Keywords – A Key Component to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Part III

It has been estimated that 70% of all business transactions begin with a search.  Even if that is 50% correct, that means over a third of business transaction begin with some type of search function.  Clearly, coordinating all effort toward appealing to those searches is necessary to drive business to your website.  Logically then, it follows that doing so is a matter of knowing what people are searching for.  From my previous post we know that finding out what search terms (i.e. keywords) need to be targeted isn’t a matter of simply guessing.  So how do you employ them to get people to find your site?  Include them in the right areas of your site in the right proportions.  Here’s how:

Domain Name – admittedly using a keyword or a combination of keywords in your domain name is not often an option, however, doing so on landing sites IS almost always an option.  More about this in a later post.  Suffice it to say for now that this can make a huge difference in how search engines rank your site.

Metatags – “Meta” information is simply user-defined data that is added to your site specifically for the search engines.  It is, for the most part, unseen by visitors to your site and should be crafted using keywords.  It’s important to mention, however, that not all search engines even use metatags in their ranking algorithms.  So it’s still valuable to include your keywords in your metatags, just know that certain search engines – Google especially – will ignore the data.

Site Title – This is the name that appears in top of your browser.  Often you’ll see website titles like “home” or “welcome” or some other name that lacks keywords.  Including a keyword or multiple keywords in your site title can make a big difference in your site rankings.

Anchor text of Links – For sake of simplicity, let’s divide the links on your website into 3 parts: the name of the link, the string of characters that says where the text goes, and the tool tip for the link (the anchor text).  The tool tip is text that shows up when you hover your mouse pointer over the link.   Make sure your anchor text includes your keywords

H1 & H2 Headers – These are the titles of your articles and or sub-articles.  Resist the urge to title the different articles on your site with catchy or nifty titles – unless they include your keywords.

Content – I talked about how keywords should be used in your content in a few of my previous posts, but for the most part using your keywords 2 to 3 times within the first 150 words is a good starting point.  Additionally, keeping your keyword usage within 2% to 5% of your total word count generally works out best.

Online Marketing – What Matters the Most

Unlike other advertising mediums (magazine, yellow pages, radio, tv, etc.) the online world moves fast, often changing by the day.  It’s part of what makes online marketing so challenging and intriguing.  It also means that in order to succeed you have to be better than your competition.  So understanding what factors matter the most can make all the difference.  Here’s a quick list (and maybe a little recap from previous posts) of the things you should pay close attention to as you engage in your online marketing efforts:

• Keyword in your domain name – whether it’s your main site or a landing page having the proper keyword(s) in your domain name is critical.
• Age of domain – not much you can do about this, but it’s important to note that there’s value in the duration of time you’ve owned your domain name.
• Title of Web page – Pretty self explanatory here.
• H1 & H2 tags – Header tags, especially your H1 and H2 tags, should be properly worded and, ideally, specific to the keywords your targeting.
• Competition of the keywords – know your keywords and compete them intelligently.
• Keyword density – Articles you write, blog entries, pretty much all content can benefit from good keyword density.  In general, using a keyword 2 to 5 times in first 250 words of any content is a good rule to follow.
• Unique content – Content is king.  Nothing replaces quality, unique content.
• Frequency of updating – Search engines like change.  Keep it fresh and make them happy.
• Internal link structure – I’ll be posting more about the dynamics of website links in the future, but for now, ensure you have a logical link structure for your site.  And be careful not to create a link structure too deep.  No more than 3 layers deep if you can.

Next time, more about keywords – how to find them and what to do with them when you do.  Stay tuned.

Design Principles for Satisfying the Search Engines

Before I delve too deeply into the design principles that will help your site rank well, it is incredibly important to keep a few things in mind:

• Getting your site to rank prominently is not the end goal – or at least it shouldn’t be.  The end goal is to get people to contact you and ultimately, purchase your products or services.
• Accomplishing the bullet point above will only happen by executing a variety of online marketing activities well.
• Search engines read the text of your site.  To take a look at how a search engine might “read” your site you can use a tool like Lynx Viewer.

Okay, with those points duly noted, executing proper site design principles for the search engines is absolutely essential to getting quality ranking results for your site.  In short, good design can be overly-simplified in this way: it’s the way you label the different parts of your site. Let’s take a look at how to do it:

We can get into some advanced design principles in later posts, but for now, we’ll go through the following areas:

• Title Tags
• Header
• Body
• Alt Tags
• Meta (index, keywords

Title Tag – this is the text you see at the top of your browser when your site is up.  Naming this properly is exceptionally important.  It should be descriptive and focused.  Even better would be if it used terms people will use to search for your site.

Headers – Headers can generally be described as the titles of articles and other prominent text found within your site. There are different levels or categories of headers beginning with H1 headers (generally the first title on a page), going down to H6 and so on (less prominent headers).  All headers should be descriptive and specific to the pre-established goals of your site.  Your H1 headers in particular should be very specific to the keywords your targeting.

Body – this is the text of your site.  See my previous post about crafting quality copy for your site.

Alt Tags – Ever use pictures or other images on your site?  Of course you do.  Alt Tags provide the search engines an alternative method for displaying images in case those images don’t display properly.  Instead of naming your image something like “stock photo #5″, give it a name that is specific to the keywords you’re focusing on. 

Meta Tags – In general terms Meta Tags are simply user-defined terms or text assigned to different areas of your site.  Once upon a time, Meta Tags were the way to get your site ranked by the search engines.  Today, meta information is still important, but not nearly the way it once was. Most search engines look at the data, but the value of this data varies. 

One last note that is probably fairly obvious at this point: be very careful about the use of flash or other “web development tools” on your home page.  Often search engines won’t be able to “read” them properly thereby reducing or eliminating all your other optimization efforts.  Splash pages are almost always a bit no-no.

Okay…now that we’ve talked in detail about how to create your site, it’s important to discuss the platform and hosting variables that can make or break your optimization and marketing efforts.  That, next time.  Stay tuned.

Good Website Design – Finding the right look and feel

Unlike writing good copy or utilizing quality programming principles, developing the “look and feel” of your site is highly subjective matter.   Consequently, a one size fits all approach isn’t possible – or advisable.  Rather, the graphics, font, menus, and other visually appealing characteristics of your site should be specific to your business, industry, and the goals you’ve set for the site.  As such, it’s impossible to provide highly specific advice on the best graphics or other visual aspects of your site.  However, I can offer some generally accepted design concepts and guidelines that you can use to base your design efforts upon…

·         People read websites like they read anything else – from left to right and from top to bottom.  Consequently, you want to keep this in mind as you plan the layout of your site.  Functionality, navigation, and menus are generally best placed on the left or across the top.  Important information is subject to the same considerations.

·         Of course colors are a big part of your site design.  The use of color is highly subjective, however, the best advice I can give you here is to use good ol’ fashioned common sense.  For example, red text on a black background is almost never visually appealing.  If you’re an environmental company, you probably want to consider using some green in your site.  If you’re a bakery you may want to consider using warmer brown and tan tones.  And so on. 

·         Font.  The font you use on your site is critically important to developing a quality website.  You’ll find varying opinions on which font is the best, but as long as it is easily readable, sized appropriately, and consistent across your site, you should be in good shape.  

·         Whitespace isn’t bad.  As is the case with printed materials, just because you have space on the page doesn’t mean that you should fill it all up.  Doing so will give your site a cluttered, claustrophobic feel.  Just ask Google.

·         Easy on the flash and other special effects.  These “effects” can be visually appealing, sure, but what about the 7^th time someone visits your site?  At that point they could probably do without the effects.    

Keep in mind that all the points above are general guidelines.  Ultimately, there’s bound to be a website somewhere that breaks the rules and still successfully performs its desired functions.  Yet, if you start with the ideas above in mind, you stand a good chance of ending up with a website the “feels” good to the viewer. 

Next post…good stuff about website copy.  Stay tuned.

How to Market Your Business Online

So it’s pretty obvious these days that advertising in the Yellow Pages and similar books is not the quality investment it once was. Equally obvious is the reason why…the Internet, of course. But marketing your business online is a very different game than simply deciding whether you want a quarter, half, or full page ad in the Yellow Pages. Numerous different variables play a role in the effectiveness of your efforts. Even more challenging, unlike the days of advertising in a book, the online market changes daily – sometimes even hourly. So exactly how do businesses effectively market themselves in this new, technology-driven world? In short, effective online marketing is a combination of website design, paid advertising activities (such as pay-per-click), directory management, social media marketing and others. Sounds confusing, right? In all fairness I suppose it is rather confusing. But the good news is it isn’t really that complicated once you understand the basics. Really. The other good news? Demystifying the online market is the subject for an upcoming series of posts I’m going to be doing over the coming weeks. Stay tuned.