Internet Marketing Tips

Meta tags are coded elements/ page definitions used to provide the descriptive elements of a particular webpage inserted into the “head” area. Most importantly, Meta tags are vital assets to SEO. Some of the most important fundamentals of SEO, such as DESCRIPTION, TITLE and KEYWORD tags are considered Meta tags. Although there are other Meta tags, we are only going to concentrate on these three.

The TITLE is a viewable Meta tag to people who are visiting your website and is by far the most important. This tag is what will appear in a search engine’s results page as the clickable text that will direct searchers to your website. The TITLE tag should always contain your keyword and be the one aspect of not only Meta tags, but also SEO that you should put a lot of effort into creating. The TITLE tag is also the text that is used when someone bookmarks or adds your page to their favorites list. Some specialists suggest placing your company’s name in all of your TITLE tags within your site.

The Meta DESCRIPTION tag allows you to summarize the content on your page and inform the crawlers what your page is about. Some search engines ignore your description tag and allow their bots to devise their own summation. The most efficient and quickest way to add copy to your DESCRIPTION tag is to copy a few sentences from the content on that page

The KEYWORDS tag allows you to fine-tune the content into a few words that you feel are the most important about the copy listed on that page. Again, not all search engines will crawl this Meta tag, but it still can have the opportunity to improve your ranking. You should never repeat words more than three times in this Meta tag or search engine robots may penalize you for using duplicate content.

Meta tags can improve your ranking status, make your site SEO friendly and increase your organic click-through rate. However, be sure not to engage in heavy keyword stuffing, where you repeatedly place your keyword in all your Meta tags. Search engines have updated their systems to ignore this. So, be descriptive and use your keyword frequently, but do not abuse this privilege or it will cost you!

The URL or Uniform Resource Locater is a website’s domain name (http://www.boomyeah.com/). It is imperative to use keywords in your website’s URL in order to inform search engines what a page is about and to help a searcher obtain information about your website’s content.

The five main things to remember when choosing an URL are as follows:

1. Ensure that the URL of each page is consistent with the subject matter presented on that page
2. When you change a previous URL, you must update all your links accordingly by inserting a 301 redirect
3. Always be sure to include pertinent and precise keywords as a part of your URL
4. Be as concise as possible by limiting the number of folders deep, trailing slashes and the amount of characters
5. Make your URL memorable and catchy

What is a 301 redirect? A 301 redirect allows users to be automatically directed from one webpage to another. A webmaster implants one of these in order to send the current URLs to the optimized URLs when a page:

*Moves to a different URL

*Is united with another page

*Is deleted (redirect still locates a page that is present)

A 301 redirect can be implemented through your hosts’ control panel, your .htaccess file (be sure to upload in ascii mode) or through server-side scripting. It is imperative to test your server’s response headers every time you execute an alteration to your htaccess file. Detailed instructions for implementing a 301 redirect can be found at Speedwagon.

Robots.txt can save your site from being penalized for containing duplicate content by not allowing search engine bots to crawl specific files that may be repeated or unnecessary to search.

What exactly is robots.txt? Robots.txt is a file that essentially places limitations on search engine robots (“bots”) that crawl the Internet trying to find pages to index to their database. If you have content that you do not want the automated bots to index, you upload a robot.txt file to the root accessible directory of your site. This will not allow the bots to crawl files, directories or even your entire website.

You have to be very careful when implementing robots.txt though. If you make a mistake and include files that you want to be displayed on your website and crawled by search engine robots to improve your ranking inside of a robots.txt, you could completely make your site unsearchable or even not viewable.

To find out more about how robots.txt operates and to further understand the process to decide where to apply this file, visit The Web Robots Pages.

A sitemap.xml is a php based system that will allow for the insertion of a sitemap into your website. In a simpler form, a sitemap is a page that lists all the links or URL’s in your website. When a user is having difficulty viewing areas of your website through browse-able interface, a sitemap can prove to be a very user-friendly option. The implementation of a sitemap will allow the searcher to visualize a layout of the architecture of your website.

Primarily organized in a hierarchical manner, this tool will help visitors find pages within your site and aid in allowing search engine robots to crawl and index your pages. In addition, ensure that a link to your sitemap is listed on your homepage to assure that your website can be easily navigated. Sitemaps have the potential to alleviate user frustration, thus allowing an opportunity for visitors to spend more time on your site and improve the probability of them utilizing your service/product.

To find out more about sitemaps and how they can benefit you, visit Google’s Webmaster Help Center.

A webmaster is the individual who is in charge of creating, designing, developing, marketing and maintaining a website. This information architect will ensure that your company’s website is operating at its maximum potential. Setting up a webmaster account can help a company understand how their site is currently ranked in search engines, the rate the robots are indexing their pages, identifying any broken links and providing other insightful information about their website.

This person may also serve as your company’s gatekeeper, by trafficking what is posted on the Internet and what is not. This person’s main duties include insuring that your website is currently updated, grammatically correct and technically sound. The webmaster may also be the main go to person who will answer emails and manage the computer server.

A webmaster must be able to multitask, be teachable, have great editing skills and be technologically savvy. As you can tell, this individual can be a vital asset to the progression of your company. In today’s era, the Internet is proving to be the medium we go to the most. By not having updated, fluid and factual information on your website, you could lose numerous potential clients/consumers. Visit Web Reference to ensure your webmaster is up-to-date with the latest tips and information.

Submitting URL’s directly to search engines allow search engine bots to find your web pages faster, thus allowing your site to show up quicker on their search results. Otherwise, it may take awhile before major search engines find your website. Some search engines take months to release their spiders to find new pages. All this time, you could be missing out on massive amounts of traffic without even realizing it.

How often should you submit your website to search engines? You only need to submit your page once. Resubmitting your website will not allow your website to be crawled more frequently or improve your ranking. Google, being the number one search engine, should be your first priority. Ensure that your website is indexed and submit your URL today!

What is a broken link? A broken link is a result of an error in the URL or HTML coding. The product of a broken link is when you click on any clickable text in order to be directed to a different location and some form of error message pops up. This causes the user to overlook vital information you may be trying to convey.

Links are integral structures that allow an individual to navigate throughout your site efficiently and effectively. Without links functioning properly, your website is prone to create user frustration, thus steering them away from your site. A broken link could cost you loss of: information, graphic images or even a sales conversion.

Duplicate content refers to blocks of text that are heavily repeated throughout multiple pages in a website. If you wish for your site to appear at the top of the rankings in the elite search engines, you should be aware that search engines will often filter out sites that have duplicate content. They due this in order to ensure that there is only one version of the content to be found in their index, so that they can be sure that a site is not trying to fool a search engine to receive a higher ranking. Creating duplicate content on your site is like telling a search engine that you want competition with yourself. A search engine will penalize you for this, thus diminishing your traffic and hurting your ranking.

One good way of avoiding this is minimizing boilerplate repetition. Instead of having an extensive block of text of numerous pages, you should create a short summary and a link on each page that will refer back to the block of text. Another good way of avoiding duplicate content is to manage your content system effectively by ensuring that copy is not duplicated in different areas of your site, including blogs, homepages and achieved pages.

Also, make sure to keep your internal linking system consistent. Keep your URL concise and if you do wish to retain duplicate content, ensure that your links within that content refer back to the same URL. If you wish to move your site to another location or have two domains with the same content, be sure to use a 301 redirect. This allows search engines and web browsers to re-index your site and theoretically retain your ranking.

An illustrated guide on understanding the process of how a search engine scans duplicate content can be found at SEOmoz.

An organic listing takes the approach of optimizing your search results internally or through a company that provides Search Engine Optimization, where you do not have to directly pay a search engine. The natural search results produced from an organic listing are derived from search algorithms and are a direct result of SEO.

A paid listing is where you provide the funds to deliver your listing to a search engine. Paid listings are usually limited to banner advertising and PPC (Pay Per Click). These concise listings usually contain 2-5 word titles sub headed by two lines of text.

The major difference between these two types of listings are that organic listings, being that they are extracted from search engines, give the creator little control over what marketing message is being formulated. On the other hand, paid listings are the direct representation of exactly what the advertiser wanted to convey.

SEO and SEM experts are constantly debating the theory that a combination of these two listing types can create an immediate impact and lead to lasting results. The only concrete fact is that you will never know what works until you utilize these options.

Google Analytics is a free service where you can accurately uncover and monitor the details of visitors to your site, such as: pages viewed, downloaded pictures, sales activity and the tracking of specific conversions. By tracking this interaction of visitors, you can more accurately predict which of your company’s online marking schemes are proving of value to your establishment.

Adwords, Google’s flagship advertising product, offers customers a space to place advertisements on Google. These advertisements are usually concise and can be both text and banner ads. From utilizing Google Analytics, your company can further track the geography of the searcher who viewed your advertisement and how long they stayed they stayed at your site. This will help you target your most ideal markets and purchase superlative keywords.

With additions to Google Analytics, you can take your tracking process one step further. You can also see what searchers are typing in your internal search box and their navigation trail from that search forward. One great time saving aspect of this service is that Adwords can convert the information you have stored on the site to CSV file that can be opened as an Excel document. You can also set up a filter that will not track traffic from your company network or employee interaction on your site.

Google Analytics and Adwords will allow your company to reveal statistics, share them and act accordingly to ensure that you are delegating your advertising budget to the appropriate source. Nowadays, a free service such as Google Analytics is rare to stumble upon. Take advantage of this service to implement cost effective strategies, reveal which marketing tools are being effective and drastically improve your ROI.