Your Website on a Bathroom Wall, Low Backlink Quality

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Backlinks are heralded as one of the most important factors in achieving SEO success.  Some backlinks are better than others however.  As an IRW (in real world) example, the image below shows a website url scrawled on a bathroom wall.  In my opinion, this probably isn’t the best recommendation for your website.

Oh, sure, there are advantages; you have a captive audience, low advertising costs, and not much competition for the best-ranking position on the wall.  The downside is obvious though; who wants to be associated with that environment?

website on bathroom wall illustrates backlink quality

(By the way, yes, I did feel a bit odd taking a picture in the bathroom.)

As the saying goes, there’s no such thing as bad press.  (That saying is wrong of course).  In this case, the attention garnered by this innovative advertising method probably isn’t always going to be good, but the ROI (Return On Investment) is always going to be positive.  After all, no cost was involved, so if even one person visits the website, it was successful.

However, if I had seen the same message on the bulletin board of the same establishment I probably would have been more interested.

The same is true of backlinks.  They won’t harm your page rank or SEO, but a backlink from a toilet manufacturer’s website isn’t going to be that helpful if your website is focused on coffee beans.

One Important and Easy Way to Optimize Your WordPress Site

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Use WP Super Cache to speed up WordPressIf you have a WordPress site, you will want to use this plugin.  It speeds up your website by creating static HTML pages from your dynamic WordPress content.

WordPress is an excellent tool for creating a personal blog, a business blog and can even be used for small ecommerce applications, but a dynamic website can slow down how fast the pages load.  Page speed is important to optimization and  WP Super Cache can help some sites dramatically decrease page loading time.  This plugin creates a static HTML page from your wordpress pages it will serve them up instead of the dynamic pages.

Also, there are options to decide who gets served static pages and also which pages get cached and which don’t.

This plugin is essential if your site suddenly has to cope with huge numbers of daily visitors.  For example, if one of your articles appeared on Digg or Slashdot you might see a spike in traffic that causes issues for your server.  With WP Super Cache the burden on your host’s ability to serve those pages will be greatly reduced.

In other words, you need not fear success!

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-05-02

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  • seo.onceover.net was indexed by Google just 7 days after being published. See our horn? We are tooting it! http://fb.me/w0lxkOmb #
  • "Lala will be discontinued as of May 31, 2010." Damn. Wonder what apple will do… http://fb.me/xZiIKHWK #
  • "Lala will be discontinued as of May 31, 2010." Damn. Wonder what apple will do… #

Questions from SEO Once-Over to Help You Optimize

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questions about your websiteBefore hiring SEO Once-Over, be prepared to answer some questions.

1. Do you have a Google Webmaster Tools account? Can you provide us with a Google Analytics report? Current website statistics will help us define our work, and help you to see results.

2. How was your website built: HTML, WordPress, Joomla, or other?

3. What is your target market? What kind of customers/visitors are you targeting with your website? Include geographic scope (neighborhood, city, state, nation, etc.) when relevant.

4. What kind of products, services or information do you provide?

5. Do you know what search terms prospective customers will use to find you? These are your keywords, and we may need to work on focusing and clarifying your list.

6. Who are your major competitors and what are their websites?

7. Are you willing to generate new content as suggested? Often the best tool in SEO is good content that people are interested in, not meta-tags or special applications.

With this information we’ll be able to begin helping you get the most out of your website, whether built on WordPress, Joomla, straight HTML or other platforms.

Quick, Affordable SEO for Small Businesses and Personal Websites!

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Not everyone can afford the big SEO companies and of those, not everyone feels comfortable trying to figure it out themselves, and of those, not everyone has a nephew who claims to know all about it.

SEO for small businesses and individualsDon’t worry, we’re here for you!

For just $50.00 and just one hour we’ll make sure you aren’t make any of the major blunders that are keeping you from being indexed by Google, Bing, Yahoo, and elsewhere.

We also have some tips and general information here, so feel free to browse the website and ask questions.  If you’re ready to go, then jump straight over to the Product Page and we’ll get to work on your site!

Internet Marketing Terms You Should Know; An SEO & SEM Glossary

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One frustrating aspect of trying to learn SEO and SEM is how people toss around terms and acronyms as if everybody already knows what they are talking about.

For example, those acronyms above are Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing, but you knew that already, right? ;-)

Feel free to let us know if you think there are SEO & SEM terms we should add to this glossary!SEO Glossary of Terms

Above the fold – The portion of the web page visible without scrolling down.

ALT tags – Text that is displayed when a non-text element cannot be, typically images or flash elements.

Back Links – Links to your websites on other websites.

Bounce Rate – Basically the percentage of visitors who “bounce” to another site rather than viewing additional pages.  A high bounce rate is bad.

Click-through – The process of clicking through an online advertisement to the advertiser’s destination.

Click-through rate (CTR) – The average number of click-throughs per hundred ad impressions, expressed as a percentage.

CMS – Content Management System, a database driven website application used to keep track of content.  Examples include Joomla, WordPress and Drupal.

Conversion rate – The percentage of visitors who take a desired action, i.e. make a purchase, sign up for a newsletter, etc…

Cost-Per-Action (CPA) – Online advertising payment model in which payment is based solely on qualifying actions such as sales or registrations.

Cost-Per-Click (CPC) – The cost or cost-equivalent paid per click-through.  Google ads are paid on a CPC basis.

CPM – Cost per thousand.

Description Tag – An HTML tag easily found by search engines that is displayed is search engine results.  Generally should not be over 16o characters.

Impression – A single instance of an online advertisement being displayed.  If a search is made on your keyword and your ad is displayed, that is one impression.

Keyword – A word used in a performing a search.  Conversely, this can also be used to reference the keywords on your website.  A keyword may be a phrase rather than a single word.

Keywords Tag – HTML META tag used to define the primary keywords of a web page.

Landing Page – The page that a link leads to.

META Tags – Tags found in website code to describe various aspects about a Web page.

Organic Results – Search results that come from a typical search.  This is differentiated from paid results, i.e. advertising.

Page – An individual HTML document, or a single page displayed by a browser.  A website generally has several pages.

Page Rank (PR) – A scale of 1 to 10 of how relevant the page is according to a search engine.

Page View - Request to load a single HTML page.

Pay Per Click (PPC) – Online advertising payment model in which payment is based solely on qualifying click-throughs.

Pay Per Lead (PPL) – Online advertising payment model in which payment is based solely based on qualifying leads.

Return on Investment (ROI) – The measurement of monetary benefit derived from money spent.  The calculation is (Gain From Investment – Cost of Investment)/Cost of Investment.  For example if you spend $100 on advertising and it leads to $50 in income, your ROI is a negative number (-.5).  If you had the same return from spending $25, your ROI would be positive (1).

It is important to note that not all ROI is obvious right away, or even monetary, and long-term strategy should be considered.  In the same token, not all investment is monetary; sweat equity labor investment should also be considered.

Robot – See Web Crawler

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – The process of ensuring that a given website places well in searches for specific keywords.  May also include ensuring that the website is easy for the search engines to gather data from.

Search Engine Friendly (SEF) – Giving search engines the easiest path to finding the data they need to place a website in its search results.  For example, when applied to URLs;

www.mysite.com/Search-engine-friendly.html is friendly and readable

www.mysite.com/?option=category&id=34&Itemid=121 is not SEF

SEM – Search Engine Marketing, internet marketing primarily composed of Search Engine Submission, Eearch Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising.

SERPS – Search Engine Results Page, the page of results given after a search.

Site Map - This is an index to all the content on a website.  It is essential in making your website easier for the search engines to read and navigate.

Site Stickiness - The amount of time spent at a site over a given time period.

Title Tag – HTML tag in the website code providing the text that displays in the top bar of the browser.  Also used by search engines as the title of the page.

Unique Visitors - Individuals who have visited a Web site at least once in a fixed time frame, typically one month.

URL - Uniform Resource Locator.  The address of a website; www.mysite.com is a URL.

Web Browser – A software application that is used to view the world wide web.  Examples include Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox and Google Chrome.

Web Crawler – Computer programs that browse the web indexing the information they find.  Also called automatic indexers, bots, robots and spiders.

Web site traffic - The amount of visitors and visits a Web site receives.

Description Meta Tag, Not Just an SEO Keyword Stuffing Box

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How to use the description meta tag to drive more traffic to your website.

Suppose you managed to get the number one position for searches (SERPS) on your keyword.  What if you get that position and still don’t get substantially more traffic?

Description Meta-Tag comparison to Gluten-Free Bakery sign

How can that happen, you ask?  Maybe the search result right below yours sells better than yours.  Search Engine Marketing isn’t just about position; it’s also about action.  If you want people to walk in your store, you have to have a good store front window display.  If you want people to actually click on your search result, you have to have a good description.

Often SEO consultants will just use the description tag as another opportunity for stuffing keywords, but it’s really more than that.  The description shows up as the impression the searcher gets of your website.

A good description should contain the keywords your search marketing strategy is set up for, but that’s really backwards thinking.  Instead, concentrate on writing a good description and your keywords will usually fall right in.

Recently I did a search on “stock photography in Albuquerque” and got this result;

Albuquerque Stock Photos and Images. 638 Albuquerque pictures and …

638 Albuquerque stock photos and images. Fotosearch Stock Photography and Stock Footage helps you find the perfect photo or footage, fast!

This is a well-written description.  It describes what I will find at the website, uses first person and has energy.  You’ll notice that it is chock-full of appropriate keywords, but more importantly, it’s a well-written description that makes me want to click-through to the website.

Also, it’s good to keep your description to 160 characters because most Search engines results will cut off more than that anyway.

Finally, it’s important to note that Google will pull text from your content surrounding the keyword being searched if there is no description tag.  Sometimes this can actually be as good or better than a description tag; for example on a page that displays a product catalog.  Most of the time I prefer to control what description is being displayed though.

Instructions for WordPress

First of all, if you don’t already have it, get the Platinum SEO Pack and install it.  Once installed each page, post and the site overall will have section at the bottom for Title, Description and Keywords, and yes, each one should have their own.

If you are unable to or don’t want to install a new plug-in, then you can insert the following in the header.php file of your theme.  This will be a “static” description meta tag, because it will be the same on every page and is dynamic with the content.

Go to Appearance -> Themes -> Editor ->Header (header.php) and add <meta content=”Your description goes here”

Instructions for Joomla

There are several good components for Joomla that handle meta tags for you, but Joomla also has a built in system.  When creating a new article note the options on the right side for “Metadata Information”.  In these fields be certain to add a description for every article.

For the Joomla website as a whole, you will want to go to Site -> Global Configuration and fill in the appropriate field with a description.

Note : I wouldn’t bother with Joomla extensions that automatically create your description for you.  If you aren’t going to take the time to create a quality description, you might as well let Google choose it for you form your content.