CEO and founder of High Rankings®, Jill Whalen has been performing search engine optimization since 1995 and is the host of the free High Rankings Advisor search engine marketing newsletter, author of "The Nitty-gritty of Writing for the Search Engines" and founder/administrator of the popular High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum. In 2006, Jill co-founded SEMNE, a local search engine marketing networking organization for people and companies in New England.
High Rankings is an internationally recognized search engine optimization firm located in Framingham, MA specializing in search engine optimization, SEO consultations, in-house training, site audit reports, search marketing seminars and workshops. High Rankings has a 100% success rate for substantially improving client rankings and targeted traffic.
Jill speaks at national and international conferences and has been writing about SEO and search marketing since 2000. She's been quoted in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, U.S. News & World Report and The Washington Post. Her articles have appeared in numerous print magazines and online websites including CIO Magazine, CMS Focus, The Internet Marketing Report, ClickZ, WorkZ, Inc.com, Entrepreneur, Lycos Small Business, WebProNews, SiteProNews and others. Jill has also appeared on many online and offline radio programs such as Entrepreneur Magazine's E-Biz Radio Show, SearchEngineRadio and the eMarketing Talkshow.
Another reason why people wrongly assume that keyword phrases in URLs are a factor in getting a page to show up in the search results is because the top results do indeed often use keyworded URLs! But (and this is a big but) websites that use keyword-rich URLs are using them because someone, somewhere is attempting to optimize the pages to show up in the search results — which means they are doing a lot more than simply putting keywords in URLs as part of their website optimization.
It appears the text Google is now showing [for a particular keyword phrase] is from our DMOZ directory listing. Until very recently (and while our listing position was as good as it is now) Google was showing the first few words of text from the body of our home page. Should we leave everything as is and enjoy the good listing position, but put up with the less than ideal text in the search results?
The SEO world is abuzz today with Google's smack in the face to a number of websites that are selling obviously paid-for, keyword-rich text links. The gist of it is that the toolbar PageRank number has been reduced by a couple of points (or more) for many websites.
A reader writes in asking about competing with a number one listing that doesn't appear to be optimized at all. Jill points out that good rankings aren't always about the "obvious" forms of search engine optimization and offers some suggestions on how to compete.
Should a small business in a non-competitive market pay a monthly SEO maintenance fee to their search marketing company? Jill Whalen answers a reader question about the need for a monthly SEO budget.
The search engines do indeed index and rank PDF documents these days. Basically, what they do is convert them into HTML and then index the information just like any other web page.
As much as Google *pretends* to like SEOs by inviting us to parties at the Googleplex and posting on SEO forums, the bottom line is that they don't like us -- or rather, they don't like what we do. Google wants to find the best, most relevant sites for the search query at hand all by themselves. Perhaps someday they will actually be able to do that, but for now, they still need our help, whether they like it or not.
If you've been anywhere in the SEM/SEO-sphere over the past month, you've probably heard of Danny Sullivan's latest venture, the social news/community site "Sphinn." It’s sort of a Digg clone, but specifically for search marketing topics....
These past few weeks I've watched how things played out in the blogosphere after breaking the story of Google's new "unavailable_after" tag. I have to say that what I learned was extremely interesting and educational to me!...
Last night was our third SEMNE event (Search Engine Marketing New England), and we were humbled to have Dan Crow, director of crawl systems at Google, spilling the beans about how to get your site into Google. He talked for a half hour or so, and then proceeded to answer audience questions for at least another hour....
Our site has a blog which is www.blog.domain.com — should it really be www.domain.com/blog? If so, then do we need to do a 301 permanent redirect from www.blog.domain.com to www.domain.com/blog?...
My real question is do the underscores have an impact on how the spider crawls the site or are long file names better? I'm thinking it doesn't matter but would like to be sure. I've been trying to name my pages (filename & title) with a relevant keyword but sometimes it's difficult. Also does a file name have any impact with ranking at all?...
My understanding is, if you have Meta tags with keywords and descriptions, this should also be reflected in your actual page content. But what if you have an ecommerce site and a homepage that displays mostly products and very short descriptions, and a menu with category names, etc.? In other words, not so much space for text "blocks."...
I wanted to discuss the possibility of developing a best practice/checklist guide for our company to follow. Our new initiative will be to launch 50 or so micro-sites focused on our key product categories. These sites will need to be rolled out quickly....
We recently released our new website in Feb. and prior to release we held the number 1 position on Google for [our main keyword phrase] and the number 3 slot and number 2 spots for [additional keyword phrases]. Within days of our release our rankings fell through the roof as did the number of quality Google leads that were coming through our doors. Is it normal to fall like this after the launch of a new site?...
Someone emailed me with a list of quick questions about some SEO terminology they didn't understand. I figured if one person was looking for these answers, many of you would be, too....
I recently had an inquiry from someone who was looking for some possible SEO consulting with me. He was in the process of a redesign and wanted to be sure not to make any mistakes along the way, which is super-smart! The time to be looking at SEO is definitely in the beginning stage of any design or redesign project....
I am trying to develop a way in which to use an include to allow me to place the Meta data in a separate file and then use the include to place in the head tag. I have tried this using an HTML file with the Meta tags in the file but Google does not seem to be able to pick this up on the site map verify stage....
My business partner is developing our site and wants to put a list of keywords at the bottom of some of our shop pages (i.e. below the text) in the hopes that this will get the search engines to notice us slightly more....
The question from an SEO standpoint is, would they be better off with a new domain name and website for the business side, or a home page that says business clients click here, individual clients click here, etc....
The title tag has been - and probably will always be - one of the most important factors in achieving high search engine rankings. In fact, fixing just the title tags of your pages can often generate quick and appreciable differences to your rankings. And because the words in the title tag are what appear in the clickable link on the search engine results page (SERP), changing them may result in more clickthroughs....
I am surprised to see that your own website still has both the www and non-www version in place — no redirect to get the "link juice" from the non-www version. Do you consider this a not so important issue? Both versions have good PR....
Until recently, whenever we sent out email flyers about our programs, we had the link go directly to the program's unique page on our website. Our marketing director has been trying to make a case for sending the clicker to the landing page that would then direct the clicker to a list of programs, including the one on which he or she clicked....
What exactly are keyword research tools good for? They are great for finding the keyword phrases that people are actually searching for when they would be looking for your products or services at the search engines....
I notice you always promote both KeywordDiscovery and WordTracker. I am trying to decide which one to subscribe to. Do you have a preference? I noticed that KeywordDiscovery promotes the fact they use data going back at least 12 months, which I guess is good if you have a seasonal business pattern....
Our web site has been around for many years and we are switching over to a content management system coded in JSP, but with extensions ending in .do as opposed to what we currently have, .asp. We have hundreds of pages dynamically code-driven from our database in .asp and I’m worried that when we switch over to the .do extension we will lose placement in the search engines....
I have a client whose web site has been created in Cold Fusion. To me it seems only logical that they will have problems with rankings because of this. I have always assumed that search engine spiders read only "live site code." Is this true?...
At the beginning of October we regenerated our entire site and ran into a very strange problem. All of a sudden all our search results were showing up under one of our old domain names. This old domain still exists because we have multiple domains in the same server with the same IP address. These domains are all pointing to the same content....
I have better backlinks than my competitor and my site is also optimized, but why is my competitor's ranking better than mine? Our backlinks are around 90 and the competitor's backlinks are around 55. What can I do for better rankings than the competitor?...
The issues you're having with your current SEO consultant are common, but they should not be accepted. If you are paying this consultant good money, and if you are providing them with all the info and sign-offs that they need in a timely manner, then it doesn't make any sense that after one year of working with them you have only a list of keywords, titles, and meta tags...
It doesn't matter what you put in the keyword Meta tag. It won't have any affect on where your site will rank in the engines for the keyword phrases that are important to you....
Nobody lies awake at night dreaming of becoming a project manager, so I have focused my toolkit product at realizing business benefits for the average middle manager employed in corporate life (and hence accelerating the reader’s career and salary ahead of their competition). Do you have any pointers with regard to keyword direction?...
It's difficult to gain a decent trust factor in competitive areas, so you'll want to think of everything you can to set your site apart from the others in your niche. The more useful stuff you can offer that isn't offered by others, the better your chances will be for search engine success....
In search marketing, trust issues are further magnified by the fact that the industry is still in its infancy and there are no set rules or regulations. Let's face it, you'd be hard pressed to get a handful of SEO consultants to agree on a definition of SEO....
Do you know if repeating keywords in the URL will help increase rankings within search engine results? If so does it have a big impact?...
In cases where a client is smarter than you are about SEO, insists on saturating his keyword pages at 5%, and currently consistently hits in the top 20 on his Google searches. Is there any tactful way a copywriter can tell this kind of client that he may be destroying his currently high ranking when he implements these new "search friendly" pages?...
We are interested in determining the real efficacy of SEO/SEM as it translates into online unit sales growth or online revenue growth. I have searched through many, many sites and haven't been able to come up with any good stats that demonstrate B2C improvements in eCommerce sales after applying SEO/SEM....
The client wants to make the landing page or homepage a login section with little to no information about his product on it except for the name of the product and login details, as he wants to keep the product confidential until the official launch....
My company currently has one main site with three URLs. The URLs currently connect to the same site and it was suggested to us by an SEO consultant to choose one of the URLs as the domain for our main site and then just 301-redirect the other two URLs to the main site....
Do the search engines see the addition of this character: | in the title tag as words/characters, thus reducing the amount of words you should put in the title tag? I am using the character to separate the various services we offer so that they are clear to the people searching, as they are very different....
I'm looking for some advice on the impact of natural search on two companies that have merged so I can advise on how best to proceed. They currently have two sites that perform well in the SERPS and have different content but are obviously competing on the same keyphrases and are now one company....
I created a site map for a client's website. MSN has indexed many of the pages but Google has indexed only 2 pages and I believe Yahoo has done only 5. What gives?...
I took a look at the source code [of a site I'm helping with] and noticed that the body copy doesn't show up until way down the page (2/3 of the way). I remember reading that this can be a problem for indexing and ranking. False? True? If so, can it be fixed?...
I have some ideas of how to go about marketing this option, but would love to hear how you market to get new clients. After scanning my local phone book to determine companies that a) spend money on expensive display ads and b) list a website, I've checked out the mentioned websites and have collected a group of potential customers. But now what?...
I wanted to use a special URL in one of our ads so we could track its effectiveness. I asked our web guy if he could make a redirect and add the name of the ad to the end of our URL like this: www.oursite.com/ad1 -- but it would go to our home page....
The good news is that as long as your content isn't the same as elsewhere on your site, being in the supplemental results at this time is really more of a glitch on Google's end than anything you need to worry about....
Would having three separate sites help in getting more targeted incoming link PR? Or is it better to vary the incoming links if I did one site with all three product lines? Am I over-thinking this? Should I just make one mall-type site?...
If we convert some of our pages from XML format to ASPX format will that affect our rankings? In other words, do the crawlers prefer certain formats over others?...
There are a zillion other things that you can learn when measuring your true SEO success through web analytics. If you're not already using a good program (and learning from it), I can't stress enough how important it is to start doing it....
How does Company A, that is new to search engine marketing, assess Company B to hire them to manage their SEO programs? It seems just as complicated to pick a company as it is to actually optimize....
Your log files and the reports generated by your software can tell you only how people are *currently* finding your site, not how they might find it in the future. So if you haven't yet optimized the site, or haven't optimized it for all the keyword phrases that you were planning on, you'll never see those phrases turn up in your log files and reports....
As long as you're not changing domain names, then switching hosts should be of no consequence. There's really no benefit to having keywords in them, and there are lots of things that can go wrong in the redirection process....
You can get your page listed, but it will be difficult because the search engines will have a hard time understanding what it's about without any text to read. You'd have to be able to tell them what it's about through the power of your links....
In order to set your website apart from all the others that are a quick click away, you need to put your personality into it, and you need to figure out how to make an emotional connection through the words and graphics on your pages....
Today when I went to my client's website, Google told me the site's PageRank (PR) is 1. A couple of hours later, while I was on the phone I needed to call up that site again and voila, the PR had increased from 1 to 3!...
Recently I learned Google has tons of different domains that all point to their Google home page. I thought this was considered spamming? If this is not spamming, would the same technique work for our site?...
Write great, professional marketing copy while keeping your keyword phrases in mind. If they stick out like a sore thumb, all you've done is written spammy, keyword-stuffed content, and who wants their company associated with that?...
I have added a title and the meta tags to the index page, and there seem to be a lot of keywords on the main page. Can I break them up and optimize each individual page with keywords, titles, and meta tags? Or do the search engines only look at the main page of our site?...
Your advertisements on other people's sites are none of the search engines' business and will not get your site banned or penalized. They will not hurt your site in any way. How you market your site is completely up to you, and you don't need to worry about the search engines if you decide to purchase text link ads....
Does it help my Google ranking to register my domain name for years in advance? The guy at the hosting company insisted it's true, but a car salesman will also say you need the anti-rust coating for only an extra $1,000....
At the very least, any professional SEO company should be doing extensive keyword research, making site architecture recommendations, making copy recommendations, and creating Title tags....
My site, which is full of good content (1500 or so pages), was dropped by Google 3 months ago. We are a small business and as a result we are close to going out of business (we rely on advertising revenue)....
My sister had a nice (Flash-based) site created for her. The web developer told her he is going to create a mirror site with HTML to deal with the issue of an all-Flash site....
Whether it's search marketing or any other business that you want to get into, no person, book, website, or seminar can make you successful; not in 15 minutes, 15 days, or even 15 years....
We have WebPosition Gold and I can't remember if it was you that said we need to get a Google API key to use the program. I was wondering why and how it works....
I have recently dropped off the face of Google for all my main keyword phrases. I was in the top 10 before Google changed my description snippet for my homepage....
Any links pointing to your site have the potential of giving your site more exposure, which can also lead to an increase in link popularity....
Even if money is tight, sometimes you just really need an attorney because many corporate contracts are extremely one-sided. If anything goes wrong later, you could be up the contract creek without a paddle....
No SEO company in the world will be able to help you unless you are ready to forget about what you think you want, and learn more about what you really need....
Jill offers up answers to some of the many reader's who emailed to ask about some of the points in last week's new and improved "10 Tips to the Top" article....
Having a website that gets found in Google, Yahoo, and MSN, etc. isn't hard to do, but it can be difficult to know where to begin. Here are my latest and greatest tips to get you started....
Could you recommend some online courses that would be a good starting ground for understanding search engines' likes and dislikes along with some marketing information? I feel I have a good understanding of the basics of SEO work but would like to fine-tune the skills I already have....
Many years ago, when search engine spiders saw a URL that seemed like it went to a dynamically generated site (because it had a bunch of parameters in it like question marks, equal signs, etc.), they wouldn't attempt to crawl it....
One of the biggest mistakes people make when thinking about SEO is that they believe there are certain hard and fast rules and if you don't follow them you will either get penalized or never see high rankings....
Other sites often link to home pages as a recommended resource. This tells the search engines that this site (and more specifically the home page of this site) is extremely worthwhile....
Why is it that one can have a higher traffic rank (according to alexa.com) than a competitor, yet the competitor has a higher ranking on Google?...
Could you recommend some online courses that would be a good starting ground for understanding search engines' likes and dislikes along with some marketing information?...
How often do we hear about "proprietary technology" when it comes to SEO? And how many use scare tactics in order to keep those monthly checks rolling in? Those are not smart, long-term client relationship techniques!...
It's true that SEO is not rocket science, and I firmly contend that it's very much a common-sense type of work. That doesn't mean that anyone can or should read a few SEO articles and then decide they can start charging people for their services....
Search marketing campaigns can have so many facets that it's very hard to provide a one-size-fits-all solution. There may not be any one pricing model that will be right for every client that you work with....
I wasn't surprised about the stuff in Google's new patent that corresponded with Google's aging delay and its "sandbox" as I had already seen a lot of discussion on this....
Good content is not content that is just there to target specific keyword phrases. Pages generated solely for the search engines do *not* constitute good content....
Many clients never think about the level of involvement they'll need to have in an SEM campaign until it has kicked off and the SEM start snagging them for things they'll need to get started....
This potential client doesn't trust the SEO company enough to pay them their normal fee, and/or they don't trust the whole SEO process....
For those of us who live and breathe SEO, it's sometimes difficult to step back and remember what it was like when we were first learning....
Jill Whalen continues answering frequently asked questions about search engine marketing by tackling the idea of robots.txt files and new domains....
Jill Whalen tackles yet another round of frequently asked search marketing questions including ones about graphics, hosts and site redesigns....
Jill Whalen continues her search engine marketing FAQ and answers commonly asked questions about special relationships with the engines, traffic estimates and keyword phrases....
Jill answers a variety of commonly asked questions about search engine optimization including multiple domains, file placement and the impact of blogs on rankings....
Jill Whalen answers frequently asked questions about search engine submission, link building and keyword rich domain names....
Search engine optimization, also known as SEO, may seem like some sort of black magic to those who don't understand it. It's very difficult to figure out the best strategy when you can't even figure out which articles or websites you can trust....
I want to put keywords in header tags such as H1 and H2 because my mail carrier told me that this would give me high rankings in the search engines. Will I be penalized if I use style sheets to keep the font down to a reasonable size?...
I have a dynamically generated site which places question marks and equal signs in the URL. Do I need to create static HTML pages in order to show up in the search engines....
Jill Whalen tackles some of the most frequently asked questions about Google, organic optimization, keywords and developing great content....
There is no keyword registering process when it comes to optimizing your pages for the "natural" search results. The engines have to logically figure out what keywords are relevant to your site by how they are incorporated into it, and by the links pointing to it....
Pat had found every SEO myth ever discussed, and then asked me about them! So I wrote Pat back and basically said that he/she had obviously gotten ahold of some really old info and that he/she should erase it all from his/her memory bank and start fresh....
Yes, there may be gazillions of sites competing for the search phrases related to your client's site, but that's what keyword research is for. What you want to do is carefully research your client's niche, then find the hundreds of phrases that people are using to search for their products or services....
There are people who think that a site that is visited often by the search engine spiders will rank higher for its optimized keyword phrases. The truth of the matter is that there's no evidence to suggest that rankings are affected by how often your pages are visited by the spiders....
Jill answers a reader's question about the importance of a strong Alexa ranking and explains what an Alexa ranking actually means....
What those guys do as SEOs really has nothing to do with what I do as an SEO. Sure, we're all trying to bring targeted search engine visitors to our sites, but that's where the similarities end. I don't have to keep up with every tiny algorithm shift, or the latest technique that the engines haven't caught onto yet. It's completely irrelevant to what I do....
If you don't currently have a unique selling proposition, you need to create one right now. Think about what it is that you can do or offer that is just different enough to make you stand out from the crowd -- then promote the heck out of it! Once the rest of the world starts to agree that you do indeed offer something unlike anything else, and you've done your on-the-page optimization correctly, the search engines will start to take notice and place your site into its proper place in the results....
Is PPC now an essential marketing tool or can honest SEO techniques still win the day alone?...
Just when I finally stopped getting the dreaded "Do I need commas or no commas in my Meta keyword tag" question, there's been a new stream of Meta tag questions being asked. I'm not sure of the reason for the sudden interest, but it's probably because people are starting to worry about other engines besides Google now....
Interestingly enough, if your site is well written, provides tons of useful information and is constantly updated, you often won't have to seek out links at all. Other sites will link to yours of their own volition....
As the Web matures, more and more site owners are discovering that their fancy, cutting-edge sites don't convert as well as the competitor's informational site that gets right down to business. It's usually at that point that they become more receptive to doing what it takes to make their site the best it can be for their visitors as well as the search engines....
I've been getting inquiries from clients regarding the creation of micro sites and how optimization of them could dilute positioning of the main corporate site. Your thoughts?...
I am perplexed as to why the Overture campaign is working better. We track the campaigns on the basis of online forms from their respective landing pages, and Overture brings in twice as many form inquiries. Is Google slipping in their performance and ability to deliver?...
Tons of unsuspecting site owners who had put their faith and trust in one particular SEO company had woken up one morning to find that their sites had completely vanished from Google, and in some cases, Yahoo. On SEO forums throughout the Internet, you could almost hear their anguished cries of "What have I done?"...
My theory is always "if it ain't broke, don't fix it," which is why I wouldn't recommend moving towards this solution unless you are very sure it is the only way your URLs will get indexed....
I imagine what had happened with this guy is that his SEO company had done what they said they would do -- get him ranked highly for some specific keyword phrases -- but he was finding out that it wasn't bringing much traffic to his site....
Sadly, it appears that PageRank is often the driving factor in how and why people link to each other, and that is just plain wrong. When a site owner refuses to link to a great site that might be useful to their visitors simply because it's only a PR3 or 2 or even zero, then we've got a huge problem....
It seems that everywhere we turn these days in the search engine marketing world, we are constantly hearing the phrases pay-for-inclusion (PFI), pay-for-performance (PFP) and pay-per-click (PPC). Here is a quick primer to explain what each of those programs means....
What is it about the phrase "search engine optimization" that makes people go crazy? Is it because the phrase itself doesn't really make sense? As Bob Massa from SearchKing is fond of saying, we don't optimize search engines, we optimize Web pages. So perhaps that's part of the reason why people have a hard time agreeing on what SEO actually is....
Everyone needs to redesign at some point, but the fear of losing existing rankings can be pretty scary. Don't worry; as long as you are careful, chances are you can keep your high rankings. Plus, your spiffy new design will most likely convert your site visitors into buyers much better than your dinosaur of a site from the 90's!...
The title tag is one of the most important factors in achieving high search engine rankings....
Google's link command and disappearing DMOZ descriptions. Copywriter credibility, punctuation, automated submittals, and more....
As with anything you set out to learn in life, you don't get from point A to point Z without touching upon all those letters in between. This is why every day for the past 7 or 8 years I see the same search engine optimization questions asked over and over again by people in the various stages of learning. The search engines may change through the years, but people just finding out about SEO all tend to go through a similar growth process....
Let's look at what circumstances cause Google to display your Meta description as opposed to a plain old snippet. It's actually surprisingly simple, yet elegant......
Aside from choosing the right keyword phrases, your professional SEO company should be well versed in other Web marketing areas. For instance, once you receive targeted traffic, you need those people to take action at your site. This means that there needs to be a certain level of usability and professionalism with your design, copy that speaks to your target audience and all that other good stuff....
Last week's Q&A article was such a hit, I decided to do a similar one today since I still have lots of "shortish" questions to answer....
I've put together an assortment of search engine marketing questions and answers compiled from the emails I answered last week. I'm sure that at least a few of these questions will be ones that have been nagging at some of you also....
It will be interesting to see where this whole paid-inclusion/PPC brave new world takes us. Is it a sign of things to come? Is this kind of change inevitable as search engine marketing grows up? It may very well be. If so, it's our job to go with the flow and figure out how to best deal with it....
Having a Web site that gets found in Google and the other engines isn't hard to do, but it can be difficult to know where to begin. Here are ten tips to get you started....
I have one site that I submitted and after being indexed almost immediately it was kicked out a week later. I waited for 6 months and then moved the site to a dedicated server. I re-submitted it and it was indexed again quickly but a week later it was kicked out again. Has this ever happened to you?...
SEOs will need to take usability and conversions into consideration when coming up with your search engine marketing campaigns in the future, if they're not already doing this. Therefore, I see there being a much brighter future for those SEOs who are able to make the transition....
There are a number of 'helpful' features being thrown into site designs these days that can sadly be the kiss of death to its overall spiderability....
I opened my store through Yahoo but just found out that they don't do anything to get the store listed on anything except Yahoo Shopping. So, I'm on my own. I did a search engine readiness check on my store yesterday and scored in the fair range. The areas where I was poor, I don't know how to fix -- maybe you could help?...
The free ride is officially over. From now on, you can't just create a site by the book, trade a few links with friendly competitors and expect to be found in Google for phrases that are relevant to millions of other sites. If you want to beat those other sites, you're gonna have to work your butt off. You're gonna have to live and breathe your Web site....
Are these pay for inclusion fees required to attract spiders properly, and also, do you feel these submissions (and the payment accompanying them) will affect a site's ranking on a search engine?...
For all you professional copywriters, the world of SEO copywriting is wide open right now. There are only a few really good people in the field, although it's growing by leaps and bounds. SEO is hot, very hot. If you're having trouble finding good writing jobs, I would strongly suggest that you learn the art of SEO copywriting and then find some SEOs to partner with. You will benefit, the SEO will benefit and most of all, the clients looking for high rankings, sales and a site that totally rocks will benefit from it!...
The easy answer is that as far as the search engines are concerned, every page of your site has its own unique keyword phrases based upon the information it provides. This means that when a search engine is determining which page in its database is relevant to the search query at hand, it's looking for the best, most relevant *page* -- not *site*. On a deeper level, however, all of the pages of your site actually do play a role in how you'll get your rankings....
Since the Title tag is given so much weight in the search engines, you should use whatever keyword phrases you're optimizing the page for....
This is what drives many people crazy with SEO. They want to understand exactly why their page is at a certain spot in the results, but since it's fluid, there's no way to be exactly sure. All we can do is understand and implement the fundamental things that will give our pages the best chance of showing up high in the rankings for our targeted keyword phrases. The rest is up to the search engines....
It's that time of year again when I do my SEO Mailbag Extravaganza! This is when I take a sampling of email questions I've received throughout the week, and post them along with my answers....
Pages can and do rank highly on all the search engines. There's never a need to design a page for any particular engine at the exclusion of others. Make your pages the best they can be for your users and search engines in general, and your site will do great!...
Along with simply having a wonderful site, you also need to get the word out about it, so that people know it exists in the first place. To do this you should submit the site's URL (domain name) to any and all of the Internet directories that exist....
Search engine optimization is not about bringing in traffic that might be interested in your product. It's about bringing in people and traffic who want exactly what you sell. Note the word 'exactly.'...
I am a small business owner who would like to improve my ranking. I have been contacted by a company who 'guarantees' top-10 rankings on 6 major sites within 180 days for a fee. Can you please tell me if these types of companies are legitimate, and which ones you would recommend or avoid....
Over the years, the engines have tried to find ways of crawling dynamic content while avoiding dynamic spider traps. One technique they use is crawling dynamic URLs that are linked to from pages with static URLs. For example, if you give your site map page a static URL, but have links to dynamic URLs within its content, there's a good chance that the leading engines will crawl those links....
Your next step is not to find more resources and books. Your next step is to go out there and create a search-engine-friendly site! You can't be successful until you take action....
ConversionRuler hasn't made any more sales for me, but my creativity in how to present my products has. ConversionRuler just lets me know if my ideas are any good!...
It doesn't matter how many people click the link, it's the conversions that make a difference, and that's what you learn with ConversionRuler....
I think that sentence sums up the crux of your problem; it appears as if you are thinking that you should be ranking highly for keyWORDs as opposed to keyword phrases. You've got to erase that idea from your memory banks immediately!...
When you don't know better, you might think that the competition report is telling you how many pages are actually optimized for a particular keyword phrase in any given engine. But they're not telling you this at all! All they can tell you is how many pages show up in a search for that particular keyword phrase....
Roughly how long after someone adds me to their link page should it come up in a Google reverse link search?...
Extra domains are definitely not something you should be using for search engine promotion efforts. DO NOT buy domain names thinking you'll use them to fool the search engines or anything like that....
Before I can explain my reasons for concentrating on the optimization side of things, I should probably discuss the differences between search engine marketing (SEM) as a whole, pay-per-click (PPC) ads, and search engine optimization (SEO)....
There are two parts to the equation. The first depends on whether your pages are truly optimized as best as they can be for the given keyword phrase. The second part of the equation is the addition of as many high-quality outside links that also utilize your keyword phrase....
Are phrases really important or should we, because of the way people search, stick to optimizing individual words?...