Want to learn how to find the keywords that are being typed into the search engines to find the products and services you sell?
Here is a video tutorial on how to use Google’s free keyword research tool. It can show you all kinds of helpful data by showing you the keywords that searchers are actually typing in to find you. It can also tell you how many people are searching for those words as well as search trends for the year.
Check out this video tutorial on how to use Google’s free keyword research tool. This video compliments the e-book Market Research on a Dime. So if you don’t have it yet fill out your name and email on the right side of this post so you can get a better look at how to correctly do keyword research.
This is the 3rd post in our series called Title Tag Do’s & Don’ts. In the last post we took a look at the don’ts of title tag optimization.
In part 2 the title tags were completely unfocused, over the 65 character limit, and not at all compelling or written for a human to actually read and click through. Title tags like this will result in your page being penalized for keyword stuffing.
As we discussed in part 1 a better strategy would be to create compelling keyword rich content, under the 65 character limit, using the exact keyword phrase up front and then a variation of that keyword in the middle or towards the end of the tag. We also put the company name at the end of the tag or better yet, left it out all together.
Now, in part 3 we are going to take a look at the best practices for using your keywords in your title tags. The first and most important thing to remember is to focus one keyword per page. Yup, that’s right- One & only one keyword per page with secondary or supporting keywords sprinkled throughout the pages content. Creating unique pages for each of the targeted keyword gives you the opportunity to rank for more pages thus giving you more real estate in the search engines.
For example, a page for dog collars, another page targeting dog leashes, another for dog harnesses and so on—rather than trying to pack everything into a single title tag. Supporting keywords for the dog collars page would be designer dog collars and fashion dog collars. When deciding on whether to target the singular or plural version of the keyword phrase you will need to take a look at your keyword research and focus on the one with the highest search volume.
Avoiding Duplicate Content in Title Tags
Another very and often used title tag mistake is not giving every web page a unique title. If you have duplicate title tags within your site, you risk having your pages banished to Google’s elusive and supposedly non-existent supplemental index. That would be the online equivalent of being sent to search engine nowhere land.
Ok, so you’re probably wondering what is the worst title tag mistake you can make and if not I’m going to tell you any way. The worst title tag mistake you can make is NO TITLE TAG AT ALL. Believe it or not web designers and business owner who have taken it apon themselves to optimize there website still fail to put anything in their title tag.
Not putting any title tag whatsoever will cause “Untitled Document” to be displayed as your page title in the search results. Surprisingly, there are over 34 million pages in the Google index that have “Untitled Document” as their title.
The same can be said for page titles like Welcome to our homepage, Company Name or index. Also, creating unique pages for keyword variations is something you want to avoid. Making different pages using keyword variations like dog collar, dog collars, and collars for dogs will dilute your keyword effectiveness. Besides how much unique content can you come up with for each of those terms. It is best practice to use those keyword variations as supporting keywords rather than creating unique pages for each.
The good thing is if you’ve been making these title tag mistakes it’s not too late to improve them using the SEO tips you’ve learned in these last 3 posts on Title Tag Do’s and Don’t’s
Please feel free to leave comments or ask questions if you need any further help with proper title tag optimization.
In Title Tag Do’s & Don’ts Part 1 we discussed how to properly format your title tags for search engine success. Keeping in mind what you learned in that post, you want experiment a bit with your title tags. This is especially true where your keywords vary slightly in word order such as Dog Collars vs Collars for Your Dog.
According to Search Engine News “Your success with using repetition and variation will be somewhat dependent upon your specific target keywords as well as the degree of competition within your niche.”
Making sure to master these title tag elements correctly is critical to ranking successfully at the top of the SERP’s. Experience shows us that implementing these minor tweaks in the title tag can make the difference between a first and second page listing. So, you should experiment with your title tags (staying within these guidelines) to get the best possible results from this critically important on-page optimization strategy.
Stupid Title Tags Mistakes to Avoid
Ok, now that you know what a good title tag looks like, take a look at some examples of a poorly written title tag.
Bad title tag example
Doggy Word – Best Prices in Collars for Your Dog
The title tags above contains a number of mistakes. First, the company name is placed first, it does not use the exact keyword phrase (Collars for Your Dog is not the same as Dog Collars), it fails to repeat a variation of the keyword, and finally it places the keyword phrase at the end of the title tag. These are common title tag mistakes you should avoid at all times.
Let’s take a look at some other stupid title tag mistakes
Really bad title tag
Dog Collars, Dog Collars, Dog Collars, Dog Collars, Dog Collars, Dog Collars, Dog Collars, Dog Collars, Dog Collars, Dog Collars
STOP THAT! Repeating keywords over and over can get your web page penalized causing you to loose rankings. While it is acceptable to use slight variations of your targeted keyword phrase and/or even repeat it later in the title tag, never repeat it more than twice… and one repetition usually works just fine.
For more on proper title tag optimization stay tuned for Title Tag Do’s & Don’ts Part 3
Let’s talk about the HTML title element within the source code of your webpage.
This is the on-page source code element that continues to be the primary element that the search engines use to determine what keywords your page is actually about—and ranks your pages accordingly. We are also talking about the descriptive element within the SERPs that people use when choosing which link to click.
So, let’s take a minute to make sure you’re getting this important element of keyword placement correct.
The best title tags focus on three characteristics.
1. They include the exact phrase the page should rank for.
2. They place that exact phrase at the very beginning of the title.
3. They repeat that phrase in some variation within the tag.
Let’s say your goal is a top ranking for the search term Dog Collars. Take a look at a couple of very good title tag examples:
good title tag
Dog Collars – Find the Best Collars for Your Dog – Doggy World
good title tag
Dog Collars – Find the Best dog collar at Doggy World
As you can see both of these title tags place the most important keyword phrase at the very beginning of the title tag. Then you want to strategically reinforce the main keyword with a closely related variation of the keyword. By doing so you are helping to boost the ranking for the closely related keyword-phrase variations. In the first example we repeat the exact phrase while the second uses a slight variation of the phrase to repeat the target keywords. Both strategies are excellent.
When deciding to target a singular or plural version, or to pursue word-order variations, you should consider two factors:
* Your keyword research — How much traffic are those related keywords getting?
* Your competitive analysis — How hard will it be to outrank the competition for those keywords?
Keep in mind that the example title tags above are kept under the 65-character limit Google uses when displaying titles in their search results. While the Google bots will spider (but not display) titles of well over 1000 characters, they will crop longer title tags off mid-sentence when displaying them to users. This will result in unattractive title tags that will lower click-through rates.
As you can also see, the company name—Doggy World is placed at the end of the title where it will interfere less with the importance of your primary keywords. It is debatable as to whether the company name belongs in the title tag at all. It is a fact that the company name does not belong at the beginning of the title unless, for some strange reason, your company name is also your target keyword.
It is usually unnecessary to put your company name in the title tag at all. This is because your company name is not a competitive keyword. Nor should it be difficult to rank for. In general, the only good reason for adding a company name to a title tag is for branding purposes. This is an important title tag fact to keep in mind.
Stay tuned for part 2 of Title Tag Do’s & Don’ts.
Hm. And that is all I have to say about that.
This is the subject of many a spammy autofollow sleazebag, I know. But there is no point in Tweeting if nobody’s reading. Relationships are what it’s all about, and that starts with following and being followed.
Quantity is important, but so is quality. The two are not mutually exclusive. You can have both.
You can have quality interactions with only so many people, and after that what you have is audience to broadcast to. If that many people want to hear what you say, good for them (and good for you, too).
Use Mr. Tweet to find other people on Twitter in your marketing niche and follow them. Many will follow you back, and they’re relevant to you and your existing followers.
Engage in conversations with top tweeters. Top tweeters are people who tweet a lot and who also have a lot of followers. The more followers a person has, the more likely those followers are to notice you, and the more likely they are to follow you.
Ask your followers to recommend you to their followers. This one takes a little guts, but if you know the other person well enough, there’s nothing wrong with it. Most people are happy to do this for you, they just didn’t think of it. You can do this via reciprocal arrangement through DMs.
Ask your blog readers to follow you on Twitter. And along the same lines, put a widget on your blog that has your latest tweets and/or the count of your Twitter followers.
Put a link to your Twitter profile page in the biography you include when you submit guest posts to other blogs (which means you should be guest-posting on other blogs).
Leave comments on blogs that let you include your twitter name, such as TwiTip by ProBlogger Darren Rowse.
Sign up for TweetBeep, a service similar to Google Alerts, but for tweets. This will help you go where the conversations are happening that you’re interested in. Engaging with others will get you more followers.
Blogging is fun. Blogging is informative. Blogging can make you cash. A blog is also the foundation of a successful Social Marketing campaign.
The best way I can define a blog is that it is like an online column in the newspaper. It is primarily one person who is an expert about certain subject reporting information or ideas on a regular basis. There is also the option for people to register to comment on your blog.
The whole point of a blog is to be a resource for people who are interested in you, your product, or your service. Twitter and Facebook come in handy to let your target market know when you have added to your Blog.
Blogs can be on your website or away from your website. There are benefits to both. Blogging away from your website creates links to your website, which is always a plus. But if I had my druthers, I’d create a blog on my website. Blogs are constantly changing, constantly growing, and if that is on your website, it is instant Google Juice.
Another option is using a custom Wordpress Blog as a site. It is a great idea if you are a startup on a small budget and have a lot to offer your target audience.
We like to use Wordpress blog platforms and recommend the following things:
Use your own URL and have it hosted away from Wordpress- You want the content in your blog to be yours. Also if you have our blog hosted you can download plug ins for SEO, Paypal, calendars, shopping carts, and just about any application you can think of.
Do your keyword research and use those words- It is also a great idea to add data like Meta descriptions, Page titles and keywords to every post. You can do this by downloading the Platinum SEO pack.
Add Twitter Tools and Publish to Facebook plug ins to automatically broadcast to your friends, fans and followers. You may want to deactivate the Facebook plug in while you are editing or making a lot of posts, since it updates with every edit, takes you straight to Facebook and leaves you there.
For more info on how we can help you set up a blog, visit Group 5’s page Get a Customized Wordpress Blog.
Twitter Search is a quick, effective way to find out who is talking about what you are interested in, and get followers that will Tweet about what you want to hear about. This leads to followers that bring value.
Twitter, tweet, twat, WHAT? If you’re going to use Twitter successfully, you need to know the lingo.
Autofollow – Automatically following other users who follow you. This is a setting in Twitter that is usually not a good idea. Most people that autofollow are spammers.
Block – If you don’t want to ever see anything another Twitter user says, you can block them. You have control. Don’t let people spam or offend you.
Direct Message/DM – Private messages sent to other Twitter users who are following you, and whom you follow. You must be mutual followers to DM. To DM, start the message “@username”.
Follow/Followers/Following – When you want to read what another Twitter user posts, you follow that user. Your followers are all the people who are interested in what you have to say and in interacting with you on Twitter. When you are logged into the service, you can follow others with the click on a button.
Hashtags – Hashtags are a keywords prefaced with a “#” sign. If I tweeted about SEO, for example, I might put #seo in the tweet. There are services online which scan for these and people can also search on them and see all the tweets that contain a particular hashtag (the # is also called a hash sign).
OH – An abbreviation for “overheard” followed by something funny or entertaining which the tweeter overheard someone say.
Reply – A tweet that is a public message to another Twitter user. These tweets begin with @username.
Retweet/RT – Copying another Twitter user’s tweet and adding the letters RT plus their Twitter username. This allows you to spread great tweets by others and credit them.
Tweeple/Tweeps – Tweeple is a combination o twitter and people, meaning twitter followers. Tweeps is a similar combination of twitter and peeps (already slang for people).
Tweet/Tweeting – What you call a post on Twitter. Tweeting is what you’re doing when you’re writing posts on Twitter (some people say “twittering” instead).
Twit – A non-pejorative name for a Twitter user (or at least used tongue-in-cheek).
Twittering/Twitting – Another way to say you’re creating posts on Twitter (it means the same as tweeting).
Twoosh – A tweet that uses exactly 140 characters.
URL Shortener – A URL is a web page address. Because of the character limit in Twitter, long URLs would destroy any chance of sending a link to your followers along with a message. A URL shortener service redirects your long URL to a much shorter one that goes to the exact same address, saving space. Twitter does this automatically with URLs that you type or paste into the message window, provided that even with the URL, the message is still less than 140 characters.
Let’s assume you can figure out the sign-up process in a logistical sense. What I’m talking about here is how to do it for the greatest effectiveness in marketing your business.
• Select the shortest name you can think of that describes you- That leaves more characters for Tweeting and Re tweeting
• Keep your name simple- No underscores or funny symbols to confuse your followers
• Use your real name- rather than the name of your business. Even though links on your Twitter profile page don’t pass PageRank for SEO purposes, your Twitter profile page still stands a good chance of ranking highly for your name, so use your real name as your Twitter name if you can. Nobody wants to interact with a corporate entity. They want to talk to people.
• Set your Twitter account settings so that you receive email notifications about follows and direct messages. You may want to turn this off later, but it’s a good idea in the beginning so you know what’s going on and can follow and respond to people.
• Set up your mobile phone/device to use Twitter if you are so inclined (best if you have a QWERTY keypad on your device, like a BlackBerry). Keep in mind that you select which followers you want to receive mobile updates from.
• Upload a decent-sized nice picture of your smiling face. On Twitter, you want to be a person first, and a business second. People are more likely to trust a person that a business.
• Customize your Twitter profile by choosing the same colors as your blog for branding consistency. You can get a fancy Twitter background image, too, if you want.
• Create a Twitter welcome page on your blog (hide it from your blog’s normal navigation). Use this Twitter welcome page as the URL you put in your Twitter profile.
• Your Twitter bio should be short, but rich in the top keywords for your business. Also be sure to include something personal.
