Jun
17
Web Stats, by Any Name, Are a Required Necessity
June 17, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Statistics Software and What it Means to Us Today I remember being happy with a simple counter on my pages. I’d check it every day and see whether I had visitors or not. If I did, I knew I was doing well and I’d keep working on the site. Today, there is a lot more to be known and more information is needed just to properly meet our markets’ needs.
Stats today cover everything under the sun. No longer is it just a number of visitors but we can see what browsers, the date and time, how much time they spent on the site, or any given page and a lot more.
I like the fact that the stats will show me what keyword was searched for and where in the listings I was when they clicked on my site. Depending on what stats software you use it will show something like “google.com – blue widgets – 1-10, which means I was somewhere between position 1 and 10 when the search was done, and they clicked on my site for the key phrase “blue widgets”. Ya gotta love this stuff!
Take your time when you look at the stats. Look for little things that will clue you in and how people search, and how they found you at all. Update your site accordingly. You will benefit from all of this with an increase in targeted traffic.
I first used AXS, from xav.com, for my stats and it is really a very good program, even today. I still use it some today and still get good information from it.
Try Google Analytics if you like. It’s free. It’s real good.
Nothing comes close to this information when it comes to improving your site and traffic from it. Get to work analyzing this information and your site will climb in the ranks from this simple, but very effective, optimization effort.
Jun
15
In the beginning of internet time there were very few websites around. It was fairly simple to be listed well for whatever keywords you needed to be found for. Over the course of time more and more sites showed up and the engines had to develop stronger algorithms in order to provide decent results to their users. Today SEO is a straight forward part of web development that is possible for anyone to do with the proper knowledge of what changes to make to your site. Today it is all pretty much cut and dry as to what needs to be done to optimize a website.
Google was not even around back then. The term SEO wasn’t even thought up yet. Optimization wasn’t a conversational word and the internet was really a melting pot of ideas and websites that took on all kinds of new and exciting looks. These were very exciting times.
After a while the engines began to work on their algorithms and utilize other criteria to get search results back to their users. This provided much more relevant sites. The meta tags were pretty much left behind at this point. The internet was gaining websites by the thousands and there seemed to be no end in sight.
There was a lot of trial and error back then. Test this and test that. As all this testing was going on it became a necessity to optimize your site if you wanted to have any traffic at all. Online businesses were scrambling to get their sites listed above the fold and SEO people were getting paid to perform these actions.
Times have changed and although I’m still more than willing to optimize your site for you, the fact is, if you have the time or personnel, you can easily learn how to do this work yourself and save a bundle too. My optimization courses, both the SEO Training Course and the Advanced SEO Training Course will teach you what you need to know in order to get your site to rise in the ranks. There is no question about it.
I urge anyone who has the ability to update their own websites to look into learning how to optimize. SEO has become common knowledge and is not longer something that demands being farmed out to special people with special knowledge. You can learn how to SEO your own websites and get the job done just as well as the gurus do.
Jun
13
Add Emphasis to Your Body Content
June 13, 2010 | Leave a Comment
I see the lack of emphasis a lot of websites. Sometimes it’s because they have never really been optimized but other times I see a site that seemingly has been worked on but has not utilized bolding and italicizing etc.
I’m not sure if it is overlooked, or if it just isn’t applied, but more often than not I will not see keyword emphasized within the body content when the could, and perhaps should be. This is a lost opportunity to lend some important to your most important keywords.
This question comes up from time to time and often I am asked how to actually place emphasis on particular words in a web page and it’s content. The most utilized way to do this to actual body content is through italicizing, or using boldface. Both work equally well and do bring emphasis to the content that it is used on.
It’s not always implemented as part of an SEO campaign. I don’t know why, I like it, and I have seen some good results from it. You are missing out if you are not emphasizing your content and keywords. As with anything, don’t go overboard, just get with the emphasis!
I can find no benefit to using underlining, quotes or all capitals. If you have any proof of this let me know. I’m really interested in this. My research shows that only the bolding and italicizing of the main body content pays off in SEO dividends.
Jun
8
Internal Linking, Outbounds Too!
June 8, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Don’t overlook the other two methods of linking … the outbound link, and the internal link. Both of these are very important to SEO and both need to be handled effectively.
Internal linking is built around your navigation. The spiders will suck all of your links into their database and then return to visit each of them in turn. This is how they find their way around your site and this is how you will get all of your pages indexed.
“Home” … or “Click Here” … how many times have you seen these used as anchor text? OK, so if your anchor text is being used by the engines to help them define the page the link points at … what on earth do we use anchor text like “Home” or “Click Here”??? It’s insanity! Yet we see it all the time.
Differing the anchor text pointing at your pages helps the engines to see things in a different light. Since your home page is more than likely defined by the broadest of your categories you may be able to use a few different key phrases as anchor text pointing at it. Be careful on other pages of your site though. Don’t try and target too many keywords to any one page, it will lose focus and be less targeted at the phrases you are trying to target through it.
Use your site map to define your pages via the anchor text with the most important keyword or phrase for that particular page. Good SEO says to use anchor text that is repeated in the title tag. You won’t go wrong here!
Outbound links carry importance just like inbound links do. You want to link out to places that are similar in some way to what your site, or at least whatever page you are on, is all about. Make the outbound link relevant so that it holds value for your users. Don’t be an internet dead end … always have links out to other sites to complete the connection of the world wide web.
Jun
4
There is one thing that seems to be universal in the world of being a human being. That is the desire to be captivated, to be entertained.
Take the time to write up a good title for your content that really shows exactly what the content is about, as well as providing them with no option but to go ahead and read what you have written.
Use the title tag wisely for a web page because it will show up in the search engine results as the title of the particular listing. You want to get the traffic from your listings so make the title engage your reader so they click on your site.
There is nothing that will make a reader move on to whatever is next than a boring title. This holds true for all writing, not only web pages and title tags, and not only the title tag itself, but your heading, which should be the title of your page.
Always use your keywords in the title tag but don’t expect them to be captivating enough on their own to get your readers to continue to your site and read on. Spend some time on this tag to make your readers want to continue reading. Provide them with a question that they need to read on to get answered. Provide them with some need that can only be solved by reading on.
May
29
Long Tail Key Phrases and Algorithmic Changes
May 29, 2010 | Leave a Comment
There are new changes afoot to the Google algorithm and things are definitely changing. Are they changing for the good, or for the bad?
Google is ever changing and perhaps we like them for that, but it’s no fun when you lose listings, and consequently traffic. It seems that this algorithmic change lies in the area of the long tail search.
Traffic is up, or maybe traffic is down for you, from this update. It’s a two sided situation and some have to win and some will indeed lose.
The long tail keyword is a great thing to have good listings for. The proof is in the fact that generally, getting to the long tail search, people have “drilled down” … starting with a more broad search and adding keywords until they get to be very specific.
I have sorted out things on some sites and done some keyword research into other long tails and begun to optimize for them. I believe I can gain some listings back with this method.
I don’t recommend jumping into the pool and making changes … not just yet anyway … or at least, not vast or sweeping ones. Let’s take a look at our statistics and see what other long tails may have popped up and are now sending us some traffic.
May
28
Title Tags Need to Define as Well as Entice
May 28, 2010 | Leave a Comment
You need to utilize the title tag of your site because it is important to your users, to get their attention, as well as to the engines to provide the keywords and a definition of the page.
Keep the title tag short, but not so short that it doesn’t define the page, and be sure to provide both your users and the engines with a very brief yet concise idea of what the page is all about. “Dell Laptops” is a title … so is “17″ Dell Laptops, Windows 7, Norton Security at Discount Prices”. Spend a little time on this tag and it will pay off handsomely.
I don’t like to see a title tag with more than 12 words in it. Less is OK, as long as you are providing the engines, and the users, with the best information.
Give you pages good titles that reflect the value of a page. If you are CEO of your company your title reflects the fact that you are the most, or one of the most, important people in your company. This quick little acronym defines you. Make your web pages be defined as thoroughly with good keyword rich title tags.
May
12
HTML 5 is On It’s Way to Browsers Near You
May 12, 2010 | Leave a Comment
Although it won’t be in everyday use for a while, HTML 5 is being talked about frequently in marketing circles.
It sounds good … perhaps too good? I say that as I see these things come on as highly touted only to fall short miserably in all areas. However, this being HTML, the basic language of the web, I have high hopes for it … and what I have seen so far is pretty good.
There are some sights out there that are using HTML 5 right now. There are browser compatibility issues, of course, and IE vs Mozilla issues, of course, but all in all it seems to be fairly smooth and does, so I understand, offer a lot of things that we use browser plug-ins for right now.
I’ll write more about this as time marches on, but one huge benefit, on more ways than one, is it will remove the need for Flash from websites. I guess many of the advantages of Flash are incorporated into HTML 5 and webmasters will be able to utilize these advantages directly through code and browser support. Save the $700 you were going to spend on Adobe Flash and learn HTML 5!
Apr
15
A Link is a Link is a Link … It’s Just Not the Case!
April 15, 2010 | Leave a Comment
A lot of talk centers around link building and how to get links. Aside from speaking of relevance, I don’t often hear people talking about the links themselves, at least not often when it takes into account the actual value of a link itself, and where it is from.
The value of a link can be bantered about by SEO types but the bottom line is really one of the most basic premises of any website … it’s overall value and worth. Not all websites are created equal, so how can links be? Well, let’s look a step deeper into this idea of the value of a link … beyond all relevance of the site itself.
In all it’s basics when we try to find a good link we look at the website itself, and what the subject matter is. We are looking for relevance. Shoe laces to shoes or blue widget to red widgets type of market comparison, where relevance lives large. But, what about the page itself, are there any reasons here that will make this particular link better than any other?
Here are some factors that a good webmaster with an eye towards making a very valuable web page will be attentive to:
• Often the domain.com name itself.
• The filename.html.
• The title tag, of course.
• The H1 tag, perhaps H2 as well.
So, our subject at hand is finding valuable pages to get a link “from”. Let us evaluate the pages we find for these factors. What I am trying to point out here is … a page that meets these values will be a much more valuable link than one that does not. A page that meets these values will have importance in the Google algorithm and will share that importance with any outgoing link from it.
So what else then is there to determine the value of a page to get a link from? Links of course!
• Inbound links from other sites pointing to this page.
So here we have five ways of judging the value of a link pointing to our site.
I know this makes getting a “good” link a lot more of a chore than it is without meeting these factors but the fact remains … these are things that make for a super valuable inbound link.
There is a lot more to learn about linking within the Advanced SEO Training Course as well as some good basics within the free eBook called SEO Basics 101.
Apr
6
Internal Linking
April 6, 2010 | Leave a Comment
We are always talking about inbound links, from other sites, their anchor text, the PageRank of the site, etc., etc. How about internal links? We need these too!
I like to provide good navigation for the spiders to find all of the links to all of my pages. I like to add in a sitemap as well, to be sure they are getting all the links. On a very large site, where there are a lot of sections, or categories, I want to get as many of the page linked as possible … not just one link to the page, but them repeated, somewhere.
One often used way to do this is by adding a block of links, to every page, at the bottom of the site, along with the footer and copyright. This seems to work well, and I have used this many times, and will continue to do so as well. When a site is so large that this block of links becomes huge, it’s time for another strategy … but what? I have not really come up with a solution here other than having each category link only to all the pages within that particular category, with main category links elsewhere. I’ve used a top horizontal nav bar for the main categories, and listing all the pages within each category down the left nav column. This works, and is perhaps the best solution for a large site with lots and lots of pages.
Internal links are important. I also like to get them within the content itself. I feel this is important in the same way that it is very valuable to get a text link from another site … these links within the actual content of the site are excellent to get. I believe they are excellent in showing importance to another page on the same site as well.
Think out your internal linking strategy and provide the engines with plenty of places to find your links … and make it as easy for your users to get around your site as well. When your users get to the bottom of your page … do they have to scroll back up to find another link to go to? This isn’t the best way to have your site set up. Consider a block of links at the bottom of the content, or along with the footer.