SEO Tips For Internet Marketers

Not a week goes by where a reader or a client doesn't ask me a question based on some bad SEO advice they heard or read somewhere. Most of the time they don't know it's bad advice. They assume that if they read it in a blog, went to a seminar, listened to a webinar or even discussed it with a company that provides SEO as a service, the advice must be solid. Sometimes (usually if they're a long-term HRA reader ;) they may think it sounds a bit fishy, and smartly ask for my opinion.

While it's true that among SEO industry veterans there can be disagreement about what works and what doesn't, there are some SEO tactics that have been known by all who have even the slightest bit of intelligence to be useless. And yet they still crop up as SEO advice -- all the time!

Just last week I got an email from a longtime HRA subscriber who told me that his friend had attended a seminar where the speaker told them they should submit their website to search engines on a monthly basis, and proceeded to provide them with the name of a tool that would do so for only $99 per month!

And just yesterday, someone emailed me for my opinion when she read in another email newsletter that Google only indexed the first 100 words on a page!

When I hear this sort of irresponsible and incorrect information being spread to impressionable Internet marketers in the making, I get irate. In fact, here's what I said in response to the question about submitting sites to the search engines:

"I honestly can't believe that there could still be, in 2011, someone who would speak to an audience on any form of Internet marketing who would recommend submitting to search engines, let alone one that would recommend spending $99 (or even 10 cents) a month to do so. In fact, it enrages me. That person who spoke must be a sales rep for that [submission tool] company, and he or she should be thrown out of the business and not allowed to speak on the topic ever again."

While it is likely that the speaker was a paid sponsor there to peddle his putrid website submission tool to clueless newbies, I started to wonder about others who spread this sort of silly SEO stupidity, and why.

Here's what I came up with:

It's easy to implement. This is likely the main reason that SEO stupidity spreads like wildfire, and the reason that is the basis for all the other reasons. SEO -- that is, real SEO -- is hard. Stupid SEO is easy. (So what if it doesn't work? That's just a small inconvenience!)

Incompetent SEOs have a vested interest in perpetuating silly SEO. The more people who think that SEO is about submitting to search engines or about meta keywords, the more people will sign up for their boondoggle services and the more ill-gained money they'll have lining their pockets.

Old articles get recirculated. There are more than 15 years' worth of old, out-of-date SEO articles from a variety of sources that may look credible on the surface (and perhaps were at one time), but that provide advice that has nothing to do with SEO in the 21st century. Just do a Google search for "Should I submit to search engines?" and you'll see all sorts of fun stuff. Even Google's Webmaster Guidelines point to their Add-URL page, which is all but worthless.

Designers and developers know just enough SEO to be dangerous. I'll just point you to my "85 Reasons Why Website Designers / Developers Keep SEOs in Business" article to explain this one.

Forum circle jerks. There are, surprisingly, still a lot of SEO forums in the online world, most of them full of newbies. While it's great that new people in our industry want to learn SEO, they need some professional and competent SEOs there to guide them. Yet on many forums it's a case of the blind leading the blind. A newbie thinks some silly SEO technique works and spreads it to the other newbies. Eventually one of the more enterprising young SEOs writes the "Newbie Bible to Stupid SEO" and at that point what is said must be true (cuz it's in the bible!).

Believing what you read or hear instead of figuring it out for yourself. This truly irks me to no end and is definitely one of the major causes for the spread of many a silly SEO idea. If something you read sounds credible, then by all means give it a try. But unless you see proof of it working with your own eyes, then don't believe it...even if the most credible person in the SEO world wrote or said it.

Mixing up cause and effect. Another one of my pet peeves that has been common since the beginning of SEO time. Just because you changed the positioning of a word in your title tag and the next day you ranked one place higher in Google doesn't mean that your change is what caused it. It may have, but it may not have. We used to joke on the High Rankings Forum that if you keep a cabbage on your monitor it will increase your rankings. Why not? It's as likely as some of the silly SEO theories that are based on poorly drawn conclusions that mix up cause and effect.

They're set in their ways. We all know that people hate change. Many SEOs are no different. But just because a 1990s search engine could only index a certain number of kilobytes of information on a page (likely due to bandwidth constraints) doesn't mean that today's Google works that way. The search engines themselves have made huge strides over the years, and while the basics of making a great site will always remain the same, the mechanics of how to do that change often. So to the person who recently asked me if hand-coded HTML pages will rank better than dynamically generated ones, the answer is a definitive NO, even if it may have been true in 1996!

Coincidentally, just as I finished writing all of the above, I received an email from my friend and colleague Karon Thackston, who has a new client who was previously told by one of those silly SEOs, "You need a THOUSAND words of copy on your eCommerce Home Page, and cram it full of keywords"! She was also told by another silly SEO, "You need to rewrite ALL the copy on your entire site because it's no longer 'fresh.'" Apparently, he qualified "fresh" as anything over 60 days old. Sigh.

With SEO stupidity such as that being spouted to unsuspecting website owners each and every day, as well as for the reasons stated above, I fear it's going to be many more years before most people can sort out the facts from the SEO fiction.

Labels: Keeps, Silly, Spreading, Stupidity

Are you looking to drive loads of natural search to your website? We’ve researched and put in practice various techniques to help improve our SEO rankings on this site and on a number of other sites we run and manage.

We’ll be sharing the  top 10 secrets to increasing your Google ranking through tried and tested SEO (Seatch Engine Optimisation) best practices. Click here for getting started with Search Engine Optimisation (this link will take you away from this page).

Part 1:

Competitor research is key to gaining the upper hand over your competitors. It might go without saying but this step is crucial to understanding your SEO plan of attack.

By understanding your competitors and your market you can benchmark your site against theirs and see where your site is better, or in some cases worse, than theirs. Research their activities on Google in both natural and paid search – this will give you further insight into what keywords your competitors are using.

Competitor Research will help you to set realistic goals for yourself and your business and will help you to identify what SEO strategies could work for you.

Keyword research is vital to any SEO strategy. Make sure you spend adequate time researching your markets keywords and don’t allocate budget until this is completed. I say this because you need to identify the critical keywords which need to be optimised first.

To get you started on keyword research we recommend using the Gooogle Keyword Tool. This will give you a rough idea of exactly which keywords and key phrases are being searched for.

As you start sinking your teeth into SEO optimisation you’ll soon learn that sometimes it’s the keywords that you think of last, or not at all, that bring in the best conversions

Google loves headings and subheadings. We like them too. They are a great way to break up content, they make large amounts of copy scanable and it helps to direct readers to whatever it is they are searching for.

Both headings and subheadings are important for search engine optimisation as it helps Google to understand the relevance of your content, the layout and the make-up of your site.

Remember too include headings and subheadings on every page with the relevant targeted keywords in each of them.

Page titles are your secret weapon. Use them and use them well! Here are a few tips to help maximise your SEO.

Google’s listings display 66 characters, including spaces, for a page title. Use this space efficiently by including the right keywords for the page in question.

Begin your page title with the relevant targeted keyword and not with your company name. Google is looking for what products and services you offer and not who you are – you can use your description in your meta tag to reassure your visitors.

A meta description is a short paragraph of copy that describes what your site is. It can be found in the page code and only search engines can find it. Google displays this text in its search results under the page title text.

Your meta tag should entice people to click through to your site and should act as an advertisement for your brand.

A few things for you to remember about your meta description:

Your meta description should be clear and to the point. It should summarise your website, using keywords, and what visitors can expect too find on your site.Your meta tag should compel the reader to click through to your site.Keywords in your meta description should match those in your page title as well as the content on your homepage.

Labels: Google, Higher, Ranking, Secrets

Sadly when picking a domain name for a new website all the best ones for SEO are usually taken; have no fear though as there are still lots of great domain names available…

- Exact keyword match domain names were once a prime online commodity, for example if you had a website about “Umbrellas” then the domain name Umbrellas.com would automatically do very well in the search engines with very little SEO.  Luckily the days of exact match domain dominance has dwindled in Google and things are a lot more open to people who weren’t lucky (or rich) enough to get the perfect domain name.

If you can get the perfect matching domain name then that’s great, if not then don’t worry too much just make sure your main, broad keyword is mentioned within the domain name for example WonderfulUmbrellas.com would be fine in the example above.

- The domain extension is important for a few reasons. You can buy domain names with many extensions including ‘.com’, ‘.co.uk’, ‘.biz’ and ‘.co’. Usually the lesser known domain extensions are available (like ‘.biz’ for example) because they are deemed a lot less valuable than common extensions such as ‘.com’ and ‘.co.uk’.

It’s true that websites that use say the ‘.biz’ extension are on average more spammy/untrustworthy than sites on the ‘.com’ extension; educational or government extensions are generally very legitimate.  Google’s Matt Cutts has quoted that the domain extension doesn’t effect Google’s rankings of a website which has had many strongly opposing views from SEO’s around the globe.

Whether or not it’s bad to use a ‘.net’, ‘.biz’ or ‘.co’ domain name extension, these have three more distinct disadvantages:
1) People find it hard to remember anything but a ‘.com’ or a local extension such as ‘.co.uk’ when you mention a website’s name in person or on a real-world advert
2) Webmasters trust domain extensions such as ‘.biz’ with less regard due to the number of spammers using them, finding external links and gaining trust is therefore a lot harder
3) Most businesses serve local areas, if your target market is the UK then a ‘.co.uk’ will help a little with SEO and gain local visitor trust

- Brands are becoming more important in SEO and it’s a great idea to create one before choosing a domain name.  Brands usually have a physical location, gain natural links and people search for them on search engines, this means that brands are a good trust signal to Google, Bing, Yahoo etc. so they gain a little more advantage in SEO.

Brand names can get associated with products/services, or more importantly keywords; when you think of the brand Ferrari most people will instantly think of ‘cars’ or perhaps even ‘sports cars’ for example.  Google also associates keywords with other keywords, a function that boosts it’s spell checking facility, paid advertisements and little things such as the Wonder Wheel.  If your brand name was associated with a certain product or service then you have a double boost with both keywords in your domain name if you chose a name in this format: [Brand Name][Main Keyword].com

We have worked with a new brand named ‘Controliss‘ which sells blinds online. Google’s related search terms for Controliss now associate the brand name with ‘blinds’, it’s main keyword.  This has helped the Controliss website reach page 1 of Google.co.uk for the keyword “Blinds” in less than 9 months from scratch, a very lucrative position to be in.

So when choosing a domain name think about creating a brand and adding in your main keyword for SEO. Avoid domain extensions (also known as TLD’s) such as ‘.biz’ and if you are a local business then perhaps go for your local domain extension and also buy the ‘.com’ for future security.

One last thing to mention is dashes; always consider how easy it is for another person to remember your domain name after you tell them the name in person. Each dash in a domain name represents another barrier in getting people to a website, more than one dash makes it near impossible!  Avoid domain names such as best-umbrella-company.com, if possible avoid dashes completely, there is a strong consensus that two or more dashes will harm your SEO in general.  Good luck!

Labels: Choose, Domain

One of the quickest ways to improve your sites SEO ranking and probably the most important on-page ranking factors is the page title meta tag. The page title meta tag should contain at least one instance of the keyword you are trying to rank highly for on Google.

The recommended maximum length of a title tag is 70 characters. The reason for this is that search engines will use the title tag in the search results displayed by the search engine. Any more than 70 characters will result in the title being cut off and not displaying correctly.

So why is the page title so important? Quite simply, search engines will use the title, and a combination of other elements, to determine the topic of the web page.

Search engines send out spiders which grab the content of the web page. You should try and use the keyword you have chosen as close to the beginning of the title as you possibly can.

Let’s say the page is about a dog walking service you are offering in particular area, say, Surrey. Then a good choice of title tag would be “Dog walking service in Surrey” or “Surrey dog walking service”. Simple and to the point. This combined with some header tags and content that describes the same service should ensure that the search engine has no confusion regarding the topic of the page.

Well that’s another post in our SEO basics on-page done. I hope you find it useful in improving your site SEO. There is so much to cover when it comes to SEO and I would encourage you to comment with topics that are of interest to you.

Labels: Basics, factor, onpage, ranking, title