OffAssist is a virtual assistance firm specializing in bookkeeping and administrative support for small and medium-sized businesses. Welcome! For more information about OffAssist, please visit our website.
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Ultimate SEO Checklist
Over the last couple of weeks I have posted a lot of information on how to drive traffic to a website. As I was doing my morning surf, I found this:
Optimizing your web site for search engines should be an integral part of your web site project, from the very beginning to the very end. Search engine optimization(SEO [1]) should be considered, and if possible, implemented, throughout the planning, design, development, and maintenance stages of your web site.
Definately a good read for anyone interested in SEO for their own site and a primer for web developers before starting sites for others.
Links to your site from other sites can help to bring new traffic to your web pages. Also, Google and other major search engines consider the number of incoming links to your website as an important factor in ranking, so more links will help you rank higher in the search engines. Google uses a 10-point scale called PageRank to indicate the quantity and quality of incoming links. Links from popular information hubs will help your site rank higher than those from low traffic sites.
1. Key Directories. A link from a directory will help your ranking -- and get you traffic. Be sure to list your site in the free Open Directory Project . This hierarchical directory provides content feeds to all the major search engines. Plus it provides a link to your site from an information hub that Google deems important. But don't be impatient and resubmit or you'll go to the end of the queue.
2. Industry Sites and Specialized Directories. Some directories focus on particular industries, such as education or finance. You probably belong to various trade associations that feature member sites. Ask for a link. Even if you have to pay something for a link, it may help boost your PageRank. Beware of directories that solicit you for "upgraded listings." Unless a directory is widely used in your field, your premium ad won't help -- but the link itself will help boost your PageRank and hence your search engine ranking.
3. Reciprocal Links. Find complementary websites and request a reciprocal link to your site (especially to your free service, if you offer one). Develop an out-of-the way page where you put links to other sites -- so you don't send people out the back door as fast as you bring them in the front door. Your best results will be from sites that get a similar amount of traffic to your site.
4. Write Articles for Others. You can dramatically increase your visibility when you write articles in your area of expertise and distribute them to editors as free content for their e-mail newsletters or their websites. Just ask that a link to your website and a one-line description of what you offer be included with the article. This is an effective "viral" approach that can produce hundreds of links to your site over time.
5. Blog, Blog, Blog. Want links to your site? Begin a business blog on your website, hosted on your own domain. If you offer excellent content and regular industry comment, people are likely to link to it, increasing your site's PageRank.
For ideas on what the Blog about, please see our past articles.
In today' business world, online marketing has become at least as important as traditional means. Many times, prospective customers will simply go to an online search engine and enter certain keywords that they hope will lead them to the product that they are looking for. If they are looking for your product,how do you ensure that they get to your webpage?
One way is to optimize your content for specific keywords about your company or service. How do you do this? Here are 6 methods that, when used together, should provide you with a high level of optimization and a reasonable chance that this prospective customer will come to your website.
1. Write a Page Title. Write a descriptive title for each page of 5 to 8 words. Remove as many "filler" words from the title, such as "the," "and," etc. This page title will appear hyperlinked on the search engines when your page is found. Entice searchers to click on the title by making it a bit provocative. Place this at the top of the webpage between the tags, in this format: . (It also shows on the blue bar at the top of your web browser.)
Plan to use some descriptive keywords along with your business name on your home page. If you specialize in bookkeeping and that's what people will be searching for, don't just use your company name "Acme Financial, Inc." use "Payroll and Bookkeeping -- Acme Financial, Inc." The words people are most likely to search on should appear first in the title (called "keyword prominence"). Remember, this title is nearly your entire identity on the search engines. The more people see that interests them in the blue hyperlinked words on the search engine, the more likely they are to click on the link.
2. Write a Description and Keyword META Tag. The description should be a sentence or two describing the content of the webpage, using the main keywords and keyphrases on this page. If you include keywords that aren't used on the webpage, you could hurt yourself. Place the Description META Tag at the top of the webpage, between the tags. Some search engines include this description below your hyperlinked title. Your maximum number of characters should be about 255; just be aware that only the first 60 or so are visible on Google, though more may be indexed.
Write the article first, then write a description of the content in that article in a sentence or two, using each of the important keywords and keyphrases included in the article. This goes into the description META tag. Then for the keywords META tag, strip out the common words, leaving just the meaty words and phrases. The keywords META tag is no longer used for ranking by Google, but it is currently used by Yahoo. Who knows when more search engines will consider it important again? Every webpage in your site should have a title, and META description tag.
3. Include Your Keywords in Header Tags H1, H2, H3. Search engines consider words that appear in the page headline and sub heads to be important to the page, so make sure your desired keywords and phrases appear in one or two header tags. Don't expect the search engine to parse your Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) to figure out which are the headlines -- it won't. Instead, use keywords in the H1, H2, and H3 tags to provide clues to the search engine. (Note: Some designers no longer use the H1, H2 tags. That's a mistake. Make sure your designer defines these tags in the CSS rather than creating headline tags with other names.)
4. Make Sure Your Keywords Are in the First Paragraph of Your Body Text. Search engines expect that your first paragraph will contain the important keywords for the document -- where most people write an introduction to the content of the page. You don't want to just artificially stuff keywords here, however. More is not better. Google might expect a keyword density in the entire body text area of maybe 1.5% to 2% for a word that should rank high, so don't overdo it. Other places you might consider including keywords would be in ALT tags and perhaps COMMENT tags, though few search engines give these much if any weight.
5. Use Keywords in Hyperlinks. Search engines are looking for clues to the focus of your page. When they see words hyperlinked in your body text, they consider these potentially important, so hyperlink your important keywords and keyphrases. To emphasize it even more, the webpage you are linking to could have a page name with the keyword or keyphrase, such as blue-widget.htm -- another clue for the search engine.
6. Develop Several Pages Focused on Particular Keywords. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) specialists no longer recommend using external doorway or gateway pages, since nearly duplicate webpages might get you penalized. Rather, develop several webpages on your site, each of which is focused on a different keyword or keyphrase. For example, instead of listing all your services on a single webpage, try developing a separate webpage for each. These pages will rank higher for their keywords since they contain targeted rather than general content. You can't fully optimize all the webpages in your site, but these focused-content webpages you'll want to spend lots of time tweaking to improve their rank.
Misleading Advertising: Little White Lie or Down-Right Scam?
For those of you that haven’t heard, Albertsons is closing a lot of their stores across the country as part of a “Restructuring” plan. Of the 10 stores in Central Texas, Albertsons will be closing 6 stores, all in Austin. As part of their “Going Out of Business” sale, they are having employees stand beside all the major roads with big “60% Off” signs. This is driving an enormous amount of traffic to their stores. I went to one on Tuesday and there were only 3 parking spaces left in the entire lot. Sounds great? Read the fine print: Up To.
That’s right, the signs all actually said “Up To 60% Off”. The “Up To” was about ½ and inch tall compared to the 3 to 4 foot tall 60%. Once you walk in you see a sign that the 60% off only applies to greeting cards. Turns out, groceries are only 10% off. Still not too bad, except Albertsons prices without their special savings card are about 20% higher than the next store over. The fine print? The stores that are closing are no longer accepting any advertised Albertsons special, including the savings cards.
I walked around the store, trying to find some kind of deal to make my time finding a parking space worth-wile. This gave me the opportunity to overhear the other customers. Words like “Rip Off”, “Scam”, and “Outright Liars” echoed through out the store. There is another Albertsons only 2 blocks away, and it is NOT on the list of closures. Didn’t corporate realize they are not only affecting the stores that are closing but the image of all those stores that will remain open?
I saw another sign while I was walking: General Merchandise 40% off. Well, having two kids we go through garbage bags pretty fast. And extra Tupperware is always nice. The problem came in when Albertsons decided to pick and choose what General Merchandise actually meant. I believe they defined it as “Things no one ever buys anyway”. Why do I say this? Because Tupperware was not marked down, only the cheap knock-offs. The same held true for garbage bags. And I was not the only customer to see through this either, two mom’s towing along 3 kids each came within inches of attacking a poor stockperson because they felt they were being mislead.
I think there is definitely a moral to this story. Advertising sales and specials are great. MIS-advertising sales and specials is not. It is always sad to see a business go under, but you want to save as much good will from your customers as possible. Who know, maybe this time next year you want to re-open your doors. It would be nice to be able to draw off that pool of customers that supported you before.
That definitely will not happen if you treat them bad or make them feel like you were just out to get there money the first time around.
Before LAN's Edge, before OffAssist, I was a Regional Manager for a lighting manufacturer. I managed 34 sales offices across 27 states. This meant a LOT of time on the road, most of it in a car going somewhere.
If your boss is anything like mine, car time was phone time. However, recent studies show just how dangerous cell phone usage while driving really is.
THURSDAY, June 29 (HealthDay News) -- Maneuvering through traffic while talking on the phone increases the likelihood of an accident five-fold and is actually more dangerous than driving drunk, U.S. researchers report. That finding held true whether the driver was holding a cell phone or using a hands-free device, the researchers noted. "As a society, we have agreed on not tolerating the risk associated with drunk driving," said researcher Frank Drews, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Utah. "This study shows us that somebody who is conversing on a cell phone is exposing him or herself and others to a similar risk -- cell phones actually are a higher risk," he said.
I always had a feeling that this was the case, so I would limit my cell phone time in the car. I was constantly getting fussed at when my bill came in and showed so much less time than the other sales managers. But you know what? I was right!
So here is to all you road warriors out there: May your hotel sheets always be clean, your expense account always large, and your journeys always safe!
We use the post office a lot here at OffAssist and are big fans. I mean, really, where else can you get someone to pick up an envelope from your doorstep and deliver it to someone else's doorstep 3000 miles away within a few short days for only 39 cents?
I was preparing a mail-out for a client late last week when I remembered coming across an article years ago talking about this group of people that got together and mailed a bunch of, well, weird... things. You can view it here at Improbable Research. I wonder what would happen if this were tried today with all the stricter regulations?
