#1. Ok, number 1 in my world of seo tips is make sure your website is fit for business when those hits start to happen. You may invest money to rank well only to find that you have the bounce rate of a high jumper. Would you shop in a cramped, crowed and confusing shop on the high street just because it was there or would you leave and go to the bright modern shop next door that sells exactly the same goods but offers them in a clear bright and spacious environment? The first page of google is exactly the same, being there is a component of and not a guarantee of success. Put your house in order, as any seo will tell you there will be time to revamp the site as it progresses through the rankings, just ensure that it is a part of the overall strategy.
#2. Sort out your page titles. Cant emphasise this one enough. Telling the google bots where to go and which page to allocate authority too is essential. Think of it this way, google arrives at your site with a big bag of authority for a search term and wants to give all of it to one lucky page. If you have one page that is all about red apples, good news. However if you have 10 pages with red apples in the title bar who gets the authority? The answer is it gets diluted and no body wins. Why make it difficult? Keep it simple, one page for ‘red apples’, one for ‘green apples’, one for ‘bananas’. Don’t spam the title bar, those websites that have a title bar packed with keyterms look untidy, amateurish and are a complete waste of time as only around 60 characters are read by the search engines!
#3.Another one on titles. Do you need your company name in the title bar? This one can hurt you in two ways, firstly the title bar is the first place google looks at when it arrives at your site. the authority given to the terms in the title bar were it a line on a graph would point sharply downwards at 45 degrees as you progress along the title bar. So use the space wisely, most important term for that page in first place and in the exact way that people would enter it in a search engine. Secondly if the name of your company is the same as your biggest search term DONT put it in your title bars. Imagine you sold i phone cases, the name of your website was i phone cases.com and you finished every single title on your site with the term i phone cases. Your biggest search term duplicated across 300 page titles. The site would never rank for that search term in one hundred years.
#4. Do I need an seo company? If you are reading this then the chances are yes. The one thing we can be sure of in seo is that things will change. Google made the equivilent of an update every day in 2010. Most were small and passed by unnoticed but the bigger updates can have a profound effect on traffic and your ability to trade on the internet. An experienced seo marketeer with access to numerous websites will see the big picture and will have the experience and the insight to adapt both your website and your online strategy to deal with whatever happens.
#5. Choose you keywords with care. I have lost count of the number of times a client has told me they want to rank for a generic term such as insurance or claims! A total waste of time and money. When was the last time you searched for ‘insurance’ or ‘claim’? Even if you did I bet that as soon as you saw the ridiculous results on screen you typed a more relevant search term. Insurance may become ‘cheap sports car insurance for over 25′s’ and claim may be the much more relevant ‘compensation claim for dog bite’ Which one do you think will convert?
#6. Meta descriptions. Don’t wax lyrical in meta descriptions. Internet searchers don’t care if “We have been in business since 1973 and some of our original employees are still with the…” Zzzzzzzzzz. They will be sleeping faster than Grandpa Simpson. The meta description is part seo and part marketing. You have a few short seconds to capture a searcher before they click on another listing. Offer the search term they are looking for in the meta descriptions and you may even steal a click from a higher ranking listing. Make it relevant, short and straight to the point. If you sell red apples your meta should be; Red Apples – Best Red Apples Online – Fast delivery – Order today! blah blah. You get the idea, spam? No, just simple basic sales techniques to get your listing noticed fast!
#7. Inner page meta descriptions. Remember that google is trying to offer not just the most relevant website for any search term but also the most relevant page within that website. This makes inner page meta descriptions equally as important as those for the home page. Make them unique to the relevant search term for that page, remember bullet points work so short, snappy and to the point. If you don’t supply google with a relevant meta for the most relevant search term for that page it will choose content from the page that it deems to be most relevant. I know I would rather have what I choose to have displayed in the listings.
#8. Don’t be a back yard seo expert. I am a professional online marketer who specializes in seo. The worst enquiries I have to deal with are the backyard seo ‘experts’. I have lost count of the number of times I have presented a plan to a prospect utilising a good spread of keywords to be told “I could get some of those terms there myself.” My reaction is always “Why did you not then?” I do of course know the answer to that question, Because they can’t! I recently had an enquiry from just such a backyard seo expert who’s opening line was “I know everything there is to know about seo.” Less than 120 seconds later I was able to tell our expert that he had four completely identical sites, .com, .co.uk www and non www and every page in all four sites in the google index. Factor in duplicated and spurious title bars, no content, duplicated meta descriptions across every page on both sites and a navigation system that could be likened to the Rubik cube. I finished my diagnosis with the words “but you know all that anyway with your in depth knowledge of seo.” Under his expert guidance you know where his web site will rank, in his back yard!
