When the the king of search looks to optimize its own content for search results, you know it’s not by going out and buying back links. They get those free of charge by their millions of users who love their resources. So what can Google do to improve their own rankings? They optimize their code on-site. Continue reading »
How do you get free usability and design tips from here by not subscribing? As the animated character Homer Simpson would put it, Dohhhh. Best Web Image does not have a subscription service, so you can’t subscribe to it. However, if you would still like to get my usability and design tips that I post here by email or RSS please visit this page: Get Free Usability and Design Tips.
Is this a shameless plug to get more feed followers? Not really, but it can’t hurt to ask. No, this post is really about the term subscriber, and how it could be killing your blog. Continue reading »
So you just finished putting up your retail site, and it’s live. Yesterday you had a whopping twenty visitors, and made zero sales. You are obviously going to need some traffic. Do you know how you are going to get it?
Exclusive Concepts specializes in online marketing for e-commerce websites. They are by trade, a SEO company, and getting search traffic is one of the best ways to start getting that targeted traffic. Continue reading »
Google’s Webmaster Tools Dashboard now comes complete with a keyword significance chart graphing your keywords. They rank the keywords found on your site by count, and in their words should “reflect the subject matter of your site”.
The list displays only one word keyword phrases, and appears to go as low as three characters. It noticed BWI on this site without a problem. I’m just wondering why usability isn’t over design for this site.
The unfortunate part about this new feature is the fact that when you download the list in CSV format, numeric values are not show along with the keywords. It’s just a list of words, but at least they are prioritized order.
Doing a little SEO work for a client, I was quickly reminded that all parts of a website need careful tending because they can all drive in traffic. A mere day after my clients added descriptive alt attributes to their images, Google search traffic started coming in for some of the text found in the attributes. If that’s not a reason to validate your HTML, nothing is. Here is how I do images now: Images are In Charge of Your Linking Title.
It’s a Team Thing
In the case of getting more visitors to your site from search engines understand that every facet of your website could play a large roll in your traffic. Your content could be generating traffic, but your meta descriptions, alt attributes, and many other factors could play just as significant part. Continue reading »
Sep 102009
What are better visitors? Well, that all depends. What do you want your visitors to do? This month I have been working on increasing the average page views per visitor. So for me, right now, a better visitor would be one that generates more page views. I feel that this is currently a weak spot on my site, so I am doing whatever it takes to improve it. Continue reading »
Sep 012009
Every morning I like to read blogs and forums. Here are the top three I found of value today. Continue reading »
Apr 152009
This is a basic tutorial on how to use heading tags on your website. It’s basic, because its use is very basic. The reason I am posting this article though, is because it has become apparent to me that many web developers, or site owners have no clue on how to use it correctly, see my reasoning why. To top it off, it can often be difficult to position. You should be able to come close to doing it right though, and after reading this, you should have a thorough understanding on its purpose.
What Are Header Tags?
Header tags do two things. They outline the sites content, and they define the value of the content below it. To use the tags you simply wrap the content like this:
<h1>Title of Site</h1>
Using my site as an example you can see it in action:
My logo is in the <h1> position. This is not ideal, text is preferred here. To compensate for this I have made sure the image has a title. Most data extractors will recognize this. So in this particular case my <h1> tag will reflect “Best Web Image – Web Usability and Design”, the image title.
The <h2> wraps around the page title, and the <h3> tags wrap around paragraph titles. It’s a simple outline of a sites content created by heading tags. They are used by most major browsers. They have been around since I’ve been building sites, 1996, and probably before that. It’s basic HTML code.
Below is an example that I think will get you motivated in using header tags correctly though.
By using W3C’s Semantic Data Extractor on my Contact Information Post you can see the outline it makes of my page. It does this by grabbing the header tags. You may have to scroll down a little to find the outline on the extractor page.
H1 [Best Web Image - Web Usability and Design] – My sites title
- H2 Contact Information – The Page title
- H3 Contact Information is Your Reflection – Paragraph title
- H3 Things to Include on Your Contact Page – Paragraph title
- H3 Related Posts – Paragraph title after the post
- H3 One Response to Contact Information – Paragraph title for comments of the post
- H3 Leave a Reply – Paragraph title for contact form on the post
- H2 Improve the Usability and Design of Your Website – Post is over, this is in the footer starting new content
You can easily see how the content is nicely organized for search engines. It also is now nicely organized for the visitors. On every page of my site, headings are defined the same way. Visitors can then quickly recognized the level of importance by simply seeing the size difference. This improves scanning, consistency, and a visitors ability to use your site faster.
SEO Land
Now here is a crazy part about heading tags, and I think it’s why so many mess it up. A couple of years ago wild rumors were going around that if you put your important keywords between <h2> tags Google will give them more value. Web developers were suddenly using <h2> tags everywhere. They didn’t know how to use them, they just new Google liked them.
Well the rumors were partially true. The reason Google, and other data mining applications, like the <h2> tag is because of what it represents. If used correctly, it often represents the page title. Obviously a page title is a good indication of its content.
What does your site outline look like when you go straight to a <h2>, and skip using the <h1> tag all together? Well, if you didn’t use an <h1> tag, you don’t have an outline, and data extractors will reflect this. Even if Google gives you a little more credit for that <h2>tag it found, your missing out on the most important keywords, the ones hidden in your sites title, aka <h1>. A <h2>tag is great, but is still bows to the king, <h1>.
How valuable is your content if you just wrapped it all in <h1> or <h2> tags? Well all things being equal, nothing will have an increased value unless it was highlighted somehow. If everything is special, nothing is special.
Time to Test and Improve Your Site
So are you ready to test your site out? Visit W3C’s Semantic Data Extractor, and type in your url. If the extractor fails to show your sites outline, time to get to work. Don’t worry if you do fail though, I’m guessing 90% of you will. Just use the information, fix your site, and get a head start on your competition.
Did you get an outline for your site using the extractor? Sweet! You are are the only one out of ten that do!
Feb 252009
There are a ton of SEO companies out there, and if you are looking to market your site, I would strongly suggest talking to an SEO specialist first. SEO Visions is one of those companies, and here is their SEO consultant page.
SEO Visions Services
You can get a variety of on and off site services to optimize your site for search engines.
- Page optimization
- Link building
- Article submission and writing
- Directory Submission
- Optimized press releases
The company has also taken the steps to become Yahoo Ambassador. If you are unfamiliar Yahoo’s Ambassador program, it basically shows that this company or person has taken the steps to learn all the functionality of Yahoo’s PPC services. You can then know it is a reasonably safe to use SEO Visions’ pay per click advertising service, and that your money will not be wasted.
SEO Sites and Their Help Pages
One of the best sources for SEO infomation is SEO sites. In an effort to convert customers they must educate them on the need first. Not everyone is a webmaster, and obviously the ones that need SEO the most understand nearly nothing about the topic. They are focused on business, not on how to build and market a website. So if you are new to the idea of optimizing your site, a great way to fast track your knowledge on the subject is to search for SEO companies, and look any articles they may have. SEO Visions had a ton of seo tips and articles.
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