Knowledge is power…

Like most people when I go to buy a product or service I generally carry out some research into it first, so I know what I’m looking at…

I guess the same can be said for people looking for a SEO Consultant, however as SEO2.0 recently pointed out in his blog article (Check out his blog for the full article) there are certain myths surrounding SEO, and he’s created a great Top 10 SEO Myths, which everyone thinking of engaging a SEO consultant should read…

Top 10 SEO Myths V2

1. “Your top ten search engine ranking can be guaranteed.”
Some SEO firms will advertise a “guarantee” to have you listed in the top ten rankings. No one other than the search engines themselves can guarantee any ranking…

2. “My in-house webmaster/web designer/programmer can do the SEO cheaper.”
Most SEO professionals can get higher rankings faster because search engine optimization and Marketing is complex, technical and has a steep learning curve…

3. “Search engine traffic is worthless or not as good as other kinds of targeted traffic”
Search engine traffic is probably the most qualified traffic, because it comes from people searching for the exact products and services which the search engines have you indexed…

4. “Websites are optimized for search engines out of the box”
A minority of designers and developers actually optimize pages for the search engines while they are building them. Most search engine optimization is done afterwards, if at all. You can lower the cost of SEO substantially if you include SEO from the start, even before the design part.

5. “Simply inserting keywords in the keyword meta tag will help list your site for that keyword”
Most major search engines do not use the meta keywords tag as a ranking factor and those that do, if the keyword is not also in the copy of the same page, it’s considered a factor which could lower your rankings, not raise it…

6. “The more times you repeat the keyword in the page, the higher it will rank”
So called “keyword density” does not matter as a major ranking factor outside the requirement that the actual keyword is present on the page in the way of natural language…

7. “Hidden links or text in a page can get your page ranked higher”
Keyword stuffing and hidden links in the page can get your site penalized or banned if detected…

8. “You don’t need to update your site to keep your rankings”
By routine maintenance (removing outdated material, fixing broken links, queries, etc.) and updating your pages regularly, you are signaling the bots and crawlers to come back and re-crawl your site for changes to their listings…

9. “You can achieve higher rankings on a keyword without changing the code or content of the pages in your site”
After Google introduced the Google bombing filter getting a higher ranking solely based on links pointing to your site does not work anymore as already mentioned at 6). If you want to steadily improve your rankings, you must make changes to your site that help the search engines spider it…

10. “Google PageRank is the single most important ranking factor for your site in Google”
While PageRank was never the only factor in ranking sites, it was in the early days of Google the most important one…

Filed under: Articles | No Comments »

So to the basics we go and where best to start than the <Title Tag>

What is the Title Tag?

The title tag does more than just give each page a unique title. It is one of the most important things that search engines use in the ranking of a page in search results. The title tag is what appears as the clickable link with in the search engine results.

It’s important that each page has a unique title tab, but they should also contain your website name / business name / brand. So if your business is Brian’s Bike Store located in Birmingham, you want to make sure that the page title includes Brian’s Bike Store, Birmingham at the end of each page title. This will ensure that every page is branded in the search results.

Also include a keyword in your title tag. For example Cycle Servicing - Brian’s Bike Store, Birmingham or Cycle Sales - Brian’s Bike Store, Birmingham.

Filed under: Articles | No Comments »

Welcome to the articles section of the site. Here you will find various article and comments on Website Usability, SEO and perhaps even the odd article about Getting Things Done (GTD) methology which I follow.

The articles section will also consist comments on blog articles from other people, as I see relevant, this is to give you, the reader a better understanding of these areas.

There is a lot of information written about usability and seo, so I’m going to start at the beginning and go through some of the basics, in hopefully a concise and easy to understand way.

Please feel free to leave any comments on articles and to email me if there is a particular area you’d like me to cover in an article.

I just hope you enjoy reading…

Filed under: Articles | No Comments »