SERP Experts

How Search Engines Work Search engines consist of five discrete software components:

1. spider : a robotic browser like program that downloads webpages.
   
2. crawler : a wandering spider that automatically follows links found on pages.
   
3. indexer : a blender like program that dissects webpages that are downloaded by spiders.
   
4. the database : a warehouse of the pages downloaded and processed.
   
5. search engine results engine : digs search results out of the database. Read the rest of this entry »

There is a long list of stop words that can drastically effect how effective your title tags are perceived by the engines. Using any of the keywords on the list below are considered stop words and should be considered when writing effective title tags. Read the rest of this entry »

On page optimization refers to the SEO tactics used in your HTML code. When utilized properly, on page optimization using specific keywords can lead to high search engine rankings and website success.
Check it out…

Critical Keyword Choice: the keywords you choose are the very foundation on which your site rankings stand. You need keywords that are relevant and specific for your page. General keywords will get make your page one of many in a huge search. You need more specific, less general key words to get your page at the top of search list.
For instance, if you have a website for your pancake house in Toledo, the keyword “pancakes” will pull you up on a search with huge results. A better keyword choice would be “pancake house Toledo”

Meta tag Appearance: your keywords should show up at least once in the meta tags of your HTML code. Let’s try it for your pancake business.

Your meta tag should look like this…

<meta name = ‘description’ content = ‘Sally’s Pancake House serves breakfast in Toledo, Ohio…’/>

Title: Also include your keywords in the title of your web page, such as: <title> Sally’s Pancake House – Pancake House Toledo </title>
Headings: Apply your key words to your heading <h1> tag on the specific page.

Bold Effects: placing your keywords in bold or italicized text works to increase the optimization of your page. Do not, however, go overboard with this tactic. If you bold and/or italicize every keyword appearance on your page, the search engine spiders might tag your page for index removal. Bolding or italicizing keywords works only when done gracefully, two or three times throughout the text.

Integrate your keywords in the content of your page at least once. More specifically, include them in paragraph <p> tags.

Place Keywords in Alt tags of images of your HTML file as an additional keyword placement.

Include keywords in domain name: place your keywords in the domain name as an additional way to improve your on page optimization.

Fight Fairly: a point to hit home is that you should stay away from on page optimization methods that might get you black listed by the search engines. Use keywords appropriately, naturally, and most importantly, in moderation!

• The Dual Roles of Navigation: Navigation needs to be user friendly and search engine friendly. If you want a user to pay attention to an offer you have to link to it with a call to action in the content area of the page. If you want search engines to pay attention to a page you have to link to it on important pages and/or from many pages. In general it is also better usability and better for your rankings to use descriptive (or keyword rich) text links over image links for your primary navigation, and in most in content links on your site.
• Navigation Should Parallel Keyword Strategy: Your primary site navigation should be aligned with keyword categories, structured in related groups that capture keywords along the entire purchase cycle. If you have navigation that is not aligned with your keywords (like date based archives or an about page) you can use nofollow on it to prevent passing link equity through that portion of your site. You may also want to demote sections of your site that convert exceptionally poor relative to the better performing options.
• Examples of Channeling Link Equity: Some websites, such as Target.com, show Google more navigation than they show end users to promote seasonally hot items. Other sites, like Chocolate.com, chose to use nofollow on unimportant internal links to de-emphasize unimportant options. You can view the nofollowed links on Chocolate.com by viewing their site with SEO for Firefox turned on. In some cases it also makes sense to use nofollow on user generated content to lessen the incentive for driveby spamming.
• Clean & Clear Structure: If you author many pages about the same topic it is important to link to the most important articles in order to emphasize them, and use breadcrumb navigation to help structure the site and show what pages are most important.
• Duplicate content: Google likes webmasters to believe that Google has duplicate content figured out, but if they have multiple similar pages indexed you are splitting your PageRank and they may rank the wrong version. Make sure you do not place the same (or exceptionally similar) content on multiple pages. Stuntdubl has a good list of resources for dealing with duplicate content.
• Subdomains: If you have logical breaks in your content you may want to use subdomains to create smaller focused mini sites. If you have a strong brand you can get a bit more aggressive with subdomains, like eBay is.
• More: Here are some more internal linking tips from a prior post on the topic.

• Google shows the first 60 to 70 characters in the search results. Make sure your important keywords occur early in the page title for scan-ability. If your title goes beyond 70 characters Google may cut off the title before 69 characters and display … at the end of your page title.
• Rather than making your page title just the keyword and/or starting your page title with the keyword, sometimes it helps to add in a descriptive modifier before your core keyword. This helps ensure your page is less likely to get filtered out of the search results (and thus makes your rankings more stable) while helping you rank for additional terms.
• Page titles are used to draw in clicks from search results amongst many anonymous competing offers, thus they present an opportunity to differentiate yourself from the competition and qualify prospects to your offer.
• Good titles evoke an emotional response, ask a question, or promise something (that the landing page fulfills).
• Since the page title is one of the few elements search engines can show searchers before sending them to your site, they place significant weight on the words in the page title. In addition, some people link to pages using their official page title as the link anchor text.
• Overlapping modifiers in a reasonable and readable way allows you improve your relevancy scores for an array of keywords, but they still need to read well. Rather than loading up page titles with a keyword list it is better to write a clear compelling offer that contains your keywords and describes your services.
• Qualifying the wrong prospective clients with a bad offer will lead to a low conversion rate, or wasting time servicing non-clients. For example, if you sell something that is high end you wouldn’t necessarily want to rank for your keyword with modifiers like cheap and discount, as servicing those people will waste your time.
• Page titles should be differentiated from page to page on your site. Unless limited by the size and scope of your site, it is best not to have all your page titles follow the exact same formula across your site. You also should not use the same keyword at or near the start of every page title.
• The format, order, and word selection of the words in your page title should be (at least slightly) different than the words in your meta description and on page headers.
• If you have a strong brand you may want to place it at the end of your page title. If you have one of the leading trusted Internet brands (Amazon, eBay, etc.) then it might make sense to place your brand at the start of the page title. In most cases the page title should still be more focused on the page copy and searcher’s intent than on your brand.
• If you blog or are creating linkbait make sure you try to create headlines that draw clicks by using magnetic headline principals.