In this day and age, things do not have to be expensive to be good – right?  I suppose nothing is exempt from this kind of thinking, not even SEO.  And with SEO being a very popular activity these days, it is not a surprise that you see countless companies touting their expertise in the field.  Some focus on promoting the idea that they are the best while others focus on the concept that they are the cheapest.  So which one should you go with?

I read an article earlier today tackling the very same question.  It provided me with some food for thought:

There is a saying that ‘Cheap’ and ‘Best’ do not exist together.

The costs coming down do not reflect on the quality of the work however. With more and more channels of optimization in place, companies providing search engine optimization services are able to work on entire new strategies; Strategies that were not around a few years ago, like social networking, and video marketing. These new age strategies ensure that the exposure for a customer is maximum, while keeping the costs at a minimum.

Indeed, just because a product or service is cheaper than others does not mean that you are sacrificing quality.  So when you find yourself looking for an SEO provider, try to bear this in mind.  However, do make sure that the quality that you’re looking for is there – don’t be blinded by the low cost!

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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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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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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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More myths in the next post.

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So what should you bear in mind when using the description meta tag? Here are some tips, again from Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide.

Accurately summarize the page’s content - Write a description that would both inform and interest users if they saw your description meta tag as a snippet in a search result.

Avoid:
• writing a description meta tag that has no relation to the content on the page
• using generic descriptions like “This is a webpage” or “Page about baseball cards”
• filling the description with only keywords
• copy and pasting the entire content of the document into the description meta tag

Use unique descriptions for each page - Having a different description meta tag for each page helps both users and Google, especially in searches where users may bring up multiple pages on your domain (e.g. searches using the site: operator). If your site has thousands or even millions of pages, hand-crafting description meta tags probably isn’t feasible. In this case, you could automatically generate description meta tags based on each page’s content.

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

The key here is in being as specific as possible. The idea is to provide Google AND your human readers with the necessary information they need to determine whether the page is relevant to their query or not. More than being specific, though, remember to give an accurate representation of the contents of the page. The last thing that a user would want is to think that a page contains certain information only to find out that they have been misled.

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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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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.