Daily SEO Tip

Heading Tags and SEO - H1 Tag FTW!

2009-12-03T01:48:00.000-08:00

I can't believe we haven't included Heading Tags H1, H2, H3, etc. in our daily SEO tips yet! I'll make sure to rectify that right now.

Heading tags are one of the most important things you can do to tell search engines what a web page is about. Putting text inside an H1 tag (the most important of heading tags) is almost as important/effective for SEO as including that text and keywords in the title tag or URL. So, ensure that your keywords are included within the H1 tag of the page. You can always use CSS to over-ride any styling that the H1 tag imposes on your page, so don't let that stop you.

Also, note that including keywords inside an H1 tag is much more relevant/important than within an H2 tag (which is more important than an H3 tag, and so on...)

Thus, include your primary keywords in the H1 tag and any secondary keywords within "lower-level" heading tags.

As with everything - make sure you're not using heading tags to stuff keywords, especially ones that are nonsensical for a user. Simply think about how to best craft the content within an H1 tag so that it has SEO in mind.

Finally, if you have pages that have headings but don't use any heading tags -- change that! Make sure that your headings (h1) and sub-headings (h2) are properly denoted using the correct HTML tags and this best practice of web design will also benefit your search rankings.

External Links for SEO: Link Quantity vs Quality vs Diversity

2009-11-30T00:20:00.000-08:00

Now that you've learned how building up inbound links to your web page from external websites is probably the single-most important element in SEO, you're embarking on a campaign to foster inbound links to your site. But how do you decide what links to go after and how to prioritize across various opportunities?

As a general rule of thumb, you want to have as many links from a diverse set of the most reputable sites possible.

First let's take quantity versus quality. You can think of the PageRank algorithm as a summation of all the links you receive, weighted by their authority. So, for example, if you receive 5 different links from 5 different sites with "authorities" 2, 3, 7, 7, and 9, you could say that the total "authority" gained by your site is 2+3+6+7+7, or 25. On the other hand, if you received 3 different links from 3 different sites with authorities 9, 9, and 9, you would have received 9+9+9, or 27 "authority points." In our example, you would have been better off with fewer, but higher quality, links.

That tradeoff between link quantity and link quality should be fairly clear. Of course, keep in mind that obtaining a link from a more authoritative site is oftentimes more difficult, and thus may require more time and effort on your part to obtain.

The third variable I'll throw in here is the issue of link diversity. Let's take the example above with the 3 links. In a situation where all 3 links are from the same single site (from different pages or from different parts of the same page) versus where each of the 3 links comes from a different site, the option where the links come from more diverse sites is better and thus likely to rank your site higher.

It's even said that search engines may grade sites as being more or less diverse from each other based on past link patterns and other factors. Thus, there are also varying grades of "diversity." Make sure to keep in mind link diversity when building your inbound link profile as it's yet another factor that engines look at which you should take into account!

Design Your Pages for Humans not for Search Engines

2009-11-22T21:34:00.000-08:00

I decided to kick off this week of SEO tips with a little piece of general wisdom for how to approach your overall SEO strategy: Design your site for humans not for search engines.

If you start compromising the user experience in order drive more organic search traffic, you'll soon find yourself with a site that is great for bots to read but terrible for users. In the long run you won't be able to retain users, not even for their first visit (driving up the bounce rate as people land on your page and don't get your value proposition).

The reverse is also true - if you build a site that delights real users, you'll soon gain the respect of other sites, earning you valuable inbound links that will give you far greater value than the SEO tweaks you might be doing that destroy the user experience. Hope you enjoy that bit of Monday morning wisdom.

Clickthrough Rates (CTR) by Position in Search Engine Results Page (SERP)

2009-11-16T22:23:00.000-08:00

So, how much of a difference does it make to move up an extra spot in the search results rankings? Should you be happy with #2 or should you go the extra mile to be #1? What about being on the first page of results versus on the second page?

The short answer is that every spot really matters - especially the closer you get to the top of the rankings in the search engine results page (SERP).

I've seen this data shown on a number of sites, but here's one I most recently looked at (they're all roughly similar). What this data says is that the #1 search result gets nearly 4 times as many clicks as the #2 result, which in turn gets 50% more than #3. We can clearly see how your placement in the SERP makes a world of difference.

Not only that, but position 11 (first result on the second page) only receives 0.7% of clickthroughs, or 1/4th of what the last position in the first page receives. This pretty much means that if you're not on the first page for a search result, you're getting a miniscule share of the overall traffic for that keyword. In fact, 90% of all search traffic goes to a result in the first page.

Use Google Analytics as a Tool for SEO

2009-11-11T23:47:00.000-08:00

Part of what we want to do here at Daily SEO Tip is to showcase various tools that make you better able to optimize for search engines, and to do so in less time. One such tool that we absolutely love is Google Analytics.

First off, you should have Google Analytics enabled on your site in order to track overall traffic. If you're driving blind it can be quite difficult to steer.

But Google Analytics is so much more when it comes to SEO. It gives you access to all the keywords that drive search traffic to your website as well as summary statistics on the value of each of those keywords (bounce rate, pageviews per visit, etc.). You can also define custom goals (e.g., registration, filled out lead form, made purchase, etc.) and see how traffic from different keywords performs. Of course, you can also monitor your overall level of search traffic and do so for all search engines (not just Google).

Google Analytics also has a very useful blog which I recommend following as they often have great case studies, updates, and tips.

I could dedicated an entire blog just to Google Analytics and how to use it (and in fact, many do!), but the best way to get acquainted with it is to read the product description but then very quickly just start using it. As with most things, the best way to learn is by doing so go on and try it.

Keyword Density and SEO - How Search Engines Parse Keywords on Your Page for Context

2009-11-08T23:38:00.000-08:00

In order to determine a web page's relevancy for a particular search query, search engines look at a variety of different factors to understand what a web page is about. We've talked about how title tags matter, as do URLs, and meta descriptions (but much less so). Additionally, one very big factor for how a search engine determines what your web page is about is by looking at the actual text on that page as well as the various words in it and their relative frequencies. The concepts of "keyword density" relates to how frequently various keywords are seen on a given page. If the keyword is seen a lot, then it follows that that page must be talking about a topic very relevant to that keyword.

In practical terms, what this means is that using the right keywords in your post matters and you should be cognizant of that. I would caveat that with a warning that "keyword stuffing," or artificially including excess keywords on your page, can not only create a bad experience for users but also potentially raise red flags with the search engines that you may be trying to game their algorithms (and subsequently incur a punishment from them). So, make sure to keep an eye on the keywords on your page but do so in a way that preserves the user experience and doesn't try to trick the search engines in any way.

Include Keywords in the URL to Improve the Page's SEO

2009-11-03T22:57:00.000-08:00

Including your target keywords in the URL of a specific page will help that page's relevance towards those keywords. So, make sure your URLs look more like http://domain.com/keyword rather than http://domain.com/?content=1234.

Not only is it good to include the keywords in the URL, but keep in mind that the more to the left in the URL they show up, the better (and the higher up in the folder structure). For example, http://keyword.com is better than http://domain.com/keyword which is better than http://domain.com/folder/keyword.

Getting your URLs correct right off the bat will save you a lot of time (and site performance headaches) later when you have to re-write the URLs (more on that in a later, and more advanced, post).

Include Keywords in Meta Description and Increase Your Page's Relevancy

2009-10-29T23:06:00.000-07:00

Are you updating the meta description tag for your pages? Make sure you don't ignore this very important tag, and also that you include your target keywords in that description.

The meta description is a way for a webmaster to tell search engines (and through that to people searching) what a particular page is about. Given that, this is one of the factors that search engines look to when assessing what a particular page is about and therefore what the relevancy of that page is to various search terms. If you want the page to be highly-relevant to certain target keywords, make sure to include them in that description. All that said, although meta description helps, it has a "light" effect on overall rankings.

Also, remember that the meta description oftentimes shows up in the search engine results page (SERP) and therefore is a big driver of the clickthrough rate to that result. So, if you're description is comprised of keywords stuffed together, but not logical sentences, a human being is not going to be able to make any sense of it and therefore be less likely to click. So remember, make sure that you build your site and pages for humans and not for search engines.

Title Tags and SEO

2009-10-26T23:27:00.000-07:00

The title tag for a page is one of the most important factors you can control for.

Ensure that the title contains the keywords you are targeting in it. Go back and review the titles for your pages and ensure that they're optimized.

Keep in mind, however, that titles are what shows on Google search results (as the title of the page), so make sure that they're readable to humans (and not just stuffing keywords!) or else no one will click on your result.

Beginner SEO Tips

2009-10-15T22:35:00.003-07:00

here is a list of all the SEO Tips that fall under the beginner category

What is SEO? An Overview of Search Engine Optimization

2009-10-15T22:23:00.000-07:00

Coming soon...