“I have a website. Â It is hosted by soandso.com. Â Yeah, the guys there really made a great looking site. Â I can’t wait to start getting calls when people find me online…”
OK, so who said you would be “found” online? Â Is that assumed? Â Did someone that setup your website say that you would be at the top of every search? Â Did you test it out and see for yourself?
Having someone host your website for you is great, because it can allow you to stick with doing what you do best, versus having to worry about how to get the code right on your CSS to make it look like you wanted. Â But don’t assume that just because someone has put your site together for you that you will be the superstar on the search engines. One small way to get some pull by the search engine robots is to use tags and keywords.
Tags are the invisible words in the page code that can get picked up by search engines such as Google or Bing. Â When you have tags in the background that are relevant to a search, the more likely you are to make it to the top of the search results window. The more relevant the tags to the search, the better your standing in the results. Â This does not, however, account for things such as paid advertising, as those guys make it to the top faster depending on how loudly their wallets talk.
This is a short post, because there isn’t much to talk about except to be mindful of the tags you use in the page. Â You want to make sure that you are precise on the word choice, as you do not want to end up in search results that are not relevant to your desired customer base. Also, for those businesses that are trying to make a name for themselves, it is always best NOT to include your competitions names in your metadata, as sooner or later, they will notice and probably call you on it. Â It may not be illegal, but it will make for some nasty phone calls, and probably a BBB complaint or two.
References:
https://www.thesitewizard.com/archive/metatags.shtml
https://www.keyworddiscovery.com/kd-manual-implementing-keywords.html
With 15 years of digital creative experience and work in dozens of major industries, Lucas writes to communicate the importance of digital strategies useful for every company from Startup to mature Brand. He currently is Creative Director at @StandAndStretch, a TEDx Speaker, SEO Expert, Father to 3 boys and married to his lovely wife, Whitney. Schedule a consult today!
Kevin Skibbe
One thing about search engines is that the algorithm they use to rank pages constantly changes. They do this because people begin to learn the tricks of the trade and tweak their site to fit the algorithm. Meta tags and meta keywords still hold weight but here’s a few other tips that have worked for me that might also help get you to the top of the search results:
1. Title tags. One of the articles you linked to references this. Make your page titles descriptive using keywords for your domain without just spamming it.
2. H1 tags. All of your pages should have an H1 tag somewhere in them. Search engines love H1 tags and use them to determine what type of content is really contained on a page. Do not add multiple H1 tags to a page though. More than one can give the appearance of spamming the search engine and can count negatively toward your page rank.
3. Keyword density. When search engines scan the content of a page they look for keywords that help categorize the page. StandandStretch.com does a good job of this by peppering the pages with words like “Social”, “media”, “Facebook”, and “Twitter”. The more of the words like this search engines see on a page the more relevant your page will look to the search engine. Do not hide keywords on a page though – white text on a white background for instance. Search engines can detect this and it will reflect negatively on your page rank.
4. External links. Having a bunch of other sites link to your site is going to make you look more relevant to a search engine. The more highly ranked the site is that links to you the more highly it will reflect on your site in the eyes of a search engine. You want links to come from sites in a similar domain though – John Doe’s blog about botany linking to your site about baseball cards isn’t going to count nearly as much as ESPN linking to your site about college football.
5. Site maps. Search engines don’t just follow links – many also use a site map to learn how to navigate your site. Be sure to include a site map as part of your site and link to it in your footer.
Kevin Skibbe
One thing about search engines is that the algorithm they use to rank pages constantly changes. They do this because people begin to learn the tricks of the trade and tweak their site to fit the algorithm. Meta tags and meta keywords still hold weight but here’s a few other tips that have worked for me that might also help get you to the top of the search results:
1. Title tags. One of the articles you linked to references this. Make your page titles descriptive using keywords for your domain without just spamming it.
2. H1 tags. All of your pages should have an H1 tag somewhere in them. Search engines love H1 tags and use them to determine what type of content is really contained on a page. Do not add multiple H1 tags to a page though. More than one can give the appearance of spamming the search engine and can count negatively toward your page rank.
3. Keyword density. When search engines scan the content of a page they look for keywords that help categorize the page. StandandStretch.com does a good job of this by peppering the pages with words like “Social”, “media”, “Facebook”, and “Twitter”. The more of the words like this search engines see on a page the more relevant your page will look to the search engine. Do not hide keywords on a page though – white text on a white background for instance. Search engines can detect this and it will reflect negatively on your page rank.
4. External links. Having a bunch of other sites link to your site is going to make you look more relevant to a search engine. The more highly ranked the site is that links to you the more highly it will reflect on your site in the eyes of a search engine. You want links to come from sites in a similar domain though – John Doe’s blog about botany linking to your site about baseball cards isn’t going to count nearly as much as ESPN linking to your site about college football.
5. Site maps. Search engines don’t just follow links – many also use a site map to learn how to navigate your site. Be sure to include a site map as part of your site and link to it in your footer.
Lucas Shaffer
This is absolutely on point! 🙂
It is interesting that while Page Rank evolves and algorithms change it is important to keep up. For instance, keyword ‘stuffing’ was an obvious no brainer and while they dropped the importance of keywords they are still very relevant; just not as imporant. And when used as you mention can provide a crawler this content without flagging the site as spam.
A new one I read about recently is site speed. Google Webmaster Tools help build site maps, site links and now can help analyze your site speed. If a crawler notices your performance is slower than others, Google now adds this attribute to build site rank. See more here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/04/using-site-speed-in-web-search-ranking.html
Cheers to SEO!
Lucas Shaffer
This is absolutely on point! 🙂
It is interesting that while Page Rank evolves and algorithms change it is important to keep up. For instance, keyword ‘stuffing’ was an obvious no brainer and while they dropped the importance of keywords they are still very relevant; just not as imporant. And when used as you mention can provide a crawler this content without flagging the site as spam.
A new one I read about recently is site speed. Google Webmaster Tools help build site maps, site links and now can help analyze your site speed. If a crawler notices your performance is slower than others, Google now adds this attribute to build site rank. See more here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/04/using-site-speed-in-web-search-ranking.html
Cheers to SEO!