Posted by Admin on October 30th, 2006 — Posted in SEO
By Scott Lindsay
While most search engines do not use Meta Tags as a means of determining placement in their overall rankings of similar websites the proper use of Title Tags should take some careful thought. For those interested in your product or service the title tag is often the first impression a consumer has about your website.
A title tag is generally only 80 characters or less in length. Usually the title tag is approached by website owners as an after thought. By optimizing your title tag you have the opportunity to appeal directly to the consumer. Consider your title tag a mini advertisement directed to millions of web users.
In the html language of each web page is a section that reads < TITLE > Title Tag information here < /TITLE>
You will find this html section within the tags that read < HEAD > and < /HEAD > Html language may be foreign to you, but you can use the services of a good webmaster and insist they work with you to optimize the pages on your site to assist you in rankings, consistency and for maximum customer and ranking impact.
What should Title Tags include?
Title tags should always include at least two keywords or phrases, but don’t go overboard. If your title is stuffed with keywords it can actually have a negative impact on your ranking due to the fact that many sites may consider this a spamming technique.
It is possible to make your title tag longer than 80 characters, however if you do make sure the most important information comes first. Search engines will place a limit on how much title information they display with their search results so it is possible some of your title information could be omitted.
It may seem a daunting task, but by placing a title tag on every page in your website you have a very simple, but often overlooked way of impacting the very people you want to visit your website – consumers.
Interestingly it is the title tag that many search engines look to first when considering site rankings and it often the most overlooked part of many SEO online marketing strategies. By overlooking title tags in SEO you are essentially doing the same things as businesses who have a phone number in the phone book and believe that’s enough to draw customers. Title tags provide a means of free advertising in search engines. When you couple that with the importance search engines places on title tags it just makes sense to optimize your title tags.
Scott Lindsay is a web developer and entrepreneur. He is the founder of HighPowerSites and many other web projects. HighPowerSites is the easiest do-it-yourself website builder on the web. No programming or design skill required. Get your own website online in just 5 minutes with HighPowerSites.com at: http://www.highpowersites.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Scott_Lindsay
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Posted by Admin on October 28th, 2006 — Posted in SEO
By Rose DesRochers
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Most of your quality traffic comes from search engines, therefore when building a website it is important to know the hints, tips and tricks that will give you better placement in the search engines. Mistakes can actually hurt your site in the search engines without you even realizing it. I have come across a number of websites in which beginners not yet familiar with search engine optimization make the same common mistakes.
Are you making these seven common mistakes too?
1. Irrelevant keywords: Many webmasters use irrelevant Keywords. Be sure to choose the right keywords that relate to your company. Be specific. Think about the words that web surfers will be typing to find your website. Inventory overture keyword selector Tool is one of the best-known services for helping you choose the right keywords. Use Inventory overture keyword selector Tool to find what people are actually typing in to the search engines.
2. No back links: Back links are extremely important to your website’s rankings, therefore this should be one of your main priorities. The easiest way to get back links is to ask for them. Visit sites related to your website and request a link exchange.
3. Bad web design: Design mistakes can hurt your website. A mistake that I found many new webmasters making is they are not building their website to ensure that it appears correctly at different screen resolutions. Your website will be the first impression and remember that first impressions are everything. Can you afford to loose visitors because your website isn’t viewing correctly on their monitor? I for one use a screen resolution of 800 x 600. If you design your site to be viewable only by a screen resolution of 1024 x 768, I have an annoying horizontal scroll bar at the bottom of the page and I have to scroll horizontally, just to see the entire content of your page. That right there is a turn off. There are many other web design mistakes, but we’ll cover that in another article.
4. Overuse of images and flash animations/ having too many graphics on your page: While graphics and flash may be pleasing to the eyes, too many graphics won’t help you get a better ranking. In fact Google and other search engines cannot read the content of an image. Flash only pages have no text; therefore there is nothing for the search engines to read.
5. Not utilizing your Title Tag: Title Tags are really important for search engines. A common mistake that I see many new webmasters making is that they leave the title tag empty or use irrelevant words.
Your title tag is the first thing a search engine’s spider sees on your page. You shouldn’t put only your company name in the title tag, but ad keywords about your company. Use Inventory overture keyword selector Tool to find related keywords.
6. No alt < img > attribute in tags: As I stated above, search engines cannot spider images. Therefore the alt image tag helps the search engines understand the subject of the image. Be sure to include the alt attribute with every image.
7. Bad anchor ext: Whatever you do, don’t use “click here” or other non-descriptive link text. I’m guilty of this one myself. Proper anchor text can help your ranking. Your anchor text should describe the page that you’re linking to. For example if you’re linking to this article, your anchor text might read, “Seven Common SEO Mistakes by Rose DesRochers” instead of “Click Here to read this article.” Anchor text is extremely important to your ranking.
These are just a few of the most common mistakes that you should avoid making. These SEO mistakes may be the main reason why your site is failing to rank well in the search engines.
Be sure to optimize your website for both search engines and people. Search engine optimization is hard work and an ongoing process. Invest a little time and learn the proper techniques and not only will your traffic come, but you’ll increase your page rank.
Does your site contain any of these mistakes? For more tips, tricks and hints to help you get the full potential of your site join http://www.invision-graphics.com. Our SEO experts are ready to help you get the best out of your website.
Rose DesRochers is the founder of one of Writer’s Digest 101 best websites for writers – Today’s Woman Writing Community http://www.todays-woman.net She is also the founder of Blogger Talk Blog Community http://www.BloggerTalk.net – a friendly community for bloggers.Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Rose_DesRochers
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