Archive for October, 2009

Choose the Right Title for Your New Website-It Really Matters!

October 29th, 2009 Barry

The title you choose for your website is very, very important to overall site optimization, search engine ranking and traffic flow. Moreover, it should be easy to remember and not so close to a competitor’s name that people go elsewhere. For example, if a competitors site is ‘lowcostresumes’ you don’t want to use ‘verylow costresumes’. They’re just too close together.

Choosing the wrong title for your website can actually harm your business because having an intelligently-selected title can dramatically influence your ranking on search engine directories. In addition, the right title listed on the directories can actually result in more traffic to your site.

The website title that you select should briefly describe to visitors just what your site is all about. If possible, you want people to click on your directory listing and be taken to your website, not some competitive site on the page. Consider these factors in making your selection:

A. Use highly relevant keywords

You already know that keywords are nothing more than the words and phrases that visitors place in their browser search bars in order to find the type of website they are seeking. Logically, then, one or more of the most relevant keywords also belong in the title of your website and as close to the beginning of the title as possible. For example, if you are targeting visitors who enter the keyword phrase “used laptops”, then you could have a website title such as “Used Laptops at Affordable Prices”.
Here, you have used your keyword right up front in the title which stresses its importance to the search engines. If, instead, your title had been “Affordable Prices for Used Laptops”, your important keyword would have absolutely no prominence.

B. If possible, use your main keyword twice in your title

This is harder to accomplish with a keyword phrase than a single keyword, but not impossible. For example, your title might be: “Used Laptops: We offer used laptops at affordable prices.” The colon: after Used Laptops makes this possible without destroying the relevance of your title.

C. Use a title that persuades & motivates visitors

The best way to persuade a visitor to click on your directory listing instead of one above or below you is to make your title compelling. This means that it should touch right on what he’s searching for. If this isn’t the case, your visitor may click on another listing that better fits his search even if you are number 1 on the page.

D. Consider your title carefully. You can only use 65 characters.

Almost every search engine limits the length of your title to 65 characters or less. Google displays between 60 and 66 characters. Under most circumstances, this is plenty of space for a title and enough for a few of your most important keywords.
You can, of course use other less-important keywords and key phrases in the body copy of your web pages.

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Search Engines

October 28th, 2009 Sam Errama

Basically, search engines look for and scan pages in much the same way that visitors use their browsers with keywords and phrases to locate the material they are searching for. Since they have literally millions of pages to search, they rely on a formula called an ‘algorithm’ to go about determining relevancy (consider this like separating the wheat from the chaff). The actual algorithm the search engines use is a closely-held secret. However, all search engines have a few search criteria in common. Some of these include:

* The location and frequency of keywords on web pages.
* The search terms (keywords) appearing in the site’s HTML title tag
* Where the keywords appear on pages—those on the top of the page are the most important.
* How often the keywords appear on a page (keyword density). The overuse of keywords to the point where relevancy is compromised is bad. This is often considered as ‘spamming’—a definite black mark. Likewise, too few keywords are a negative too.
* Off-the-page factors are considered. The most important is ‘linking’ to other relevant websites. Another is ‘click-through’ results. If the website pages are not receiving an adequate number of clicks, rankings are lowered.

Remember that proper SEO benefits you in two ways. First, it makes your website attractive to search engines and promotes higher page rankings. Second, and equally important, it ensures that the website text is highly relevant for both the search engines and the visitors to the website. We know that Effective SEO= web content mass + keyword optimization+ links.

Top Quality Ranking carefully balances these factors so that our clients not only achieve high directory rankings, they also get highly-relevant content that that will motivate visitors to websites to take further action by requesting more information or making a purchase.

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THE PERFECT SEO FRIENDLY WEBSITE

October 23rd, 2009 Sam Errama

There are many stories going around the internet about what you need to have for the perfect SEO friendly website. Some people say that you do not need to do anything, and that you just need to get your website built. Some say that you just need to submit your website to search engines like Google, Yahoo, Ask, Live and others. Some seem to think that having a website that is one hundred percent JAVA or Flash, or 3D will do the trick. This is not the case, and the absolute truth is that you need to have SEO friendly website text, because 3D Flash and Java really does nothing for your SEO.

If you have a website that you do not want to market on the internet, let’s say that you only give out your website address to clients on your business card, then this is fine, but if you are looking to target people on the internet, and if you are looking to generate more traffic through SEO (search engine marketing), then you will need to have a properly built SEO friendly website and more importantly, a properly maintained website. It all comes down to building your website so that it is search engine friendly, and then doing your link building. This is where you need to start. First you will find a company that believes in SEO friendly websites, who will make you a text based, easy to navigate and view website. This does not need to be boring and 1 dimensional, however.

We are not saying that you mustn’t have any Flash or Java, these things are good, but it is recommended that you keep them to a minimum. Also remember that links are not to be picture or flash buttons. They should rather be text, or the spider bots will not find their way around your site easily and you will get a poor ranking. The next thing you need for your SEO friendly website is actual content. This means hiring a copywriter to produce meaningful content that relates to your business and actually promotes your services or products. These should also have keywords placed strategically throughout the text. This can be done be a professional copywriter who works primarily over the internet for SEO purposes. The last things you need for an SEO friendly website is outbound and inbound links as well as internal linking between your own web pages.

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CHOOSING A DOMAIN NAME IS IMPORTANT TO SEO

October 22nd, 2009 Sam Errama

Your domain name is important in the SEO process. If possible, it should reflect the subject matter on your website. Read this and choose carefully.

Once you have a domain name checker before you, it’s time to begin the trial and error process of finding a suitable and available name for your website. Get a hot cup of coffee and settle down to the task. This might take some time.
Plainly stated, your domain name should describe your website or business. The reason is easy to understand. People search the web for information by using certain terms or keywords. If you are just starting to build a website, it will be best to name the business or website after the domain name you’ve secured. For example, if you are offering to prepare resumes at low cost, and you secure the domain name lowcostresumes.com, that should be your website name too. After all, you can’t expect that people will memorize a totally unrelated URL. There is, however, another issue: Is low cost resumes the best keyword phrase you can select? Is that the term the majority of people will search under? Probably not! And there are methods and tools available to help you select the search term (keyword) with the greatest potential for high traffic.

Many people seem to believe that a generic domain name is best, like refrigerators.com. However, you will quickly discover that such names are almost always taken and if you want to buy one, be prepared to pay an arm and a leg. We personally believe that a domain name that is also your brand name is the best bet because most people search that way. For example, would you search under refrigerators or something more related to what you are looking for like General Electric refrigerators or portable refrigerators?

Whether a domain name should be long or short is also debated. In reality, your domain name can be up to 67 characters long. This gives you a chance to be specific and use a name that more closely matches your target market. Low cost resumes uses 14 characters compared to 7 for resumes, but it specifies people who don’t want to pay a lot of money to have their new resume written, and if this is your targeted group, it makes good sense. In this example, the longer one is more targeted. It is also becoming almost impossible to get a short generic domain name these days.

Hyphenated domain names have good points and bad points. The bad points are that it’s awfully easy to forget to type in the hyphens which might end up taking visitors to your competition. They are also a pain to type when you’re in a hurry. The advantage might be that the non-hyphenated name is not available. With hyphenation, you can at least end up with the name you really want. For example if lowcostresumes.com was taken, this webmaster could have gotten low-cost-resumes.com.

You will also find that many domain registrars offer you suggestions that are built around the name that’s taken. Many of these have ‘The’ or ‘My’ or ‘Your’ in the name. For example, lowcostresumes, if taken, could have been offered as ‘mylow costresumes’ or ‘yourlowcostresumes’. Or, ‘refrigerator.com’ could have been ‘my refrigerator.com’ or ‘refrigerators.com’ with the plural form added. Beware of one danger when selecting a plural form of a domain name: if visitors omit the plural, they may be going straight to your competitor’s website.

What about names that don’t have a .com because they are all taken. You can probably get .biz, .org, .net or some other suffix. If you feel strongly that the primary name is a critical identifier, one of these might be an acceptable option to the more familiar .com suffix. If you end up with a non-.com name, don’t forget to use the full URL in any promotions you do. Use the complete name!

One thing you don’t want to do is start out with one domain name and then change it later on. Any momentum you will have earned will be lost and you’ll be starting out from scratch.

So take the time to thoroughly search available domain names and keep all the options at your disposal firmly in mind. If possible, search on a site that is big and well established. A site that offers many suggestions when the name you wanted is taken, even if you plan to host your site elsewhere. GoDaddy.com is just such a site!

Remember that most of this applies to people who have not yet begun their new website. But your domain name can have a very-positive influence on search engine optimization, so consider this carefully before you begin.

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KEYWORD DENSITY – IMPORTANT FACTS FOR SEO

October 21st, 2009 Sam Errama

Keyword density, or how often your keywords should appear on a given website page, is often a controversial issue. There are still people who place far more importance on density than is necessary. In fact, when keyword density gets so high that it cripples relevance and readability, it will result in a lower ranking on the directories and especially on Google. Keyword density is vital in SEO services.

The actual definition of keyword density is the ratio of the word being searched for vs. the total number of words on a given web page. In other words, the more a given keyword or group of keywords appear on a page, the higher the keyword density.

Today, all search engines consider keyword density as part of their ranking algorithm. However, they also consider relevance of your text to be important since that is what attracts and retains visitors. Here are some SEO tips regarding keyword density:

  • Consult WordTracker’s large database of keywords and keyword phrases. Be certain your website’s keywords include similar, relevant search terms. This will go far to making you more visible on search engines as people search for products or services that your site offers.
  • Be certain that the keywords you select and include in your site are relevant to your website topics. Some webmasters try to include every keyword or phrase they can and this can result in you being banned for “spamming”.
  • Utilize the most critical keywords and phrases in their full form. Avoid referring to them as ‘it’ or ‘that’, words that won’t mean a thing to the search robots.
  • Don’t ‘overuse’ keywords or resort to very short text to increase keyword density. Search engines today are a lot smarter than they used to be and all the old ‘tricks’ people used to get high ranking no longer work. Always remember that now, relevance of what you say on your pages really matters to both the search engines and your visitors.
  • Shoot for a keyword density of between 2% and 5%. This is more than adequate when the keywords and key phrases are combined with truly relevant text.

Keep in mind that any good SEO/SEM provider fully understands every aspect of keyword and keyword phrase utilization on your website pages. They know which will be the ‘right’ keywords and phrases to use, where to place them correctly and just how many should appear on each page to achieve optimum density without affecting the important relevance of what you’re saying tyo your site’s visitors.

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