Archive for March, 2011

Choosing Your Domain Name

You wouldn’t name your child a series of random letters, hyphens, backslashes, and numbers.  You wouldn’t name your store something like: joeshouseofribsisthebest-inthewholeworld12.com.  So why choose a domain name that is obscure, too lengthy, or entirely unrelated to your industry or business?  Domain names are essential to good SEO, and they just make sense.  How do you choose a domain name that suits your business and helps your optimization efforts?

 

Make it easy. Easy to remember, easy to type, easy to say – your domain name should be convenient for the user.  If someone is going to bother typing in a URL or even entering your domain name into a search engine, it has to be straightforward and short.  In the example above, Joe may want to see if HouseofRibs.com is taken, JoesRibs.com, or something similarly to the point.  You wouldn’t try to be clever or witty when giving out your address or phone number to a client, right?  You’d give them the relevant, accurate information.  While you do have some creative room in your domain name, the point is information and accessibility.

 

Make it informational. Unless you are Amazon or eBay, you want a domain name the instantly provides the searcher with the information he needs.  ConsumerReports, MayoClinic, AutoTrader – these sites all provide the necessary information.  We don’t have to guess, and we know instantly whether or not the site is relevant to our query.  Amazon can get away with a name that doesn’t tell the searcher anything about its business because it has exceptional brand power.  For most sites, a more direct domain name is essential.

 

Go with .com. Most people assume, unless explicitly told otherwise, that a site ends in .com.  JoesRibs?  They’ll add the .com themselves.  So if Joe chooses .net or .biz, for instance, he may find himself missing out on traffic.  Joe should buy the .com address and redirect traffic to a .net with a 301 if he wants to then.

 

Choose relevant keywords. Brainstorm several keywords that are relevant to your business.  Experiment with them and their different variations to find a combination that works well for your business.  Remember to ask yourself: is it short?  Is it easy to remember?  Is it easy to say? Is it easy to type?  Will people know who I am with this name?  Use a service like Domjax or AJAXwhois to see if anyone owns the domain name you settle on, and you can also run it through copyright.gov to see if it is already copyrighted by another entity.

 

Your domain name is crucial.  Spend some time working on it and testing it out with colleagues to see if it meets your needs.

 

Posted by admin on March 8th, 2011 | Email | Print |

SEO for the Social Media Marketer

Search engine optimization and social media marketing are really not two unrelated disciplines; they can both be crucial in any effort to increase visibility and traffic.  SEO and SMO are only going to become more enmeshed as networking sites like Facebook and Twitter rise in popularity and become ubiquitous business tools.  There are some simple SEO techniques that can be used by a social media manager or marketer to boost results.  With a little help from SEO, social media can be a tremendously effective tool.

 

Keyword Research. Keywords are a basic part of any SEO campaign, and it should be the same with SMO.  If you are doing media work without the help of an SEO, Google’s Adwords Keyword Tool is helpful.  Look up possible search terms related to your business or website, but don’t necessarily go with the most popular terms.  You can use Adword’s Keyword Difficulty Tool to get a better sense of which keywords to target.  Make sure to optimize your title (which is one of the most crucial on-page ranking factors).

 

Meta Descriptions. This won’t help with rankings per se, but it does help readers see what the content is about before they decide to click through.  The description, along with title, will help users determine if the information contained in a link (say on Facebook) is going to be useful.

 

Build direct links. When you make content easy to link to, it can help boost social media results.  You can’t help but have run into sharing buttons for Twitter and Facebook, among other sites.  This allows users to simply “like” or share the content from the site.

 

Canonical pages. This is a method through which you can track social shares to gauge the efficacy of an SMO campaign. The direct URL you are using on a site may not be the tracking URL you want so Google Analytics can help you track your shares.  You can specify the canonical page, or the one that Google indexes, by adding a <link> element with rel=”canonical” href=”.  So if your original URL is:

 

http://www.example.com/product

 
Your canonical URL will look like: <link rel=”canonical” href=http://www.example.com/product/>

 
301 redirects also do this, but it can be easier to use this method. Tracking social sharing is essential.

 
SEO and SMO are two aspects of the same industry, and they share the goal of improving visibility. Taking the time to apply a few basic SEO tricks can help boost your results.

Posted by admin on March 8th, 2011 | Email | Print |

SEO No-No’s

Like any process, search engine optimization has become more refined in its approach and targeted in its scope.  As SEO has become a more integral component of web and content design, campaigns are now more comprehensive and effective.  The techniques and tactics that yield results change over time, and those that were used even a year or two ago may not be outdated, considered grey or black hat, or simply a waste of time, money, and effort.  When planning to optimize a site, it is as important to identify which tactics you should avoid as it is to know which to use.  The following strategies won’t help your SEO goals, and they may even cost you a top spot in the SERPs.

 

Link abuse. Links can be crucial to a good ranking, but don’t try any and everything to get links to your site.  This includes using link farms, artificial link exchanges, and link wheels.  These are not necessarily black hat techniques, and they are not always ineffective.  They key to links is content.  Link wheels may do little good because some are designed to trick Google into thinking your site has several backlinks – the problem is that there is no content of value for any traffic, which ultimately defeats the entire purpose.  Some other link abuse to avoid:

• Reciprocal linking.
• Three-way linking.
• Spam commenting on blogs and forums (again, real, relevant comments are helpful. Commenting to comment is not).
• Launching sub-domains so you can link to your own site.
• Submit your sites to thousands of directories.

Hidden content. Hiding content – such as using white text on a white background – will help you hide keywords and links from the site’s users but not from Google. The hope of this type of tactic is that the site will rank higher, but at most, any boost will be temporary.  You could also find yourself penalized by Google’s web spam team.  Besides the hidden white text (or black, or blue, etc) on the same colored background, here are other hiding spots to avoid:

• Putting your links and keywords in very small text
• Using hyphens, periods, commas, question marks, and other small characters to link from.
• Hiding text over an image or with CSS.

Keyword stuffing. As with links and good content, keywords can be crucial to good SEO campaigns.  And as with links and content, keywords can be used improperly.  Blatant keyword stuffing can get your site penalized, but other, more subtle tricks should also go on the avoid list:

• Listing your keywords in your title tag.
• Putting keyword rich text below the footer.
• Using meta keywords tags.
• Tracking keyword density.

Just because an SEO tactic isn’t strictly black hat doesn’t mean it will benefit your campaign or SERP rankings.  Stick to proven techniques, focusing on real, relevant content will keep you out of Google’s crosshairs and help you gain visibility.

 

 

Posted by admin on March 8th, 2011 | Email | Print |