Demystifying Websites & SEO
Dang! December already. November blew by in a flurry of web projects, writing gigs and marketing consulting with several new clients. That along with some speaking gigs.
Speaking of speaking, I’ll be presenting Demystifying Websites & SEO at Citibank in Tamarac, Florida on December 12. For those of you that aren’t in the area, here are some highlights from the search engine optimization part. It’s hardly a definitive work on SEO, but it should get you moving in the right direction.
It’s estimated that there are 231.5 million websites floating around out there. Those sites serve up over one trillion pages. That’s a whole lotta pages. How’s a self-promoter to be found? Well, the sad truth is that most aren’t.
I have a handy little plug-in for Firefox that shows a page’s Google Page Rank and Alexa ranking. If you’re not in the know, Google ranks pages on a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 being the best. Google’s a 10. JoeSchmo.com’s probably a 0 (actually, I just checked and it turns out they are, in fact, a 0).
It’s pretty sad to see most of the sites folks ask me to review have a Page Rank of 0 or maybe 1, if they have a rank at all. There are usually a few things these sites have in common. They have page titles like, “Home,” “XYZ Company,” or “About Us.” Not exactly descriptive from a search engine point of view. Well, I guess they’re okay if someone out there is searching for “Home,” or “About Us.” The content tends to be focused on the business, not the visitor and isn’t often keyword-rich. You don’t want it to be too rich, just rich enough. But, we’ll talk more about that later.
Page titles are pretty important when it comes to search engine optimization and it’s a good idea to have some keywords in yours. I’ve found that it works best for me is to lead off with your best keywords, and end with your company name. Unless you’re a household name, or folks already know of you, it’s a safe bet that they won’t be using your business name in their search efforts.
How do you know what keywords to choose? Our friends at Google have a nifty keyword tool that helps to take the guess work out of finding your best keywords. Plus, it’s free. You simply pop in your best guess to start. Google will return with the number of searches conducted for that term or phrase in the past month ... plus a slew of alternates. Take it for a whirl and look for the keywords with the highest number of searches. Those are likely to be your best bets.
Once you have your winners, incorporate them into your page titles and content. The latter is the tricky part. Writing for the Web is different than writing a brochure or an ad. The reason are the balancing act of including keywords while maintaining a sensible flow and keyword density. Keyword density is a double-edged sword. Too little and the search engines won’t think your site has any useful, relevant content. Too much and they’ll think you’re keyword spamming. That can be an easy way to get your site banned from the search engines. That would be a bad thing.
Do a search for “keyword density checker,” and you’ll find numerous, free online tools to gauge your density for specific keywords and phrases.
You’ll still want to have your metadata in place. Metadata is the section of your page code that carries the page title, description, keywords and other info for the search engine bots. Although the keyword tag isn’t used by Google anymore to directly index a site, it’s still useful. The description tag also isn’t as important as it once was, but hey, every little bit helps.
The biggie when it comes to SEO is also the hardest thing for small businesses to get – backlinks. Backlinks are links to your site from other sites. But, not all links are created equal. You want “quality” links. A quality link is one, ideally from a fairly robust site, that carries content similar to yours. For example, a photographer would want a link from, say, the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) or links from other photography related sites. A link from CreativePro or HOW Magazine’s site would be a good fit for a graphic designer. You get the idea.
So, how does one go about getting backlinks? First off, you’ll want to have all the usual social media bits going on. That means a Facebook account, Twitter, LinkedIn, perhaps YouTube, if video is relevant for your purposes. Be active on these sites and build up some content.
Next, get yourself listed on as many relevant directories as you can. Again, these should relate to your site’s topic. These can be industry directories, associations, portal sites and such. Fire up Google and you’re sure to find a boat load of sites where you can get listed.
Online press release submissions and syndication is another way to gain backlinks. But, it’s important not to submit releases simply for backlinks. Your release should be authentic and newsworthy. A link back to your site is gravy. Plus, releases tend to head off to the archives pretty quick.
Articles are a bit more permanent. If you have a flair for the written word, and something useful to write about, consider drafting some articles and submitting them to syndication sites like ezinearticles.com.
You might also consider authoring a blog. Search engine bots will love to gobble up your keyword infested poignant prose. A "bot," by the by, is a little piece of software that the search engines send out to roam around the Web, hitting sites and indexing them. Bots, robots, spiders are synonyms. Alas, I digress. A blog that relates to your business is a search engine is a natural. Blogs carry loads of content and, unlike me, most authors update their blogs on a regular basis.
Avoid, at all costs, getting into Black Hat tactics. Black Hat tactics are all the shady tomfoolery used in an attempt to dupe search engines like keyword stuffing, invisible text and doorway pages.
The search engine gang are hardly fools and they’re on to these techniques. Practice them and it’s another sure way to get your site banned.
Finally, SEO is an ongoing task and it takes time to get decent rankings. I tend to launch new sites on Sunday evenings. I wish I had a quarter for every client that called me on the following Wednesday asking why they’re not number one on Google. Give it time. If you’re diligent and follow these basic techniques, over time you’ll find your ranking moving up.
Speaking of speaking, I’ll be presenting Demystifying Websites & SEO at Citibank in Tamarac, Florida on December 12. For those of you that aren’t in the area, here are some highlights from the search engine optimization part. It’s hardly a definitive work on SEO, but it should get you moving in the right direction.
It’s estimated that there are 231.5 million websites floating around out there. Those sites serve up over one trillion pages. That’s a whole lotta pages. How’s a self-promoter to be found? Well, the sad truth is that most aren’t.
I have a handy little plug-in for Firefox that shows a page’s Google Page Rank and Alexa ranking. If you’re not in the know, Google ranks pages on a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 being the best. Google’s a 10. JoeSchmo.com’s probably a 0 (actually, I just checked and it turns out they are, in fact, a 0).
It’s pretty sad to see most of the sites folks ask me to review have a Page Rank of 0 or maybe 1, if they have a rank at all. There are usually a few things these sites have in common. They have page titles like, “Home,” “XYZ Company,” or “About Us.” Not exactly descriptive from a search engine point of view. Well, I guess they’re okay if someone out there is searching for “Home,” or “About Us.” The content tends to be focused on the business, not the visitor and isn’t often keyword-rich. You don’t want it to be too rich, just rich enough. But, we’ll talk more about that later.
Page titles are pretty important when it comes to search engine optimization and it’s a good idea to have some keywords in yours. I’ve found that it works best for me is to lead off with your best keywords, and end with your company name. Unless you’re a household name, or folks already know of you, it’s a safe bet that they won’t be using your business name in their search efforts.
How do you know what keywords to choose? Our friends at Google have a nifty keyword tool that helps to take the guess work out of finding your best keywords. Plus, it’s free. You simply pop in your best guess to start. Google will return with the number of searches conducted for that term or phrase in the past month ... plus a slew of alternates. Take it for a whirl and look for the keywords with the highest number of searches. Those are likely to be your best bets.
Once you have your winners, incorporate them into your page titles and content. The latter is the tricky part. Writing for the Web is different than writing a brochure or an ad. The reason are the balancing act of including keywords while maintaining a sensible flow and keyword density. Keyword density is a double-edged sword. Too little and the search engines won’t think your site has any useful, relevant content. Too much and they’ll think you’re keyword spamming. That can be an easy way to get your site banned from the search engines. That would be a bad thing.
Do a search for “keyword density checker,” and you’ll find numerous, free online tools to gauge your density for specific keywords and phrases.
You’ll still want to have your metadata in place. Metadata is the section of your page code that carries the page title, description, keywords and other info for the search engine bots. Although the keyword tag isn’t used by Google anymore to directly index a site, it’s still useful. The description tag also isn’t as important as it once was, but hey, every little bit helps.
The biggie when it comes to SEO is also the hardest thing for small businesses to get – backlinks. Backlinks are links to your site from other sites. But, not all links are created equal. You want “quality” links. A quality link is one, ideally from a fairly robust site, that carries content similar to yours. For example, a photographer would want a link from, say, the American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) or links from other photography related sites. A link from CreativePro or HOW Magazine’s site would be a good fit for a graphic designer. You get the idea.
So, how does one go about getting backlinks? First off, you’ll want to have all the usual social media bits going on. That means a Facebook account, Twitter, LinkedIn, perhaps YouTube, if video is relevant for your purposes. Be active on these sites and build up some content.
Next, get yourself listed on as many relevant directories as you can. Again, these should relate to your site’s topic. These can be industry directories, associations, portal sites and such. Fire up Google and you’re sure to find a boat load of sites where you can get listed.
Online press release submissions and syndication is another way to gain backlinks. But, it’s important not to submit releases simply for backlinks. Your release should be authentic and newsworthy. A link back to your site is gravy. Plus, releases tend to head off to the archives pretty quick.
Articles are a bit more permanent. If you have a flair for the written word, and something useful to write about, consider drafting some articles and submitting them to syndication sites like ezinearticles.com.
You might also consider authoring a blog. Search engine bots will love to gobble up your keyword infested poignant prose. A "bot," by the by, is a little piece of software that the search engines send out to roam around the Web, hitting sites and indexing them. Bots, robots, spiders are synonyms. Alas, I digress. A blog that relates to your business is a search engine is a natural. Blogs carry loads of content and, unlike me, most authors update their blogs on a regular basis.
Avoid, at all costs, getting into Black Hat tactics. Black Hat tactics are all the shady tomfoolery used in an attempt to dupe search engines like keyword stuffing, invisible text and doorway pages.
The search engine gang are hardly fools and they’re on to these techniques. Practice them and it’s another sure way to get your site banned.
Finally, SEO is an ongoing task and it takes time to get decent rankings. I tend to launch new sites on Sunday evenings. I wish I had a quarter for every client that called me on the following Wednesday asking why they’re not number one on Google. Give it time. If you’re diligent and follow these basic techniques, over time you’ll find your ranking moving up.
Labels: neil tortorella, search engine optimization, SEO
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