Anchor
We talk a lot about links around here, both internal links and inbound links. In today’s Introduction to SEO webinar, SEO Linking Essentials: How to Generate Inbound Links, Travis got into the nitty-gritty of the process.
Anchor text is a little like the outlet that links plug into. If your outlet is poor, you’re not going to get good performance from your link because it won’t have reliable power. Using your carefully-chosen keywords as anchor text for relevant inbound links gets the amps flowing. As tempting as it is to write copy for your site that tells people to click here and here, it is much better to give them an idea of where they are going, say, Grand Canyon or Great Barrier Reef. That way you don’t lose your visitors and you don’t confuse the crawlers.
Just for fun: anchors.
Tags: Blogs, Google spiders, Highlights, keywords, SEO, Webinar, Webmarketing123
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What a lot of spiders! They must like it here!
Why should I bother to read your site? There are so many sites out there and I really don’t have time to look at yours.
Good question. Both human and crawler visitors want to know. Answering that question with your content is the big task of content writing. Fortunately, our latest webinar in the Introduction to SEO series, Copywriting for SEO: The Art and Science of Content Creation, provided insight to our audience today.
To begin, you need some attention. Great titles for your articles attract readers, but they won’t stay long if that’s all you have on offer. Spiders, much like people, get impatient and bored with the same old stuff. Give them a compelling subject underneath that great title, and they’ll stick around. It’s even better if you make it funny, educational, engaging, or all of the above.
However nice it is to have folks sticking around to read the content you’ve spent so much time and energy creating, it’s not enough. You want them to DO something while they’re with you. Ensuring that there is a call to action—a link to click to download a white paper, perhaps—up high on the page helps to turn casual visitors into actual leads.
Finally, write like a human, but keep an eye on the spiders. Spiders understand a lot more about context than they used to. They will be able to get the gist of what your content is about, much like your human readers. Using your keywords in your content makes spiders notice them and subsequently improve your rankings for them.
The answer to why I should bother with your site? Because it’s fascinating, timely, relevant, useful, and often really entertaining. And I don’t mind all the spiders it attracts; I don’t have arachnophobia.
Tags: Blogs, Google spiders, Highlights, keywords, SEO, Webinar, Webmarketing123
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When you redesign your website, it’s a lot like moving. You won’t throw out your back lifting heavy boxes and you won’t have to figure out how to maneuver your suddenly much-longer-than-you-thought couch around the corner to get to the door, but there are a lot of similar logistical problems. In today’s webinar, Improving Your Search Rankings During a Website Redesign, Mike Turner gave a comprehensive overview of all of them, but one in particular stood out: Don’t reinvent the wheel, just redirect it.
A real-life move takes you from one habitable spot to another. Much as you wouldn’t move without your treasured inlaid mint-condition doodlesnipper because of its immense sentimental and actual value, you shouldn’t move your site without a plan to take your search engine rankings with you.
Before you ship that doodlesnipper, you want to take a picture of it, just in case. Similarly, you should take a snapshot of your keyword rankings before the move as baselines for your traffic after the move. Because the doodlesnipper is large with many attachments, you need to make sure all the boxes are clearly labeled and that you have mapped out where all the parts are going to go in the new living room. Those attachments are like the different pages of your site; when you change their URLs, you have to map out which old ones should redirect to which new ones.
Then the key: 301 Redirects. Much as you forward your mail from one physical address to another, you forward your old page visits to your new pages. You want to use the 301 Redirect rather than the 302 because you want the change to be permanent, lest the crawlers consider your new page just a squatter and not worth bothering about.
Redirecting the tens or hundreds or thousands of pages on your site is definitely a big job. The good news is that you don’t have to hire a truck.
Tags: Blogs, Highlights, keywords, SEO, Webinar
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Our Introduction to SEO webinar series continued today with The Six Pillars of SEO. Here’s the two-minute, Cliff’s Notes version:
- Keywords: These are the words you are optimizing around, the terms that you want to show up for when users search.
- Site Content: Writing keyword-rich content helps search engine crawlers recognize your pages as relevant.
- Meta Content: Customizing your page titles, meta content, and meta keywords, while old-school, are still best practice for optimization.
- URLs: Using your keywords in your URLs will improve your rankings on results pages.
- Inbound Links: When other sites link to your site as an authority, search engines are more likely to see you as one, too, moving you up the rankings.
- Content Silos: Organizing your content into cohesive units helps search engine crawlers perceive your themes and find you more relevant.
And if you want to schedule a free site analysis for more details, click here.
Tags: Blogs, Google, Highlights, keywords, Webinar, Webmarketing123
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Today’s webinar, Long Tail Versus Short Tail Keywords, made me think of Indiana Jones. (No, not because of the spiders crawling all over the webpages!) In the opening credits with the sepia map in the background, the little plane traces its red line from exotic location to remote landing to middle of nowhere to the exact right spot to find the lost ark.
If Indy had used Google, he might have started by typing in “ark.” It’s a short-tail keyword, a mere three letters. After paging through a zillion pages of Noah’s ark replicas, complete with zebras and chimpanzees, he’d get a little frustrated, but instead of lashing out at his trusty laptop with his whip, he’d get more specific. He’d try typing “ark of the covenant.” His little airplane is getting closer. He still has to stop to rebut the scurrilous claims of Dr. Rene Belloq on Wikipedia, but that takes mere moments. Then he tries the long tail search for “ark of the covenant Cairo” and Google gives him a handy amulet with an address. His plane arrives and now all he has to do is beat the Nazis, survive the snakes, and rescue the girl.
Indy, like most searchers, is getting savvier in his techniques. He’ll be quicker to find the temple of doom and the holy grail. He’ll breeze right by the film versions of Doom and Monty Python and the Holy Grail. By the time he gets to looking for the crystal skull, it’s a wonder the search takes long enough to film.
Similarly, the purveyors of lost arks and the like can make themselves easier to find by optimizing for exactly the kind of long tail keywords Dr. Jones used in his research. While there are relatively few archaeologists and evil empires searching for precious relics, those who search for “ark of the covenant Cairo” are ready to buy.
Tags: Blogs, E-Commerce, eCommerce, Google, keywords, SEO, Webinar, Webmarketing123
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Dear Santa—
This is what I want for Christmas…
What comes next in your letter to Santa is what you want most, right? You’re not going to put the shiny red bike or the Wii with the best games or the Radio Flyer low on the list if it is what you’ve been dreaming about for months. To get exactly what you want, you have to make sure Santa knows.
Today’s webinar, Top 10 Tips in SEO for 2010, emphasized how important it is to choose the right keywords. Think of them as the keys to those perfect packages under the tree. With the right keywords, you get the red bike, not the dopey blue one and with the right keywords, you get the customers who really want your products or services.
To do this, you need to select specific keywords and put them in the right spots on your webpages. Santa won’t know to bring you what you don’t ask for, and the search engine spiders won’t rank you for keywords you don’t use.
Tags: keywords, Search, SEO
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