With so much disinformation available online about SEO (Search Engine Optimization), I thought it would be helpful to shed some light on common SEO mistakes that I see web design companies make.  These aren’t in any particular order…

Navigation.
Your web site navigation is the key to Google and other search engines crawling your web site and indexing each and every page of valuable content.  If your web site’s navigation is all in flash or graphics, the spiders / crawlers have nothing to crawl.  If you must use flash or graphics, you can always utilize text links to each relevant landing page of your site in your web site footer.

Quick tip: Add an XML sitemap to your web site and submit it to Google. This is a clean formatted sitemap that Google prefers to read.

Title Tags.
My biggest pet peeve, web designers who leave the home page called ‘home’ or worse, ‘untitled’.  The title tag is what shows up in search engines like Google when you search for a company.  This is within your web site code and will show up at the top of your browser as you are browsing a web site. Take the 3 minutes and write a unique title tag for each page of your web site.

Quick Tip: Make certain that the title tag actually emulates the content on that particular page. Also, as hard as it maybe to swallow, unless you are a huge brand like Coca-Cola, put your company at the END of the title tag and focus on relevant keywords at the front of the title tag.

No Copy.
Perhaps the mother of all cardinal sins.  It would be better had your web site never been born….. Web designers who design web sites with copy as a graphic should get their license to breed revoked. I have seen complete web sites with brilliant copy composed by a copy writer as one gigantic graphic.  Search engines cannot read graphics, translation, the content is pointless to the search engines and you won’t be ranking on any search term other than MAYBE your domain name.

Quick Tip: If your web designer insists that building the web site in all graphics is the best practice, it’s time to fire Skippy and move on to a web design firm that has your best interests in mind.

Spam Copy.
This is a key point: your copy needs to be written for PEOPLE.  I can’t stand seeing content composed solely for search engines. The whole point of SEO is to get your web site found so that people will actually read it.

Quick Tip: When you are composing copy for your web site take a few minutes and jot down some keywords that are relevant to the article. After you’ve composed your copy, re-read it and see if there are any opportunities to sprinkle those keywords within your copy.

Pointless Linking.
Hiring Bob from New Diehli to submit your web site to 23,000 Page rank 2 websites and directories ALL AT ONCE is sure to catch Google’s attention and possibly get you penalized in the search engines.  Stick with submitting and / or link exchanging with quality and relevant web sites.  If your web site is linked in some ‘sketchy’ web neighborhoods, it’s guilt by association.

Quick Tip: Bob from New Deihli doesn’t care about your web site and your company’s reputation.  Work with people / companies who are passionate about helping your company and it’s web site grow online.

Paid Links.
Google is on the lookout for paid links, if you are paying a link farm or link directory to get your URL listed on their ‘comprehensive’ directory listing, you may be hurting yourself more than helping.  Google wants to deliver FAIR and relevant results, therefore, if it suspects that your web site is paying to play, it could also penalize your web site in the listings.

NO Description tag or poorly written meta description:
The meta description tag is what you see when you do a Google search about a particular URL, so be sure that your meta description is written to compel both PEOPLE and the search engines.  Write copy that is actual copy and not just a collection of spam keywords that you’ve thrown together.

Quick Tip: Like the title tag, the description should be unique to each page and relevant to what that page is actually about.

SLOW Load time.
The great Googlebot is a very busy robot.  It does not have the luxury of infinite time to wait for your home page to load.  If your web page is constantly timing out and not loading because you have a video of silly Uncle Ned juggling firecrackers on your home page, Googlebot isn’t interested and will move on to the next web site.

Quick Tip: If you must have a video on your home page, setting it to auto-play will annoy most web site visitors. Let people watch what they want and control their own visit,  it’s about them, not your video.

Next blog: social media mistakes and how to avoid them.

By the way: it may seem far away but Christmas will be here before you know it. It’s  Time to get your web site and your Internet Marketing plan in full swing for the season. How will your web site stand out and sell in a tough economic climate? Give me a call to discuss your plan: 407-830-4550.

Aside of being an amazing search engine, Google continues to crank out amazing applications / and / or tools for webmasters.  Google webmaster tools can give you some amazing insight into how Google views and treats your web site and it’s content.

To get started with Google Webmaster Tools, you’ll need to create an account with Google, then choose webmaster tools.  You can then add a web site domain which Google will ask you to verify ownership of.  There are two options to verify the site, you can either add a meta tag to the home page of your site, or upload a file that Google will ask you to create. Once installed and verified, Google will start gathering some data which you now have access to.  You can learn about any Googlebot crawl issues, any 404′s or broken pages and much more.

Every now and again, it helps us re familiarize ourselves with Google’s Quality Guidelines: by reading these guidelines, one can learn a great deal about how Google looks at content, and subsequently, how they could ultimately rank that content or particular web site:

Please find an excerpt from Google’s Quality Guideliness Section:
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769

Quality guidelines – specific guidelines

Avoid hidden text or hidden links.

Don’t use cloaking or sneaky redirects.

Don’t send automated queries to Google.

Don’t load pages with irrelevant keywords.

Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.

Don’t create pages with malicious behavior, such as phishing or installing viruses, trojans, or other badware.

Avoid “doorway” pages created just for search engines, or other “cookie cutter” approaches such as affiliate programs with little or no original content.

If your site participates in an affiliate program, make sure that your site adds value. Provide unique and relevant content that gives users a reason to visit your site first.

If you determine that your site doesn’t meet these guidelines, you can modify your site so that it does and then submit your site for reconsideration.

This is cool and would be wonderful if it worked:

According To Google:
“Project 10^100 is a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible”

Read more here and sign up.

We installed google analytics on a client web site like we had done a million or so times before and decided to quantify or add a goal conversion to his contact form.  We created our typical PHP Captcha based web form and logged into the analytics account to set the goal conversion.  In this particular case, the ‘trigger’ page was thankyou.php.  Thankyou.php is the page that is viewed after a prospect fills out the contact form.  Easy enough right?

Wrong.  We waited 24 hours and logged back in the analytics account to make certain that everything was in order and that Google was receiving data from the site.  We know that we had filled out the client test form several times to test it and make certain it was functioning properly, but did not see any goal conversions fulfilled in our analytics account.  Everything looked right, the analytics code was correct, the path to the thank you page was correct, so why wasn’t it triggering a conversion?

Days went by the answer popped into my head.  For some reason, this problem plagued my brain because I was waking up at 4:00 a.m. to solve the problem: I could see the form code in my head and then it hit me: We were using an ‘include’ file to call the thankyou.php after the form was completed.  The thankyou.php page was technically never hit in a web browser, it was included in the form page itself upon a successful completion of the form. Given this structure, there is no way to ‘trigger’ the analytics script and subsequently, trigger the conversion within analytics.

Here was the ‘Macgyver’ solution: we created a simple php redirect file which pointed to the thankyou.php form upon successful completion of the form, thus allowing for a ‘trigger’ for the goal conversion.

All is right with the world now. I hope this experience helps alleviate someone’s stress down the road!

Searching for products and services on the Internet doesn’t have to be an exercise in obscurity. The bottom line is this. Search engines have to balance how much information they stuff into their databases with the speed at which they deliver those results to you. Obviously the greater the amount of information they have to sift through to get you your answer, the longer it will take. Quick and accurate responses are of great importance to search engines as their goal is to quickly respond to your request in an almost psychic way.
 
One method that is used by them is to ignore common words like, “where, how, is, and & in”. One way to get the search engine to include a word that you think is essential in your search phrase is by adding a plus sign next to that word or by enclosing the entire phrase in quotes. Google uses a good example for a search on Star Wars Episode I. If you absolutely wanted the search engine to include the last character in the search phrase you would simply type “Star Wars Episode I” or Star Wars Episode +I. In the first case the phrase was enclosed in quotes and in the latter case the plus sign was placed next to the I. One item to note here is that search engines see everything in lower case so there is no need to use capitalization. It’s a wasted keystroke.
 
Something else you might find interesting is known as “Stemming” or word variations. Google defines this as the ability to search, not only for YOUR search phrase, but also for words that are similar to some or all of the words in your phrase. In another of Google’s search examples, they use the phrase – pet lemur dietary needs. Google will not only find relevant content on that particular phrase, it will also yield results such as – pet lemur diet needs.
 
Of course there are times when you are using a word or phrase that can be found in many unrelated situations such as the word “bass”. In yet another of Google’s examples, bass could be related to fish as well as music (as in bass guitar). One way to deal with that situation is to use what is referred to as negative terms. Simply put, you would enter the search phrase and place a minus sign ‘-‘ next to the word or words you want to avoid as in, bass –music -guitar. The negative sign next to the words “music” and “guitar” will stop the search engine from delivering results related to bass music and bass guitar.
 
In a nutshell, eliminate those pesky common words from your search terms and get more targeted results by using quotes(“), plus signs (+) and minus signs (-) where necessary. Also, don’t waste time with capitalization as “Orlando SEO Experts” and “orlando seo experts” yield the same exact results. Searching the Internet for products and services can be a challenge sometimes so why not help the search engine help you.
 
Naturally at On Target Web Solutions, we keep these items in mind when performing our Search Engine Optimization magic for our clients. If you need help being found on the Internet, why not give us a call at 407.830.8550 now or click to your Search Engine Optimization Experts website? We will be happy to discuss your situation and potential needs with a free consultation. Happy searching!

Google announced today yet another tool in it’s webmaster tools arsenal: Google Friend Connect.  This project is still in the development phase, but it promises to help small web site operators have the tools to wander into the wonderful world of social Internet marketing.

Google’s goal is to give small web site operators widgets or tools to aid them in opening their web sites to friends, family, communities, etc.  Not much knowledge of code is required and the Google Friend Connect engine will output the code that will be customized by the web site operator and then pasted into the code of their respective web site.

Friend Connect is in a testing phase, but I’m excited to see what the end result will be: Social Internet Marketing is truly an excellent tool if utilized properly to help spread the word about your web site.

To learn more about social Internet marketing or to explore other Internet marketing opportunities: give us a call at 407-830-4550. You may also visit our web site to learn more about our services.

In April, Google announced a new tool that will specify your landing page’s load time: this is the time Google has calculated that it takes to load that particular page of your web site.  Google also announced that this new load time measure will be applied to it’s Google adwords quality score.  What does this mean to you? If you are utilizing Google AdWords as a part of your Internet marketing strategy, you need to be mindful of your web site’s load time.  If you web site (or landing page) is taking too long to load (i.e., heavy graphics, slow server speed, third party utilities, etc.) you may wish to isolate the problem and take appropriate action to improve the load speed so that your quality score does not ultimately suffer.

Read more about Google’s new enhancement here >>

Was digging around my google webmaster tools account and stumbled upon what looks like a new feature: Google Geo-Targeting.  Geo Targeting is simply put: targeting your website to a specific geographic location.  For example: you own a furniture store in Canada and your website is ends in a .ca extension: People searching from within Bolivia (for example) would not necessarily find your furniture store relevant to them as they want to be able to stop by the store, or order more locally.  If you did own a .com domain and did serve the entire world selling products or services, you should be able to specify that to Google as well, thus not limiting searchers utilizing google.ca, etc.

Here’s how you can set it up:

Step 1. Go to Google.com and setup a  Google Account.

Step 2. Go to Webmaster Tools

Step 3: Under dashboard add your site

Step 4: Google will ask you to verify your site: they will give you a verification code that you will need to upload to the root of your web site.

Step 5: Go back to your google account and hit verify: it may take a few tries, but if you have uploaded the code correctly, it will find the verification file.

Step 6: Click your site under manage

Step 7:  Click tools on the bottom left of the screen

Step 8: Click Set Geographic Target

Step 9: Click Associate a geographic location with this site

Step 10: Choose your geographic target.

That’s it! You’re all set.

We have a new organic seo client that asked us to take a look at his Google AdWords campaign, our client truly gets ‘it’ and is eager to see a return on his adword conversion: We dove right in and discovered that he had in the past 8 months, spent $17,430 in Google adwords: his conversions? 6.  He sold 6 items and spent 17,430 to get those six sales. If he was selling million dollar mansions or Ferraris, I might not get so excited. BUT, this is not the case.  We found he was bidding on terms that were not as relevant to his web site as they could have been (obviously) and ultimately he was bleeding money.

Google Adwords can be a great enhancement to your online marketing campaign, however, you need to choose your words wisely, write campaigns that GET attention and make certain that you are reaching your target audience.  While it sounds like a no-brainer, understanding AdWords and maintaining it is an art form within itself. Here are a few pointers:

1.) Research, research, research.  Know what your competition is doing and do it better.

2.) Choose your words wisely: make certain that your keywords AND key-phrases are relevant to your target audience.

3.) Set Goals: Google analytics has a wonderful tool to measure site conversions, make certain that this is setup properly.

4.) Be Diligent. Check in on your campaign daily, in fact, opt in to have Google send you an email each morning outlining your progress. Cool reports, and easy to read.

5.) Track those conversions and monitor your Google analytics.

6.) Experiment: by knowing your demographic well, you can construct multiple ads that you can test, setup a few and have AdWords display the most effective ones (there is a setting for this as well.)

7.) Add new keywords: as you add new products, add new keywords, ads, etc.

8.) Delete the keywords that are not converting: you will be able to monitor click through ratios in the AdWords control panel, if they aren’t gettin’ clicked, dump em.

9.) Running a special? Think it through, adjust your ads to display discounts, incentives, etc. for that time period.

10.) Test Market: new product? Kick the tires before you spend a ton of marketing dollars promoting it, get a feel from your AdWords campaign on how well received your new product will be.

For those of you who use Google’s free tracking software : Google Analytics, you may wish to poke around in their a bit.

Google has a free goal tracking built right into the analytics software: let’s say that you want to know where your leads are coming from and further, what pages they traversed to get to your end goal: whether it’s a sale, contact form, or lead inquiry, you can set your Google Analytics to track conversions:

Here’s how to set it up:
Log Into Your Google Account:
Click My Account
Click Analytics
Choose your account, if you have multiple sites being tracked
Click Edit
You will then see a listing of empty goals
Enter your goal information : i.e., let’s say that when people fill out your online form, they get sent to a thanks.html page, you would enter that information in here.

It does take about 24 hours to start generating information, I recommend sending a test web conversion through to make certain that it is tracking.