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How to change the titles of your web pages to get more visitors

Saturday, March 6th, 2010

The titles that you use for your web pages are very important. They are an important factor for the ranking algorithms of search engines and they are the first thing that web surfers see when they find your website in the search results.

Depending on which kind of traffic you want to attract, you should use different title formats on your web pages:

1. News titles (not so good for SEO)

This kind of title is often used by bloggers and news websites. Here are some examples:

Beat the ‘overqualified’ tag
Parking fees spark meter madness
Nominate your hero
Karl Malden died

The problem with these titles is that they are not good for search engine optimization. These titles usually don’t contain relevant keywords and they don’t look very attractive in the search results.

There won’t be many people who will type “Parking fees spark meter madness” in Google’s search box so it’s not likely that the page will get many visitors through search engines.

2. Shopping titles (good for SEO)

Shopping titles usually contain a product name that is used by web surfers. If they also contain a call to action, you can get targeted visitors with these titles. Here are some examples:

ASUS Eee PC 1000HE 10-Inch Black Netbook – 9.5 Hour Battery Life
ASUS Eee PC 1000 – Buy it now for only $249.95
Buy an ASUS Eee PC 1000 with extended guarantee
Free shipping: ASUS Eee PC 1000 – $249.95

The first shopping title is rather descriptive because it only lists the features. The other titles contain a call to action (buy now), prices and additional benefits (free shipping).

People who want to buy an ASUS Eee PC probably will click on the title with the call to action while people who are looking for product information might choose the first title.

3. Information seeker titles (good for SEO)

Information seeker titles won’t attract buyers but people who are looking for information about a special topic. Here are some examples:

How to lose weight as fast as possible
How to repair a broken chair
12 mistakes most parents make when choosing a school
How to find the perfect golf club
5 ways to find the perfect partner

These web page titles are good because they will attract visitors over a long time period. People are always looking for “how to” articles and solutions to their problems and you will get long term, constant traffic with these pages.

Action plan: how to change your current web page titles

Good web page titles can make a huge difference in the number of visitors that your website gets. For that reason, you should check the titles of all web pages of your website now:

Make sure that the titles of your web pages are descriptive. It should be clear what to expect on the pages.
If possible, add a call to action and benefits in your web page title.
Put the most important information at the beginning of the title. Search engines might shorten the title in the search result pages and people might not see the complete text.
If you’re not a major brand name, avoid your company name in your web page titles.
Do not use the same title for all of your web pages. This is a mistake that many beginners make.

People judge books by their covers and search results by web page titles. If you want to get as many website visitors as possible, you should develop engaging titles for all pages of your site.

In addition to the title of your web pages, many other elements influence the position of your pages in Google’s search results. You can get a full analysis of all elements of your web pages here.

Posted in Google Tidbits, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »

Do Search Engines Understand Your Web Pages?

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

You have a beautiful website with great products, great guarantees, many comprehensive pages and great customer service. Unfortunately, Google and other search engines won’t give your website high rankings.

There are several reasons why search engines do not list websites although they look great and offer quality content:

1. Your web pages are meaningless to search engine spiders

Search engines use simple software programs to visit your web pages. In general, search engine spiders won’t see anything that is displayed in images, Flash elements, JavaScript (except for a few exceptions) and other multimedia formats.

If the main content of your website is displayed in images or Flash then your website can be totally meaningless to search engines. If your website navigation is pure JavaScript then chances are that search engines won’t find the pages of your website.

Your website will look like a single page site although it consists of many different pages.

2. The HTML code of your web page contains major errors

Most web pages have minor errors in their HTML code. While most search engine spiders can handle minor HTML code errors, some errors can prevent search engine spiders from indexing your web pages.

For example, a tag at the top of your web pages could tell search engine spiders that they have reached the end of the page although the main content of the page has not been indexed yet.

3. The HTML code of your web pages doesn’t contain the right elements

If you want to get high rankings for certain keywords then these keywords must appear in the right places on your web page. For example, it usually helps to use the keyword in the web page title.

There are many other elements that are important if you want to have high rankings. All of them should be in place if you want to get high rankings.

4. Your web server sends the wrong status codes

Some web servers send wrong status codes to search engine spiders and visitors. When a search engine spider requests a web page from your site then your server sends a response code. This should be the “200 OK” code.

Some servers send a “302 moved” or even a “404 not found” response code to the search engine spiders although the web page can be displayed in a normal web browser.

If your web server sends the wrong response code, search engine spiders will think that the web page doesn’t exist and they won’t index the page.

Solution: Use the search engine spider simulator mentioned above to find out which response code your web server returns to search engines. If the response code is not “200 OK”, the spider simulator will return a warning message.

5. Your robots.txt file rejects all search engine spiders

If your robots.txt file does not allow search engine spiders to visit your web pages then your website won’t be included in the search results. Some robots.txt file contain errors and search engine spiders are blocked by mistake.

Solution: Check the contents of your robots.txt file. In general, it is not necessary to use a robots.txt file if you don’t want to block certain areas of your website.

Search engine spiders must be able to understand your web pages if you want to get high rankings on Google, Bing and other search engines. The tips above help you to make sure that search engine spiders see what you want them to see.

Posted in Google Tidbits, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »

Google AdWords (PPC): how to lower your costs while selling more

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

If you advertise your website on Google AdWords, chances are that you found out that you can spent a lot of money on AdWords without getting a lot in return.

The reason why many people spend much more than they have to for their Google AdWords ads is that they use the wrong settings in their campaigns.

Long tail keywords convert better and there are a lot of them

Several studies found out that long tail keywords have a much higher conversion rate than single word keywords. Long tail keywords are very specific keywords that consists of 4 or more words.

According to a recent Hitwise study, more than 18% of searches contain five or more keywords. In addition, Google says that “20% of the queries Google receives each day are ones [they] haven’t seen in at least 90 days, if at all.”

The wrong long tail keywords will just cost you money

The facts above indicate that it might be a good idea to use broad match for all of your keywords. It’s just not possible to include all possible keywords manually in your campaigns. Google recommend to use broad match with your keywords:

“Broad match is a great way to capitalize on those unexpected, but relevant queries. When you include a keyword as a broad match, your corresponding ad is not only eligible to appear alongside queries with that exact spelling, but it can also capture keyword expansions that include synonyms, singular/plural forms, relevant variants of your keywords, and phrases containing your keywords.”

Unfortunately, it’s not that easy. If you use broad match for all of your keywords then your ads will be shown for a lot of unrelated searches and you’ll pay a lot of money without getting something in return.

For example, the word “tiger” would be used for searches regarding Tiger Woods, the Siberian tiger, tiger sharks, the town Tiger in Georgia, etc.

For that reason, it is important to exclude the long tail keywords that are not related to your website.

Negative keywords will increase your conversion rate

You can enter so-called negative keywords in your Google AdWords campaigns. If a long tail keyword contains one of your negative keywords, your AdWords ads won’t be displayed.

For example, if you enter “-free” as a negative keyword, your AdWords ad is not displayed if someone searches for free things. Negative keywords are an excellent tool for excluding Internet users looking for free items only.

You can also use negative keywords to display an ad for specific target groups. An insurance broker might want to exclude people who are searching for books about insurance. He could enter “book” and “books” as negative keywords.

If one of your keywords has multiple meanings (“tiger” would trigger “tiger woods” and “siberian tiger”, “tiger shark”, “tiger, georgia”) then you should add negative keywords that remove the unrelated searches.

Broad match can help you to get more customers but you have to be very careful with that option. If you use broad match with your keywords, don’t forget to use negative keywords so that you don’t pay for unwanted traffic.

Posted in Google Tidbits, Pay Per Click | No Comments »

How to get your breadcrumbs on Google’s result pages

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

Webmasters continue to see breadcrumbs on Google’s result pages. What are breadcrumbs, for which websites does Google display them and how can you get Google to display breadcrumbs for your own website?

What are breadcrumbs?

Breadcrumbs is the name for the hierarchical site navigation links that are often used on web pages. Here’s an example: “You are here: Home > Category > Sub category > Page“.

Since a few weeks Google displays breadcrumbs for some websites on the search result pages:

Why is it good if Google shows breadcrumbs for your website?

If Google displays breadcrumbs for your website then you basically have more links on Google’s result page. Each page in the breadcrumbs line has its own link.

If your web page is listed with breadcrumbs in the results then it is more likely that the searcher will come to the right page on your website and that you will get a sale.

How can you get Google to display breadcrumbs for your website?

If you want Google to display breadcrumbs for your website, you have to use bread crump navigation on your web pages. That means that you must have a set of delimited links on your website that reflects your website hierarchy.

Google’s Matt Cutts recently published a video in which he tries to shed some light on the topic. It seems that Google is still testing breadcrumbs on the result pages and that the display of breadcrumbs in the search results will change (just like Google’s Sitelinks changed).

Regarding the question which delimiter is best for breadcrumb navigation, Matt remains very vague. For example, links could be delimited with >, hyphens or the » symbol. So far, all examples on Google pages use > as the delimiter so it’s probably best to go with that symbol.

Depending on the size of your website, it is a good idea to use breadcrumbs. They make it easier for users to navigate your website and they help users to remember where they are on your website.

Of course, breadcrumbs alone won’t get you in Google’s search results. You must also make sure that Google finds the right keywords on your website and that your website has enough inbound links.

Posted in Google Tidbits, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »

The effect of your URL structure on your Google rankings

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

Does Google care about the position of a web page on your server? Does it make a difference if a web page is in the root directory of your website or in a sub directory? How does your URL structure influence the position of your web pages in Google’s search results?

Trailing slashes and sub directories

A popular assumption is that Google prefers pages that are in the root directory of a website.

If an URL contains many trailing slashes (meaning the page is placed in a sub-sub-directory) then Google might not think that the page is important in relation to the other pages.

Although this statement is often repeated in SEO forums, it is probably not true.

The visibility of a web page counts, not its position

If a web page is linked throughout your website and if the page has inbound links then the web page will be indexed and ranked by Google without any problems.

Most web pages on today’s websites are created dynamically and the URL that is displayed in a web browser presents only a virtual site structure that is not really available on the server.

As there are no real folders on the server, search engines won’t find a valuable ranking signal if they look at things like presence or absence of directories.

What does this mean for your website?

If you want to show search engines that a page on your website is important, link to it from many other pages of your website so that it can easily be found.

A page that gets many links (both from your own website and from other websites) will get the attention that it deserves from Google’s indexing robot.

When you should care about the structure of your URLs

1. URL stripping can cause problems

Rumor has it that Google uses URL stripping to index web pages. That means that Google shortens the path to an URL to find new pages on a site. For example, “www.example.com/folder/keyword.htm“ would be shortened to “www.example.com/folder/“.

If you use dynamically created URLs then you should make sure that all virtual folders return real web pages and not ”404 not found” pages. Otherwise, Google might think that you have many faulty pages and/or that your website has a low quality.

2. Shorter URLs can be better for your website visitors

Although most web surfers don’t pay attention to the URL in the browser address bar, shorter URLs can enhance the user experience. Shorter URLs are easier to remember and they can improve the direct type-in traffic.

3. Short URLs get more clicks

A search marketing study found out that web surfers clicked short URLs twice as often as long URLs in Google’s search results. Long URLs are cut off in Google search engine result pages. Web surfers cannot see where they are going to go and this can decrease the click-through rate.

4. The URLs of your web pages can contain your keywords

The words that appear in the URL of a web page can influence the position of the web page for these words. For that reason, it can make sense to rewrite your URLs so that they include the keywords for which you want to have high rankings.

Find out if the URL structure of your web pages prevents them from getting top rankings on Google.

Posted in Google Tidbits, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »

Three easy steps to optimize your existing links

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

Link building is one of the hardest and one of the most important things that you have to do if you want to get high rankings on Google. As it takes so much time to get inbound links, it is very important to make sure that the links to your website contain the right keywords.

The basics about keywords in text links and link bombs

Google tries to find a relation between the words that are used to link to your site and the content of your website. If many websites link to your website with the word “tomatoes” then Google’s algorithm will come to the conclusion that your website should be listed in the search results for the keyword “tomatoes”.

The keywords in the links to a website have been so important for Google that people managed to get websites to the top of Google’s search results for very obscure keywords. For example, some people started a scheme in which they asked their friends to link to the official website of George W. Bush with the keyword “miserable failure”.

The result was that George W. Bush’s website was #1 on Google for that keyword. In the meantime, Google has learned to deal with these so-called Google bombs and it’s not as easy to manipulate the results with the links as it has been.

What you should do if your website has no links

When you try to get links from other websites, you should make sure that they help you to increase your rankings for your keywords. That means that you must make sure that the links to your website contain your keywords.

At the same time, you must make sure that the links to your site don’t look like a Google bomb. You need links to your website that use keywords that are related to your site. If many websites link to you with a special keyword, that will increase your chances to be listed for that keyword. However, the keyword should be varied.

For example, if you want to be listed for “tomatoes”, the other websites should link to your site with link texts such as “tomatoes”, “delicious tomatoes”, “great tomatoes”, “tomatoes and other vegetables”, etc.

In addition, the web page to which the links point should also contain content about tomatoes. If the linked page contains the same keywords as the link texts then it is less likely that the links are part of a Google bomb.

A good way to start link building is to contact the websites that link to your competitors.

What you should do if your website already has some links

If your website already has some links then you should make sure that the other websites link with the right link texts to your site.

By optimizing your existing link texts, you’ll greatly increase the chances to be listed for the keywords that are relevant to your website.

Optimizing the links to your website is not enough. You must also optimize the content of your web pages to show Google that your website is relevant to your keywords. The links that point to your website should confirm that your website is really relevant for the keywords for which you optimized your pages.

Posted in Google Tidbits, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »

Google Reveals Factors for Ranking Tweets

Friday, January 15th, 2010

It’s ok to say “no” to Twitter if that’s your thing. There’s a chance that it just doesn’t fit into your strategy or help you achieve your goals. That’s cool. However, if it is your thing, you may be interested in how Google ranks tweets. That is if search marketing is your thing.

Google and Microsoft almost simultaneously announced deals with Twitter a few months back, that would give the companies access to tweets in real-time to fuel their respective search engines’ real-time results. Microsoft immediately launched their version, but it was separate from the regular Bing search engine. Google waited a while, but eventually started incorporating real-time results right into regular Google SERPs (including not only tweets, but various other sources).

After the Twitter deals were announced, Bing came out and said, “If someone has a lot of followers, his/her Tweet may get ranked higher. If a tweet is exactly the same as other Tweets, it will get ranked lower.”

Google was not as vocal about how it would rank tweets and other real-time results, but the company has now shed a bit of light on that via an interview with MIT’s Technology Review. David Talbot interviewed Google “Fellow” Amit Singhal, who has led development of real-time search at the company. According to him, Google also ranks tweets by followers to an extent, but it’s not just about how many followers you get. It’s about how reputable those followers are.

Singhal likens the system to the well-known Google system of link popularity. Getting good links from reputable sources helps your content in Google, so having followers with that some kind of authority theoretically helps your tweets rank in Google’s real-time search.

“One user following another in social media is analogous to one page linking to another on the Web. Both are a form of recommendation,” Singhal says. “As high-quality pages link to another page on the Web, the quality of the linked-to page goes up. Likewise, in social media, as established users follow another user, the quality of the followed user goes up as well.”

But that’s only one factor.

Do you commonly use hashtags in your tweets? If your goal is to rank in Google’s real-time search index, you may want to cut down on that practice, because according to Singhal, that is a big red flag for a lower quality tweet. This seems to be part of Google’s spam control strategy.

Another noteworthy excerpt from the interview:

Another problem: how, if someone is searching for “Obama,” to sift through White House press tweets and thousands of others to find the most timely and topical information. Google scans tweets to find the “signal in the noise,” he says. Such a “signal” might include a new onslaught of tweets and other blogs that mention “Cambridge police” or “Harry Reid” near mentions of “Obama.” By looking out for such signals, Google is able to furnish real-time hits that contain the freshest subject matter even for very common search terms.

Well, we certainly know more about Google’s strategy for tweet ranking now, but there are still plenty of questions about it. What is Google’s stance is on Ghost Tweeting? Are Google’s ranking factors a good reason to create and follow more Twitter lists in hopes for gaining more reputable industry followers?

The factors mentioned aren’t the only ones Google employs. It’s not like Google is going to tell us everything. It also helps to keep in mind that real-time search spans far beyond just tweets. Still, Twitter is clearly a big part of it, and even the significance of tweets themselves will evolve in time.

Google says it hopes to factor in geo-location data (with regards to tweets) into the real-time search results at some point. Google and Twitter engineers frequently collaborate on real-time search, which Google itself says is evolving.

By the way, it stands to reason that Google’s strategy for ranking tweets probably shares similarities for how it ranks content from other sources drawn from for real-time search.

Posted in Google Tidbits, Social Media | No Comments »

Google Caffeine Is Coming? How will it affect the rankings of your web pages?

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

Google Caffeine is the name given to Google’s next algorithm update that is going live after the holidays. It seems that Google Caffeine will be more than Google’s regular updates. It will probably be a major overhaul of the calculations that Google uses to rank web pages.

What is going to change?
Of course, Google hasn’t revealed the details of Google Caffeine yet. However, the new index has been live on some test servers and some Google employees also talked about the next index. The following factors might play a larger role in Google’s next index:

Website speed: if you have a slow loading website, it might not get high rankings on Google.
Broken links: if your website contains many broken links, this might have a negative impact of the position of your web pages in Google search results.
Bad neighborhoods: Linking to known spammers and getting a lot of links from known spammers isn’t good for your rankings in Google’s current algorithm. The negative impact of a bad neighborhood will probably be even worse with Google Caffeine.
The over-all quality of your website: Google’s new algorithm probably will take a closer look at the over-all quality of your website. It’s not enough to have one or two ranking factors in place.

You’ll probably need good optimized content, a good website design with a clear navigation, good inbound links, a low bounce rate, etc. The number of social bookmarks might also play an increased role.

Factors like the age of a website, its past history, authority etc. will still play a role in Google’s new index. However, the effect of the different factors on your rankings will shift.

How can you adjust your web pages to Google’s new Caffeine index?
Although Google’s Caffeine update hasn’t been release yet, there are some things that you can do to increase the chances that your website will get good rankings in Google’s new index:

Remove all spam elements from your web pages. Anything that might be considered spam can and will have a negative effect on the position of your web pages sooner or later. This includes text that has nearly the same color as the background, cloaking and fully automated linking systems.
Check your website design and the navigation of your website. Your website should have a professional look and feel. The navigation should be easy to understand and your web pages should easily be parseable by search engine spiders.
Get links from social bookmark websites. Social bookmark links already play a role in Google’s current algorithm and that role might increase.
Check your links. You shouldn’t link to websites that look like spammers. It’s better to focus on selected quality links instead of as many links as possible.

Google Caffeine is going to be released after the holidays. If you follow the tips above, your website will be in a good position when Google’s new index will be online.

Posted in Google Tidbits, Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »

Google PageRank Sculpting: What has Changed?

Friday, July 10th, 2009

Google has changed the way it processes the nofollow attribute. These changes have an impact on how you can use the nofollow attribute for PageRank sculpting on your website.

What is PageRank sculpting?

PageRank sculpting is the attempt to control the link power of one website page to another page of the same website. For example, when Google finds a website with three links then the link power is evenly passed to all three links:

Some webmasters thought that if a web page has a high PageRank of 8 then it shouldn’t pass that PageRank power to “Terms of Service” or “Privacy Policy” pages.

For that reason, some webmasters started to use the rel=nofollow attribute for these links: <a href=”example.htm” rel=”nofollow”>Example</a>

Links that are marked with the nofollow attribute shouldn’t be followed by Google. That meant that the other links on the web page benefited more from the high PageRank of the page. It worked like that:

In this example, link 1 passes no link power while link 2 and 3 each pass half of the available link power to the target page. The result is that the linked pages have a higher chance of getting listed in the search results.

What has changed?

Google’s Matt Cutts recently made a statement about the way Google now treats nofollow links:

Link 1 still doesn’t pass any link power but the link power of that link is simply discarded.

What does this mean for your website?

The change means that PageRank sculpting with the nofollow attribute does not work anymore and that it now makes sense to remove any nofollow links that go to your own website. You’re just wasting link power by using the attribute for links to your own pages.

Do not waste your time by trying to manipulate the links on your web pages. Better concentrate on a good user experience with good web page content and an easy to understand website navigation. Websites with a good user experience usually get more links from other websites.

Posted in Google Tidbits, Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »

PR Sculpting and Link Juice and No-Follow

Monday, June 15th, 2009

There are some changes expected to be coming to Google in terms of the “no-follow” attribute. These no-follow changes have some pretty significant implications for lots of things, first and foremost though it seems these changes are specifically geared to mitigate, to some degree, the effectiveness of PR sculpting.

Now, PR sculpting is a fairly advanced concept a lot of folks may not fully understand. So, I figured I would try to provide some explanation of at least the general ideas involved. That seems like the best way to go about explaining why Google is looking to make some sort of change in their treatment of no-follow. If you understand PageRank sculpting, you will get why Google might not like it so much.

Suggest people to thoroughly read up and make sure they understand PR sculpting before they start slapping no-follows all over their site. You really can screw your site up if you do it wrong.

So what the heck is PR Sculpting anyway? I’m so glad you asked. We’ll start with the concept of your Page Rank ‘power’ or ‘authority’. This is the overall ‘value’ of a given page in terms of how much ‘authority’ that page has to pass along via it’s outbound links. You have no doubt heard people talk about ‘link juice’, that’s what link juice is. The more important (in Google’s eyes) a page is, the more link juice it possesses.

Now think of your website as a bucket. Your bucket contains all of your link juice. Now think of your outbound links as tiny holes in your bucket. Your link juice flows through the holes and passes on your page’s authority.

Now, the PR sculpting theory holds that the more holes you have in your bucket, the more your link juice is spread around or diluted. This is at least in part supported by the search engine accepted and approved concept of Crawl Efficiency. Search engines aren’t going to spend forever crawling and indexing every link on every page, so the concept of crawl efficiency basically means you prioritize the important stuff for them.

How do you do this? Well you stick no-follow attributes on non-important links. PR sculpting theory takes this one step further and says that ALL outbound links count as a hole in your bucket, so you would then want to make more liberal use of no-follow to help direct the flow of the link juice. For example; if you had navigation links at the top of your page, in the side bar and again in your footer, PR sculpting would say you add no-follow attributes to all but one set of them. Less holes = more juice flowing through the holes that are left. Get the idea? Good.

There are rumors or suggestions that Google may be going to change how they look at no-follow in relation to how the link juice is passed along. So if you had, for example, 10 outbound links on a page and no-followed all but 2 of them, effective PR sculpting would funnel all of your juice through those 2 and not dilute it over all 10. Google, being… well, Google, doesn’t like to have situations where people can ‘control’ the value of links – especially for the purposes of ranking better in Google.

So much buzzing and grumbling ensued when it was suggested that Google might not look at no-follow in quite the same way moving forward. If you have 10 links and no-follow 8 of them in other words, they were still going to count you as having 10 holes in your bucket instead of sending more love to the 2 regular links you didn’t add no-follow to.

The implications for counting no-follow links ‘against’ you in terms of authority passing ability raises all sorts of difficulties.

For one, let’s say you have a popular article that gets 500 comments. Most everybody that leaves a comment also leaves a link. Generally these links are no-followed. If more links = some sort of diminished or diluted authority of a page, that would seem to suggest your fantastic article that got 500 comments was maybe not as good as an article that only got maybe 5 comments.

Second, the whole no-follow thing was Google’s idea to begin with. It’s very existence is arguably not much more than a Google helper to assist them in managing the whole link economy they created out of their heavy reliance on links as a ranking factor.

Google hates paid links because paid links have the potential to impact search results and if you can buy links you can essentially raise your result in Google. The problem is, paid links have been around longer than Google…. we used to just call them ads. So, Google decided if you slap a no-follow attribute on a link, it meant you were not trying to pass your page authority on to that link and therefore weren’t being paid to elevate said link in their index.

Now, it seems like Google is starting to see people using no-follow to emphasize links via the PR sculpting thing and they want to do something about it.

Posted in Google Tidbits, Search Engine Marketing | No Comments »