Keyword Placement: Where Is The Best Place To Stick It? (Poke It? Cram It? … Uhm)
I have said plenty of times that keyword placement is more important than keyword density. But where exactly is the best place to stick your, uh, keyword? Well, I can tell you now, it isn't in the gutter (where you're thinking). No, the best place to stick your keyword is your page headline. To be more specific, right at the beginning of the headline. And notice, I did say headline. Not title. The difference between your page headline and title is academic, but important. The title is a meta tag, title tag. It goes under the hood. And while the mechanics under the hood are important, the decoration above the hood is far more important. Because, unlike an automobile, the fancy adornment at the top actually produces CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Spellmeleon Assists Savvy Search Marketers
A good amount of the time Matt Cutts shares some really useful stuff. Like Tuesday. While there are some really good tidbits in that blog post, I'd like to focus on just one thing that has probably been talked about to death over the years but that is still worth a good discussion now and then. The issue is misspelled words. I really like the feature he calls "Spellmeleon". If you misspell a word in your search query Google will ask if you meant such-and-such and then give you some results based on that. But Spellmeleon actually provides a better service. With Spellmeleon you still get the "did you mean ..." but you also get results for your original query, indicating that Google will honor CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Will The Google Trends Gadget Optimize Your Website?
Google recently announced that webmasters can put a Google Trends gadget on their website. Google Trends is one of Google's coolest tools that allows webmasters to see what the trending searches are over time. And just in you're wondering, the gadget is customizable so that you can show your visitors what the trending search topics are for your industry. Why would you want to do that? Well, you might want to do if you want your visitors to know what other people are searching for related to their interest in your niche. But don't expect it to help you with the search engine optimization efforts of your website. The information returned and output in the gadget is wrapped in an iframe and iframe's might CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
How To Write Alt Tags
Much is written about alt tags, but not very often do you see anything about how to write one. So I'm going to do that right now. An alt tag is a tag is often used to describe a photo or graphic. It's not a way to get more of your keyword in there for the search engines so they'll know what your content is about, but it can be a good way to add an additional SEO element. Sound contradictory. It isn't. Keep in mind that the search engines define graphics by the surrounding text. If you have a paragraph that wraps around the graphic and that paragraph uses your primary keyword and a secondary keyword once each. That isn't a lot of clues. But CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Are Geographic Keywords For Local Businesses Still Necessary?
Since Google has started returning a Maps result for many local search queries even if the searcher doesn't specifically search for a local business, it is necessary to include geographic keywords in your content? Absolutely. For more than one reason. Keep in mind that the Maps search results only appears for certain types of searches. For instance, you'll get the Maps query for a search on "dentist" no matter where you search. The Maps will show the dentist's closer to your location. Other search queries like "plumber" will also show local results if Google knows where you are searching from. It won't work, however, if you are traveling. For instance, you live in St. Paul Minnesota, which is where you typically make your search queries from, CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Is There An Anti-SEO Approach That Works?
Listen to some experts and search engine optimization is the Force. Go against it at your own risk. But is there ever a time when you can make a website work - that is, make it profitable - without SEO? Can you shun the SEO business and still make money? Generally, I'd never encourage anyone to dismiss with on site optimization principles when building a new site, but there are times when SEO just isn't going to help you reach your goals because of it building and long term nature. Of course, one could take the argument that good content is far more important than SEO anyway, but that's a different discussion altogether. The real issue to building a successful website without optimization is far greater CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Can You Rank For Key Terms Without Inbound Links?
More and more I read online where some search engine optimization expert is telling people they can't rank without inbound links. This is about the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. Of course you can rank without links. How do you explain a blog post that goes to Page 1 on Google within a couple of hours before dropping off the radar? Do you think it suddenly bagged a bunch of links within two hours then fell because the competition managed to gain more links? No. That rarely happens. On-page content is the most important aspect of SEO. It always has been and always will be. Because the search engines are constantly updating and changing their ranking algorithms, the degree to which on-page content and inbound CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Is SEO A Zero Sum Game?
A zero sum game is one in which a gain for one person means an equal loss to another. That is, if you win the other person loses, and vice-versa One example of a zero sum game is in professional football. Two teams match up and at the end of the game there emerges a clear winner. The team that wins gets a 1 in the left column and the team that loses gets a 1 in the right column. The fact that one team won means the other team lost. That's a zero sum game. Search engine optimization or SEO isn't played like that. It's not zero sum. There are no clear winners and losers since there are a large number of variables that affect CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Local SEO Just Got Easier
An interesting article in WebProNews illustrates just how easy local SEO is now. Is this the way Google is going to start handling all queries now? I performed my own search at Google for the following search terms: Chiropractor Dentist Auto mechanic Internet marketing In all except the last case, Google returned local results. I did not have to search for local, Google returned it automatically. I think this is a great trend and it illustrates a very important concept - that Google knows, based on your IP address, where you are geographically. That's very important for search engine optimization experts to know. If you are building a local business in certain niches then it is important to submit your website to Google Maps. The reason a search for CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Why SEO Is A Dirty Word
Talk to some people and you'll find that SEO is a dirty word. I agree, it sure it. But why? I think I have the answer. There is this mindset, especially in Internet culture, that says anything that propels a person to success is dirty and gritty. Success is just supposed to happen. So if you build a website and hit it big because you've dominated your niche, it should be an accident. You should not have planned it that way. Another reason I think SEO or search engine optimization is a dirty word is because people don't really understand it. SEO means you've tried to rank pages of your website for specific keyword phrases highly in the search engines.. But Google isn't based on people trying to CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Will Real Time Search Improve SEO?
There's a battle brewing between Google's link-based search engine optimization algorithms and a newfangled approach to search via Twitter. The latter uses real time data based on tweets and Twitter streams that are ever-changing and constantly updated. Some folks are predicting that Twitter Search will outpace Google Search and be the most popular search engine in just a couple of years. That may be true, but will it improve how people search? First, Twitter's links are all nofollow so the likelihood of the tweets affecting optimization in a Google sort of way is rather slim. But tweets do show up in Google searches so there is reason to believe that search engine marketing will be affected by the long term sustainability of Twitter. In order to CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Image Optimization Best Practices
Peter Linsley, product manager at Google, discusses best practices for image search optimization. How can webmasters position their images for best results to improve the image search feature at Google and assist searchers in finding the images that they want to find? It's a good question and particularly pertinent because none of the search engines have perfected image search to the level that regular web search is at currently. There is still some ways to go. His four salient points stick within the boundaries of: Focus on the User Using High Quality Images Staying Above the Fold Providing Descriptive Text These are all great points but what he doesn't discuss are keywords and alt tags. These are both very important for optimizing your images and both go hand in hand with CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
How Long Should Your Meta Description Tag Be?
I've seen meta description tags get cut off in the SERPs. Have you? There is a reason this happens. It's because there is a limit to how much description the search engines will display in the SERP for any search result that appears. Google will display up to 160 characters in your SERP snippet. Yahoo! goes up to 165 characters. And MSN will display over 200 words. You don't want to go beyond the smallest number, 160. Keep it short. But is character limit all there is to think about in writing your meta description? No. Of course not. You also want to think about optimizing your meta description and write it in such a way as to entice searchers to click through to your website. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
CSS Or Tables: Is The Argument Over?
Ever since the turn of the millennium web designers have been arguing over CSS and tables. Tables, of course, are the old way of doing things. CSS is the new way. But if there any afforded advantage to using CSS over tables? Talk to someone like Chromatic and the answer is yes. Talk to someone like Decloak, however, and the answer is a resounding No. I'm no designer, however, so I can't speak from personal experience on every single point. I will make the observation that Chromatic's arguments seem to be focused on what is best or easiest for the designer and not for the client. There is one point he makes, though, that I will disagree with entirely. CSS is not better CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Do You Need A Sitemap?
A sitemap is a document that you submit to the search engines or file on your website to make your site more crawlable and to make it easier for the search engine robots to find your pages and index them. It's a useful tool many for many webmasters, but does every website need one? In a word, no. If your website consists of only five pages then you don't really need a sitemap. If you do a good job of linking between your pages and develop some inbound links to your website then it isn't necessary to put up a sitemap so that the search engines can find all five of your pages. Unless you have serious issues with your links and the code on CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
SEO Journal is Written by
Brick Marketing Founder,
Nick Stamoulis:
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