SAMsSites Blog

The Title Tag and SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

SAM — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 23:11:56 +0000

The title is not visible on the actual website. It is exposed above the address bar as shown below. The view below is from Firefox on the Mac. Different browsers place it elsewhere in the bar but not on the site itself. The title is the most powerful tag for your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategy.

Even though the title is not visible on the website, it is on the address bar and is the label of the bookmark when saving a page to favorites. It is also what comes up when sharing the page on Linkedin, Facebook and other social media communications.

Rules to prompt the robots to recognize your page with the title:

Put strong keywords first. This isn’t about grammar or sound bites. This is about what the robots like.
Keep the theme of the page. If you are talking about hiking for exercise and not once is nutrition mentioned on the page, don’t use the word nutrition on the title of that page.
Each page should have a unique title. Since each page on your site contains different information. Robots like it when the title supports the information itself.
For strategy use the word of the site. The word of the site is what the whole site is about. Since the goal of the website is “health”, it is good to support this keyword yet keep the theme of the page. The page may not mention the actual word health but since it is in the name of the website and organization that is how to use it. My suggestion for the title would be: Exercise, Hiking – Health Conscious Movement.
The theme of the website or the theme of the page. Even though the word health is the most important for the website, it is not important for the page. Keep it in the title as to say this is from the Health Conscious Movement. Do not overwhelm the robots with words. Two or three words with the website name as a name not an address is the most effective.
Sentences are OK to use in the title. This works when the title is dynamic and the heading of the page automatically goes into the title. Most headings on blogs and dynamic pages follow the theme of the page. A few adverbs can help when sharing the page for social media. This can be more important than search engines for getting users to your site for the right reason.

Make Your Own Website Your Browser Homepage

SAM — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 17:12:30 +0000

It wasn’t too long ago I was visiting a past client’s website and noticed a different website than the one she had me build for her. I was surprised since it was it wasn’t that long ago that I had performed updates to the site. I contacted her to ask if she sold her site or changed it. She said no. I did a Whois search and found that her domain had expired over a month ago. It was long enough that she lost the right to it and someone else had purchased it. She had owned the domain for over four years and had grandfathered the domain into the system and it was doing well in search engines. She now had to purchase a new domain and start over establishing the domain on the web.

Two things can save this from happening:

Make sure that your email address, phone number and business address are up-to-date in your account where you register the domain. Registrars want you to reregister with them and they will try to notify you when the domain is about to expire. The first way is with email. If you have changed your email, this notification gets lost. Some registrars will call you or send mail to you but not all do. You want to be on top of it.
Another way is to make your website the homepage of your browser. In Firefox and Safari you go into the Preferences that are under the label of the top dropdown menu and select Preferences. Then replace the homepage link with your own domain address. In Chrome go to Preferences and look for Settings. It is under Appearances. And in Internet Explorer go to the dropdown menu under Tools, select Options and change the Homepage link to your website address.

Having your website as the homepage for your browser is a good idea for other reasons. If your host is having a problem and they are unaware, you can notify them that the site is down. This keeps you up on the condition of your website and every time you open your browser the first website you see is yours. If it changes and you react quickly you can usually recover without incident. In the case of registrars they have a waiting period before you lose the right to buy it back, if you forgot to update your email address with them or never got the email.

Where is the best place to put your blog?

SAM — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 19:03:08 +0000

When taking on the challenge of writing a blog, the decision comes up where do I put it. A few choices are; on Wordpress.com or on Blogspot.com. These are free places to create and store your blog. You can’t beat free. That is the major advantage to using these sites for a blog. One draw back to free, though, is the technical support; finding a person to talk to is not easy. If you lose where you are and how to get in, it could be hard finding your way back.

If you are the owner of a website and/or a domain name, consider putting your blog on your own website. That doesn’t mean making your blog the website; that is another topic. It means using a blog as a blog. A place to log your interests that supports your website.

The advantage here is even though you are paying for hosting and a webmaster to set up the blog, they will be a source of technical support. But even better than that, you own your own content. You are not loading it onto someone else’s site. It is your own database and it is content on your site. It is working for you on the search engines. Wordpress has a site wordpress.org where you download the software for free and then upload it to your site. You then format it to look like you want. It works the same way as the one on their free blog site.

Wordpress is created as an open source tool by its own team. Blogspot and/or Blogger are owned and created by Google. They both have RSS feeds. This makes them both searchable by the blog search within hours. We like Wordpress software for blogs not for websites; the blog has an RSS feed. Learn more about RSS feeds. Then read more about this post…

Why is Redundant Content Penalized in Google?

SAM — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 19:55:50 +0000

If you are searching a topic and the same article comes up five times, this could make your research less effective and more time consuming. An article posted many times comes from a common belief that spinning your article all over the web will bring you more exposure. All this is doing is cluttering the web with redundant content. It is also reducing your website’s placement in the search engine rankings. This is even less effective than the traditional meta tag keyword myth. Look that one up. Redundant content has run its course, as Google, for one, looks for high-quality original sites in search of good content.

The World Wide Web is about content. It is a way to search and find something. It is important that content be original and clean. Google’s algorithms can now tell when an article is repeated and spun with a few words changed to fool the robots.

If you have a concern about rankings in search engines do not reuse your articles all over the web. If you want to post to a publisher, do not repeat the article on your site. It is O.K. to link. If the publisher does not archive the article, it is O.K. to post it on your site. If the publisher owns the article, then post it on yours, as it leaves their site and credits the publisher for the article. Read more…

Does hosting for a shopping cart on a site have to be PCI Compliant?

SAM — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 01:47:30 +0000

If you have a shopping cart on your website or are thinking of having one, you may have heard about the required PCI Compliancy (as of 2004). This is a security requirement preventing hackers from accessing your forms and data comprising your customers’ ID. Hackers can get to your databases if security isn’t high, and if you stored credit card numbers, hackers can get to them unless you have a PCI Compliant server. Even if you take credit card numbers on your site and do not store them, a hacker can monitor this process if your server is not PCI compliant.

Keep in mind, your website hosting has to be PCI compliant ONLY if you take credit card numbers on your site. This is true especially if you feel the need to store credit card numbers. This is a risk you do not have to take. When you have PCI compliant hosting, it means you need a whole server (computer) to yourself. Hosting is renting space on a computer that is dedicated to the Internet. It is best to use a company that specializes in hosting. They have backup systems for content as well as power supplies. If your area experiences a storm, you should avoid downtime with most hosting companies as they have a backup plan.

If you are a small company and want to have a shopping cart but can not afford the PCI Compliant hosting, there is a way to get around this and still be safe. Most hosting that a small company pays for can do the job for about $20 a month. If you rent a dedicated server, the difference is a much larger monthly fee. Your company can still be held accountable for any misuse of a credit card.

The safest way to take credit cards is to not do it on your site.

Period.

Even if your programmer says you are not doing it, if it appears that you are taking them on your site be skeptical. The safest way is to not store any of your customer’s data on your site. Every time they
order, they should refill out the data as if it was their first time. This means you do not require a login to your site. When it comes to putting in a credit card, they are redirected to authorize.net or Paypal.
The address clearly shows this.

If you go to http://transnetmedia.com/payonline.php, put in an amount and follow it through without putting in your credit number and you will see it goes to authorize.net with transNET Media ^® LLC’s name on it.Your site can add up the amount and even transfer the details of what was purchased to authorize.net. It will then send the merchant a notice to fill the order and the recipient will get a receipt. Read more…

The Buzz Term “PCI Compliant”

SAM — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 22:58:27 +0000

When it became possible to sell items on the Internet, everyone wanted to do it. It became a dream job. Work at home while your websites work for you all the time, taking money and dropping it into your bank account. It was happening, but the horror stories started to erupt. Identity theft has been traced to charging on the Internet. This scares buyers from shopping at their computers and prefer the real store front.

There are many that believe that it is unsafe to buy or put their credit cards online, and justifiably so. Although this should be, and can be, the safest way to buy. If a site is set up properly, your clients are at no risk. But unfortunately there are a lot of overlooked holes that websites fall into because people trusted their developers to know how to avoid the risks. If you are an online merchant, you have heard the buzz phrase, “PCI compliant.” Is your site PCI compliant and does it have to be?

If you go here https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/ you can read about what this means for your site’s security and what you need to take into account when taking money. If you’re using Paypal, it is compliant, but who is taking the credit card number? Is your site taking the number and sending it to Paypal, or is your site allowing Paypal to take the number? Read more…

The Links to the Site

SAM — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 21:25:24 +0000

Linking to your site can raise your rank but there are some things you need to remember as you link to your site. Often when a link is created to a website only the domain name is used as the link. If your domain name does not have your important keywords in it then the link is not supporting your placement for those words. For instance, If I make a link for http://transnetmedia.com, it doesn’t have Phoenix website design in it, it does nothing for my placement. The one who owns the domain phoenixwebdesign.com has an advantage right off the bat.

There is a way to help your name and that is to make the text of your keywords the link. This isn’t always possible but when it is, it adds power to your placement. Phoenix Web Design is linked to my site. If you are posting a link in a blog and make it the title, it doesn’t have any effect. I have just tested this, I made the term transNET Media® LLC a title in a blog and it didn’t do anything. Read more …

Is the SEO effort working?

SAM — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 23:38:25 +0000

We have moved up to page 6 which means it is between 60 and 70. It is moving up. There is a website that keeps track of the links to your site and the keywords linked to it. Go to backlinkwatch.com. If you can make those keywords line up with the words you choose as the right keywords for your site, it can help to move up your ranking. Getting to page two is important. Searchers today don’t feel as compelled to use the number one listing for a search. The first page can be dominated by directories. They are large listings and companies that spend big bucks for SEO maintenance. These sites are being forced to the top. Most searchers are seeing the value in digging a little deeper. For instance, if you are looking for someone to work on your car and you key in Auto Repair Phoenix, they first several listings are going to be car dealerships. Maybe you don’t want to us a car dealership. Then you may dig deeper then the first page.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is still a good idea as searches dig a little deeper to find you. Read more …

SEOing transNETMedia.com

SAM — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 18:42:16 +0000

Based on our research we are now focusing on the placement of the phrase “Phoenix Web Design.” This does mean on the website but it also means naming links to the website. What does that mean? If you put a link to your website, say in a blog, give it a title and use the phrase for which you want your site to rank high in Google.

The homepage title tag is probably the most important tag on the entire site. It is much much more powerful than any meta tag. The title is above the web address with the http://— If your competition isn’t great, this alone can bring your ranking up on google. Often this is not enough. Now, it is a good idea to repeat this phrase in a header in the text somewhere and it can only help to repeat it again in the content. We have done this. Read more …

The Keyword Stategy

SAM — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 15:09:42 +0000

Have you ever heard of the cobbler’s son who goes barefoot? Well, our website is barefoot. It needs some tender loving SEO. We do not advertise ourselves as SEO specialists but by following certain rules, sites can climb to the spots that can bring them a Google presence. Selling and new clients is another matter. That is where your site needs to do a few more things with the message you give. We decided to give transNETMedia.com an SEO uplift. So far, we have toyed with some phrases but this takes a serious focus to get your site on the first page with the right phrase. So this article is about picking the phrase we want for our site to place high on Google.
To do this we are using two google tools

Google Adwords keyword tool
A search in Google itself

Using google Adword keyword tool it tells us how many times phrases are used within a month.

Here are the results of the phrases we thought were key.

Web Design 4,090,000
Phoenix web design 6,600
Phoenix web designer 6,600
Arizona web design 6,600
Phoenix web development 880
Phoenix online marketing 590
Phoenix internet marketing 1,600
Phoenix social media 390
Phoenix php development nothing
Php development 40,500
Phoenix web master nothing

Even though a web designer, developer or master are what we are, those numbers show what was keyed in by users. There is no sense in trying to come up for “Phoenix web master” in search engines since it is not keyed in enough to register data.

Localizing the data to an area like Phoenix is good. It makes the search more specific and a little easier to achieve. Notice the number for web design. Seems like an easy choice but adding the word Phoenix makes the climb a little easier. As we make our decisions on how we go about this, maybe it will be clearer as to how it works.

When you do a search in Google, you will notice that it tells you the number of times a phrase is found on websites. When you put the phrase in quotations, it gives you the number where the phrase is found just as you keyed it. If you key in “Phoenix Web Design,” it doesn’t give you “Web Design Phx.” If you leave the quotes off, it will give the number every time those words are used alone and together.

Results

Phoenix Web Desigin 9,510,000 “Phoenix Web Design” 93,700
Phoenix Web Designer 14,600,000 “Phoenix Web Designer” 99,100
“Arizona web design” 742,000
” web design” 9,430,000
Phoenix Online Marketing 6,710,000 “Phoenix online Marketing” 56,200

Because of the results from the keyword tool, I decided to search only for the terms above. As I consider what I really want to be found for; it is design. Even though building a website is a marketing budget expense, we are designers, developers and masters. But “developers” and “masters” are not words that are used.

Now we compare: Arizona, Phoenix and without localizing. These numbers shows our competition using or not using the locality. We want this number to be small. Our choice is “Phoenix Web Design.”

If we try to find ourselves on Google for this term, we come upat 187. We also did a search for us for the term Phoenix Web Designer. We come up at 187 as well. Read more …