SEO and the Basics of Onpage SEO

Search engines do not rank whole web sites, but individual pages within the site. When doing some Page Rank research you may see that pages within a web site can have very different rankings. Therefore, with single web pages in mind, start small to build up your rankings within as many pages of your site as possible. You need to use what is known as onpage SEO to give your web page the best advantage, and if you have many highly optimized pages they will help you more than just a homepage with a good ranking.

The most baic level onpage SEO techniques that you need to encompass within your web pages are as follows:

1. Page title
This is what appears in the blue bar at the very top of your browser window. This ‘title tag’ must list your keywords. If you leave your title out it will be listed by default as ‘Untitled’. This is to be avoided as your title tag lets the search engines know what your page is about. So, ‘untitled’ doesn’t tell them anything other than you omitted the title. In a search result the title tag is displayed so you want to keep it short and to the point using about 7 or 8 words. Make sure all the pages on your site have different title tags.

2. Metadata
This is coding found before your ‘head’ tag. Search engines used to use metadata for page rank much more than they do these days, but don’t overlook your meta tags – Google differentiates between your pages by using your metadata. List your keywords in your meta tags, do not list words that you don’t have in your content.

3. Web page content
Use a light peppering of keywords throughout your web page content but don’t overdo it and ’stuff’ your pages. The search engines will regard that as a negative. As long as your web copy is relevant to your title tags and keywords you are OK. Think big picture and ‘theme’ your web page. And try using synonyms as well as your keywords so that your text reads properly.

4. Links
Link to pages within your web site using your chosen keywords. This internal linking will inform search engines that the keyword has importance. Refrain from linking all over the place within your web copy as your theme will ‘bleed’. Keep things tight by controlling where your links go out to, and remember this means content links here, not your menu links.

5. Your domain name
If you want to improve in the search engine rankings it helps to have your keywords in your url. If your keyword is “weightloss tips” you should chose weightlosstips.com which will rank much higher for your keyword term than, say, healthyeating101.com. Of course you have to make sure each page is fully optimized too.

Remember as you optimize your web page content to make sure that it reads well. Naturally flowing text will make your visitors feel like sticking around, and later returning; and by using these few, easy to follow pointers, your onpage SEO will be a success.

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Keywords – Are You Choosing the Right Ones?

To get enough potential customers to your website you need to harness the power of search engines. Targeted customers are potential customers because they come to your site looking for something specific through the keywords that you have used, either in your web content or your pay per click campaign.

As you plan your keyword strategy remember that using the right keywords, ones that people actually use, is the name of the game. Your potential customers are those visitors who are interested in what you have to say as long as it is relevant to their search.

Back and the old days before people got really search engine savvy, a one word search term was common: insurance, mortgage, diet – you get the idea. Try getting the first place position in the Google with a one word phrase like those now – it’s a much steeper hill to climb, and an expensive one at that.

With most people these days using a three or four word search terms when using a search engine we can really see how specific and targeted searches are. So, for example, if you have a diet website you know there is a lot of competition out there – I just googled diet and there are 187,000,000 results – that’s a lot of competition.

How easy do you think it is to get a number one placement for the term ‘diet?’ Do you think you would have more success ranking number one for a slightly longer search term, such as ‘diet scams.’ You bet ya – ‘diet scams’ has only 4,480,000 listings. And what about ‘diet scams revealed,’ a three word search term that has only 65,300 listings! Do you think you could optimize your page to be number one out of just 65K or so? Sure you can!

Now that you can see the power of funneling down and using longer search terms as your keyword phrase it’s time to work out a strategy to evaluate your website’s keywords and phrases.

The first step is working out what your keywords and phrases are. This is actually sometimes more difficult than it sounds because most business owners think they know what those keywords and phrases are, but after a little research find out that they did not.

It’s very difficult to be objective when you are so close to your business or endeavor and put yourself in your customers’ shoes. What you would use for a search term is likely to be an industry term not one used by regular Joes on the street.

You will likely be surprised by what you find when you ask your customers what they see your business is about and how they understand it, as well as how they would go about searching for it on the Internet.

When you have a stack of keywords or phrases from your customers and you feel like the big picture is getting clearer for you then think about adding in your own keywords – but remember, if you are trying to gain new customers or clients, industry specific terms are not going to bring you conversions.

With your keyword list now you have to work out how relevant you think the terms are. If you are a web hosting company and your polled customers tell you ‘free web hosting’ is a search term they would use you should still think twice about whether it really is a search term for your business. Do you want to offer free web hosting? If not then do not entertain the thought – scrap that keyword phrase. By using it the only people you will bring to your site are those looking for free web hosting. Will they suddenly be looking for hosting they have to pay for when they land on your snazzy website? In a word: No.

You want to use keywords and phrases that people actually use to find things on the Net so choose popular words and terms. If no one searches for a term why use it, just in the unlikely event that someone, some day might?

How can you find out how popular terms are? There are lots of resources available that can give you this information if you want to find this out for yourself. A popular one is Wordtracker. [Full disclosure – that is my affiliate link to the site where you can sign up for a free trial.]

But popularity alone is not a certainty for bringing in web traffic. Your keywords and phrases need to be specific and relevant – remember ‘diet scams revealed?’ That term was not the most popular [that was diet] but if you have a website where you debunk diets then you are going to get traffic from that term.

And finally as you go through your list of keywords remember the why of it all – why is someone typing in those specific words in a search engine in the first place? Maybe if they typed in ‘diet scams revealed’ they have been thinking about a diet but want to know if it is really unhealthy, or dangerous in some way.

When you think you can locate the whys then you will have a fuller grasp of your visitors’ motivations and you can expand upon them. You may be able to offer more products or services once you have successfully pinned down specific customer motivations, which is a nice bonus.

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Working Out Where Your Website Sucks

Just because you build it, it doesn’t mean they will come. The honest truth is that the majority of web sites out there suck. That doesn’t mean the designs are necessarily bad, it just means that the websites’ owners don’t have a good grasp on why and where their website isn’t performing as they had hoped.

Think about it: How do you know how successful your web site really is unless you have data that is measurable? You don’t. You may have a vague idea, but you don’t have enough of the big picture. Web analytics, or should I say good web analytics will give you the big picture.

1. Know if Your Visitors Are Going to Your Key Pages
Pages that you want your visitors to go to and make a sale, give a donation, sign up for something e.t.c. are your key pages. With a good stats application you can tell at a glance what your top performing pages are, as well as your worst performing pages.

2. Know if Your Visitors are Going Through Your Sales Funnel
Using good web analytics will mean you can see time periods of your choosing that will highlight visitor behavior. You may find that you have a lot of visitors to your home page but they leave fast, meaning you have a high bounce rate. Web stats won’t tell you why people leave but a high bounce rate indicates that they found you through an entry way but you’re site was not ‘as advertised’ when they arrived. This is why it is pointless to write content that is not targeted – because customers that do not convert are sales that do not happen. Web stats will tell you what your conversion rate is.

3. Quickly Know Your Conversion Rate
Your conversion rate is calculated as the number of visitors per month divided by the number of visitors that actually did what you specifically wanted them to do [e.g. buy product] multiplied by 100. One thousand visitors with ten also as buyers will mean a sales conversion rate of 1%. Using Google Analytics will mean that you don’t have to use a calculator – it’s really easy to see your goals and your conversions at a glance.

4. Easily Set Up Goals
Setting up goals for your website is not only a marketing campaign must-do, it is an easy way to evaluate the success or failure of areas of your website. You need to know if your visitors are actually landing on your landing pages, if they sign up for your newsletter or promo, or any other page that you want to funnel traffic to.

Google Analytics makes it likely easy to set up goals that are trackable. For example, if you want to track how many people sign up for a special promo on your site, the thank you page after the sign-up is your end goal. You start off your tracking funnel by selecting the pages that you have set up to lead visitors to sign up. By setting up goals can easily see if people drop out and do not go through to your intended end goal page.

5. Long Term Feedback is Vital for Site Health
If you notice that your website isn’t getting many visitors, or that bounce rates are high you’ll know it’s time to do some search engine optimization on your website. You might have a content issue and need better OnPage search engine optimization, or you might not have enough good quality links bringing in traffic.

There are many web traffic stat applications available that can help you get a really good grasp on what is happening on your website. They range from fees in the thousands to free. I like free and especially when it is from Google because I know it’s good stuff.

You may be wondering why Google offers a free service that is comparable to high cost solutions, well the answer is that the analytics part of data gathering links in very nicely with the advertising Adwords, money generating part of Google. They are giving us this freebie hoping that we will make good use of their paid advertising capability to drive traffic to our websites. There is method to their madness after all.

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Above the Fold? Re-Thinking Your Web Copy

Sometimes when I have a design job I am told, “We want all our text ‘above the fold.’” When asked why, often the answer is because somebody in the company had mentioned that they heard it was a good idea not to have any web content below the fold.

I can see the logic – text above the fold can be read without having to scroll, which makes it more likely to be read in those precious few moments a visitor’s eyes first meet your site, but where exactly is the fold?

On my desktop computer, with a regular 19 inch monitor, my browser window has several tool bars open and I still have several inches of screen space. Switch over to my laptop, with a 15.4 inch widescreen monitor, and nary a tool bar, and the fold hits almost immediately – there is barely depth enough for a header, a photo and a couple of paragraphs.

I like to keep the good stuff above the fold – but not all of it – because web copy is important and its importance doesn’t drop off because it is below a very hard to define area.

The word count on your web page needs to be high enough to impart information not only to your readers, but also search engine robots so they can ascertain how relevant your content is for their search queries.

You might think it a waste of time to write a lot on a web page because people don’t read the same way on the web as they do with print; but the fact is that with all things being equal, long copy will outperform short copy each and every time.

Now don’t get confused with long copy and boring copy. You don’t want boring copy – you want quality copy.

Very few people will read your entire web page’s content. They either have to be researching something, or they have plenty of time on their hands! Whichever is true, the longer your web page [when trying to get a sale] the much more effective it is than a short one.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that you are your prospect. What might seem long to you, especially if you wrote it and edited it several times, may not seem that way your readers. You need time to build their trust through examples, testimonials and money back guarantees, for example. You can’t just expect to show up online and seal the deal within a few hundred words.

Now there have been many studies and split tests conducted on long copy versus short copy. The far and away winner is always long copy. But remember that’s targeted relevant long copy.

So, what kind of long copy are we talking about? Well here are some great online examples:

Google Ambush
The Magic of Making Up
Earth For Energy

Research on long copy has shown that readership typically drops off dramatically at around 300 words, which on this post was at the ‘Very few people will read your entire web page’s content’ part in paragraph eight, but interestingly it does not drop off again until around 3,000 words – and I am not going to write that much here, I promise, as I’d need to come up with another 2,500!

So let’s end with a brief word on your target readership, since that’s who you are lasering in on. Know who your true audience is. It is vital. Writing long copy and promoting something to an audience that has little or no interest in it is pointless – it’s a time and money loser for you.

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