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9 Common Title Tag Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

02 2012 Sunday

By Kristina Weis in Featured

A website’s title tags are very important for several reasons:

1) The title tag shows up in search results as the blue link, and a good one helps the site get more clicks and visitors from
search results.

2) Title tags are a crucial SEO element that can help the website show up higher when people search for the words in it.

3) Title tags show up when web pages are shared on social media sites like Facebook. This is important because social media mentions are now a ranking factor in Google search results.

So if you have the time to optimize one thing on your website, title tags are it.

Here are some of the top mistakes and missed opportunities I’ve seen in title tags. Avoid these and you’ll be ahead of the game. You’ll rank higher in search results and entice more people to click on your site.

9 Signs of a Bad Title Tag:

1. “Home” or “Home Page” in Title Tag

The Meta Description Tag

11 2011 Sunday

By Jill Whalen in Featured

metatags The keywords and phrases you use in your Meta description tag may not affect your page’s ranking in the search engines, but this tag can still come in handy in your overall SEO and social media marketing campaigns.

What Is the Meta Description Tag?

It’s a snippet of HTML code that belongs inside the <Head> </Head> section of a web page. It is usually placed after the Title tag and before the Meta keywords tag (if you use one), although the order is not important.

The proper syntax for this HTML tag is:

If you’re using a content management system (CMS), look for a field to fill out that’s called Meta Description, or possibly just “Description.”

Many years ago, the information contained in a Meta description could slightly help a page rank highly for the words that were contained within it. Today, neither Google, Bing, nor Yahoo! use it as a ranking signal.

Search Engine Optimization – Help Your Business Grow

10 2010 Friday

By Forrest Yingling in Featured

When someone has a question, many times these days the first thing they turn to for an answer is the Internet. Just about anything and everything can be found online. From the most basic answer to the simplest question to in depth research about complex topics — it’s all available on the Internet.

As a business owner, the Internet can be a valuable tool for you to utilize in your marketing efforts. You need to make sure that when people type in a search phrase related to your business that your website comes up on the results pages. The process of search engine optimization (SEO) enhances your website to make it more appealing to the search engine spiders that crawl your site and when done properly, improves your website as a whole.

SEO as a Business Strategy
The top three search engines are Google, Bing, and Yahoo so these are the sites that you should target in your SEO efforts. Since Google is undoubtedly the leader in the search engine industry, they set the standards and they are the site to target with your SEO efforts.

If your business is not optimized for the search engines and your competition’s website is then they will rank higher in the search engine results pages (SERP) and thus people will more likely click through to their site and do business with them. The higher you rank on Google and the other search engines, the more traffic your site will receive and if you have a good website, the more conversions you will make and your profits will increase.

Editing Your Website For SEO Purposes
In order to properly optimize your website for the search engines, you will need to perform some basic tasks.

First, you need to make sure you pick around 10-15 keywords that you should use as the meta tags for your website and focus on 3-5 as your main keywords. Meta tags consist of the title of the page, the description of the page and the keywords of the page.

Search engines use the meta description tag as the description of your website in the SERPs. The keywords are used as search terms or phrases so that when someone searches for those terms, your website appears as a result.

You want your site to be as friendly to the search engines as possible in order to rank higher for your targeted keywords. You want to repeat your keywords but not too much. You need to keep the keyword density to no more than 1 keyword per 100 words of text.

Being at the top of the results pages for targeted keywords is an extremely important part of business in today’s world. Making your website both user-friendly and search engine friendly by performing website editing tasks like regular content updates and the use of meta tags.

Forrest Yingling is the Marketing Director for Easy WebContent, the premier website editing tool. Easy WebContent is the most powerful HTML editor on the market and makes updating your website easier than ever before!

Meta Title Tags are Gold

08 2010 Wednesday

By Peter Bowen in Featured

How to write compelling page titles

From an SEO perspective, the title of the webpage is very important. These are the words that describe what your page is about and are the first words that a search engine sees when it crawls your webpage looking for content to add to its index.

The page title is also what the searcher sees in a search result – so the page title is very important in describing what the page is about and if the title meets the searcher’s criteria, then it is more likely to be clicked on and your page opened.

It is safe to assume that the majority of searchers these days will be tempted to either click or ignore based on the content of the title. This is like your ad in the natural search section of the search engine results page.

Now that the impact of the title of the webpage is obvious, let me explain how to write an effective and powerful title.

First the basics! The webpage title aka the title tag is the synopsis of the content of the web page. So, as no two pages on your website are the same, hence why should their title tags be? Therefore, as a general rule, title tags for each page on your website should be unique. This is an added bonus from an SEO perspective, because now you can target many more keywords and spread your reach across search engine indexes.

The second thing to consider is whether you want to add your company name in the title tag? The answer is that it depends on your branding strategy. If your company name is a known brand, or if you want to promote your firm name as a brand or if your company name consists of keyword(s) that you want to target such as ABC Family Solicitors targeting the keyword “Family Solicitors”, then by all means add your company name in the title tag. If not, then use the limited but valuable space to add your targeted keywords. If you do decide to add your company name, make sure that it is at the end of the title. This is because you want search engines and your visitors to first read
the targeted keyword(s) for that page and then the company name.

It is important to remember that since the title tag is the synopsis of the content of the web page, you need to make sure that the title tag is relevant. For example, the title tag for an about us page is “About Website Design Company – ECommerce Partners”. Hence, the title tag does its job of informing what the page is about. Now, you might have noticed that instead of “About Us – ECommerce Partners”, we added “About Website Design Company – ECommerce Partners”.

The reason is because “Website Design Company” is one of the key phrases we want to target and so, we replaced “About Us” with “About Website Design Company”. This brings out an important point. We need to do a keyword analysis before we write an effective and powerful title tag.

Keyword mining and analysis is a very important part of writing compelling page titles and is a part of the Search Engine Optimization service that First One On provides to their clients.

The next step after keyword analysis will be to write down title tags for each and every web page on your website.

Please be careful when writing title tags and never, never over stuff keywords in the title. Doing so will undermine the power of the title tag and defeat the purpose of better ranking in the search engines. The title tag is the title of your web page and so it must be relevant and meaningful. Remember, this is the title in your AD in the natural search listings of the search engine.

General Suggestion: You cannot promote all of your keywords in one page. Normally, you should promote 3 to 5 keyword phrases per page. The ‘Title tag’ should contain up to 3 important keywords that match to the body of the page content. If the keyword you are trying to promote is highly competitive, you can consider repeating the important keyword twice in the first 100 words of the page content.

Limit the length of the title keywords to 65 characters or less, including spaces. There’s no reason to have the engines cut off the last word and have it replaced with a “…” Note that some search engines are now accepting longer titles and Google, in particular, is now supporting up to 70 characters.

Use a divider when splitting up the keywords. We generally recommend the use of the “|” symbol aka the pipe bar. Others choose the arrow “>” or hyphen “-” and both work well.

Re-using the title tag of each page as the H1 heading tag can be valuable from both a SEO keyword targeting standpoint and a user experience improvement. Users who go to the page from the search result listing will have the expectation of finding the title they clicked on. Users will be more likely to stay on a page they’re reasonably certain fits their intended search query.

Peter Bowen is a seasoned marketing communications professional with an extensive web based marketing background, he won the 1994 Entrepreneur of the Year award for developing an online shopping mall when the internet was in its infancy. Passionate about internet search engine marketing and “converting clicks into customers” by applying proven SEO strategies.

How to Use Strong Keywords

07 2010 Friday

By Bradley Hess in Featured

Of all the important parts of creating excellent content, using strong, keyword-rich content is among the most important. Keywords, links and site visits help searchers find your content and website. Without strong keywords your potential visitors won’t find you. If you are not using the same keywords in your content and meta tags that searchers use when they begin their search in Google, Bing, or other search engines, your site will not show up in the search results.

1. Keyword Research—Do some research to find out which keywords will best fit your content. First you need to realize that not all, if any, of your customers are familiar with industry jargon so create a broader list of keywords that your customers might be searching with. After you have created this list, run those keywords through a keyword research tool, such as Google Suggest to find out how many users are searching with those words, how many of those searched convert to sales, etc.

How to Use Strong Keywords

06 2010 Monday

By Brad Hess in Featured

1. Keyword Research
Do some research to find out which keywords will best fit your content. First you need to realize that not all, if any, of your customers are familiar with industry jargon so create a broader list of keywords that your customers might be searching with. After you have created this list, run those keywords through a keyword research tool, such as Google Suggest to find out how many users are searching with those words, how many of those searched convert to sales, etc.

To get some good keyword suggestions, visit https://adwords.google.com and click on their link to get keyword ideas. From this page you can enter an industry phrase or your company website to get some good suggestions for keywords to use. The results also list the statistics of how many times each keyword is searched for every month, and other local statistics to help you determine which keywords will theoretically be the best to use as your tags.

2. Create Content Based on Keywords
After you have discovered the strongest keywords, create content about those keywords. You want to make sure that this is quality content but keep the topic centered around the specific keywords that you have chosen. You don’t have to use all of your keywords in one blog or article but try to use as many related keywords as possible.

3. Edit Content for Over-Use of Keywords
No one will read your content if it doesn’t make sense. Be sure to review your content to ensure its overall quality. Over-using keywords will make your content hard to understand. Above all, ensure quality for your readers and create something that they would like to read rather than something that only fits your purposes. In addition, if you over-use keywords in your document, the search engines will flag your content as potential abuse and not give you a high rating in search results.

4. Meta-Tags
Using Meta tags in your blogs, articles and press releases is basic and still important. This will help search engines find your relevant topics more quickly. Many blogs allow you to sort each blog into a general category of other similar blogs but using meta-tags is where you will really score points with search engines. Include all appropriate keywords in the Meta tags to ensure search engines will find your content and provide your content in the search engine results.

5. Good Titles
How well does your title relate to your content? Make sure that your title is directly related to your content. Use relevant keywords in your title as well. Search engines give more weight to titles than other content in your article. The title is also the first thing your potential visitors and readers will see in the search engine results so make sure it is enticing and relevant to their search.

Excellent Keywords are essential to future link-building and generating traffic to your website to increase your search engine rankings. Be very selective and use the most appropriate keywords for your content. Be sure to research relevant keywords and follow all of the steps to appropriately use strong keywords. Just because you create content doesn’t mean that people will come read it. Make it enticing and relevant to your reader.

For this and other articles by Brad Hess, please go to http://www.mymark.com/articles . MyMark, LLC is a media rich professional social networking website that gives you the tools to use social media optimization to enhance your search engine optimization and generate revenue. Visit http://www.mymark.com/ today to set up your free account!

How to Use Strong Keywords

06 2010 Tuesday

By Brad Hess in Featured

2. Create Content Based on Keywords—After you have discovered the strongest keywords, create content about those keywords. You want to make sure that this is quality content but keep the topic centered around the specific keywords that you have chosen. You don’t have to use all of your keywords in one blog or article but try to use as many related keywords as possible.

3. Edit Content for Over-Use of Keywords. No one will read your content if it doesn’t make sense. Be sure to review your content to ensure its overall quality. Over-using keywords will make your content hard to understand. Above all, ensure quality for your readers and create something that they would like to read rather than something that only fits your purposes. In addition, if you over-use keywords in your document, the search engines will flag your content as potential abuse and not give you a high rating in search results.

4. Meta-Tags—Using Meta tags in your blogs, articles and press releases is basic and still important. This will help search engines find your relevant topics more quickly. Many blogs allow you to sort each blog into a general category of other similar blogs but using meta-tags is where you will really score points with search engines. Include all appropriate keywords in the Meta tags to ensure search engines will find your content and provide your content in the search engine results.

5. Good Titles—How well does your title relate to your content? Make sure that your title is directly related to your content. Use relevant keywords in your title as well. Search engines give more weight to titles than other content in your article. The title is also the first thing your potential visitors and readers will see in the search engine results so make sure it is enticing and relevant to their search.

Does Your Web Site Pass the Title Tag Test?

03 2010 Wednesday

By Stone Reuning in Featured

SE-Tactics You know those words in the top bar of the browser when you’re on a website? You may not have noticed them before now, but you’ll want to pay attention to what shows there for your site from now on.

Those words are from the page’s title meta tag, a part of the code that makes up the page. And while the title tag is just one small part of the code, it plays a really big role.

Title tags are crucial in getting your site indexed and ranked in the search engines. A title tag tells the search engine what your page is about – and it’s also what displays in search results to represent your site.

Let’s take a look at your title tags now. Pull up your site and look at what appears in the very top bar of the browser.

What Are Meta Tags and Why Do I Need Them?

10 2009 Friday

By admin in Featured

There is no other way to put it; the World Wide Web is big business. As an example, you only have to look at the phenomenal success of the online bookstore, Amazon. In 2008, Amazon brought in over nineteen billion dollars in income, yet only required an operating budget of approximately eight hundred and fifty million dollars. It really is no surprise to anyone then that more businesses are investing in expanded web presence and capability. Yet, not every organization has the same successes. Barnes and Noble was selling books online before Amazon was even an idea, and yet it isn’t Barnes and Noble that people think of when considering online bookstores, it’s Amazon. The key? Amazon took greater advantage of the opportunity to effectively market their product.

Search Engines, Spiders and Websites, Oh My

The most important and often least understood tool for online marketers is the search engine. The primary type of search engine is the web crawler – these are largely automated programs that crawl through available web pages, indexing data according to a variety of parameters. In short, the crawler, or spider, examines each page of a website. Once it has examined the page, it submits it to an index. Then, when a person uses the search engine software, the index provides links to these pages, ranked according to relevance. It is worth mentioning two other points. First, not all engines index the same way. Some use keyword density; others focus on the content of the first paragraph. Second, any changes to a webpage are likely to affect search rankings, so webmasters must carefully consider each change and its possible effects.

I Never Meta Tag I Didn’t Like

One important part of preparing a page for good search engine rankings is effective use of HTML meta-tags. These tags do not directly relate to the position a site will have in a search result, but they do offer webmasters some control over the way their sites are presented when they come up in a search. In brief, meta-tags are additional bits of code added to the head of your HTML document, right after “TITLE.” Because of the tendency for unscrupulous coders to find and abuse loopholes in search technologies, search engines do not rely heavily on these tags for rankings. Their benefits to web users are important, however.

First, there is the Meta Description tag. This is a brief report about the content of the webpage in question. When a search engine presents users with a hyperlink, there is frequently a small description accompanying that result. In many cases, that is the Meta Description tag the Webmaster put in the HTML document so that when a spider visits the site, it indexes this information. This is not always the case, however; Google in particular will generate its own description for a site.

The Meta Description is often the first piece of information someone using a search engine will see. The URL may not mean anything to them, but this description will. If it is poorly written, the user will likely skim right past the site for one that presents itself more effectively. Thus, the key is effective, concise writing that conveys exactly what the site is about.

The second tag is the Meta Keywords tag. This tag is a list of keywords the Webmaster considers most pertinent to each page. Proper use of the keywords tag is also vital. While search engines use a variety of keyword systems, and have in recent years de-emphasized the Meta Keywords tag, it still contributes to website rankings and should not be neglected. The best method is to examine each page carefully, and pick approximately ten keywords that best represent the data therein. Too many nonspecific keywords will lead to inconsistent search results, and too few means missing an opportunity to get a message in front of users. In addition, many sites are actively on the lookout for keyword abuse. Google in particular is known to ban certain pages from its index entirely if they consider the article to be an abusive, loophole-seeking piece.

There are other, less relevant tags that can provide some benefits, though they aren’t as important as the previous two. An example is the Robots tag, which is only useful in making sure certain sites do not index a particular page. This can help a Webmaster keep their content from being associated with undesirable elements, but it does not contribute directly to higher search placement.

No Meta Tag is an Island

Once again, it must be stressed that meta-tags are not a magical solution to the very complex problem of online marketing. They must be regarded as one tool in an inventory of other tools, and should be used responsibly. Properly implemented, they will help complete an effective marketing strategy.

Enzo F. Cesario is a Copywriter and co-founder of Brandsplat. Brandcasting uses informative content and state-of-the-art internet distribution and optimization to build links and drive the right kind of traffic to your website. Go to http://www.Brandsplat.com/ or visit our blog at: http://www.brandsplatblog.com/

The 5 Minute SEO Site Audit Checklist

04 2009 Friday

By Matt Siltala in Featured

From month to month I have the opportunity to present 4 different webinars on different topics related to Internet marketing to brand new online business owners.

The reason I bring this up is because no matter what the topic I am presenting on, I usually get asked the same question by completely different random people. They are all wanting me to “look at their site” and give them a “quick, what do you think?”.

These people are wanting to know if their site is ready to “go live” (although I never really understand why people ask that question) but for these people, and this post – I have come up with what I’d like to call “The 5 Minute SEO Site Audit Checklist” If you have a brand new site, and have never done any kind of SEO before, this will be a great list of reminders that will set you off on the right foot.

1. URL canonicalization and 301 re-dirs – One of the first things I look for on any domain I am giving a health check too is the URL canonicalization. In My Opinion it does not matter if you pick proper URL canonicalization pointing to the wwws or non-wwws, but you need to pick one and stick to it. I personally always choose the wwws because more people (from my experience) tend to link to you with the full URL. So you need to get into your .htaccess file and make a few edits. Any variation of the homepage URL needs to be done this way too – for example you need to have the /index.php also re-direct to the main URL (however you have it set up) Bottom line here, you need to make sure all variations of your URL point to the same way you set it up.

Any extension of your URL like:

http://www.example.com/index.php
http://www.example.com/index.htm
http://www.example.com/default.html
http://www.example.com/default.php
http://www.example.com/anything (that goes to homepage)

All need to be pointed to the main - http://www.example.com (without any extensions on them). You also need to make sure that you don’t have any dev links that need to be 301-ed to their new addresses so you don’t have any bad or dead links on the site. You can handle all these changes via the .htaccess file. Here is a little more in depth look into 301 re-directs via a post I did on it a few months back.
Here’s the code:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^yourdomain.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

(Make sure your Apache installation has mod_rewrite enabled.)

As long as your Apache installation has mod_rewrite enabled then you should be able to use this fix on almost any host.

2. Unique Title Tags and Meta Data. I will go to Google and run a a site: command and see all of the pages that are indexed just to make sure that there are no duplicate content issues and that all pages seem to be individual and unique with their own title tags and meta data. If your site is not right – all results that come back will look the exact same, and if the title and data that comes back is all the exact same – you have a problem!

3. Search Engine Friendly – Check to make sure the CMS you are using is search engine friendly. Are your URLs search engine friendly? Are you using keywords in the naming structure of your URLs or just auto-matically created jibberish by the builder? Are you able to include header tags? Alt Tags?

4. Has the site been submitted to Google Webmaster Central? By submitting your site to Google you are able to get your whole site indexed properly on Google, and they are able to show you any errors your site may have. There are so many tools that are offered here that you need to become aware of, but for the sake of “The 5 Minute SEO Site Audit” I just want to make sure the site has been submitted.

5. Check for Duplicate Content – If you are selling products and are using a supplier with their descriptions and info, I am going to make sure there is no duplicate content issues. If you are using the same content that 1000 other people are using, there might be a problem. I would always suggest making sure you do everything you can to make sure that you have no duplicate content of any kind on your site.

In Conclusion:

Again, this is just a quick “What I would do” SEO Audit checklist of what I look for when “checking out” brand new sites. These are a few of the steps that I would recommend anyone new to Internet business and SEO would check out before really thinking they are ready to make money with their website. I know this info may seem basic to a lot of us that have been doing it “forever”, but you woul be surprised how many people still do the simple things wrong!

Matt Siltala has been working with Internet business owners since 1999 to help them increase their conversion rate and truly become successful. Matt got started in the field by working with a small radio station in Arizona and posting to his own personal blog From there, Matt has become an expert in the field of SEO and internet marketing, all while building his own internet marketing company, Dream Systems Media.

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SiteProNews Blogs

9 Common Title Tag Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

The Meta Description Tag

Search Engine Optimization – Help Your Business Grow

Meta Title Tags are Gold

How to Use Strong Keywords

How to Use Strong Keywords

How to Use Strong Keywords

Does Your Web Site Pass the Title Tag Test?

What Are Meta Tags and Why Do I Need Them?

The 5 Minute SEO Site Audit Checklist

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