Seriously, if you’re going to auto-tweet a banal marketing message, at least use proper grammar and punctuation. Why are there quotation marks? Why do you use “U” instead of “You?” Why do you want to look like base incompetence is the standard at your corporation?
(Having eaten there, I can actually answer the third question…)
A fairly common thing that I see when visiting sites that have been optimized by a novice is the use of the <H1>, <H2> and the other header tags as little more than another opportunity to put keywords on the page. Here’s the sort of thing I’m talking about. (Note that I’ve underlined keywords in the headers for emphasis.)
Red Widgets For Sale
We supply red widgets to businesses of all sizes, regardless of their CM292 status! Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nam iaculis ornare urna, eget congue ligula tincidunt sit amet. Vivamus sit amet elit sed turpis tincidunt suscipit. Sed vestibulum risus quis urna faucibus luctus.
Red Widgets Are Good And Worth Buying
Red widgets can be had for less than you’d think! Lorem ipsum proin vestibulum, lorem euismod ullamcorper ultrices, est urna fermentum ipsum, eu faucibus velit nunc et tellus. Donec nibh elit, vestibulum nec dignissim nec, suscipit quis mi.
Red Widgets Are So Great
They really are the best kind of widgets and if you are serious about widgets, you need to get some! Lorum ipsum auris pharetra eleifend ipsum accumsan rutrum. Duis dapibus lorem in massa laoreet eu viverra lectus tincidunt. Morbi in tempor purus.
While this increases your raw keyword count and accompanying density, Google and the other search engines look at more than that when determining the quality of information presented. Headers need to provide structure to your readers, to show them content that is sorted from most important to least important in regards to the page’s topic. You should also look at headers as a way to place keywords relevant to your topic in the appropriate order. A better example would go as follows:
Red Widgets For Sale
We supply red widgets to businesses of all sizes, regardless of their CM292 status! Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nam iaculis ornare urna, eget congue ligula tincidunt sit amet. Vivamus sit amet elit sed turpis tincidunt suscipit. Sed vestibulum risus quis urna faucibus luctus.
What To Know Before You Buy Red Widgets
Red widgets can be had for less than you’d think! Lorem ipsum proin vestibulum, lorem euismod ullamcorper ultrices, est urna fermentum ipsum, eu faucibus velit nunc et tellus. Donec nibh elit, vestibulum nec dignissim nec, suscipit quis mi.
Red Widget Financing is Available
We make it possible for any business to buy red widgets with our financing options! Lorum ipsum auris pharetra eleifend ipsum accumsan rutrum. Duis dapibus lorem in massa laoreet eu viverra lectus tincidunt. Morbi in tempor purus.
Search engine spiders will see that this page provides authoritative text on the topic of buying red widgets, even as I’ve conveniently arranged them by their (completely theoretical) search volume that matches the (completely theoretical) order of relevance. Of course, if a term like “red widget financing” had a massive amount of volume, it could well get its own page that would then be ordered by headers in the same fashion.
This goes back to a central point that’s frequently missed in discussions about SEO: the reader should come first. What’s the point of getting someone to a page if they see just keyword-packed text with no thought applied to its flow? The more relevant information that you provide to your customers, the more likely they are to view your site as a resource, even if they don’t purchase on their first visit.
May 7
Google’s updated their design for search results quite nicely, taking a bit of what I like about Bing’s left-side menubar and making it more minimal and friendly. I found myself looking at the descriptions under the titles a bit more in this iteration, but that’s what an attorney would call purely anecdotal evidence, I’m sure.
Better go make sure your retail operation’s information is up to date in Google, because Google Maps is now including local businesses in their maps’ Street Views. It looks to be a very dynamic system and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we saw it integrating Yelp! and the ever-popular-on-Twitter Foursquare. Check it out on the Google Maps blog!
Apr 3
Hi, Kevin Church here. I’m the guy behind Searchpeers and I want to apologize if you’re one of those who read this site looking for information. I’ve honestly been so busy doing SEO that I’ve not had a lot of time to write about it lately. I decided to take the Easter holiday weekend as a chance to catch up, see how you all are doing, and let you know about how we’ve helped two of our clients recently.
First of all, let’s talk about Data Devices International. They’re a respected vendor of security products like degaussers, hard drive destroyers, hard drive erasers, etcetera. They had Degausser.com redirecting to their main homepage and I sat down with them and came up with a strategy to maximize this URL by creating a resource for the data security business. Hence, the new Degausser.com was born, offering information about degaussers, including how they work, different types of degaussers, and information about NSA-approved devices.
Then there’s Housewall. They offer garage organization and storage solutions that let you get your garage back. Working with the people at Blue Agate, we restructured the site with new URLs, better on-page content, metatags, and directory placement that led to a dramatic improvement in their performance, moving them up in the rankings in a highly-competitive field, particularly when it comes to localized search. There’s still more work to be done by their team, but they’ve got a very solid foundation for improved rankings in the future.
These are just two examples of how we’ve helped smaller businesses get more traction out of their web presence. Unfortunately, our three largest clients have us bound to confidentiality agreements, so we can’t go into details on those, but in the next few weeks, I’m going to try to make some posts that talk about how we’ve helped them without naming names.