Showing posts with label Search Engine Optimisation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Search Engine Optimisation. Show all posts

Does Your Web Site Make These 6 SEO Mistakes?

You've seen the search engine optimization tips...

Now here are some common mistakes!

  1. Not using the H1 tags for headings.  The search engines give more weight to words or phrases that are emphasised because they reckon they're more important on that web site. Therefore they're likely to be what the searcher is looking for.
  2. Using images for buttons. Search engines can't read images so the button text can't be used for optimization.
  3. Pages that aren't linked to the home page. Without a link it's unlikely that the search engine spider will find the pages.
  4. Images without alt text labels. If you don't put an alt text label for an image people who use spoken browsers won't know what the image is and also it wont be indexed in the search engines either.
  5. Using the same Title tag for every page. Search engines use the title tag to check whether keywords they're searching for are at all relevant to that page.
  6. Assuming which keywords to optimize your web pages for. You need to know which words get searched on using a keyword checker such as Good Keywords or the Overture keywords checker

Mistake 6 is especially relevant to business owners or those who've been in a particular business sector for a long time.

Why?

Because they know everything about their industry, their products and their competitors products.

But they rarely know what keywords people are using during their searches on the Internet.

I once made the mistake of thinking the keywords a business owner was using were those used by his target market.

Wrong!

Well, not completely wrong, but it did mean I had to do a lot more work to include the correct keywords.

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Are Your Web Pages Making These Mistakes?

Search engine optimization is great for getting traffic to your web site.

What if your page had something on that annoys your visitor?

In a survey carried out in July 2005 Taylor Nelson Sofres (TNS) asked shoppers the things they found most annoying.

The survey discovered the following items that people found extremely annoying:

  • Those pop-up ads (83.8% of people surveyed)
  • needing to install software to use the site (72%)
  • non-working links (66.2%)
  • Required to register/log on before viewing the site (61.1%)
  • Pages that load slowly (57.3%)
  • out-dated content (56.5%)
  • hard to navigate (55.4%)
  • poor site search tool (52.4%)
  • Little or no contact information (50.2%)
  • back button unavailable (49%)
  • Use of too much flash and animation (41.5%)
  • text that moves (33.5%)
  • audio playing automatically(30.1%)
  • poor appearance (28.3%)

While these "mistakes" or irritations don't do much for Search engine optimization they do stop users from using or bookmarking sites.

And after all being number 1 on Google doesn't count for anything if they don't use your site when they get to it does it?


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Can Subdomains Help With SEO?

A domain name that contains one or more of your major keywords is going to get better ranking than using a domain name without your keywords in it.

However, a further refinement is to look at using sub-domains.

For example rather than using a single domain structure like:

your.site/advertising
your.site/pressroom
your.site/optimization

You could use subdomains, for example:

advertising.your.site
pressroom.your.site
optimization.your.site

This is a current discussion over at Search Engine Watch.

I recommend using subdomains when you have substantial unique content for each subdomain so they're really almost mini web sites on their own.

Otherwise I would tend to use the initial single domain structure and make sure that all pages are accessible from the home page with 2 clicks. That usually means creating a site map and placing its link on every page.

As noted at Search Engine Watch there may be good marketing reasons for you to decide to use subdomains. So review the need for subdomains as part of your initial web site creation and review strategy. 


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SEO Copywriting Using Links For More Traffic

My main blog (Marketing For Power Packed Business Growth), aside from being a mouthful to say has been gradually increasing in numbers and I now get hundreds of views per month.

Whenever I've decided to write copy that revolves around a specific keyword that post has attracted more readers.

You know that one of Google's major elements for working out search rankings is how important the content of a particular page is for keywords.

And funnily enough a lot of weight is given for links from other sites with the keyword in the link text. 

So for example I've done a post on creating better business cards on my other blog.

Let's say someone searches for "Business Card".

 if I simply put "post at my other blog" when I refer to the business card posting that is the only part Google will see in linking to that blog post on business cards.

If I put "Create A Better Business Card" as the link text to the blog posting that really helps the search rankings because Google has picked up the key phrase (Business Card) and because an external link "recommends" the site the search ranking for the page goes up.

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5 Insider SEO Tips

Rather than just one tip I'm giving you 5. They all come from another SEO expert, Andy Jenkins whose partnership with Brad Fallon has just created a massive buzz about their SEO coaching program on the site I've blogged about before: Stompernet .

 Right. Let's see about hitting Google to rank you higher in the search engines.

First of all, don't hire a search engine optimization (SEO) company until you understand about Search engine optimization.

 

That's because there are a huge number of SEO companies out there charging money and learning while they do it at your expense. And in some cases not even  actually improving your rankings.

Because I understand and use SEO myself I've seen awful Search Engine Optimization, both in content and link strategy for quite a number of sites. Even some web designers who should understand the principles who are completely clueless.

Here are 5 points that will help you in choosing and working with an SEO company.

1. From personal experience the 80/20 rule applies to SEO. That is 20% of the work will account for 80% of the results.

So ask for an itemised quote so you can check you're not paying too much for the 80%.


Some SEO experts still tell you they'll spend hours checking and redoing your site's keywords and meta tags. There's no real evidence that such tinkering helps your rankings.


Simpler things, such as making sure all your pages can be indexed by the search engines is more important. Obviously you still want to do the other 80%, but make sure that the priority (and cost) is on the effort that gets the best results.

2. SEO firms say only black hat SEO companies or scammers guarantee rankings. However I guarantee you can be ranked in the top 10 on Google.


How...?


It all depends on the amount of money you're willing to spend and the time you're able to wait for the results. After all if an SEO firm believes they can improve your rankings, why not offer you a guarantee?

3. You can see immediate results. Many SEO experts tell you it takes months to get results.


Untrue. It depends on your keywords and what you're doing and you can often see results within a week.


Obviously highly competitive keywords take longer.


If the SEO expert looking to sign you up tells you it'll take three months to get any results they're simply looking for a long term contract.

4. SEO isn't too complicated to explain to the layman. In this case you! SEO experts like to blind people with science and make it sound very complicated.


True there are some complexities. But equally there are quite a few of the important tasks that are straightforward to explain. Get some explanation that way you can compare what experts tell you and check for consistency and true expertise.


5. You've probably heard that links to your site are the most important factor in SEO. That means a lot of focus needs to be on getting links into your web site. Having an SEO firm "optimize" your site is important for the first few months of going live but not as vital as getting good links to your site.


As I said before I've blogged about SEO and one of the great resources I've found is Brad Fallon and Andy Jenkins site at Stompernet. Their massive push to get people to join their monthly coaching sessions is over - thank goodness my email flow has slowed down now!


If you go to the link you can't join the coaching anymore it's full but they do still have some useful and free SEO videos that are worth watching.


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SEO Copywriting

SEO copywriting what's it all about?

Is it really an enormously big mystery that normal mortals shouldn't venture into?

The short answer to that is "RUBBISH!"

There's no reason at all that the average company can't do there own SEO copywriting. It does take time and research to do so. But other than that it really is straight forward.

What you really pay for with a good SEO copywriter is their ability to research keywords that you might not even think about (and that get good traffic) and incorporate them smoothly into your copy.

Additionally there are a number of tactics, almost completely unrelated to your web site, that improve your web rankings.

So what are those I hear you ask...

Tune into my next post where I'll explain one very powerful tactic and introduce the next one.
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