Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Blog

When you prepare for your early morning jog, you probably grab the nearest baseball hat and head out the door. This process may be OK for your morning workout, but the type of hat – black hat or white hat – you’re Web site wears during the day can mean a world of difference when it comes to search engine optimization.

There tends to be a Great Divide between the effectiveness of white hats and black hats when it comes to SEO. Search engine optimizers typically label themselves as white hat or black hat to identify their basic philosophy, approach and methodology for SEO. The general theory is that SEO white hats try to follow the rules and grow sites through a period of years. SEO black hats tend to focus on winning the search engine game and making money today. (http://seoblackhat.com/category/white-hat-vs-black-hat)

As with most things in life, SEO probably isn’t as much “black” and “white” as a spectrum of gray. And more importantly to marketers, the question isn’t so much what’s black and what’s white but what impact can each approach have on your brand?

White Hat and black Hat SEOs seem to have their place in cyberspace. Plenty of people look for the types of products and services in which black hats specialize. There is a huge demand for their brand of black magic – and the thought of “doing things right” with the white hats (http://www.highrankings.com/issue119.htm).

Or maybe you prefer a New York Yankees hat like LeBron James.

OK, so you’re looking for more ways to use search engines to your advantage and attract people to your Web site. You can start with your meta tag description, which can be an essential component in your quest to gain greater SEO and search engine results page (SERP) visibility. A meta tag is an HTML tag that gives information about the content of a Web page, such as what HTML specifications a Web page follows or description of a Web page’s content. For more information on meta tags visit the W3C or check out the wikipedia.

To avoid truncation by the search engines in their SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), your meta description tag should be concise, within 140 to 200 characters. Truncation will vary depending on the search engine and the number of characters displayed in the search results
(http://www.seoconsultants.com/meta-tags/description.asp).

If the keywords in the meta tag description keyword line are not found within the text on the Web page, some search engines will penalize the page or simply not list it. The penalty is done to prevent meta tag spoofing. So, you might want to have several meta description tag on each of your pages, and be certain that keywords in the keyword tags are used on the page.

Keep in mind that there are specialized techniques involved in optimizing a site to place well in SERPs for specific keywords and meta tags. It is not just a matter of using dozens or hundreds of keywords in your meta tags. Doing so can ultimately have a negative impact on your site (http://www.bcseo.com/seo-search-engine-optimization/SEO-faq.htm).

Here is a useful article I found about the meta description from SEOConsultants.com..

To avoid truncation by the search engines in their SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages), your meta description tag should be concise, within 140 to 200 characters. Truncation will vary depending on the search engine and the number of characters displayed in the search results.

(http://www.seoconsultants.com/meta-tags/description.asp).

If the keywords in the meta tag description keyword line are not found within the text on the Web page, some search engines will penalize the page or simply not list it. The penalty is done to prevent meta tag spoofing. So, you might want to have several meta description tag on each of your pages, and be certain that keywords in the keyword tags are used on the page.

Keep in mind that there are specialized techniques involved in optimizing a site to place well in SERPs for specific keywords and meta tags. It is not just a matter of using dozens or hundreds of keywords in your meta tags. Doing so can ultimately have a negative impact on your site. We will fully investigate this matter in an upcoming article.

You’re intentions are good – you want visitors to your Web site to feel welcome – but you don’t necessarily have to spell it out for them on your Web site. Avoiding a Welcome page, or splash page, can actually help you in your quest to attract and retain viewers of your Web site.

Splash pages are certainly eye-catching and appealing, but they are not helpful when trying to place your site with search engines (http://www.northstudio.com/searchengines/factors_that_can_hurt.htm). Because splash pages are heavy with graphics and light on content, they are difficult for search engines to “spider.” Search engine spiders crawl out on the Web looking for links and content to evaluate.

So, if your homepage is entangled in a splash page with no content, these spiders will give your site the spin. You are essentially telling search engines that there is nothing of value on your site.

Keep in mind that your Web site is a valuable, yet unique marketing tool for your company. People seek you out, rather than you seeking them (http://www.newfangled.com/splash_page_usage). You don’t have to work as hard as you may think to get people to stay on your site.

The intention of a Welcome page generally is to explain how your server works … information that usually isn’t helpful to your primary visitors. Welcome them once they walk through your doors after you’ve captured their attention with a Web site that is clean and easy to navigate (http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/Etiquette.html).

Your Web site is by far your most important marketing tool – the gateway to reaching new customers and keeping in touch with existing customers. If your Web site consists of just one page, then you may want to rethink your strategy and invest in a Web site development company that can provide you with multiple pages for your Web site
(http://www.startupnation.com/articles).

One page is not nearly enough to convey the many features and benefits of your business. Does your company have a catalog or handle order fulfillment? Then you should devote special pages to these two areas alone. Remember, the idea that drives your Web site is to let your customers – and potential customers – know all about your company and what you provide, and to be as user-friendly and informative as possible
(http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3627129).

When it comes to your Web site, don’t pinch pennies. Hire a professional Web site design and develop company that can give you a dynamic look – with the appropriate links — to portray your company in the proper manner to all who visit your site
(http://www.seobook.com/archives/001792.shtml).

Finding a suitable name for your Web site domain doesn’t have to be as difficult as finding a name for a child, but it is important nonetheless. With this thought in mind, don’t be in a hurry to rush out and purchase a domain name. Start off by doing a search to see if the domain names you like are available. You may be able to save yourself some time and trouble by purchasing your ideal domain name from its current owner http://www.igoldrush.com/buy2.htm.

Remember, keep your domain name simple. Shorter names tend to grab people’s attention and make it easier for them to remember it. Think of your domain name like a well-written newspaper headline that jars you into reading the story. Keywords that pertain to your business will help you to optimize your domain name on many search engines..
Read More.

Once you selected and registered your domain name, remember to check to be sure it doesn’t violate a registered trademark. Your domain name is important – and it’s advisable that you take the proper steps to ensure its safekeeping.

Check to see if your domain name is available.

When a web designer goes about developing a new website, he or she usually focuses on two aspects: functionality and appearance. Since text usually isn’t very appealing, images are often used to make a website more pleasing to the eyes. However, the saying “A picture is worth a thousand words.” does not apply to search engines. A search engine only understands text. Therefore, the question becomes, how can I create a fully optimized site, but still use images?

The first thing that you can do is make sure that everything that can be expressed in text is expressed in text. Often times, images actually contain text. One popular example of this is the use of navigation links on a website. Text could easily be used instead of images. This may raise the question: Why would I want to use more text if you just said that is was less appealing? Well, there are ways to make text seem like images. A perfect example is that of Ameritrade. The green links across the top of the page appear to be images, but are actually text contained within a background image, thus helping to optimize the homepage.

Another idea for optimizing you website is using alt and title elements whenever you use the img tag. Taking advantage of the alt element allows you to optimize your images for search engines. Essentially, what you are doing is telling the search engine what the image is, through the use of text. alt text is intended to be used instead of an image, not to provide additional information. To be used effectively, it should be limited to 3 keywords at most. The title element also allows you to assign text to an image. However, the text assigned should provide supplemental information, not explain what the image is. The title element allows users to bring their mouse over an image and get extended information about an image that may not be shown.

Image without alt and title elements

<img src=”dog.jpg” width=”200″ height=”150″>

Image with alt and title elements

<img src=”dog.jpg” width=”200″ height=”150″ alt=”Dog Jumping” title=”This friendly Labrador is great with kids.”>

Wait… What exactly are keywords you ask? Keywords are the search “terms or words” that users enter in search engines to find web sites in search engines such as Google, Live, or Yahoo. These words or phrases must align to the theme of your web site in order to have a successful SEO campaign.

Keywords are vital to the success of your web site. It is a waste of time money and energy to optimize your web pages for keywords that no one uses in the search engines.

The purpose of SEO is to get targeted visitors to your web site. In order to get targeted traffic, your keywords and phrases must not be to general or too broad.

Remember to choose keywords and phrases that are generic enough so the surfer can find your product or service but at the same time selective enough to discount millions of others pages and competitors. The more specific a keyword is, the more targeted and qualified visitors come to your site which in turn increases your sales.

Here are some general guideline to consider when choosing your keywords:

• Try to use only two to four keywords at a time.
• Remember to be specific enough to bring in only target traffic
• Try to avoid over competitive keywords and phrases.
• Don’t use keywords that have nothing to do with your site.
• Single keywords usually will not work and usually are not effective.

Use Google’s Keyword tool to help generate new keyword ideas.

Overview of Robots.txt

A robots file, named “robots.txt” is simply an “Access” file stored in your web server’s root directory. Creating a robots.txt file doesn’t improve your search engine ranking, but it does provide robots, or web crawlers, with specific information concerning which files you will not allow to be crawled and indexed in the search engines.

For example, if we had an area on our web site, such as a family blog that we didn’t the search engines to show the pages in the search engine results pages, or “serps,” we could specify in the robots.txt file, to exclude our blog directory.

We would do this by adding these two lines of code to the robots.txt file.

User-agent: *
Disallow: /blog/

If we want our entire web site crawled by the bots, we would simply either upload a blank robots.txt file into our web servers root directory our we would change the “Disallow:” to have nothing after it as in the example below:

User-agent: *
Disallow:

I have provide the following links for more information on the robots.txt file and it’s uses:
http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/robots.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robots.txt

Here is a link to a robots.txt file generator:
http://www.mcanerin.com/EN/search-engine/robots-txt.asp

Today, I am going to talk about exactly what SEO is, and who needs it. For the sake of this post, we are going to say SEO is an acronym for “Search Engine Optimization.” However, it can also be defined as a job title, which would then mean “Search Engine Optimizer.”

The Wikipedia defines SEO as the following: “Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via “natural” (”organic” or “algorithmic”) search results.”

SEO not only brings in more visitors to your web site or online store, but it IMPROVES the quality of visitors that you need to make the sales you want. This is explained in more detail in one of my previous posts called Choosing Your Target Audience.

Now that we’ve covered what SEO is, let’s talk about Who Needs It.

It’s been said that well over 60% of all web sites on the internet have NOT had any sort of optimization implemented to their web site. This is mainly due to the fact that most of your local web design companies are simply not large enough or trained in internet marketing. They may be able to make you a professional looking web site, but it won’t mean much if no one is finding it in the search engine result pages. Remember the saying “it’s like finding a needle in a hay stack?” Well with the web, it’s like finding a needle in a million hay stacks. The internet is huge. The competition is fierce. BUT, the customers are out there waiting to buy. They just don’t know it yet because they haven’t seen your web site, right? If you think your web site could use some SEO, contact me, Brian Petti, at ATX Webmasters and I will give you a free web site optimization analysis.

The very first question you need to ask yourself before you start any marketing campaign is, “Who’s going to buy my product or service?” or “Who is my target audience?” A target audience can be people of a certain age group, gender, marital status, etc. (for example: teenagers, females, single people, etc.) A certain combination, like men from twenty to thirty is often a target audience.

Okay. So I’ve picked my target audience. How does choosing the right target audience relate to Search Engine Optimization?

By choosing the right target audience, not only will you be able to choose a web design which appeals to that group, but you will also be able to pick the right keywords and write content which appeals to that demographic.

Let’s say I have a client with a new brand of beer called “Man Beer.” My target audience would be Men ages 21 and over. Would I have a pink web site with a flowered border? Would I write content that talks about how beer shortens the length of menstrual cycles? Would my keyword phrase be “fabulous fruity drink”? - Of course not. You may be able to get top rankings with the keywords and phrases you select, but bringing the wrong target audience to your web site won’t get you much business.