How to Create Audience Friendly Title Tags

December 22, 2011 By

There’s many ways that people can find web pages, but beyond word of mouth, businesses need to rely on the support of but there are several key tips to ensure that you know how to create SEO and audience friendly title tags.

Audience Friendly Basics

One of the major things that businesses need to pay attention to is that their headline is entirely readable.  It should relate to the contents of the article or post itself and, as a business, you have to be sure that your readers are going to be entirely clear on the content that you’re offering them.  It’s of vital importance to ensure that your SEO friendly articles are, first and foremost, reader friendly, because if they’re not, no one will link to them, and the link building will fall entirely to you.  More importantly however, if the article doesn’t perform, people won’t stay on your site to read your other content, and if you’re using your articles as a gateway to your other content.  It’s important to ensure that your content is as attractive as possible, but also performs the way you’d like it to.

SEO Friendly Title Tags

Choosing SEO friendly title tags can be as simple as choosing title tags based around your keywords in your article.  Not only does that meet the need to be audience friendly when creating article titles, but it will allow you to meet your need to offer information in your title that’s not only accurate but supportive to your content.  Keywords in your title can also really help you narrow down the focus of your article, and help you decide on the slant and angle of your content, especially over broader topics.  In short, it’s important to ensure that you pick SEO friendly keywords and use them in your articles and in your title, that way, you’re creating SEO and audience friendly title tags without using black hat tactics and you’re sticking to behaving in favour of your readers, and ensuring that the content serves them – and your business – with ease.  Without being able to do that, you’ll find it difficult to create long lasting content.

 

Filed Under: SEO, SEO Strategy

Are Iframes Bad for SEO?

December 21, 2011 By

Iframes (otherwise known as inline frames) are windows that can be placed on your webpage to enable your readers to view another website without reloading another page.  Usually used for advertisements, iframes can also be used to embed interactive applications into a website such as Google Maps, a puzzle application or a YouTube video.  They can also include text which must be scrolled through by the website user to read.

Why do Websites Use Iframes?

The majority of website owners who use Iframes on their pages claim to do so because of the great user experience.  They are also useful for creating galleries when flash coding isn’t desirable and can look really seamless when done correctly.  However, many of the website owners who incorporate Iframes into their site do not realise the effect that they can have on SEO.

Are Iframes Good or Bad for SEO?

The general consensus by webmasters is that Iframes are bad for SEO.  This will of course depend on the type of website that you have, but as the content included inside the Iframe is not able to be crawled by the search engines, many believe that this can severely affect an SEO campaign – especially if the majority of your website’s content is in an Iframe.  Furthermore, a webpage that is full of Iframes is very hard if not impossible to view on mobile or tablet devices which can lead to a disappointed web user on top.

Content is King for SEO

With the algorithms of the search engines constantly being updated, the only thing that has remained consistent over the years is the importance of content.  Unique and high quality content is always at the forefront of a search engine update and with Google now trying to improve its search engine results for its users more than ever, it has never been more important for a website to have unique and valuable content.

As Iframes are unable to be crawled by the search engine spiders it is highly important to include a substantial amount of high quality content on the same page if you do choose to use them.  A website that purely contains Iframes and no other content at all will not rank in the search engines.

 

Filed Under: SEO Strategy

Is It Possible To Build Backlinks Using Twitter?

December 20, 2011 By

As Internet marketers we are constantly on the look out for new and beneficial ways to build back links and to generate traffic for a website. There are arguments to both sides of the story as to whether Twitter links are considered good value as SEO links. Google has stated that it will consider Twitter links as backlinks but there remains the question of relevance and keywords especially when using URL shorteners to help save space.

Social Networking

Twitter is one of the most popular social networking tools on the Internet and it can be used to gain a lot of popularity, a great following, and some serious social attention. However, it should not be considered a sustainable and long term linking solution purely for the benefit of SEO. Links from other accounts can prove difficult to come by and because you cannot dictate the exact keyword used in the link it is very difficult to use for SEO purposes.

Twitter Use

We do recommend that you continue using Twitter, though, because it is one of the most popular websites on the net. Millions of people use it everyday to find new information and to gain access to top quality sites from around the world and this could include your website.

Filed Under: Link Building

Meta Tags and SEO

December 19, 2011 By

Everyone who runs a website knows that if you want to rank high in the search engines, all you have to do is include all of your keywords in the keyword meta tag, right?  Not even completely close!  Seriously, if it was that simple to get a high search engine position purely by writing your keywords in the keyword meta tag, there would be a lot of internet SEO companies out of work.  So should you use it, or is it a complete waste of time?

The Most Abused Meta Tag

Originally useful (when the internet was small) the keyword meta tag was an easy way for a search engine to determine what a website was about.  However, with all things this simple it didn’t take long before it started to be abused by spammers and before long people were spamming the keyword meta tag with unrelated keywords and the same keyword more than once to increase their search engine ranking and the amount of traffic their website received.  This clearly gave the tag little worth and many of the top search engines now choose not to factor it into search results.

Should You Use it?

Matt Cutts from Google has openly said that Google do not pay one bit of attention to the keyword meta tag on a webpage, however this does not necessarily mean that every search engine is the same.  As the search engines use a variety of factors in their algorithms to determine a website’s position, it takes a lot more than an abused keyword meta tag to rank high.  Therefore many SEO experts recommend still entering information into the keyword meta tag as although it probably won’t help your search engine ranking it also won’t do it any harm – unless you abuse it.

It all depends on which search engine you are trying to improve your position in as to whether you should use the keyword meta tag.  If you are going all out for Google, there is little point in using it, and if you are assumed to be abusing it, it could do you more harm than good.

 

Filed Under: SEO

So What is a Good Backlinking Strategy?

December 16, 2011 By

There’s been a lot of talk recently concerning backlink diversity, mainly due to the recent Google algorithm changes.  For those of you who don’t really know what’s been going on, Google have made some changes which directly affect the way that content farms such as Ezine Articles, HubPages and Squidoo work.  Due to the changes, webmasters who haven’t practiced backlink diversity in the past have found their sites penalised.

Backlink Diversity

A good backlinking strategy does not involve getting hundreds of links from one source, and this is why many article marketers have found they have been penalised of late.  Many webmasters do not think about backlink diversity and so instead may choose to publish 100 articles on Hub Pages.  They then find, a few months down the line, that they are still in the same search engine position as where they started.  The solution is to garner ranks from a multitude of different sources with the aim of them being as diverse as possible.

Backlink Link Sources

In order to have backlink diversity you will need to have links from a number of different link sources.  Some of the main sources include:

  • Article Directories – these are what we discussed above, and although in many cases the links are “no follow” this isn’t necessarily a bad thing when you consider that they add to the diversity of your backlinks.
  • Blog Comments – surprisingly these can be highly effective when done correctly.  The trick is to comment on blogs that already have a high search engine authority.  There are thousands of these online; it just takes an hour a day to get a blog comment backlink strategy going.
  • Social Bookmarking – this is a way to get some quickly indexed backlinks and although it’s not as reliable as some of the other methods it does add to your backlink diversity.
  • Blog Directories – again whilst submitting your website to blog directories won’t necessarily help your search engine ranking, it does help with your backlink diversity which does help your overall SEO strategy.

When all is said and done, a link is a link, but this does not mean that the more backlinks you have, the better your website will rank in the search engines.  The trick is to focus on balancing your links out and focusing on backlink diversity – this really can help your overall SEO strategy.

 

Filed Under: Link Building

SEO Competitor Analysis – How Do You Do it?

December 15, 2011 By

SEO competitor analysis is one of the most important things any business can do to ensure they’re being competitive in an environment of ultra-competitiveness and will give you the edge that you need to create a successful SEO system.

Analysing your competitors

The first thing you need to do when analysing your competitors for SEO purposes is work out where your competitors are.  You can start as small as five URLS – choose five sites that you can find based on searching your primary keyword.  It’s critical at this point to choose 1,2, 4,6 and 8.  If you choose 1-5 you might find lots of the same information and your SEO competitor analysis won’t work.

There are three things you should focus on analysing primarily

1) Use of keywords – have a look at everything, from titles, and copy on page, to alt tags, images and meta tags.  It’s difficult to judge what is going to remain useable in the long term, but for now, meta tags and more are important and should be paid attention to at all costs.  That’s one of the major areas you should be analysing

2) Social media including blogging – again, focus on keywords – what articles are they working with, what information are they sharing and what keywords are they focussing on?  It’s important to work with the information available.   Once you’ve analysed this there is one final place to check out.

3) Look at the domain name – in many cases, the domain names contain more clues than many people realise, so examine the domain name, and if you can, any other domain names they are using for branches of their site, if they are.  Look at subdomains and explore the site thoroughly.

Once you’ve done all of this, you should have a strong keyword list that you can use to analyse your competitors.  Once you’ve gleaned enough from the pages, you may want to subscribe to their blog feeds, and then start again on another site.  It’s critical that you continually stay on top of your analysis of competitors sites to ensure that you’re working with the freshest trends and your best slants on those trends to stay ahead of the game.

 

Filed Under: SEO Strategy

Using Twitter to find fresh Backlinks

December 14, 2011 By

Social media is moving from strength to strength and there appears to be no stopping this incredible way to make use of the Internet.  If you are trying to work on a successful back linking campaign you would be very foolish if you were to ignore the powerful business resource which is networking on social platforms such as Twitter.

Reaching an Active Audience

Twitter recently disclosed the amount of active users that they have, stating there are 100 million active accounts. By active they mean that the account holder has logged into their profile at least once during the past month.  That is a lot of users, although still far behind Facebook’s 800 million it is still a powerful force to be reckoned with.

Twitter is Perfectly Designed for Posting Links

Twitter is the ideal social media platform to use when working on building the amount of quality backlinks which lead to your website. The small amount of characters suits links down to the ground. Users are comfortable linking through to see what is on the other side of the link and it can be a fantastic way of attracting new and returning visitors daily.

Weight With the Search Engines

However, the use of twitter for back links goes beyond reaching an active audience. Search engines are also well aware of the website and have admitted that they use it in their algorithms which determine how high up your website is listed in the search engine results pages. Therefore Twitter is being used by many businesses to their advantage, and if you are not their already you should seriously consider signing up and using it for your business too.

Tips on Making the Most of Twitter for Your SEO

Creating a profile on Twitter costs nothing, all you need to have is an abundance of time. The more followers you can attract the better too as if you can have your back link retweeted the more weight it has with the search engines. Using hash tags is another great way of reaching out to the right type of audience.

Use your keywords with a hash tag in the front of the word to entice the right people to find your back link. This will not only increase the amount of people who will potentially want to use the link you create, it may increase the amount of retweets you achieve, and the amount of followers you have, therefore you stand improve the quality of your future back links on Twitter too.

 

 

Filed Under: Social Media Marketing

SEO and Subdomains

December 13, 2011 By

When putting a SEO strategy together you have to consider all the angles and possibilities.  You obviously want your ranking to improve, your brand awareness to increase and your sales to soar.

Luckily there are no rules regarding subdomains, which are considered useful SEO tools.  The advantage is you can embed a large number of subdomains and categorize them according to language, city and more.

These subdomains are usually easy to remember, they create brand awareness and they act independently to your own full website.  You can put pertinent information and products on the subdomain according to the city you are targeting, sometimes these subdomains are considered more useful and user friendly than the main site.

The biggest advantage is you can name your subdomain after your chosen keywords, ensuring it appears in search engine results, these are often considered more credible than subdirectories.  They are diverse, flexible and you can organise them according to certain criteria.

The Bad Bits

Of course anything as good as this has to have its bad bits.  The first thing is that they have been given a bad name thanks to all the spammers out there.  These spammers have used subdomains to get to people, advertise junk products and have just caused chaos.  For some reason the major search engines don’t pick up whether they are the main site or subdomains, which is beneficial and detrimental to you.

When you have your website hosted by a company they often only offer you a limited amount of space to host your website, this will limit you in the amount of subdomains you will be able to have. Another problem is a majority of these hosting companies offer free website design; these designs don’t allow for certain criteria needed for subdomains.

The Solution

If you want to go all out on your SEO campaign, it’s advisable to outsource to a SEO specialist.  Someone who will be able to get around the hurdles, get your SEO and subdomains up and running smoothly and get you in the top rankings when it comes to search engines.

Anyone specialising in SEO will be able to get your company listed and ranked within a short period of time, they will also be able to advise on solutions to get your company website considered as credible, which means the higher your search engine ranking will be.

 

Filed Under: SEO

The DMOZ Directory and SEO

December 12, 2011 By

DMOZ is a major open source website directory.  Originally directories such as DMOZ were created to organise information on the internet, however unlike many other directories DMOZ was renowned from the start for its human editors.  A website owner could, if they wished, add their own site to the directory however whether it was accepted or not was down to the moderators at DMOZ.  This led many to believe that DMOZ was a directory that contained only the best sites on the web.

Being Listed on DMOZ was a Huge Plus

In the late 1990’s, DMOZ was touted by the big search engines including Google and Yahoo and many of the sites that were accepted into DMOZ found themselves having a high position in the search engine rankings.  This led to many blog and website owners fervently trying to get their website to be accepted into the directory.  Just after the turn of the century, Google created its own web directory.  The company decided to use DMOZ as the source and then sort all of the websites by PR.  Many SEO experts at the time believed that in order to run a successful SEO campaign it was paramount to be accepted into the DMOZ and Google directories.

DMOZ has Gone Downhill Since Then

Although initially thought to be the most important website directory online, many people now have not even heard of it, and many others are querying its credibility.  As the DMOZ directory grew, so did the number of human editors that were required to maintain it.  This led to many querying the quality of the directory and over the last few years, the DMOZ directory has seen a large decrease in visitors.

Content is King

As Google and many of the other search engines have gone on to update their algorithms, new ways of telling the worth of a site have been established.  One thing that has always had some weight but is now said to be more important than ever is “content is king”.  Many SEO experts now believe that no matter what online directory you are listed in and no matter how beautiful your website is, if your content is valuable and if it is updated regularly, your website will be found by search engine users.

 

Filed Under: Directory Submission

Outsourcing SEO

December 9, 2011 By

SEO is a word you hear thrown around a lot lately, especially when you are discussing marketing for your business.  What is this SEO?  SEO is search engine optimization and is the use of keywords, phrases and other techniques designed to improve your businesses ranking in search engine results.

Think of a customer looking for a product you supply, they type in the product into the search engine and get a list of companies offering the product.  If you’re not within the first few companies listed, you are losing out on web traffic and sales.

Getting your head around this new technology isn’t easy, there are so many ways to promote your business and choosing carefully selected keywords, knowing how to use them in blogs and articles to increase your ranking is a specialised job.  This is why outsourcing is the solution.

Why Outsource SEO

There is nothing stopping you from hiring someone on a full time basis to work from your offices and purely handle SEO.  Though this will require a full time salary, desk space, a computer and internet connection.  All of this costs money, never mind you need to pay leave pay, sick leave, national insurance and tax for the person, so all in all a very expensive exercise to promote your business.

Outsourcing enables you to hire a reputable company that specialises in SEO.  This company will understand the ins and outs and what your business needs to succeed on the internet.  Through their expertise you will increase website traffic, your sales will increase and your search engine ranking will improve.

The major benefit is that you don’t have to pay a set salary; you can pay the company when their services are needed, you also relieve yourself from having to pay PAYE and national insurance and if they’re sick, it really isn’t your problem.

This is an affordable option for any company who wants to improve their SEO campaign.  With times moving forward when it comes to technology, the only way for any business to succeed is through an excellent SEO campaign, which should include carefully considered keywords, key phrases, blogs, articles and links, each one designed to improve ranking, build brand awareness, increase website traffic and improve profitability.

 

Filed Under: SEO
« Older Posts
Newer Posts »