that page if you have really good answers to a specific question. (This will cut down on use of that contact information, too!)

Organization and sequence. Make your landing page informative without being crowded. Set the hook and reel them further in, page by page. Hint at a freebie on the landing page if you like, but make it require accessing several levels down to download or utilize it.

Use graphics, but only relevant ones and not so many that your page is too crowded. There have been several cases when the ‘best practices’ in regards to graphics have been proven wrong!

By setting your site up with the user in mind, you will already have done most of the things needed to optimize your site, and it will be easy to add the components necessary to start ranking higher in the search engines.

Buying a domain may sound simple, and in a way, it is. You decide on a name, and if it’s available, you buy it.

There’s a little more to it than that, though. You have to come up with a simple url that makes sense to the average person and tells a little bit about your site. Then you have to see if it and / or any variations of it are available for purchase.

You have to decide on a .com, a .org or a .net appellation, or among a host of others. You need to see if there are any common misspellings that might be worth buying as well, to ensure that all traffic, even if misdirected by a faulty keystroke, will reach you and not your competition.

Domain names that have your main keywords can be good, but more importantly is your brand name. Something that catches the eye and is memorable is best – for example, a site devoted to flower delivery could be called RosesToGo or StoreToDoorFlowers.

A misspelling such as HotDawgCookers could be available and become a decently memorable brand if you happened to specialize in specialty cooking gadgets.

The reason for buying up the spelling variants and different IP addresses is to be able to park the domains and redirect the traffic to your main site. That way you don’t lose any prospective customers just because they made a typo or didn’t know how to spell.

Don’t start checking out domain names too far ahead of when you are ready to buy. There are unscrupulous businesses out there that will watch to see what domain names are being searched, then will jump in and snap them up to turn around and offer them for resale at ridiculous prices.

Play it close to the vest until you have a clear direction, then search all your possible domains and try to make a decision that day. This may involve doing a little preparation in advance searchin for difeerent keyword pgrases, etc depending on the direction you plan to take with your site, but realy in the end your domain name isn’t as closely connected with your keywords as it is with your brand name.

Don’t forget to remember to re-register when your year is up – not just your main domain but any of your parked domains as well. However, (and here’s another scam’ don’t respond to ‘courtesy’ emails that seek to inform you your domain will run out soon, but you can have extensive savings by renewing through he email sender.

These are almost always a trick to get you to sign with them for a higher fee than what you would normally pay for a domain name, and should be avoided. Several of these companies have been taken to court, but they are still very accessible.

Your domain name is what people look for, what they hang on to from past visits and where they tell their friends to go! Make it a name to remember!

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