Category: Search Engine Optimization

Where and what are the most important parts or elements of your website for top search engine optimization impact? What things can give you the most bang for your buck?

1. The most important element is your title tag. This is found in your source code between title and /title. What you put here appears on your browser screen at the very top just to the right of the IE icon near the edge of your monitor. It should be keyword dense, on topic to your website and NOT contain your business name.

2. The second most important element is your navigation. If you are using JavaScripted drop down menus, you must supply text based navigation for search engines to follow or they will not move to the inside of your website to spider pages. Typically we will supply text links in alphabetic order in the footer of a page for a site like this. Better yet would be to build a site with navigation using CSS or text and not have to add footer links. But it is better to remediate than to not have your site be search engine friendly.

3. The third most important is the meta description. This is found only in your page’s source code. One of the biggest errors we see is the use of the same meta description and title tag site wide. Each of these elements should be unique for each page. Google did not for a period of time use the description that you created for you meta description tag, but is doing so now if you have header code to tell Google not to use what you have supplied to DMOZ.

4. Everyone asks about the meta keyword tags, but Google and we place no value on them right now. Should you still include them. Yes I guess you could, but I would not waste huge time on them, but I did feel the need to mention them but this field is not important.

If you have another element you think is important, just click comments and leave me one to share what you think is important.

You may be interesting in reviewing our PowerPoint presentation (now made into a PDF) of our speach yesterday at the Capital PC Users Group in Washington DC.

This presentation is a preview of our white paper “The Tangible Benefits of Blogging” that will be published in our e-newsletter in early October.

I think that you will find the case studies and tips on how to be an effective blogger and how to blog for search engine placement interesting and helpful.

Sometimes a customer just simply wants to do a test to see if something will work before they go whole hog. Here is one case study for Pinnacle Executive Center you may find interesting.

This client leases virtual office space in the Bethesda and Rockville areas outside of Washington DC. Now by virtual I mean 100 to 300 square foot mini-offices. But these offices have a special twist, they are deluxe and have reception service, copy center, conference rooms, and even concierge services. That means get your errands and dry cleaning done for you while you are working.

The client did not want to invest in a full blown optimized website and had already purchased a nice online Flash brochure, plus they were testing a Google AdWords program to see if any or all of it would work to drive leases.

What we did was to do a mini site optimization for the Flash page, scroll to the bottom of the landing page linked into my blog post title and you will see what I mean. You can right click to view source and review the meta tags as well. I tried to create some keyword density for them on a Flash site that had no text as he was hoping to get some organic placement as well.

In addition we are using this same page as a Google AdWords landing page, looking for a good quality score based again on a mini-optimization. I’ll let you know how it performs over the next several weeks. It should be an interesting test!

Many of the same techniques that you routinely use for good search engine optimization on your website should be used on your blog. Here are some of our top tips.

• Make sure your blog post contains your top keywords but don’t spam
• Keep your blog posts keyword dense and on one topic
• Use the title link field to make your title clickable to point to an article or your website for more information
• If you have a link in the content, make sure that you properly use keywords in the anchor text
• For more boost try bolding your important keywords in your post or in your anchor text
• Our typical blog post is about 200 to 350 words, don’t write a dissertation
• Use labels if you can with your keywords in the label

There is no right or wrong way to write your blog, but there is a more effective way to get better search engine placement using your blog.