Meta Tags (Yes they are still used)
As a quick reminder I just want to go over meta tags. As a veteran with web sites I remember the early days of web design and search engines. Meta tags were the most important SEO tip out there. 'Hey I want to be #1 for Maryland injury lawyers', 'Ok just put in Maryland injury lawyer in your meta tags about a million times, oh yeah and be sure to put in paragraph after paragraph repeating those words over and over.'
Thank god those days are over. However meta tags aren't totally dead. Google's Webmaster tools gives you a lot of great resources and troubleshooting tips for your web site. One of them centers around your meta tags. Each page should have unique keyword and description meta tags. Don't worry if your pages are not all unique its ok - however the best practice is that each page does in fact have unique meta tags. Before you right click on this page I can save you the time - all mine are not unique.
It's still good pratice so if you have a big important site you are working on, it may not be a bad idea and check.
Keywords
There's a bit of debate on the best format for meta keywords. I personally feel they should be a small number and contain one word followed by a comma. For example
<meta name="keywords" content="maryland,lawyer,personal,injury">
This says first things first we are in Maryland. My law clients typically only practice law in one state. So the most important thing we want is location. Secondly we want Google (and the other search engines) to know that my client is a lawyer. From there we go into other details such as 'personal injury'. I would say a good number would be between 7 and 10 keywords. Please for the love of god do not spam it - it won't work. I also recommend not using whole phrases such as
<meta name="keywords" content="maryland injury lawyer, maryland injury attorney">
No! One word, followed by a comma then another word. Simple tip but it helps.
Using dynamic content to help SEO
I wanted to talk a little about using dynamic content. Dynamic content can mean pretty much anything as long as the content isn't just static text. The idea is with a single change in a database you can update several files very quickly. One thing that is kind/sorta important to mention is that JavaScript doesn't count. JavaScript that is generated on the fly is not indexed by Google. Note: I could be wrong about this but my point is I would not rely on JavaScript alone to dynamically change text. What I'm referring to is using a database along with some server side language such as PHP, Coldfusion or ASP.
Are you making it count?
When it comes to SEO there are a lot of mixed opinions out there. I certainly don't believe I know everything or that may methods are 100% correct. I believe that know one really knows what is the ultimate best practice out there. Not until Google releases their source code for the search engine algorithm, and I don't see that happening any time soon. What I did want to go over is a few techniques that I use commonly. Hopefully they will help you with your websites.
Mapping Points Using Google's Map API - Part 2
Hey everyone! Sorry for the delay in posting this. It’s been a busy time lately. I’m spending half my time in
Mapping Points Using Google's Map API - Part 1
In this tutorial I wanted to go over how to take raw data from just about any source and then plot the points on a Google map. This process can be done in any number of ways, I know myself I have done a little differently each time - mainly due to constraints or a customers request. In this particular request I had very limited time. I was asked to take data from their client management system and then place it on a Google map. Let's see how we should start such a process.
Mashups, APIs, Pipes & Popfly Oh My!
I wanted to talk about some new trends that have been rising in popularity now. Then we'll go over how to use each of these resources to help your web site. Using these new techologies you can really add some amazing things to your sites. Its not always easy to see how these techologies can be used to increase visits - that's what we'll be going over. So lets get started.
Google Ranking Tool - Source Code
If you are a SEO professional one of the many parts of your job is actually measuring your success. Ok so your client is ranked on the first page of 'Maryland Personal Injury Lawyer' now, but what were they ranked when you started? What I do whenever I begin working with a new client is to take all their keyword phrases and see what their current position is. Then on a weekly basis I will run that report again and see our progress. How do we do this? Well we don't manually search Google fo reach keyword instead we use a great little program to do the work for us. Lets take a look
Listing number of conversions per traffic source
If you are a SEO professional or even if you are just doing SEO for your own web site, you need to track conversions. Conversions are the core of why we optimize sites. Conversions is a successful transaction through your site. Our firm focuses on helping attorneys reach more clients, so a successful conversion is when a client contacts our lawyers via a contact form. If your site is selling sprockets then a successful conversion is when a sale is made. This tutorial assumes you already are tracking conversions. What we want to do is know the exact number of conversions per traffic source. Google will tell you the percentage but not the number. I find this annoying and sometimes my clients want to know the numbers. Its a really easy method and I'll show you how I do it.
Using Sitemaps Effectively
I wanted to talk about an important issue with web sits and SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Web site development along with technology itself is extremely fast changing. As a web developer it is extremely important to stay on top of upcoming changes as fast as possible. What was the 'cool thing' last year is now outdated and useless, that's just the way it is. My point? Stay up to date. Let's take a look at using sitemaps effectively.
Welcome!
Welcome to the new blog of the Search Engine Optimization Experts.
