Here is the continuation of the previous post on some of the best – and easiest – SEO tips. There are actually ten of them in the whole article at About.com but I am only choosing the ones that I myself have done and can attest to. Here goes.

Optimize your site for your target audience, not for the search engines.
This may sound counterintuitive, but hear me out. The search engines are looking for pages that best fit the keyword phrase someone types into their little search box. If those “someones” are typing in search words that relate to what your site offers, then they are most likely members of your target audience. You need to optimize your site to meet *their* needs. If you don’t know who your target audience is, then you need to find out one way or another. Look for studies online that might provide demographic information, and visit other sites, communities, or forums where your target audience might hang out and listen to what they discuss. This information will be crucial to your resulting website design, keyword research, and copywriting.

I have written about this before and I do not hesitate to keep repeating it. The problem that some people encounter is that they become too obsessed with what the search engines want. The human side oftentimes becomes ignored. This, I believe, negates much of the efforts put into the site. So the search engine spiders love your site but who is going to read it and keep coming back for more? People! Need I say more?

(to be continued)

Photo courtesy of Martin Heigan

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We hear this term all the time – search engine ranking – and rightly so.  It is one of the important things that we should pay attention to when engaging in SEO.  That is why it is called “Search Engine” Optimization after all.  So what should we do in order to climb the ranks of the very high search engine ladder?

I am sure that there are countless ways and means by which we can do so – every SEO expert will probably have his own list.  I found a comprehensive – and yet simple – list of tips at About.com.  Let’s take a look at them.

Do not purchase a new domain unless you have to.
Due to Google’s aging delay for all new domains, your best bet is to use your existing domain/website if at all possible. If you’re redesigning or starting from scratch and you have to use a brand-new domain for some reason, you can expect to wait a good 9-12 months before your site will show up in Google for any keyword phrases that are important to you.

This is so true!  That is why there is a very profitable market which peddles domains that have been around for quite some time.  The longer the domain has been around, the higher you should expect to pay for it.  That is also why I suggest buying a domain immediately when you think of a potential idea.  It doesn’t mean that you have to use this domain at once – you can keep it for future use.  In the meantime, for your current needs, try sticking to your existing domain or shopping around for one that is already established.

(to be continued)

Photo courtesy of isriya

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In the last post, I showcased two of the most annoying SEO myths – at least in my mind. I am not quite done yet! If you enjoyed being annoyed at those myths, then here is more for you to read.

Annoying myth #3: All you need is one huge burst of effort and you’re done.
This kind of attitude irks me and I am not only talking about SEO. You know those people who, when starting a project, are so into it? They put everything they have into the project and then after some time, they suddenly seem to have lost all their interest. This is the kind of attitude that some people have towards SEO. They think that you only have to exert effort for a limited period of time in the beginning and that once you have gotten the results you want, you can stop and sit on your laurels. FALSE. Try doing that and see what happens to your SERPs in the long run!

Annoying myth #4: You HAVE to submit to search engines.
This is annoying only because I keep seeing ads about submitting to thousands of search engines. It is even more annoying because they want you to pay for the submission. I guess there is some basis to this myth because it used to be that you really had to submit to search engines. These days, though, you do not have to do this. I did not submit my personal blog to Google or any other major search engine but I can find my blog using some keywords.

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I am a person who is easily annoyed – I have to admit to that.  Not that I show my annoyance easily, I actually keep it to myself most of the time.  When it comes to SEO, I have been annoyed so many times I cannot even begin to count them.  I think that it is about time to share some of this annoyance with you guys.  After all, misery (annoyance in this case) loves company.

Annoying myth #1:  SEO is all about tricking the search engines.
There are those people who think that the word “optimization” in search engine optimization is a euphemism for “trickery.”  They think that SEO is simple trying to get one over on the search engines.  If you have every dabbled in SEO – legitimate SEO – then you would know this to be totally false.  SEO is all about providing the search engines with excellent web sites that adhere to their standards and this takes legitimate work, not trickery!  It is debasing to even think that SEO is nothing but a sham.

Annoying myth#2: PPC highly influences SEO.
So why is this annoying?  I have heard countless theories which some people hold to be true.  Some say that a web site owner has to pay for a PPC (pay per click) campaign in order to get the best SEO results.  Others say that if you have ads running on your web site, your SEO efforts will be lost.  They are both extremes in the spectrum and they are both false.  SEO is based on other things NOT the presence or absence of ads.

More myths in the next post.

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I hope that I have gotten your attention with regard to page title tags. As I mentioned before, not everyone really pays attention to these. If you just want to blog or create a web site without really focusing on SEO, then that should be just fine. However, if you have the slightest inclination to optimize your site, then I suggest shifting a bit of your focus to the page title tags. Here are some tips by which you can do that – again, courtesy of the Google Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide.

Tip #1: Accurately describe the page’s content.
Choose a title that effectively communicates the topic of the page’s content.

Avoid:
• choosing a title that has no relation to the content on the page
• using default or vague titles like “Untitled” or “New Page 1″

Ask yourself, what is the page talking about? For blogs, what is the post all about? Focus tightly on the main idea and get the title from that.

Tip #2: Create unique title tags for each page.
Each of your pages should ideally have a unique title tag, which helps Google know how the page is distinct from the others on your site.

Avoid:
• using a single title tag across all of your site’s pages or a large group of pages

If you do not use unique title tags, then guess what? The search engines – Google, at least – will think that your web site has redundant pages and that is not good at all.

Tip #3: Use brief, but descriptive titles.
Titles can be both short and informative. If the title is too long, Google will show only a portion of it in the search result.

Avoid:
• using extremely lengthy titles that are unhelpful to users
• stuffing unneeded keywords in your title tags

I really do not need to dwell on this – just think about it, titles that are more than 5 words long could be quite tiresome.

Hope this helps!

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To be honest with you, I never really paid much attention to this.  As I was going through Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide, which I talked about in the previous post, I was hit by the realization of just how important the page title is.  According to the guide, the purpose of the page title is to let both human readers and search engine bots know what the content of a particular web page is.  It is actually much like a book, which has chapter titles.  You tend to get the idea of what a chapter contains from its title.

This is what the guide says:

A title tag tells both users and search engines what the topic of a particular page is. The <title> tag should be placed within the <head> tag of the HTML document. Ideally, you should create a unique title for each page on your site.

If your document appears in a search results page, the contents of the title tag will usually appear in the first line of the results (If you’re unfamiliar with the different parts of a Google search result, you might want to check out the anatomy of a search result video by Google engineer Matt Cutts, and this helpful diagram of a Google search results page.) Words in the title are bolded if they appear in the user’s search query. This can help users recognize if the page is likely to be relevant to their search.

The title for your homepage can list the name of your website/business and could include other bits of important information like the physical location of the business or maybe a few of its main focuses or offerings.

In the next post, let’s look at some tips which you can use to come up with the proper title tags.

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Let me ask you a question, who is “the man” when it comes to SEO? The obvious answer would be the search engine (the search engines, rather). And when it comes to search engines, we all have to admit that Google is the dominant entity. So when I read on their blog that they have released an SEO starter guide, I thought to myself – perfect!

What can we expect from their starter guide? Here is an excerpt of the blog post:

Our Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide covers around a dozen common areas that webmasters might consider optimizing. We felt that these areas (like improving title and description meta tags, URL structure, site navigation, content creation, anchor text, and more) would apply to webmasters of all experience levels and sites of all sizes and types. Throughout the guide, we also worked in many illustrations, pitfalls to avoid, and links to other resources that help expand our explanation of the topics. We plan on updating the guide at regular intervals with new optimization suggestions and to keep the technical advice current.

The guide is in PDF format and downloads in less than a minute. I have not had the time to go over it thoroughly but I am expecting something simple and effective. Others already have their opinion, like Bill Hartzer. He points out a big flaw where “the example site noted in the guide is set up as a 302 Temporary Redirect to the Google.com home page.” He states that this is something that you would NEVER want to do. Apparently, Google’s starter guide is not error free. Why don’t you take a look at it for yourself? Perhaps in the future, we can tackle some topics presented there.

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Though I maintain blogs in both Wordpress and Blogger, it seems to me that there are more developers focusing on Wordpress and as a result, there is always something new to do with a Wordpress blog.  Of course, I could be wrong – it could just be my impression.

Anyhow, I read a press release from SEO Content Solutions, an SEO copywriting firm.  They have just released a new widget for Wordpress and it is totally free.  Here is an excerpt of the release:

Bloggers can now boast the number of current and cumulative daily visitors on their Wordpress blogs, as well the locations of the 5 most current visitors. Launched by SEO Content Solutions, a leading SEO copywriting firm, the new Online Now Wordpress Widget is free to all and compatible with all Wordpress versions.

“We wanted to create something that was both fun and functional for the blogging community. Not only does the ‘Online Now’ Wordpress Widget pique the interest of a casual reader, but it also validates the blog by proving that readers from all over the world frequently read and comment,” said Christine O’Kelly, Founder and Co-Owner of SEO Content Solutions.

Bloggers who love statistics – I am one of those! – will appreciate a widget like this.  Furthermore, stats are an important part of any SEO effort.  And when you can combine fun and function, there is no need to complain!  If you want to check out this new Wordpress Widget, you can visit SEO Content Solutions and download the widget.  You can also see a preview of the widget so that you can determine whether or not the visuals match your blog.

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Spam is something that bugs the heck out of a lot of people.  Sometimes I wonder about the tenacity and motivation of the people who are behind all sorts of spam activity.  We do have a good thing in spam filters, though.  They are automated programs that do everything by themselves.  Of course, sometimes, legitimate comments get labeled as spam and we have to manually rectify the problem.  This is not as big an issue, however, as spam that are masked so ingeniously that they pass for legitimate ones.

I am talking about spam comments which are being used for SEO purposes.  They seem to be legit and written by a real person – and they most usually are – but at the end of the day, if you analyze them, they are nothing but shameless plugs that do not mean much for the owner of the blog where the comment was made.

You may be thinking, so what if they are actually spammers?  Their comments are somehow coherent anyway.  But would you want to take the risk of attracting the ire of major search engines simply because they see an association between you and these new breed of spammers?  I don’t think so!  I certainly would not!

This increase in this kind of spamming is actually troublesome.  As I mentioned, we cannot rely on Akismet and other similar features to catch them automatically.  What is left to be done is for us, the bloggers, to manually check and analyze the comments.  Naturally, this takes time and effort – time and effort which could be channeled to other worthier activities.

What do you think should be done with them?

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