SEO for Web Designers – Make Time for These 5 Essentials

As a freelancer for many years I know what it feels like to be a web designer who’s strapped for resources, trying to do a great job for your clients, and feeling like there just isn’t enough time to handle marketing tasks like SEO.

Whether your a generalist web design freelancer or just an entrepreneur launching your first product site, SEO often gets left until the last minute and by then you’ve already made things more difficult for yourself.

How about a 5 point rundown on the absolute must dos for SEO? With these 5 points you will have taken care of about 80% of what really needs to be done to optimize your site for search engines and if you follow this list you will at least have a website which is built on a solid foundation so if you have time you can come back and do a more in depth optimization in the future.

Here we go.

Build SEO Into Your Plan From the Beginning

I’ve already mentioned this one once and that’s because it really is the most important point. There’s no magic bullet to SEO. Getting results takes work. However, there are two different ways to work. You can either work hard or work smart. Both types of work will get you to the same result. The difference is you can either do it efficiently and have time for a margarita in the hammock or you can do it slowly and be all sweaty when you get to the end.

To work smart with SEO first you need to figure out how the software that you plan on using handles URLs, page titles, and meta descriptions. Do this before you start building. You can use whatever software you like. I am not going to advocate for one language or CMS over another but whichever software you pick you need to do research and understand how it handles SEO. Here is a basic SEO rundown for popular CMS’s.

To Continue to work smart you need to create an outline of how you are going to structure the content of your site. If you want to you can do a full silo plan for your site but if you’re like most busy people you probably don’t have time for that.

The solution is just to create an outline of your site which lists the top level navigation (home, about, contact, etc.) for your site and then lists what content will be go into each of those areas. If you are planning a blog you can do the same thing for your topics. Create a clear structure that will be easy for people to navigate. The key here is that people need to be able to easily understand where they are on your site at all times. If people can navigate it then search engines will be able to navigate it as well.

Use Longtail Keywords

When you are creating the pages and topics for your site think about writing your content around terms that will make your site both relevant to your readers/customers and uniquely specific to those people. “Dog parks” is a term that would be relevant to your readers if you are running a doggie blog. “Dog Parks in Berkeley” is even better. It’s relevant to your readers but it’s also specific to them meaning that you will be getting just he right information to just the right people. These highly specific keywords are called longtail keywords and they are a good way to maximize the effectiveness of your content by making sure that you are reaching people who will be very interested in your website, product, or service specifically. Here’s my 2-step process for finding winning keywords.

Sitemaps

Ever pulled up to an intersection and cursed the local urban planners because there was no street signs? That’s how search engine bots feel most of the time. They have to do a lot of extra work to figure out what your site is about and that negatively impacts your SEO. A well built site map is like a feast for search engines. Search engines love them. It allows them to very easily get a complete picture of your site in milliseconds and they don’t have to do any guessing which adds up to more targeted traffic coming to your site.

Keyword Your URLs, Descriptions, and Page Titles

The urls, meta descriptions, and page titles you chose for your site should use the same longtail keywords that you are using in your site content. URLs, meta descriptions, and page titles are 3 ways that you can tell search engines who your site is important for. Longtail keywords give search engines a clear signal that the page that you are presenting is going to be full of very tasty information for whomever is searching for it.

Use Google Search Console

It used to be called Webmaster Tools, now it’s called Search Console but it’s still the easiest way to tell Google what your site is about. Search Console is a one stop shop for setting up your site in just the way that Google likes it. Here is a link to the places where you can get all the info that you need to set up your site correctly with Search Console.

Conclusion
Let’s be honest with ourselves, having the time to master all aspects of web design is practically impossible when you have limited time and budget. Creating a site, writing content, and optimizing that site each day is often not in the cards.
You can set yourself up for success however by doing just a few tasks early in the design process that will help you optimize your site and set either you or your client up for success in the future.
Start by asking yourself, “Do I want to work hard or do I want to work smart?”
Source : business2community

E-commerce experts reveal 7 ways to boost your B2B online sales

Here's how to get ahead in the increasingly competitive B2B e-commerce market, with seven ways to optimise your B2B online sales.

1. Target your audience with verified business and consumer data

"As corporate data grows 40% annually over the next decade, marketers need to get a handle on their data quality. It’s estimated anywhere between 10 and 25% of B2B marketing databases have errors, according to VentureBeat's 2014 State of Marketing Report," says Jay Blaker, Data Ambassador at Infogroup, which services 70% of Fortune 100 companies.

2. Grab their attention with strategically placed earned media coverage

 About one in every four news consumers are influenced by content in news outlets, e.g. print and online media, when written by a brand, found Acquity Group's 2015 Next Generation of Commerce Study. That's according to Allison Ward, Senior Account Executive at Walker Sands Communications.

3. Drive traffic through killer search engine optimization (SEO)

"Forrester’s Interactive Marketing Forecast for 2011-2016 predicts that 26% of all advertising spending will come from interactive marketing. $33 billion of that spending will come through search," adds John Fairley, VP of Digital Services at Walker Sands Digital.

4. Gain trust through strong product content management (PCM)

"78% of consumers say quality product information online is very important when it comes to making a purchase decision, and 64% say the same for in store, as found in a new study by Shotfarm," comments Mike Lapchick, Founder and CEO at Shotfarm, a product content exchange network.

5. Build loyalty by providing a personalized customer experience

Bob Barr, Managing Director at Acquity Group, Part of Accenture Interactive, says: "Nearly half (49%) of consumers are comfortable with retailers collecting personal info, in exchange for more personalized service, according to a past Cisco Customer Experience Research report."

6. Optimize your serviceability with a scalable e-commerce platform 

"87% of buyers prefer ordering from a company offering delivery transparency, as found by The Acquity Group 2015 Next Generation of Commerce Study," claims Chris Dalton, CEO at CloudCraze, a natively developed Salesforce eCommerce application.

7. Engage cutomers on social in real-time

98% of marketers report a positive impact to revenue from real-time marketing, with 89% of real-time marketers in agreement that they can easily tie these efforts to overall business goals, according to The 2015 Wayin Real-Time Marketing Report.

Source : pcr-online

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16 Common But Toxic On-Page SEO Practices

When it comes to achieving that coveted 1st position on search engine rankings, you know that search engine optimization (SEO) plays an important role. After all, SEO helps ensure that search engines properly index your website, thus ensuring your website is shown to the right people at the right time.

But beware: Not all SEO practices are created alike. In fact, there are some common but toxic SEO practices that could actually sink your site’s rank, making it less likely that potential customers will find you.

When SEO Hurts: 16 Common but Toxic On-Page Practices

Surprised that there are SEO practices out there that hurt, rather than help? They didn’t always start out that way; in fact, many toxic on-page practices were once crucial to boosting a site’s positioning in search engine rankings. However, search engines have become smarter over the years. Now Google, Yahoo!, and Bing aim to provide the best content possible to their users, which means that your SEO practices will need to reflect a better user experience.

Want to avoid the search engine black hole? Avoid these 16 common but toxic SEO practices:

1. Using thin content: If you’re copying and pasting content from page to page on your site, you’ll end up killing your search engine rankings. For example, if you’re using the same paragraph CTA on each page or using product descriptions that your supplier has provided hundreds of other sites, change up the content to improve your SEO rankings.

2. Refusing to be mobile-responsive: Not only is this bad news for your sales – more customers than ever are shopping with their smartphones – but many search engines will punish your site if it’s not mobile-responsive. Invest in working with a website designer who can create a mobile-friendly website, and watch as your SEO rankings skyrocket.

3. Over-optimizing your content: Back in the day, a common SEO practice was to stuff as many keywords as humanly possible into your site’s text. Search engines have become much smarter, as they realized plenty of websites did this without offering valuable content to users. Optimize your content, but don’t go overboard!

4. Using identical title tags: If you’re using the same title tags across multiple site pages, you’re missing out on the chance to capture more search engine traffic. Use specific and unique keywords for each page’s title tag to increase the odds of getting more visitors to your site.

5. Purchasing links: While many people are still getting away with this bad SEO practice, search engines are getting smarter about identifying natural linking, and when links have been purchased. If someone reports your site as spam, Google will manually review your website, which could quickly unveil your shady link-building strategy. I know, this isn’t technically and on-page issue, but we had to mention it as the ensuing penalty would affect ALL of your pages!

6. Using vague CTAs: If your button copy says “Click Here” or “Search Now”, you’re missing out on an opportunity to use your CTAs to rank your site. For example, if you’re an auto insurance broker, use “Search Auto Quotes Now” rather than a simple “Search Now” CTA.

7. Not optimizing your meta description: Like title tags, each page of your site has a meta description that can be optimized for better indexing. Avoid stuffing the description with keywords, as it needs to make sense to human readers as well as search engine crawlers.

8. Using irrelevant keywords: If one page on your site is dedicated to a keyword that is irrelevant to the rest of your site, you’re going to get penalized by search engines. Remember, relevancy is the most important ranking factor!

9. Purchasing One-Off Domains: This can be an excellent SEO strategy – but only when performed by the right hands. If you have dozens of one-off sites designed solely to point visitors back to your main page, you may get penalized by Google.

10. Using your competition as a keyword: If you’re hoping to get away with stealing some traffic from your competition, take note – search engines are on to you. Worse still: you could open yourself up to copyright lawsuits.

11. Speaking in “Spamglish”: If your site’s content doesn’t make sense simply because you’re stuffing as many keywords as possible in there, you’ll get penalized. Remember, search engines prioritize their users’ experiences with your site.

12. Using “doorway” pages: These webpages are exclusively designed just for search engines, rather than humans. Search engines frown on this practice, so make sure every page is useful to your site’s visitors.

13. Hijacking high-performance pages: Otherwise known as “pagejacking”, this refers to the practice of ripping off content from another high-performing site and using it on your own site. You won’t just get in trouble with search engines; you could also get in serious legal trouble.

14. Using poor guest posts: When done correctly, guest posts can be a great way to build credibility and recognition from search engines. However, if your guests are posting poor, irrelevant, or spammy content – just for the sake of a link back to their own site – your site will be the one that ends up getting penalized.

15. Placing too many ads above the fold: The fold is the part of the site page that’s visible without requiring any scrolling. If you have too many ads above this fold, you’ll be penalized by many search engines – especially by Google.

16. Having a slow site: Does your website take longer than five seconds to load? Guess what – that can count against your SEO ranking! Make sure you use a good hosting provider to ensure your site loads quickly and easily.

Have you ever worked with a company that used these dated and harmful tactics? Have you accidentally made one of these mistakes? Let us know in the comments below!
Source : business2community


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5 Key Aspects of Local SEO

Operating a local SEO campaign can be a challenging adventure in the marketing world, leaving many small businesses feeling like a fish out of water. Often times, local businesses miss out on potential online successes; simply because they are not sure on where to begin. There are a lot of on and off-site factors that play into a local SEO campaign’s success and it is important to implement them throughout the campaign. But what are these factors?
Let’s talk about these key factors that drive success within a local SEO campaign.

Name, Address, Phone Number (NAP)

One of the more important on-site tactics within a local SEO campaign is including the business’s NAP within every page of the website. It is vital that this information is displayed in the exact same format across the website. Including a consistent NAP within the website will allow Google to index the necessary information to include the website within the local pack in the SERPs.

Mobile Optimization

With the rise of technology within the recent years, nearly everybody has a smartphone or a tablet. Due to this, Google has finally updated their algorithm to include a website’s mobile optimization within their ranking factors. This means it is vital for a website to be optimized for viewing on desktop, smartphones and tablets. However, this study conducted by Rizolt shows that implementing mobile optimization can yield enormous online successes for a business.

Google My Business

Acquiring a Google My Business listing can give a local business an enormous leg-up in the competition. This allows a business to be shown within a variety of Google’s services (Search, Maps or Google+) when potential customers are searching for the services that business provides. Keep in mind that it is important to fill out the listing with very detailed information about the business.

Local Link Building

Yes, high-quality, authoritative links are always an incredible win for link building, but when running a local SEO campaign, acquiring relevant links on local websites that are engaged within your potential customers is just as important. Moz put together a directory of local citation opportunities, and earning these NAP citations on local websites will assist Google in understanding how to put the website in front of the individuals looking for its services.

Reviews

Earning local reviews is one of the more important local SEO tactics, since studies have shown they are a driving factor within Google’s carousel rankings. Aside from reaching out to existing customers for reviews, simply Including a link for a website’s viewers to quickly leave a review can be an easy way to acquire online successes, while building a positive image behind a business’s overall brand.

Source : tech

Expert Tips on Multilingual SEO to Boost Your Online Findability

So you’ve created a beautiful, compelling website that wows your home audience. The time is ripe for adapting it for key markets around the world.

But how valuable is your excellent website to your intended audiences if they can’t find it online?
Enter multilingual SEO. Done well, SEO practices for each of your website versions can illuminate your site in the search engine spotlight—right before your customers’ eyes.

Here are some tips from experts on dealing with common challenges arising from multilingual SEO.

The right content for the right market
The biggest challenge by far is making sure your content reads well in all languages. Having native speakers write this for you is of upmost importance. I once saw a native English fashion client describe their range of leather jackets as “skins,” which was hurting their visibility as well as their conversions. Understanding the subtle changes in culture is important for marketing as a whole, so it’s definitely important for SEO as well.

Also important is earning coverage and links from native-speaking sites to the relevant language/locale URLs. This is what will build textual and link relevance for search engines that will associate the content of the page that links to you with your business.
–Shreedhan Vaidya, head of SEO, Engage Interactive

Different domains
With multilingual SEO, each country needs to be targeted separately. I would recommend creating different TLD (top-level domain) websites with 100 percent different content. Each domain should end in the countries’ ending domain. So for France, it would be: http://yourwebsite.fr.
If this cannot be done, then creating sub-domains on the main website is preferable with the country’s language. This will help separate everything.

In the end, this is completely worth the effort.

Also, do not use Google translate for your website. It creates duplicate content issues, which Google and other search engines do not like.
–Todd Jirecek, president/SEO director, Website Marketing Pros LLC

More on duplicate content: Avoid getting dinged by search engines
Always be mindful of the menace of duplicated content. This can make or break your long-term SEO efforts.

To deal with duplicate content-related SEO dangers, you can use any (and I recommend all!) of the below tips:

1) Set up a verified Webmaster Tools account and enable Google to notify you if they detect a duplicate content issue via internal message. Another easy way to find duplicate pages is by checking your duplicate meta descriptions under the WMT > HTML improvements tab.

2) Watch your parameters. When you have one page in multiple languages, each language with various tags for your analytics or marketing can cause unwanted duplicate page creation. So consult with your Web team on the best solutions before you switch your multilingual site on.

3) Use website audit tools like Screaming Frog or similar. They have dedicated options especially designed to sniff out duplicated content. When you find those pages, be sure to add a rel=canonical tag on them so you can show the search bots what the original page is. Not doing this can result in massive SEO damages.

4) Non-translated areas of your website. If you have a larger website, some parts might be left untranslated. This is bad news for the SEO for that specific language. Be sure to have less than 10 percent (I`d even recommend 5 percent, but 10 percent is the standard) of your website without translation.
–Martin Milanov, digital marketing lead, FairPoint

Ready to roll with multilingual SEO?
Consider working with a language service provider who’s heavily experienced with website translation and other global marketing initiatives. Expect tailored guidance with multilingual SEO and an overall roadmap to help you expand your online reach.
Source : business2community

Google Targets Intent With Email, YouTube And Search Matching And Universal App Campaigns

As Ad Week rolls into New York, the tech giants are rolling out their ad product news. Today Google announced moves further into Facebook-style targeting territory, with a new product called Customer Match that will let advertisers upload lists of emails and match them to signed-in Google users on Gmail, Search and YouTube. Google is also upping its game in app promotions.

Meanwhile, Facebook has announced a new service that itself is competitive with yet another platform: Twitter, and specifically in the area of nabbing more TV ad dollars. The social network will be working with Nielsen on a new metric and ad buying option to let advertisers more closely link their TV ad spend with Facebook video spend.

Google’s Customer Match — which will be getting rolled out in the next few weeks — will let advertisers build campaigns based around email address lists that they upload and match against Google’s own database of signed-in users across some of its biggest properties — including Gmail, YouTube and Search.

In an example given by  Sridhar Ramaswamy, SVP of Ads and Commerce at Google, a travel brand can upload the names of people in its rewards program, who will then be served ads from that travel brand the next time they are searching a relevant term. Similarly those ads (or others like them) can then follow a user when she or he visits YouTube or checking email on Gmail.

On top of this, Google will also be giving advertisers the ability to use that same data to find similar audiences — that is, signed-in users who may not be on your own lists but match profiles of those who are and are therefore more likely to be interested in your products.

If you think all of this sounds familiar, it’s because it is: Facebook has been letting advertisers run similar styles of campaigns based around customer databases for years already. Why has Google been so slow to come around to this? Regulatory scrutiny seems to be one key reason highlighted by Digiday, which had reported that targeting plans were in the works before Google made the news official: the search giant has been happy to let others take the lead on this kind of ad tech first because then Google appears as the competitor when it enters the market.

There could be other reasons, too: You could also argue that Google has been so successful with its core search products that the idea of adding new features may have been put on the backburner. Similarly, it may only be now that advertisers are showing so much interest in targeting and ad tech in general that Google has felt the push to roll out similar products itself.

The push from the wider market, and competition from Facebook, it could be argued, may also be behind the new Android app promotion tools that Google is also unveiling.

This is not the first time that Google has leveraged its larger networks in areas like search to promote apps: Google unveiled some initiatives in this space back in May during its big I/O developer conference. Now we have a more complete picture in the form of Universal App Campaigns.
Essentially, what this is is a new type of AdWords product focused specifically on targeting app users across different Google platforms such as Search, Google Play, YouTube, and the Google Display Network, which Google says covers some 2 million websites. Some of this is similar to the intent that Google is trying to capture with Customer Match: a search for adventure gaming apps will yield an ad for, say, an adverture game. What’s less clear is if that intent then follows you to other platforms, or whether Google creates separate intent-based ads in, say, YouTube based on what you are watching.

As with other app-install networks, Google says a developer sets a cost-per-install in order to set up a campaign across different platforms. Source : techcrunch

Facebook’s video ambitions

If Google is wading deeper into Facebook’s territory with app install ads and email-based advertising databases, Facebook is also dipping its toes elsewhere, too.

Earlier today, Facebook, which says it now works with 2.5 million advertisers (up from 2 million in February), announced that it would work with Nielsen to develop and introduce a new metric that it calls the “total rating point” (TRP) to measure how Facebook video ads perform alongside corresponding TV ad campaigns. “Marketers can plan a campaign across TV and Facebook with a total TRP target in mind, and they can buy a share of those TRPs directly with Facebook,” Facebook notes in a blog post about the new product.

As with Nielsen’s early moves to work more closely with Twitter to measure and match up Twitter users with TV consumers, the idea here is to create a stronger link between the old platform and the new in order to encourage more advertising on the latter platform. Video is huge on Facebook, and the social network killing from video ads in its news feed (which are increasingly also going mobile). Making more products to align those even more closely, and with TV advertisers’ budgets, makes a lot of sense.

Other new Facebook products today include brand awareness optimization bidding; polling services coming to mobile; and — in one more push to enhance and expand video inventory — adding videos to the carousel format Facebook introduced earlier this year.


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Watch scientists send brain signals between people over the internet

A new study has demonstrated that it is possible for people to transmit brain signals between one another over the internet – watch how it works here.

You may not believe in psychics’ self-proclaimed ability to read minds, but new research from the University of Washington suggests that telepathy may not be as farfetched as it once seemed. According to a report from Eurekalert, scientists were able to create a direct connection between two brains that allowed people to play a question and answer game without using words.
The researchers were able to allow participants to play the question and answer game by transmitting signals between the two people over the internet. The experiment, published in the journal PLOS ONE, is the first to show that two brains can in fact be linked to allow one person to perceive what the other is thinking.
According to the study’s lead author, Andrea Stocco, “This is the most complex brain-to-brain experiment, I think, that’s been done to date in humans.” Stocco is an assistant professor of psychology and a researcher at the University of Washington’s Institute of Learning and Brain Sciences. The experiment uses peoples’ consciousness through visual signals, and relies on the collaboration between people.
The brain interface is actually relatively simple. It works with the first participant, the respondent, donning a cap collected to an EEG machine that logs the electrical activity in the brain. The respondent is presented with an object, like a dog on a computer screen, and the second participant is presented with a list of potential objects they can guess the first person has seen. The second person, or the inquirer, sends a question to the respondent, to which he can answer either yes or no by looking at one of two blinking LED lights on the monitor that flash at different frequencies.
An answer of either no or yes will send a signal over the internet to the inquirer. This signal activates a magnetic coil placed behind the inquirer’s head. However, only a “yes” answer will generate a response that stimulates the visual cortex in the inquirer, causing him or her to perceive a flash of light called a “phosphene.” This flash appears as a blob, waves, or a line, and is created by briefly disrupting the visual field and letting the inquirer know that the answer is a yes. The inquirer is then able to deduce the correct item through a series of these yes or no questions without actually speaking to the respondent.
The researchers performed the experiment in dark rooms in two different labs at the University of Washington, which were nearly a mile apart. They tested five different pairs of participants, each playing 20 rounds of the game. The sessions were structured to include ten real games and ten control games to compare results.
The scientists made sure that the participants couldn’t use any additional clues besides the direct brain communication. The people asking the questions wore earplugs so they couldn’t associate the sounds produced by the different stimulation frequencies with specific responses. Similarly, the researchers took care to slightly alter the simulation intensities due to their ability to travel as sound waves through the skull that could be used as clues in the game.
The team also made sure to change the position of the coil near the inquirer’s head at the beginning of each round. For the control games, they added a plastic spacer that blocked the magnetic field from the inquirer’s head so that there were no phosphenes generated in response to the answers. The inquirers were not told if they had guessed the correct item, and were unaware if the game was a real round or just a control round. Stocco reiterated that they wanted to ensure that people were not cheating in the games.
The results of the study suggest that the researcher’s method for transmitting information was quite successful. The participants correctly guessed the object in 72 percent of the real games, and just 18 percent in the control games. There could have been many reasons why people guessed the incorrect object in the real games, likely due to difficulties in detecting whether or not a phosphene had actually occurred. Interpreting a new phenomenon is not always easy; many of the participants had never seen a phosphene before.
The respondents could have confused the signals before they were transmitted as well, contributing to a number of incorrect answers. The brain signal was subject to interference from hardware issues as well, so there was bound to be some variation in the actual results. According to Chantel Prat, a staff member at UW’s Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences and an associate professor of psychology, “While the flashing lights are signals that we’re putting into the brain, those parts of the brain are doing a million other things at any given time too.”
The experiment’s roots date back to 2013 when the researchers first figured out they could create a connection between peoples’ brains. Other researchers have successfully linked the brains of rats and monkeys, and even transmitted a brain signal from a human to a rat using electrodes directly implanted into their brains. The UW team was the first to figure out a way to transmit brain signals without invasive technology, by sending them over the internet to control the motion of another individual’s hand.
The experiment was born out of the research of one of the study’s co-authors, Rajesh Rao. Rao is a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Washington, and has spent years working on interfaces that allow people to activate devices with their brains. He began collaborating with Stocco and Prat to design an experiment that would show how far two linked human brains could go in 2011.
The team of researchers received a $1 million grant from the W.M. Keck foundation and got to work designing the games that the linked participants would play in 2014. Their current goals involve seeing whether they can transfer brain signals from healthy brains to developmentally impaired ones, what they call “brain tutoring.” They are also trying to see if they can influence a brain that was affected by an external factor like a stroke or an injury. It could even be used for normal educational purposes between teacher and student.
The research team is close to being able to transmit entire brain states, which would involve sending a signal from an awake person to a tired one to see if he would suddenly enter a state of alertness. This could be used to help people suffering form attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, to focus.
The research has huge implications for the way we communicate. We already use the internet to send messages, recordings and videos, but we stop short of communicating without physically logging in. If researchers could reach an understanding that would allow people to directly transmit brain signals at massive distances, it would represent a massive step in the evolution of communications technology.
It could have huge implications for medicine, cognitive therapy, and could create massive efficiencies in the economy. It will likely be some time before this technology is available for use on a large scale, but the work of these three researchers at the University of Washington could very well change the way we live and interact with each other.

Source : babwnews

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SEO HACKS: 3 Bad SEO Habits You Need To Break Today

Here’s the thing about SEO (search engine optimization): Whether you’re a marketer or a business owner managing your own web presence, it matters. A lot. But trying to define what it means to “be good at SEO,” can be a challenge. Rules are constantly changing, and the algorithms used to place and rank pages in search results continue to evolve as Google and other search engines out there adapt how they determine whether or not a page is “relevant.”

As a marketer, this is what used to terrify me about SEO. Bad SEO can make or break your website, and there is a finite amount of space to get it right.
So that’s what I’m here to talk to you about today because I’ve learned over the past year that SEO doesn’t have to be that scary. Yes, the rules will continue to change, but there is one simple strategy to help take your SEO game up a couple of notches – knowing what are the bad SEO strategies out there that you should be avoiding like the plague…

Bad SEO Habit No. 1: Keyword Stuffing

What is keyword stuffing? It’s when you overload a page with an unnatural proportion of short or long-tail keywords, phone numbers, and other information, in an attempt to game the system to get a better search engine ranking. I have some bad news for the smartypants out there who think this strategy works. Google knows about this practice, to the point where they have a dedicated support page about it.

This kind of practice may have worked back in the day, but now Google actively considers content relevancy, as well as user experience, when calculating a website page ranking. That’s why back in April 2015, Google shared it was going to demote the ranking of websites who did not have a responsive website design. Why? Poor mobile user experience.
The moral of this story is that nailing a particular keyword or content percentage is not going to be what gets you the SEO results you want. In fact, it could have the opposite effect. Which leads me to my next point…

Bad SEO Habit No. 2: Feeding The Robots First

Google, Bing, Yahoo…instead of little ones and zeros, I like to imagine these brands as great big robots who stand guard at the gates of the Internet. When I want to know how long to bake a chicken in the oven, I call upon these Internet Robot Gatekeepers. And when I need to know how to put out the fire in my oven from me over-cooking said chicken, back to the Internet Robots, I go.
This is what bugs me as a user: When I go to a search engine to figure out how to put the fire out in my kitchen, and then the page with the great ranking ends up being awful. It either doesn’t have any valuable information on it, or the information is minimal like, “If your kitchen is on fire, you should probably put it out,”
Best case scenario, I’m annoyed and inconvenienced. Worst case scenario, well, my kitchen is still on fire.
This is the result of something called “feeding the robots first.” Meaning you create a page with the idea of nailing a particular keyword first, and then thinking about the content for the user second. Maybe you did need that page, but maybe you didn’t. Who knows? When you build a page on your website that exists purely to grab the attention of a robot to get a higher search ranking, instead of creating something that provides valuable information to potential customers, someone is going to end up unhappy.
Instead, focus on developing a design and sitemap with purpose that is then further supported with meaningful content geared toward serving the people you’re trying to reach. Then optimize that content for SEO value. Because you can lead someone to your website, but they won’t stay if what you lead them to stinks.

Bad SEO Habit No. 3: Not Considering Page Content An Asset

One of my favorite tools that I use for SEO on WordPress websites is the Yoast SEO plugin. (A tool I learned about when I first started working here at Quintain!)

What I like about it is that it clearly lays out the elements that you need to focus on to make sure you nail your website’s SEO: URL, focus keyword, SEO title, and meta description.
But what I also like is how it includes content as one of the defining factors. If you’re a marketer or an old SEO pro, you probably know how important content is. But if you’re not, well, it’s time to shift your perspective. One of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen made in the past is when someone creates a page chock full of content – including images! – but then the keyword, URL, page title and meta description is where they focus ALL of their efforts.
They don’t realize that getting found online hinges on the synergistic relationship between an SEO keyword strategy and valuable content. You can’t SEO your way out of bad page content with a killer meta description, because content is your biggest SEO asset. This is especially true as Google continues to give more weight to the relevancy of on-site page content, in addition to any other optimizations you may make.

Final Thought

When it comes to bad SEO strategies, the worst out there is thinking there is a magic bullet that will help you win at Google. Instead, think of a good SEO strategy being one that relies on many moving parts, with your content serving as the backbone of everything you do. Is it a difficult balancing act? Absolutely. You can’t have a website that gets the SEO results you want without good content as a foundation. And you certainly won’t see the site traffic you want without doing some keyword research and optimizing your content and search result fields.
But just the simple act of permanently shelving your “gaming the system” tactics can serve as the first step toward having a great SEO strategy.
Source : business2community

New Website? Here’s A Quick SEO Checklist

 Optimizing your site for search engines will help crawlers identify and understand the nature of your site and what information it contains. This enables your site to appear on relevant search results and determines how it will rank. Let’s just say this, the better optimized your site is and the better quality of content and links your site contains, the better opportunity your site will be ranked on organic search engine results.

Now if you are launching a new site, you have a number of things to take into account to rank above your competitors. If you pay attention to the following items on this checklist, your site has a better chance of climbing the ranks even if it is fairly new.

The All Important Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Checklist

The following SEO checklist will greatly improve your search results ranking. It will put you on the right path, and coupled with consistent inbound marketing best practices, you can dominate your competition in no time.

A. Site Speed 

Does your site load quickly? Google and other search engines give precedence to sites that load quickly over sites that are slow to load. Sites that load too slowly are more likely to experience high bounce rates from users. If you want your audience to stay on your site, commit to an action and get value, you have to think of User Experience. Sufficed to say, if it loads too slow, your leads won’t grow.

B. Mobile Optimization

A growing number of people are turning to their mobile phones to conduct activities online. And why not? Smartphones are far more easily accessible and ubiquitous than desktops these days. This is precisely why search engines are taking notice and including mobile optimization as an important factor when it comes to search rankings.

If your site is not optimized for mobile devices, users will have a difficult time navigating through your site. Is the text big enough to read on mobile? Is the navigation clear and easily accessible? Is the content cut out to be digested easily and to the point? Are the calls-to-action clear, big and positioned well? Are the forms fillable? Are buttons big enough for mobile devices?

Your site must not simply exist on the internet for mobile users. It has be designed for mobile interaction with your users. You have two options here — design a mobile version of your site or optimize your site dynamically for mobile devices.

C. Keyword Optimization 

Keywords and keyword phrases help users find your site. Make sure that your website is optimized for your industry-specific keyword phrases. Place keywords strategically on page titles and throughout your site naturally. A good way to do this is to analyze what keyword phrases are being used in your industry to search for the service or products you offer. Pay attention to keyword trends and find out what phrases are being used by your competitors.

Be mindful of using keywords, though. Do not resort to keyword stuffing. The most important piece of your site is quality content. If your audience stumble upon unnaturally occurring keywords throughout your site, they will be turned off completely. Not to mention this is also something that search engine crawlers are mindful of.

D. Content Quality  

Your website content should have the following characteristics:

• Well-written and intuitively formatted so readers can digest the information well.
• Content can not be duplicated throughout the site or found on other websites.
• Internal links that lead the readers to other parts of your site and high quality and relevant external links can improve the credibility of your content.

E. Indexed Pages 

Your website needs to be indexed with the various search engines. Indexed pages are pages that search engine robots have crawled. Using Google Webmaster tools, you can also add the sitemap to your indexed pages. Google recently announced that a site map will help their bots to more accurately crawl and index your website, which in turn can result in better search engine rankings. For example, is the home page the most important page or should the contact page gain preference within search results?

F. Algorithm Overlay

Is your website optimized for the latest search engine algorithms? This is a question that should be answered early-on within your web development process. If your website doesn’t meet the latest algorithm standards, then your inbound marketing efforts can suffer. In other words, a search engine’s algorithm is the series of steps that it uses to populate website results within a user’s keyword search. Understanding the latest algorithms can help you to build a site with better search result performance.

G. Redirects

Make sure that any broken or old links are properly redirected. Creating unique, keyword driven 404 error redirect pages can also help boost your SEO by keeping your audience from hopping onto another site if they arrive on a broken page or a page that no longer exists.

H. Internal Linking

Internal linking helps search engines and users better understand your website and navigate through the pages within. It also helps give greater preference to the most important pages. With this in mind, internal linking should help to reduce the number of times that a reader has to click throughout a site. For example, if a user has just read an interesting blog post, there should be an internal link that directs them to a) other similar posts or b) the contact page (if a call to action was used within the blog post).

I. Image Tags

Don’t forget about the importance of labeling your images (and we’re not talking about a simple caption). Search engines categorize images based on image tags. These tags will tell the search engine robots exactly what the image holds. For example, you might have a nifty infographic on you services page that engages users and succinctly showcases your company’s strengths. The image tags for this infographic should tell the search engine what services you are describing using keywords and keyword phrases. In short, no matter how big or small, each image should have at least one relevant image tag.

Takeaways

By following the SEO tips above you can improve your chances of ranking higher on search engines. Just keep in mind that ranking isn’t a one and done activity though. You will have to have an SEO strategy in place that takes into account new algorithm changes, keyword positions, and even SCHEMA. Inbound marketing activities can help you rank consistently and rise above your competitors. If you want to get found no matter how new your site may be, you should pay attention to the items above.

Source : business2community

How to Use Search Engine Optimization For Your Nonprofit

Say you're launching a new non-profit organization (here's some tips on launching a new non-profit online BTW). What's the first way people will try to find you? They'll usually go to their trusty search engine (most often Google with about 2/3 of the market, Bing being #2) and type in your name.

It's critical that your official website shows up in the first page of results, in the top few choices above the fold if possible.
 
How do you make that magic happen? Here's some search engine optimization tips that will help you land at the top of the heap.

To step back a bit, Moz has a great in-depth guide to how search engines work and how to optimize your results, and SearchEngineLand has a great guide to seo as well. This post is a much more abbreviated work.
Search engines use several factors to determine the ranking of results, but these are the main factors you can control:

• Use keywords in your URL(s)
• Use keywords on your pages (both the page title and in headers, as well as content)
• Get as many quality links to your site as possible
• Tell Google about your site, so that it is completely indexed

Also remember that search engine optimization is a process. There is no magic bullet that will capture you the #1 slot in a day-- or ever, on some hot terms. For better placement, you're going to need to spend some $ on Google AdWords to get in front of your audience.

Google Adwords is a great idea for some non-profits, but especially if your search results are not where you want them to be. If you have a 501 c(3) non-profit, Google ad spending may even be free! More about Google Grants.

Your URL
The most important thing you can do at the start is secure a good URL. An ounce of search engine preventative work will save you a pound of trouble later (and keeping your URL out of the hands of your opponents!). Read my previous post on how to successfully launch your organization online, there's lots of tips in there about securing good URLs.

Use keywords in your URL if possible - i.e. your organization name (if it isn't too long) as opposed to just your acronym. It's unclear how heavily Google or Bing weigh this factor, but it certainly can't hurt. More importantly, it will help people find your site when they just try typing in the name + .com rather than searching. It may be worth buying the long form of your organization name and also the acronym .com and .org, and making them all point to the same place.

Secure good URLs using your name or keywords at Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn and Google+ etc. (if relevant) -- because these sites will usually have a very good search engine ranking without you needing to do much work. Don't forget to set the username for your Facebook page, to make the URL shorter and cleaner!

The reason for this is because quality inbound links are such a key factor in search ranking. And which sites have the most inbound links on the web? Sites like Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, New York Times, Politico etc.. Also this is one of the reasons why Rick Santorum is never going to be able to shake his particular unfortunate results.

And finally, make sure you are using permalinks on your site with keywords in them, i.e. your posts look like joesmith.com/why-i-oppose-keystone-xl instead of joesmith.com/?q=27 This is another opportunity to get keywords into the URL itself of pages.

Your Content
Make sure your content is as search engine optimized as possible. There's a fantastic free plugin for WordPress that we swear by. It makes it easy to determine how your site and individual pages will look to search engines (and when shared via Facebook), by letting you configure the meta description and title for the page. It also lets you solve the common CMS problem of your content showing up with many different urls thanks to categories, tags, and date archives. Google may penalize you for that. Use the LunaMetrics guide for SEOing your WordPress site for more tips. If your site is built in NationBuilder, be sure to configure the SEO settings for each page and for the site as a whole. Here's a guide for NationBuilder and SEO. Here's a guide for how to search engine optimize for Drupal, and here's a guide for Joomla and SEO.
Keep in mind that you want the title, meta description for each page AND the content on the page itself to match up with what people are searching for. So use keywords in the title of the page, and on the page itself (you can even put keywords into alt tags for images), but in a way that makes sense. Everybody's seen websites that are so keyword heavy that the sentences aren't even readable anymore. Google is starting to crack down on that kind of blatant keyword packaging, and overdoing can hurt you.


Remember that search engine optimization will bring people to your house. You still want them to come inside, and not scare them away with a wall of unintelligible keyword spam text. So your meta description and text snippets, social media sharing text, should be written in a way that it encourages people to click through to your site. But if it's misleading or false, people will bounce quickly off your page and Google will penalize you. Make your page descriptions attractive, but accurate.

Quality Links
One of the reasons why I emphasized having your landing page ready when you launch so heavily in my previous post is this: when you launch, it's the one time that newspapers, blogs etc. may link to your site. You need that search engine juice badly in order to do well in search -- as previously mentioned, quality inbound links are key.

But say you missed the boat for whatever reason, you launched with no url or a different URL. Then you'll need to do the hard work of getting as many sites out there as possible to link to you. See if you can get other friendly sites to link to you. Also don't forget if you have an old URL, to redirect it to the new one. You can tell Google (via Webmaster Tools) that your site has moved as well, or when you first launch tell Google to come crawl it (more later on this).

Don't forget about the "quality" part to achieving links. If you get a lot of search engine spam-type emails, these are the folks that use black hat techniques like spamming the content section of websites (or even hacking websites) and packing in paid-for URLs. Google can and will delist you entirely if you use black hat techniques. So, just like buying a questionable email list, DON'T DO IT.

Finally, pay attention to the "anchor text" -- the text you use to describe the link on a page. For example <a href="link">this is anchor text.</a> You want to make sure the anchor text for the quality inbound links matches up with how you want the search engines to think about the link itself. This is a good place to utilize keywords you want to rank for. <a href="link">my website</a> is not as good as <a href="link">friends of the planet website</a>. You have limited control over what other sites use for anchor text, but make sure every link you create has the best possible anchor text. This is critical for how you'll rate for some keywords.

Tell Google
One of the first things you should do as you launch your site (after you have set up an SEO plugin and/or made the appropriate SEO adjustments to your pages) is to tell Google to come crawl it. There are a few different ways to do this.

Make sure you're set up in Webmaster Tools. Did you know Google thinks of www.joesmith.com and joesmith.com as two separate sites? You can tell Google in webmaster tools which is the preferred version to use (also make sure your CMS allows you to set one as the canonical version). You can link webmaster tools to Google analytics for the same site, for an even fuller picture of traffic to your site, what search terms are driving people etc. Under the Search Traffic tab, you can also tell which sites link to you (and see what's missing). Under the Crawl tab (Fetch as Google), you can tell Google to go index your site right now. You can also submit a sitemap to make sure every page is indexed, which can be important if your site design does not easily allow access to every page. Make sure that sitemap is listed in your robots.txt file too.
Just because you're telling Google to crawl your site, doesn't mean you'll show up in search results. Be sure to check your robots.txt file, to make sure you are allowing search engines to crawl your site! Read more about robots.txt files.

Google takes into account your site speed in determining your ranking, and also whether the site is mobile optimized (i.e. Mobilegeddon happened in April, where Google started paying attention to this). If you want to keep your supporters happy and engaged, make sure your site loads fast and looks great on mobile devices. If you want to do well in search, that applies just as much. If your site is slow, setting up caching may help. Or it may be time to look at a full website redesign, especially if your site is not achieving your goals and/or is not mobile optimized.
Source : huffingtonpost

The Content Structure & Link Valuation Guide to On-Page SEO

In the same way that a good written document (like a report, or newspaper article) should be arranged in a certain way to make it more accessible to readers, it’s a good idea to structure your webpages so they are easy for Google and the other search engines to crawl and understand.

By using best practices that make your webpages more accessible to search engines and searchers alike, you can increase both the value and visibility of your content.

The best way to envision search-friendly content structure, and a big-picture sense, is to imagine the inverted pyramid preferred by journalists around the world. At the top, you have the most important ideas and keywords, with additional details being added as the content goes along.

This means that you’ll almost always want big ideas, and key phrases associated with them, to be found at or near the top of your page. So, your prospects' most common search phrases should be incorporated into page titles, H1 (main heading) tags, and subheadings (and URLs if possible). Then you can structure your content in a way that makes it easy to read and understand as you add more thoughts to the piece.
As you develop and refine your content (static pages and blog posts included), you should pay particular attention to:

1 Optimizing your page title with your most important search phrase – Google pays a lot of attention to your page titles, just as you would the title of the document. Make sure that your titles are descriptive, and that they include any important search phrasing that you’re topically focusing on.

2 Including a meta-description that invites readers to click through to your content – although search engines won’t pay attention to your meta-descriptions, they will display them within search results (note: Google may opt to insert other text from your page). That gives you an opportunity to prompt readers to click through.

3 Limiting H1 headlines to a single item on the page – your H1 headline is like the title of a magazine. You only get one to use. It should be search-friendly, and irresistible to your core prospects.
4 Introducing key ideas very early on – don’t forget the inverted pyramid. Google pays more attention to content at the top of the page or article, so your most important idea should be found here.

5 Including an image (with topical, search-friendly alt text) behind the image – images are indexed by search engines, but more importantly, as visuals, they can work very well to attract readers. Choose a photo or image that’s relevant to your message, add branding if necessary, and be sure to use search-friendly alt text. (Tip: view your image as a thumbnail... it should be recognizable even at a tiny size. Solid, simple colours work well.)

6 Using bullet points within your content – these help you highlight or recap main points, break up the flow of text on a page, and signal to Google and the other search engines that you have something important to point out. Use them lightly to highlight special points, not as the default paragraph formatting.
7 Making sure that each article is accompanied by a call to action – always give readers something new (or next) to do when they reach the end of your piece. The links you add to your pages matter (see below), and it’s important for you to lead searchers in the right direction.

8 Following good page file-naming conventions – strong file names include keywords being used in a natural, straightforward way. Use dashes to separate words in a phrase as opposed to all as one word in your page titles, and stay away from generic numbers or special characters that obscure the topic.

Link Valuation, User Experience, and Calls to Action (CTAs)

Include hyperlinks with varying anchor text (the text you select and link) – very important for search optimization of your content. That’s because Google can follow the links and infer meaning from the phrases you use to guide a reader from one page to another.

However, while you should certainly link between different pieces of content, you shouldn’t do it too often. That’s because Google and the other search engines will essentially divide the power of each link (or, Juice) by the number of links on a page.

For example, if you have two links within your content, each will get 50% of the “juice” available to pass onto the linked page(s). If you have 10 links, on the other hand, each link only gets 10% of the available authority (note that Google generally overlooks navigation elements in these determinations - just remember you will want to favour a positive user experience over dumping a long list of links on sidebars or footers). It’s also good to remember that links placed higher on a page get slightly more weight, so you should try including the most important link in the first couple of paragraphs if possible.

Of course, the best links aren’t put into place solely for search engine optimization purposes, but to encourage a visitor to read and learn more on their way to contacting you. For that reason, they should be placed within the body of a paragraph at a point that feels natural, so someone who is reading your content can act on an opportunity to learn even more.

In addition to making your site more relevant and useful for humans, this also helps your search positioning. When Google sees that users are taking time to go through multiple pages on your site, following one link to another, it sends a positive signal that you are a relevant and authoritative source of information.

One special reminder should be given about links in the form of graphical calls to action, which should accompany all of your blog content (at the bottom of the article) and on pages where appropriate to be helpful. These are important not just for the purposes of search structure, but to generate conversions on your website.

Believe it or not, there's a bit of psychology to the placement of links vs. graphical CTAs. Consider for a moment that a hyperlink and a graphical CTA reside in close proximity to one another on a page. A reader who is interested in clicking the CTA (being large and colourful with an obvious prompt like the example at the bottom of this article) would understand that they are not simply navigating to another page to read, but going to an actionable item. Whereas, the reader clicking the hyperlink is likely still in reading or discovery move, not yet at a point of taking action. In a nutshell, clicking one or the other is indicative of intent (and by extension, of interest or commitment).

Structuring your pages correctly is a huge component of successful search engine optimization and lead generation. Although the process of including key phrases, refining content, and setting up internal links can seem tedious at first, it’s a skill that becomes second nature over time… and more powerful as you optimize your content again and again.

Notes from David Amerland. One thing you may want to address is that Google has stopped updating external PageRank (PR) which they said was always intended to help searchers – they are probably still using internal PR but that is deprecated and there is the additional layer of links adding semantic value to a page (i.e. including links to high authority sites as additional reference or citing sources) and linking, internally, to pages that are complementary rather than simply suggestions to visit other content (a practice that seems to be all the more rare now).

As a matter of fact it is helpful to think of both internal and external linking practices as a means of building a link tree where everything is related and all the links, taken together, become something way greater than the article would have been on its own. Then the linking strategy begins to acquire specific SEO value in the eyes of Google and the page that is associated with it, also benefits.

Great reminder from David about contextual menus:
You know, those 4 or 5 links along the right sidebar on desktop where you link to highly focussed and related content that helps the visitor dig deeper or act on your content. If you have all the same sidebar links on many pages, you're missing an exciting opportunity to offer up additional related resources to a visitor who has already expressed an interest in your topic.

And, while we're on the topic of SEO, links and search engine optimization, you may want to pick up our Local SEO checklist download. It's free.
Source : linkedin

How To Generate Website Traffic Through Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

How To Generate Website Traffic Through Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Web-traffic, every website needs it; every webmaster wants more of it.
We are all looking for that one secret traffic trick that will turn our site around.
There is tons of website out there on internet.
Competition is fierce to entice the visitors. But the real thing is that among the heap of Web pages out there, only a countable percentage of these web-pages actually able to succeed a steady readership, also only these same Web pages actually bring advertisers.
In order to fight the battle, you first need to develop and execute a Web site advertising strategy.
There is no quick fix; web-owner must need to stay patient, dynamic and consistent.
There are several ways to encourage traffic to your site.
 
In this post, I will provide and discuss the strategies that have long-lasted and have been proven to their core.

Generate website Traffic through Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is the technique of promoting a website in order to improve its rankings so that a site receives maximum number of visitors organically from search engines. Search Engine Ranking is essential to generate traffic because user generally clicked on the search results that are listed on the first page.

Clearly there’s a big advantage for any web-owner, if they can rank their website high in the search engine results.

Google and others search engines ranks website according to relevancy, value and user experience. If you can improve your website for these three aspects, you can stay at the top for long time.
Each search engine has its own distinctive ranking criteria and uses their ingenious algorithm which weighs each criterion accordingly.

KEYWORD FUNDAMENTALS

This is the most important factor in the organic search engine optimization. The fact is webmasters have to select the precise keywords for their business, products/services and their target market. Owner must keep in mind that they need to identify with their targeting audience and then build their search engine optimization strategy around that audience.

Basically keywords are the requisites and phrases that the target audience uses when searching for the particular products and services that the owner of the website is offering. Then according to the ranking of the website on the major search engines and directories it will be shown on that page.

The owner of the site must choose keyword phrases that will bring constant targeted traffic consisting of potential customers. It becomes important to research and validate the keywords for the search queries.
Following the basic fundamentals of the Keyword Placement:

Keyword prominence – As the name suggest, it is essential to place the keywords in the text is at the top of each webpage, essentially the main page. For better search hits it is important to place the keywords at the start of the page or at the beginning of a sentence which is the prominent area. A Search engine algorithm uses this concept to search the relevant data for the user. Here is general case how search engines analyze the web page.
Keyword prominence is to place keyword near tags.

Keyword = IT SOLUTIONS

The best in the town our IT SOLUTIONs Company offers various packages.

Now, owner thinks this is the best job with the keyword “IT SOLUTIONS “at the top of page. A search engine, however, sees your page this way:

The best in the town our IT SOLUTIONS Company offers various packages. This doesn’t provide any chance of high results, so to avoid it place keyword-rich text at the very top of your page.

Keyword Proximity:
A Search engine uses the concept of “keyword proximity” in their ranking algorithm. As suggested by the name, “keyword proximity” means the how close keywords are to each other. Then it becomes essential to place the keywords as close together as possible and make sure your sentences are clear.
Take an example:
We have been selling Hair gain products for over five years.
We have been selling products for hair gain for over five years.

Navigation
It is essential to have optimized navigation structure of the website because it is all the way through the navigation that the search engine spiders are able to access all of your web site’s content. If the site has less number of pages owner should have every page of their site linked to every other page of the site. This can be achieved by having a left/right side menu or by putting a link to every other page on the bottom of your page. For sites which have many pages it is suitable to include in directories the pages that are content related. For example, if you sell 10 different types of IT services and you also give training on networking clothes it is obvious not to link the various IT services page with the networking-page, but rather from the services page itself.

TWEAKING THE WEBSITE

The search engines are always modifying and enhancing their algorithm, that’s why it becomes essential to tweak or tune-up your web- accordingly. Search engines always tries to give relevant results for any search item so for them a relevant site must be the one who has build the content around the relevant keyword phrase. So for the code page optimization following description tags about the web-page must be taken care of to generate traffic:- Title Tag

For achieving the highest search rank the title tag is one of the essential factors.
A title tag is basically a HTML code that produces the words that appear in the top bar of the Web browser. Generally, the Title Tag is the first element in the area of the website, followed by the Meta Description and the Meta Keywords Tags. Following are the basic rules that must be followed when optimizing the web-page title tag:

1. At the best there must be maximum of three keyword phrases and hundred characters in the Tite
2. Avoid the use of the words like “a, and, or”.
3. Always take care that same keyword is not repeated in the title more than twice, because it is spam.

Meta Description tag

This tag illustrates the content of the web-page, which provides the search engines’ spiders an exact outline filled with multiple keywords. The search engines uses this Meta description tag to describe the tag ,in order to make sure that no keyword phrases are repeated for maximum three times but also makes sure that the real representation of the page that the visitor will be viewing.
Following are the basic rules that must be followed when optimizing the Meta description tag: This Tag must contain many keywords prearranged in a coherent sentence.  It must be noted that the keywords phrase must be placed at the beginning of the description in order to get the best possible ranking. The description this tag must be under 255 characters.

The Meta Keywords Tag
The Meta keywords tag provides an extra text for crawler-based search engines to index alongside with the body copy. What makes it useful? Because Meta keywords tag are used in a way to support the terms that are essential for the crawlers that used it. For example, if the webpage is about making money– AND this word is placed at various places in the body copy — then the description of the words “making money” in the Meta keywords tag enhances the chance of search hit a bit higher for those words.
The Meta keyword tag is also occasionally functional as a way to boost the page rank for synonyms or unusual words that don’t appear on the page itself. For example, let’s say the webpage is about the earning money, but the user doesn’t mention the word “TIPS” on this page. But having the word in the Meta keywords tag, might increase the odds of coming up if user searched for “TIPS TO EARN MONEY”. Obviously there is more chance of hitting the odds if the word “TIPS” is used in the body copy of the page itself. Here is an case of what a plain basic header should look like:
your page title here
There are a few times when extra code is needed in the page header, for instance, when using JAVA scripts or CSS (cascade style sheet); in this case it is essential to use external files for java and css with extensions .js and .css.
To call the JavaScript simply scratch the JavaScript from the header and save in a file called java.js and call it using this line of code:
Similarly to call your css from and ext file use this line of code:
It must be remembered that the header is the invisible part of the webpage.

Body text
The Body text is what visible to the visitors, when they actually land on the webpage. The placement of keywords in the text of the webpage is not simple. Mainly search engines index the complete text of each page, so it’s essential to place keywords throughout the text of the webpage. However, different search engine uses different ranking algorithms.
These are various rules to be followed when putting the text:-
The Main page must have the main keywords because it has the maximum chance of getting indexed.
The Keywords inside the H1, H2…H6 tags are given gravity against the other tags so the relevant text must be integrated in them.
Source : business2community

4 Ways Social Media Helps SEO

Imagine if your business appeared high up on the first page of Google’s search results whenever someone typed in a relevant search term — without your having to spend a single cent on ads. How amazing would that be? Are you drooling yet? Did you know that social media helps SEO, i.e. search engine optimization?
With over 1 billion people on Facebook, and over 900 million combined on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest, you would be crazy to not have a presence on the social media networks where your customers hang out. But did you know that these networks are also giving smart businesses an edge over their competitors when it comes to search engine rankings and SEO? Raise your hands if you’d like some more love from Google, Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo and other search engines…and read on.

1. Social media helps SEO on Google — directly.

Google and Twitter have announced that Google’s search results will now include tweets and Twitter accounts that match the search term. People searching on mobile — which actually represents the majority of all Google searches done in the U.S. — will be the first to see this change. They’ll see it when they’re doing a Google search in their mobile browser, or in Google’s iOS or Android apps. But soon anyone using Google.com on a desktop or laptop will also see the change.
Now when the two companies first announced this change, they used a few popular, media-friendly, search terms like Taylor Swift and NASA to explain this new feature. But unless you’re a huge Taylor Swift fan (and who isn’t?) the most interesting question is, what will results look like for less glamorous searches, like “best real estate agent in Dallas” or “small business consultant in Kansas City”? And how can you get your Twitter account to the top of the heap?
As is usually the case when it comes to unpacking the mysterious, voodo-wrapped black box known as SEO, this calls for a bit of speculation.

If you were Google and Twitter, which Twitter accounts would you put at the top of those results? I’m willing to bet that the Twitter accounts that make it to the top of Google’s search results will have at least 4 things:

• The right search terms in their Twitter bio
• A sizable number of followers, providing social proof of their right to represent this search term
• A sizable number of other people actively talking about this Twitter account, and
• Having people who are not just talking about this Twitter account, but mentioning it in conjunction with that search term.

 So are you going to wait until your competitors own this? Or would you rather start prepping now? Here are the steps you should start taking today to get ready for this brave new world.

• First, use Google’s keyword planner to figure out the search terms with which you want to be associated and make sure these are in your Twitter bio. (And also the bios of all your other social media networks while you’re at it.) Ryan Cruz has a great post that explains how this planner works (and also shows you a few other nifty ways to use it.)
• Then, make sure you are building up a steady stream of new followers by tweeting frequently and consistently. Don’t just broadcast, but engage with your followers and potential followers to get people talking to and about your Twitter account.
• Finally, when you do talk about your brand on Twitter (which should only be about 20-25% of the time) make sure you’re using the key search terms you want to own. With luck and skill you’ll get followers echoing the sentiment, building a trail for Google to follow.

2. Your social media profiles are already appearing in search results.

As Chloe Mason Gray points out, the results of a search for your brand’s name are likely to include your social media profiles today, anyway. So, whether you are aware of it or not, your social media may be already helping to direct people to your business when they type in a certain search term. A look at your Google Analytics stats can tell you, particularly if you use a tracking URL to help detect this. (Here’s a free, easy-to-use tool from Google to create one.) If you’re General Electric you can worry less about your brand being misunderstood, but if you’re a lesser known entity who wants to stake its claim to fame it will definitely benefit you to put the keyword terms you want right upfront in your social media profiles to help your SEO and, more broadly, to help you establish the reputation you want.

3. Don’t forget: “search” is more than just Google….

Google may be the big kahuna, but don’t forget the concept of marginal utility: the smaller you are, the more mileage you will get from even the smallest incremental gains. As a small(er) business do you really want to neglect all the other search engines that have long been taking your social profiles into account?
Take Bing. It hosts one out every five searches done on the desktop in the U.S. and has explicitly told Search Engine Land that it looks at your social networks when compiling results:

We do look at the social authority of a user. We look at how many people you follow, how many follow you, and this can add a little weight to a listing in regular search results. It carries much more weight in Bing Social Search, where tweets from more authoritative people will flow to the top when best match relevancy is used.

This is backed up by a statement directly from Bing:

Social media plays a role in today’s effort to rank well in search results. The most obvious part it plays is via influence. If you are influential socially, this leads to your followers sharing your information widely, which in turn results in Bing seeing these positive signals. These positive signals can have an impact on how you rank organically in the long run.

And because Bing powers most of Yahoo search its reach is actually greater than its direct market share.

4. Finally, consider how many searches are now being done directly on the social media networks, themselves.

Neil Patel explained just how significant this has become:

• Twitter: handles 19 billion search queries a month (based on 2010 data)
• Facebook: one billion search queries per day (based on a statement it made in 2012)
• YouTube: roughly 3.7 billion search queries a month (as of 2010)

So while you should certainly keep an eye on where your website ranks in Google, Bing and Yahoo results, remember that search is getting more social by the day. Social media helps SEO, so do optimize your profiles, post frequently, and talk to your followers to take advantage of it!
Do you use social media consciously to boost your SEO? What other tactics do you use? Tell us in the comments!
Source : business2community

Super simple SEO secrets most internet businesses don’t know

One of the trendiest things that we can say about digital marketing is that SEO is dead. People cite the constantly-changing landscape of the digital world as proof of the death of search engine optimization. Most believe that SEO doesn’t work anymore and social media holds the power. It is said that the average consumer will not listen to anything or believe in anything unless they are provided social proof, such is the stronghold of social media. However, there is one fact that everyone needs to understand; you cannot use the same stick for measuring all SEO strategies.

Unsophisticated SEO strategies, commonly known as black hat SEO tactics, are essentially the spam of search engines. Page swapping, conspicuous commenting and keyword stuffing are just some of the techniques that can get your website blacklisted. But then, there are also the sophisticated strategies, commonly known as white hat SEO tactics, which enhance the customer experience by providing them the answers they are looking for and fulfilling their needs. This SEO is still alive and all businesses can reap its benefits. Most business owners have a basic understanding of SEO strategies, there is one key technique that can work wonders for your business, even today and it is back linking.

Sophisticated SEO is based on the premise that you don’t need the loudest voice for connecting with your audience. Instead, you need to figure out what they need and create a resource for meeting their need. Basic strategies indicate that customers want to spend the smallest possible amount of time searching for answers they want. The most reliable sites are often determined by search engines according to the number of backlinks they have. Essentially, a backlink is just a link to your website from another webpage. This seems simple at first glance, but most businesses struggle in determining the backlinks that should be targeted.

The inefficient use of backlinks is a defining characteristic of an unsophisticated strategy. Moz conducted a recent study, which showed that higher rankings are strongly associated with links. This means that you will gain an advantage in the digital marketplace if you implement backlinks properly. You have to be highly selective when choosing backlinks as the goal is to provide your audience with tangible value via the links. This means you should opt for a reputable and reliable source, preferably the authorities in your industry. The idea is to put all the information together and save the consumer from this hassle.

Hence, your job is to create a website that accumulates all vital information pertaining to their question that allows them to draw their conclusions. You should focus on developing a content marketing strategy, which attracts backlinks to useful and meaningful information. An excellent way of engaging, educating and entertaining potential customers is via the use of visual content marketing such as videos and infographics. Don’t try to trick people into visiting your website; your goal is to make your customers happy when they do come in order to ensure SEO success. 

Source : examiner