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Search Engine Optimization – On-page Content

By Ken Partain

This is the third in a series of five articles on Search Engine Optimization – Back to the Basics.  Yesterday we talked about the coding of your website.  Today we’re going to talk about the on-page content, including the meta tags.

There are essentially four parts to the on-page content of your website.

They are:

  1. Title
  2. Description
  3. Keywords
  4. Content

Title

The Title tag is a meta tag, which means it is not usually seen as part of the content a typical user would see.  However, the Title tag shows up at the top of your browser when a page is loaded.  Behind the URL itself, I believe the Title tag is probably the most important element of on-page optimization.  This Title tag tells the search engines what this page is all about.  The Title tag is also what shows up as a link to your website in search results. In the image below, from a Google search, the text highlighted in green is the Title tag.

wmme-serp-snipit

Description

The Description tag is also a meta tag.  It is basically a short description of the content the reader can expect to find when they click through to your site.  In the image above it is the text right below the Title tag.  Typically about 160 characters will show up in the search results.  So the best way to take advantage of that is to make your description compelling so that searchers will be enticed to click through to your site.  In our example above it simply tells who we are.

Keywords

The Keywords tag is also a meta tag.  Because this tag got so much abuse in the past, most of the major search engines simply ignore it today, but there are some that still look at it to pick up keywords that may not be replicated exactly in your content.

Content

This is the juicy part and what all of your human readers visit your site for.  The content is exactly that; your article, your blog post, your video, your pictures.  They all make up the on-page content of your website.  Your content can be really long or really short.  Ideally you should have about 500 words per page at a minimum.  If you are posting to a blog sometimes that’s a little much.  The key is to have unique content about a few keywords so that your content can rank well for those keywords.  If you try to put too much information on one page it won’t rank well for any of it.

Take this series of articles for example.  I broke it out into an introduction and four follow up posts so that each one could focus on one aspect of search engine optimization.  Take a lesson from that.

When all four of these elements are in sync you can rank really well for your chosen keywords.  If there is a lot of competition it may take a little longer, but it can still be done.  You will just need to work on getting more incoming links to those pages.

Tomorrow we are going to talk about Link Popularity.

To your success,
Ken Partain

Filed Under: Search Engine Optimization Tagged With: search engine optimization, seo, small business websites

Search Engine Optimization – Clean Code

By Ken Partain

Not all code is created equal!

This is the second in a series of five articles on Search Engine Optimization – Back to the Basics.

One of the strongest factors of a website that ranks well is the code itself.  This is something that most small business owners never even consider.  If a site looks good, as far as they are concerned, it’s a good site.

However, the coding plays a big part in how well your website ranks in the search engines.  If your site has a lot of unnecessary code to compensate for lack of technical ability on the part of your web designer, that can cause a problem.

I see this alot with small companies who sign up for cheap web sites because they can build it themselves.  The companies offering such sites have done so many things to make the sites dummy proof that there is an extremely high amount of unnecessary code.  This is true for scripts as well.  Scripts are small (sometimes not so small) pieces of code that make a site function a certain way.

Every bit of code and every script that is required to make your site function properly can potentially slow down the amount of time it takes for your site to load.  Site load time has always been a factor in rankings, but just recently Google made an announcement that page load times are going to be a bigger factor in rankings and have even provided some tools in Webmaster Tools so that site owners can measure their page load times and take steps to improve it.  Keep in mind that if your site is built on one of the do-it-yourself platforms mentioned above that you will have little to no control over these factors.

Our own site is built on the WordPress platform, which, in my opinion, is a very well coded system.  It is an open-source platform so there are literally thousands of programmers around the world working on it every day to make it better.  Every site we have built on the WordPress platform performs significantly better in search results, even than the sites we had previously optimized on other platforms.

It just takes a few seconds to look at a site and tell if there are issues with bloated code.  Give me a call or send me an email and I’ll be glad to take a quick look at your site.

If you would like to know all the other factors affecting your rankings, you may want to consider our Comprehensive Website Marketing Analysis.

Tomorrow we’re going to talk about your on-page content as a ranking factor.

To your success!
Ken Partain

Filed Under: Search Engine Optimization, websites Tagged With: google, ranking factors, search engine optimization, small business websites

Should You Add Prices To Your Web Site?

By Ken Partain

I had a little debate with a client recently about adding prices to their website.  There are a good number of people who are searching online for the cost of the product they offer.

I suggested they add a page with their pricing on it.  They said no.  Their reasoning was that they couldn’t fully explain the features and benefits of their product without talking to the prospect.

I say Hogwash!  If you can’t fully explain the features and benefits of your product or service on your web site, where can you?  By the way, all the features and benefits are covered on this client’s site.

Your web site is the greatest employee of all.  It tells your story the exact same way to every single visitor.  It’s at work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and it very rarely, if ever, doesn’t show up for work.

A well written and optimized website can be your very best sales tool.  Take the time to do it right.  Share the benefits (and prices!), anticipate objections and address them and turn your website into a selling machine.

Obviously, we have chosen to include prices on our own site.  We have all our SEO Plan prices, Link-building prices, Article Marketing prices and Small Business Website Prices listed where everyone can see.  And depending on the client’s needs, we’ll put together a custom plan with just the right mix.

I’d love to know what you think.  Should you put prices on yoru web site or not?  And tell us why or why not?

Filed Under: Search Engine Marketing Tagged With: greenbaum marketing, mobile websites, search engine marketing, small business websites

How To Get Started Marketing Your Small Business Online

By Ken Partain

Thanks to Rebecca Romo of SHA Insurance, a Life and Health Insurance Agent in Allen, Texas, for being the first person to submit her Top 3 Online Marketing Questions.

Here are the answers to your questions, Rebecca.

How do you make your business successful online?

As with most questions this broad, the answer is really “it depends”.  It depends on what type of business you are in and what your objectives are.

However, there are several things any small business can do to improve their online presence and help connect with their target market.

  1. Establish a web presence.  You can do this several ways, but the most important way, in my opinion, is to have a web site that you control.  With our own website you have full control over the content of the site, how it is marketed, how well it is optimized, etc.
  2. Get your business listed in relevant online directories.  There are a multitude of online directories, both free and paid, that you can list your business with.  Some of them, such as MerchantCircle, are a very good alternative if you absolutely can’t afford to build your own web site as I mentioned in #1.  We offer Local Search Engine Business Profiles that are very well optimized for local search and provide a good snapshot of your business, not to mention they are very inexpensive.
  3. Get involved in Social Media and Social Networking even if you don’t have the first clue about how to proceed.  Get yourself listed with sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter and slowly learn more about each one and how you can use it to connect with your target market and grow your business.

What is your favorite part of online marketing?

This seems to be a more personal question and my answer is optimizing small business websites.  I love seeing a company go from generating very few, or in some cases absolutely no leads from their website, to generating a consistent flow of quality leads because of the work we do.

Search engine rankings are not the be all, end all anymore.  With the introduction of Universal Search and Personalized Search from Google, evey single person could get different search results when looking up the same keyword phrase.  Therefore, the only true measure of how effective your optimization is, is whether or not your business improves as a result.

If you had to start marketing online again, what would you do differently?

I’ve done a few projects in the past where I just leaped out, spent a bunch of money on image stuff like logos, letterhead, business cards, etc. only to find later that the market either wasn’t there, or wasn’t willing to pay for the services we offered.

If I had it to do again I would do more market research before spending a bunch of money developing a web site and other materials.  I would start with some of the free tools available online and find out if there was a need for my idea and how big of a potential market there was for our product or service.

Then I would do everything I could to keep expenses to a bare minimum and not make any long-term obligations until the business started picking up steam.

I’d love to hear your comments and thoughts.

To your success!

Ken Partain

Follow Me On Twitter

Filed Under: Local Search, Questions & Answers, Search Engine Marketing, Social Media Marketing Tagged With: local search, online marketing, small business websites, social media, social networking

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Ken Partain - Small Business Marketing ConsultantHello, my name is Ken Partain and I personally oversee every single SEO and Website development project that we take on at IPG Search Marketing and I stand behind our work 100%.

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