Have you ever wondered how experts use Wordtracker to keep their clients’ sites at the top of the search engine results pages? What can you learn from their methods? How can you apply their strategies to your own website to get outstanding results?
September 7th, 2006
What’s the difference between a Web page titled:
Bob’s Doggy Treats
And one titled:
Bob's Doggy Treats
Maybe more than you think … it’s all in the apostrophe.
Recently, I noticed that a client had pasted their business name from Microsoft Word into their Web site title tag without converting their apostrophe from Word’s character entity to the straight text-only apostrophe that HTML requires.
Initially, I was not very concerned until I Googled for the client’s name and it was nowhere to be found. Other similar business names were in the search engine results pages where my client should have been. Though most Web browsers are able to interpret the Word markup visually, it made no sense to Google, who treated the apostrophe pasted from Word as part of the business name instead of punctuation. For a business who relies on search engine traffic, this can be a costly mistake.
This post is a short reminder that cutting and pasting from Microsoft Word into a Web page document is ALWAYS a bad idea. If you need to cut and paste, a short workaround is to copy from Word into a text editor like Notepad. Then, copy the text from Notepad into your Web page. This removes most of the extra characters could potentially harm your Web page.
1 comment August 28th, 2006
Do you want to improve your Web site’s search engine results rank but feeling intimidated by the complexity of Search Engine Optimization and confused about where to begin? If so, Search Engine Optimization An Hour A Day may be exactly what you are looking for to help you get started. Where other books offer facts, tips, and conceptual background, this volume offers simple tasks that demonstrate the core principles of SEO.
The authors, Jennifer Grappone and Gradiva Couzin, introduce SEO objectives a week at a time and break each objective into goals and tasks that can be easily understood and completed each day. Written with clarity and detail, the book leaves little room for confusion about what you can do to improve your Web site’s rank in the search engine results pages.
One of the most valuable sections of this book discusses team building in a company or organization with competing departmental agendas. In detail, the authors present proven methods for communicating the benefits of SEO in language that reflects the priorities of the Webmaster, programmers, marketing department, graphic designers and more. If you need the help of others to improve your Web site, you’ll find this chapter on team building invaluable.
Topics covered in Search Engine Optimization An Hour A Day include:
This book is an excellent resource for task-oriented realists who want to find a way to improve their Web site’s search engine rank. If you already understand the basics of SEO, you may become frustrated by the pace of progress through the book. If so, don’t forget that you can proceed at any pace and that you may find gems that make the format worth reading. For beginners, the daily task format makes SEO easy to understand and, more importantly, easy to put into practice. No implementation details are left unaddressed and the companion Web site features a full array of documents to track Web site changes, keywords, pay-per-click campaigns and link request letters.
I recommend Search Engine Optimization An Hour A Day for anyone interested in Search Engine Optimization and new to the concept of improving search engine results by optimizing content, especially if your organization or business structure will require you to build teams across deparmental structures.
Product Details
Related Resources
1 comment August 9th, 2006
Though much of this post is excellent, there seem to be some errors. Search engine robots do browse dynamic urls, and meta tags are no longer used by all but meta search engines such as hotbot etc. I still think it is an article worth sharing, but don’t buy everything it says.
A check list for making your site friendly to the Googlebot. This post discusses search engine optimization for Google in more detail than most.
March 24th, 2006
Using standards compliant methods to create highly readable, content rich code with optimized content can aid in your campaign to dominate the search engine category.
February 25th, 2006
It looks like google is in the middle of a PageRank update. I’m sure others are blogging about this also, but thought I would chime in and mention that if you want to see the Google PageRank dance taking place you can use the handy Future PageRank Predictor at SEO Chat.
What you should see is a considerable amount of difference in the PageRank on each server. As you can see below, my web site today (Februrary 21, 2006) shows some variation and looks like it is being promoted to PR6 from PR5. I won’t hold my breath, but it is fun to watch.
Edit: I see another post on the Google PageRank update here.
February 22nd, 2006
Back in April of ‘05, I wrote a short post called How to Succeed in Search Engine Marketing without Trying, in which I proposed that the only viable (sustainable) way to boost search engine rankings is to create valuable content and keep it coming. What does this have to do with today?
As I mentioned earlier, I am reading Naked Conversations by Scoble and Israel and a small statement caught my attention on page 29. “For now, it is clear that the shortest, cheapest, fastest, and easiest route to a prominent Google ranking is to blog often.”
I admit they said it better, but this is exactly the same point I made.
I’m validated.
Do you agree with this perspective? (Not on my being validated, but on content provision as the only viable way to boost search engine rankings!)
February 8th, 2006
I learned CSS initially because I was frustrated by the repetitive tasks that the old Web design techniques imposed on me. Removing and changing font tags was not a favorite passtime. As CSS evolved and my ability as a designer improved, I saw other benefits of CSS design. These included simpler code, increased search engine visibility, faster page loads, and even greater accessibility.
Of course, my first attempts at CSS design weren’t always coded with simplicity. I added tags where some simple CSS code would have sufficed. I credit some examples of low clutter templates for WordPress with teaching me excellent semantic coding in XHTML. Though the templates weren’t eye candy, they did get the job done with a minimum of clutter.
My devotion to CSS increased when learned that uncluttered code increased search engine results, provided the content that is on those cruft free pages is actually relevant to people browsing the Web.
Since speed is so important to many people who browse the Web on their dial-up connections, I saw the bandwidth savings of external linked CSS as a great asset. Of course, there is a bit of a frontloading effect. Let me explain. Though CSS in external files is cached in the browser’s memory from page to page, it must be loaded completely on the first page view. Since CSS files do not have to be large to be effective, this is usually not much of a drawback.
Though I do not claim to be a Web accessibility guru, I do see significant advantages to uncluttered HTML code for those on assistive devices such as screen readers. Even for those on small screens, clean code can make a standard page render more usefully.
January 18th, 2006
Clearly search engine optimization is a very complex process that cannot be reduced to a list of ten points. However, I hope this list helps you understand search engine optimization more completely. Perhaps it will keep you out of trouble with search engines and web directories to which you submit your Web site.
These are directly related to how you design your Web pages and what content you choose to include.
These factors are related to incoming and outgoing links.
Though I cannot assign credit for all of these ideas to any one source, none of them are completely original with me. I have relied on David George’s The ABC of SEO and have been influenced by Shari Thurow’s Search Engine Visibility.
2 comments July 23rd, 2005
Over my web design career, I have learned the importance of high-ranking search engine results and want each of my clients to succeed in their online business. Since high-ranking search engine results tend to equal high-traffic web pages, I have felt pressure to design pages with the search engines in mind. Of course, I still think there is value in taking the needs of a search engine into account when setting up pages and planning content, but what has changed is my focus. Let me explain.
Ultimately, what a search engine needs and wants is not a raft of well-designed pages that carefully target key phrases and words. What search engines and web connoisseurs need is relevant content and current information regarding their topic of interest. After watching successive changes in the leading search engine’s page ranking algorithm change the rank of my carefully crafted SEO friendly pages, I have reached a conclusion to the whole matter. I will design search engine friendly pages, but my clients will now understand that their only chance at being a real destination online is to create and publish (REGULARLY) content relevant to their product or service. In a virtual world that is driven by information, the only sustainable way to succeed is to provide valuable information free of charge.
Why should I give away my valuable information? Perhaps this is a question for another article, but let me answer it in part with some examples. If I am a book publisher, I will obviously not want to give away my books. Instead, I could convince my authors to write short articles relevant to their specialty that would enhance their status as authors and heighten interest in their books. If I were a manufacturer, I would not give away my product but would publish articles that enhance my credibility as an expert in the field to which my product pertains.
Let me sum up. One secret to growing, organic, sustainable growth in any online business is its strategy for the cultivation and development of valuable information related to its product or service.
The Web We Weave, Linking for Googlecrazyfists mp3 36archives mp3 78 rpm record4gb watch mp3activex ocx mp3 id3mp3 100 outlawz jamie foxx thousandmp3 a950 telusiced earth mp3 1776mp3 270 70 Mapmp3 5th disco beethovenmp3 67 ut64kbps mp3 informationton mp3 67estransfer mp3 a930mp3 guns 68your does abba mp3 motheradi mp3 6bhajagovindam shank composer Maptravel nm accommodation casino directorycomp free casinos alliowa ameristar casinoaffiliate program casino internetaffiliate casino program internet$5 deposit minimum casino onlinecasinos 8883dice promo codes casino Map
1 comment April 28th, 2005
CSS Web design, e-commerce Web design, and internet marketing issues from the desk of Harvey A. Ramer at Design Delineations.
| M | T | W | T | F | S | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| « Apr | ||||||
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |||
| 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
| 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 |
| 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | |