Have you ever wondered, “How do I promote my fan page on Facebook?” This article reveals 5 Killer ways to use the power of Facebook to grow your fan base.
Why Do You Need a Facebook Fan Page? You may ask, “Why do I even need a Facebook fan page?” Here’s why: Right now Facebook has an Alexa ranking of 2. They are the 2nd most trafficked website next only to Google!
This means your Facebook page will get indexed faster on Google and other search engines, so if you don’t have a fan page, be sure to create one and promote it.
Here are 5 Killer ways to grow your Facebook fans:
#1: Invite People From Your Facebook Friends List
Do you have your personal friends and professional colleagues segmented into lists on your Facebook home page?
I have a number of lists in my personal Facebook account.
You can invite these lists as groups to your Facebook fan page rather of sending individual invites. This is the easiest and fastest way to jump-start your fan base.
When you click “Suggest to Friends” on your fan page, start typing in the name of your friends list in the filtered friends section; for example, “Social Media Experts.” This will automatically send an invitation to your facebook fan page to all of your colleagues listed in that category.
It’s possible that it may take a while before you start seeing those known faces pop up in your fan page because people are busy. There have been a few occasions where I’ve softly nudged them with an individual invite, but I keep that to a minimum.
As you add more people to your network, remember to go back to your same lists and send the invite to the new people you have added. The names of those who have already been invited will be “grayed out” and the invite will only be sent to your new contacts.
#2: Find People With Facebook Search
The updated Facebook Search feature (see the Search bar at the top of Facebook) gives you a view into conversations of your friends and status updates that may even show you who may be looking for the services you offer.
There is even an option to search “Posts by Everyone,” which gives you a glimpse into conversations of people who may not even be connected to you. After entering a search term, there will be a display, “Posts By Everyone.” This allows you to view conversations from others who aren’t in your friend lists.
Here is a screenshot when I entered “buying a home” in the Search field:
As you can see, there is a person saying “I think we are buying a house tomorrow.” If this person is already in your contacts list, the following is a very easy conversation starter: “Hi ______, I saw your Facebook comment about your plans to buy a house tomorrow. Do you need any help with school information in that particular area?”
There is another person stating that they plan to stay in their house for a long time. This can be a potential candidate for a loan refinance. Again, if this person is already a friend on Facebook, it would be very easy to start a conversation without sounding like an annoying salesperson.
#3: Attract People With Facebook Social Ads
Social Ads provide advertisements alongside your Facebook sidebar which show related actions your friends have taken on the site. These actions may be things like “Leah is now a fan of The Offspring. Would you like to become a fan too?” It is possible to tailor ads to your friends and their interests, which makes it more appealing for them to take action because you are interested as well.
This strategy requires a small budget, but can be very effective in finding your target market. It is very important to do a Facebook search with specific keywords in your particular niche to find out if it’s being talked about on Facebook (see #2 above).
If you click on “Promote With an Ad” on your fan page, you can start a campaign. You can set a daily spending limit of $10, $25, or other appropriate amount. Because I market mostly to businesses with my keywords (such as real estate broker, loan officer, real estate investor, and so forth) which are in numerous profiles as job descriptions I have been able to use Facebook Social Ads effectively for my fan page.
It’s possible to run your Facebook ads for only 4 to 5 days with a $25 per day budget. Then stop the ad for a few weeks if you like and run the same ad again. This allows your fan page to grow in spurts and I have found it to be very effective in growing my fan base without spending a lot of money at once.
#4: Facebook Fan Page Twitter App
The Facebook Fan Page Twitter application is a great tool that brings your Twitter following back to your fan page. When you post a status update, a link or a photo (you can choose) on your Facebook fan page, there will be an update to Twitter with a shortened bit.ly link back to your fan page. This is just pure genius to drive traffic from another source right to your page.
There are other Facebook and Twitter integration applications; however, this is the one that leads people directly back to your page. This gives them an option to become a fan of your page right at that moment if they click on the bit.ly link from Twitter.
#5: Facebook Fan Box Widget
The Facebook Fan Box Widget is a great feature to add to your blog or website. This widget allows you to show your fan base and allows others to become fans instantly. This is just one way to promote your page across several social media sites. It is important to cross-reference all of your social media sites so others can find you and your websites on other networks.
So what do you have to add to this list? Are you finding other effective ways to promote your Facebook fan page? I would love to hear from you and your successes in promoting your pages in the comments below.
If you have any question in this regard, don’t hesitate to ask. You can contact me through our Contact form or just send me an email at Wahid@wahidqazi.com.
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Whether you run a small business from your home or work for a large corporation, you can use YouTube to boost your company. As you probably know, YouTube is a No.1 video sharing community where anyone including you and your business can upload videos for others to view. The trick is to determine the right kind of video to upload, and then finding a way to profit from YouTube viewership.
Using YouTube as a Video Host
Do you already have videos in your business? If your answer is yes, you can easily upload those videos to YouTube, for anyone to view. (Whether anyone wants to view your videos is another story, however, which we’re going to cover shortly.) Aside from making your videos public, there’s one more good reason to upload your videos to YouTube; when YouTube hosts your video, you don’t have to.
That’s right; YouTube is, at its most basic, a giant video hosting website. Instead of taking up valuable storage space on your own web server, you can allow YouTube host your video instead. You will display the video on your own website, of course, but you do it by embedding code for the video in your site’s underlying HTML. The code points to the video on the YouTube site; YouTube then serves the video from its website to appear on your webpage.
Not only you save on storage costs, you also don’t have to pay for all the bandwidth used when visitors watch your videos and YouTube offers unlimited bandwidth. Yes, you still have a slight bandwidth usage when someone views the text of your webpage, but the bandwidth used to deliver the video comes straight from YouTube.
If you run a small business with limits on storage and bandwidth, letting YouTube host your videos can be a real cost saver. And if your video happens to become popular or even viral, you don’t risk having your servers overload and shutdown; YouTube’s servers will handle the load as I said earlier YouTube offers unlimited bandwidth.
Creating an Online Video Presence
What types of videos can your business make for YouTube? It depends on the type of your business and on the way you want to use the Web.
First, look at any existing videos you might have made for use in your business. Perhaps you’ve taped a company meeting, seminar or webinar, or you have a PowerPoint presentation that’s been converted to video. Or maybe you’re a realtor who has recorded video house tours or a motivational speaker who has a speech or two recorded on tape. Any of those videos could make a good beginning point for moving your business to YouTube.
Take the example of realtor. Today, most realtors take digital photographs of the houses they list, and then potential buyers view those photos on their website. But there’s nothing stopping you from using a camcorder to produce a video tour of the house, editing that tour into a short video, and then publishing that video on YouTube. You can then embed the YouTube video on your own website, so that potential buyers can view the video. It’s a great improvement to a realtor’s selling services, and it doesn’t cost you a cent (beyond the cost of shooting the video, of course).
Here’s one more example for you. If your business is a leader in its category, or if you yourself are an industry specialist, you can establish and exploit that expertise via a series of YouTube videos. All it takes is a video camera or webcam pointed at you behind a desk; you then spend three or four minutes talking about a peculiar topic or issue of interest. Think of it as a professional video blog; if you truly know what you’re talking about, it will help to establish your professional credentials and polish your company’s image.
For that matter, there are a lot of different types of videos that can help enhance your company’s image. There may be value, for example, in placing a video online of your company’s most recent sales conference or at least the part that introduces forthcoming new products. Or maybe your company has hosted a seminar or conference that is of interest to others outside your company. These videos can be edited for duration and uploaded to YouTube, where any interested party can view them.
That said; there is one type of video that you don’t want to upload. YouTube is not the place to recycle your company’s commercials. Users will not go out of their way to view something online that they try to avoid in the real world. Unless you have a really clever, Super bowl worthy commercial that people want to view again and again, keep your ads to yourself and don’t upload them to YouTube.
Promoting Products and Services via YouTube
So far, I’ve talked about videos that only broadly boost your company, in terms of enhancing your company’s image. You can also use YouTube more directly to boost your company’s products and services that is, to drive potential customers to your website where they can buy what you sell. To do this, you need to make and upload videos that function as online infomercials, subtly boosting your company’s products and services.
Let’s say that you offer gift baskets for sale. You create a short video for YouTube about how to make gift baskets something that would be of interest to anyone in the market for them. You prominently display your web page address and phone number within the video, and in the descriptive text that accompanies the video on the YouTube site. Because the video has some informational content (the how-to information), it attracts viewers, and a certain percentage of these will follow through to purchase the gift baskets you have for sale.
Or maybe you’re a business consultant and you want to promote your consulting services. To demonstrate what you have to offer potential clients, you create and upload some sort of short video a motivational lecture, perhaps, or a slideshow about specific business practices, or something similar. You use the video to establish your expert status and then display your email address or web page URL to solicit business for your consulting services.
Or maybe you have a full-length DVD for sale. You excerpt a portion of DVD and upload it to YouTube, with graphics before and after (and maybe even during) the video detailing how the full-length DVD can be ordered.
Likewise if you’re a musician with CDs to sell, an author with books to sell, an artist with paintings or other artwork to sell, or a crafts maker with various crafts and such to sell. The musician might create a music video to promote his CDs; the author might read an excerpt from her book; the artist might produce a photo slideshow of his work; and the crafts maker might upload a short video walk-through of pieces she has for sale. Make sure you include details for how the additional product can be ordered, and let your placement on YouTube do the promotion for you.
As an example, Charles Smith Pottery offers a series of instructional videos on YouTube that demonstrate how to use a pottery wheel. Interested viewers can then access the accompanying website (detailed both in the video and in the video’s description) to learn more and to see what products the company has for sale.
Another example is t he San Francisco Electric Tour Company, which offers Segway tours of the San Francisco Bay Area. The company created an entertaining demo video about the Segway and their tours and then uploaded the video to YouTube. Interested people can view the video and then contact the firm to schedule a tour. It’s quite synergistic.
Then there’s John Pullum, a hypnotist and mind reader who provides corporate entertainment and motivational speeches. He’s uploaded videos of several of his appearances to YouTube; they’re both entertaining and informational regarding the services that he has to offer. Any viewer who likes what they see can then go to his website to learn more or to arrange an engagement.
The key is to create a video that people actually want to watch. That means something informative, useful, or entertaining. It can’t be a straight commercial, because people don’t like to watch commercials. It has to provide value to the viewer.
Once you get the viewer hooked, you lead him back to your website where your goods or services are for sale. It’s a two-step process watch the video, then go to the website to learn more or buy something. If your video is interesting enough, viewers will make the trip to your website to close the deal.
Shooting for YouTube: Proper Production Values
When you’re producing a video for YouTube, keep in mind that the video will be viewed in a small (320 x 240 pixel) window on the viewer’s computer monitor. It won’t be viewed on a high-definition widescreen TV; it won’t even be viewed on the full computer screen. No, your video has to be compelling when viewed in that small YouTube video window.
What this means is that you don’t need to spend a lot of money on sophisticated video values. Skip the HDTV recording, skip the widescreen aspect ratio, may be even skip the ultra-expensive lights and makeup. Make your video good enough to be viewed at a 320 x 240 size, and don’t waste your money on production values that won’t be visible to the viewer.
In addition, keep that size in mind when deciding what to shoot. Don’t bother with crowd scenes; all those people will be too tiny to see in the small video window. Instead, compose an image that has maximum impact in the small window. What works best, more often than not, is a large subject against a simple background. That might be nothing more than the speaker full-frame against a light background; it’s a big image with good contrast, which is what you want.
You should, however, spend a few bucks for onscreen graphics. You want a title for your video, appropriate subtitles throughout, and your company’s phone number and website URL. These graphics need to look professional, and be large enough to read in the YouTube video window.
You can shoot a video for YouTube using professional video equipment, a consumer-level video camcorder (shooting in digital video format, of course), or even a computer webcam. Many video blogs are shot with simple webcams, just a person in front of the camera, talking about the subject at hand. You’ll probably want to transfer the video to a computer for editing, of course; any consumer-level video editing program, such as Microsoft’s Windows Movie Maker or Apple’s iMovie, should do the trick.
As to length, YouTube lets you upload videos up to 10 minutes long. If you have a longer video say, a half-hour seminar on tape you can simply edit it into several shorter segments. In fact, shorter segments are generally better; I recommend keeping your videos to three minutes or less. Anything longer and you’ll start to bore people and lose viewers. Even if you have a 10-minute video, you might want to edit it into three or four 2- or 3-minute segments. YouTube viewers have a short attention span, and you need to compensate for this.
Uploading Your Videos to YouTube
The hardest part about uploading a video to YouTube is creating and editing the video. The uploading process itself is so simple a CEO can do it.
First, however, you have to make sure that your video file meets YouTube’s requirements, which are as follows:
- MPEG-4 format video with either the DivX or XviD codecs
- MP3 format audio
- 320[ts]240 resolution
- Frame rate of 30 frames per second (FPS)
- Length of 10 minutes or less
- File size of 100MB or less
If you shot your video with a digital camcorder or computer webcam, it’s probably in the right format to begin with, so there’s no conversion necessary. Your only concern is to stay within the length and file size limits.
To upload the video, click the Upload Videos link at the top right-hand corner of any YouTube page. This displays the Video Upload page; you now have a little paperwork to do.
First, enter a title for your video. Make sure it’s descriptive without being overly long. Next, enter a description for the video; this can and should be longer and more complete. (And don’t forget to include your phone number and website address in the description.)
Then enter one or more tags for the video, separating each tag by a space. Tags are keywords people use when searching; use as many tags as necessary to capture all possible search words and attract as many potential viewers as possible.
Now pull down the Video Category list and select a category for the video. Click the Upload a Video button when you’re ready to proceed.
Step two of the video upload process is where you specify the file you want to upload. Click the Browse button to open the Select File to Upload dialog box; navigate to and select the file you want and then click Open. This loads the filename into the File box on the Video Upload page.
With all of that done, the final step is to click the Upload Video button. YouTube finds the video on your hard disk and starts uploading it; the progress is shown on the Video Upload page. Once uploaded, take note of the video’s URL (to link to from your site and use in promotional material) and the embed code (to embed the video in your own website). Your video is now ready for viewing!
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I think that sometimes, we in the field of search marketing try to make the concept of ranking more difficult than it really is. True – there are hundreds of ways to build a link, an infinite number of keywords, thousands of unique sources to drive traffic along with analytics, design, usability, code structure, conversion testing, etc. However, when it comes to the very specific question of how to rank well for a particular keyword in standard organic results at the engines, you’re really only talking about a few big key components.
#1 – Keyword Usage & Content Relevance
While I don’t believe in keyword density (reference: nonsense), there’s no doubt that using your keywords intelligently and creating a page that is actually relevant to the query and searcher intent is critical to ranking well. My general best practice is to use the primary keyword phrase as follows:
- In the title tag once, and possibly twice (or as a variation) if it makes sense and sounds good (subjective, but necessary)
- Once in the H1 header tag of the page
- At least 3X in the body copy on the page (sometimes a few more times if there’s a lot of text content)
- At least once in bold
- At least once in the alt tag of an image
- Once in the URL
- At least once (sometimes 2X when it makes sense) in the meta description tag
- Generally not in link anchor text on the page itself (this is a bit more complex – see this post for details)
For those who’ve done the nonsense words testing to see how the engines respond, you know that you can certainly get some extra value out of going wild and stuffing the keywords all over the page, but we’ve also seen that once you reach about this level of saturation I’ve described above, you’re getting about 95% of the value you can get, and even the tiniest amount of extra link juice can make a page like this outrank a “super-stuffed” page (usually).
#2 – Raw Link Juice
Some people call this PageRank or link weight or link power – basically it refers to the raw quantity of global link popularity ascribed to the page. You can grow this with internal links (from your own site) and external links (from other sites). A page with a phenomenal amount of global link power, even if the sources aren’t particularly relevant and the keywords are barely used, can still rank remarkably well in Google & Yahoo! (MSN & Ask are both a bit more keyword & subject focused from what we’ve seen).
Link juice operates on the basic principle that was used in the early PageRank formula – that pages on the web have some (low) inherent level of importance and that the link structure of the web could help to point out pages with greater and lesser value. Those pages that were linked to by many thousands of pages were very important and thus, when they linked to other pages, those pages must, by extension, also have great importance.
Carrying this theory back to your own pages, you can see how raw link juice will have a large impact on how the search engines score their rankings. Growing global link popularity requires both link building (so your site has enough link juice) and intelligent internal link structure (to ensure that you’re flowing that juice to the right places).
#3 – Anchor Text Weight
As the search engines evolved in the early 2000′s, they picked up on the usage of anchor text and found that by weighting the keywords and phrases pages used to link, they could get an even better idea of what pages would be about and which were most relevant to particular subjects. The anchor text of links is now a critical part of the ranking equation, and when seen in great quantity, it can overshadow many other ranking factors – you can see plenty of web pages that are weaker in all the other three factors I describe here ranking primarily because they’ve earned (or, oftentimes for commercial terms, bought) many hundreds or thousands of links with the precise anchor text of the phrase they’re targeting.
Note that anchor text comes from both internal and external links, so if you’re trying to optimize, it’s wise to think about how you’re linking to material from your own pages – using generic links or image links may cost you some of the ranking power you’d otherwise earn by having internal links with accurate, relevant anchor text. However, you can go overboard here, so be cautious – and note that 100,000 internal pages linking with anchor text doesn’t provide the same value as 100,000 external links with that text.
#4 – Domain Authority
This is the most complex of the factors I describe in this post. Basically, domain trust refers to a variety of signals about a site that the search engines use to determine legitimacy. Does the domain have a history in the engine? Do lots of people search for and use the domain? Does the domain have high quality links pointing to it from other trustworthy sources? Does the domain link out primarily to other trusted sites? Do analytics and registration information and temporal link growth fit with expected patterns?
To influence this variable positively, all you really need to do is operate your site in a manner consistent with the engines’ guidelines. If you want to earn a lot of trust early on in a domain’s life, get lots of sites that the engines already trust to link to you. And if you’re looking to spoil that trust, link out to bad neighborhoods, use manipulative link growth practices that don’t match up to queries or traffic patterns and play the churn & burn game.
As a wrap up, I’d love to hear your opinions on these four factors and whether you think there should be 5, 3 or 20 instead.
p.s. Remember that this post is my personal opinion only! Sure – I’m basing it on my experience, which is relatively robust, but I don’t doubt that others have there have very different conceptions of what comprises the bulk of the rankings equation, so please use your own judgment.
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Back to basics time this Friday, and this time, it’s all about the only meta tag that still has relevance; the meta description tag. Meta descriptions have three primary uses:
- To describe the content of the page accurately and succinctly
- To serve as a short, text “advertisement” to click on your results in the search results
- To display targeted keywords, not for ranking purposes, but to indicate the content to searchers
Great meta descriptions, just like great ads, can be tough to write, but for keyword-targeted pages, particularly in competitive search results, they’re a critical part of driving traffic from the engines through to your pages. Their importance is much greater for search terms where the intent of the searcher is unclear or different searchers might have different motivations.
There’s a few good rules to follow when writing meta descriptions that take advantage of their use in pulling in search traffic:
- Always describe your content honestly – if it’s not as “sexy” as you’d like, spice up your content, don’t bait and switch on searchers or they’ll have a poor brand association.
- Character limits – currently Google displays up to 160 characters, Yahoo! up to 165 and MSN up to 200+ (they’ll go to three vertical lines in some cases). Stick with the smallest – Google – and keep those descriptions at 160 characters (including spaces) or less.
- Write with as much sizzle as you can while staying descriptive – the perfect meta description is like the perfect ad – compelling and informative.
- Just like an ad, you can test meta description performance in the search results, but it takes careful attention. You’ll need to buy the keyword through PPC so you know how many impressions it received over a given timeframe and can track your CTR.
- Unlike an ad, the motivation for natural search click is frequently very different than that of users clicking on the paid results. Don’t assume that a successful PPC ad will transition into a good meta description (or the reverse).
- It’s extremely important to have your keywords in the meta tag – the bolding done by the engines can make a big difference in visibility and CTR.
- You shouldn’t always write a meta description. Although conventional logic would hold that it’s universally wiser to write a good meta description yourself, rather than let the engines scrape your page, this isn’t the case. I use the general rule that if the page is targeting 1-3 heavily-searched terms/phrases, go with a meta description that hits those users performing that search. However, if you’re targeting longer tail traffic, for example with hundreds of articles or blog entries or even a huge product catalog, it can sometimes be wiser to let the engines themselves extract the relevant text. The reason is simple – when engines pull, they always display the keywords (and surrounding phrases) that the user searched for. If you force a meta description, you can detract from the relevance the engines make naturally. In some cases, they’ll overrule your meta description anyway, but it’s not always wise to rely on that.
So, we’ve now completed the triumvirate of on-page basics with title tags, meta descriptions and URLs. If you’ve got some valuable meta description writing techniques, please do share.
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I could have sworn that someone has already a great post or forum thread on this topic, but I can’t seem to find it (no matter how advanced my operators). I’m sure Mr. Malicoat has it in his bookmarks, but since blog posts are one of my personal systems for public bookmarking, here goes.
Eleven Guidelines to Successful URLs
- Describe Your Content
An obvious URL is a great URL. If a user can look at the Address bar (or a pasted link) and make an accurate guess about the content of the page before ever reaching it, you’ve done your job. These URLs get pasted, shared, emailed, written down, and yes, even recognized by the engines.
- Keep it Short
Remember always; brevity is a virtue. The shorter the URL, the easier to copy & paste, read over the phone, write on a business card, or use in a hundred other unorthodox fashions, all of which spell better usability & increased branding.
- Static is the Way & the Light
Not to bring religion into this, but I can tell you with certainty that some of the engines absolutely DO treat static URLs differently than dynamic ones. And no human likes a URL where the big players are “?,” “&,” and “=.”
- Descriptives are Better than Numbers
If you’re thinking of using 114/cat223/, go with /brand/adidas/ instead. Even if the descriptive isn’t a keyword or particularly informative to an uninitiated user, it’s far better to use words when possible. If nothing else, your team members will thank you for making it that much easier to ID problems in development and testing.
- Keywords Never Hurt
If you know that you’re going to be targeting a lot of competitive keyword phrases on your website for search traffic, you’ll want every advantage you can get. Keywords are certainly one element of that strategy, so take the list from marketing, map it to the proper pages, and get to work. For dynamically created pages through a CMS, create the option of including keywords in the URL.
- Subdomains Aren’t the Answer
First off, never use multiple subdomains (e.g., siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com) – it’s unnecessarily complex and lengthy. Secondly, consider that subdomains have the potential to be treated separately from the primary domain when it comes to passing link and trust value. In most cases where just a few subdomains are used and there’s good interlinking, it won’t hurt, but I wouldn’t take the chance. To me, the benefits derived from reputation management (by flooding the SERPs with your subdomains) are minimal compared to the potential loss of link/trust juice. I also think that subdomain takeovers of SERPs is not something the search engines see as beneficial to their users and may shut down at any point. Luckily, if you’re doing it now, you can always 301 to the main domain.
- Fewer Folders
A URL should contain no unnecessary folders (or words or characters for that matter), for the same reason that a man’s pants should contain no unnecessary pleats. The extra fabric is useless and will reduce his likelihood of impressing potential mates.
- Hyphens Separate Best
When creating URLs with multiple words in the format of a phrase, hyphens are best to separate the terms (e.g. /brands/dolce-and-gabbana/), followed (in order) by, underscores (_), pluses (+) and nothing.
- Stick with Conventions
If your site uses a single format throughout, don’t consider making one section unique. Stick to your URL guidelines once established, so users (and future developers) will have a clear idea of how content is organized into folders and pages. This can apply globally as well for sites that share platforms, brands, etc. Re-inventing the wheel in situations where reliance on convention makes everyone’s tasks easier is folly.
- Don’t be Case Sensitive
Since URLs can accept both uppercase and lowercase characters, don’t ever, ever allow any uppercase letters in your structure. If you have them now, 301 them to all-lowercase versions to help avoid confusion. If you have a lot of type-in traffic, you might even consider a 301 rule that sends any incorrect capitalization permutation to its rightful home.
- Don’t Append Extraneous Data
There’s no point to having a URL exist in which removing characters generates the same content. You can be virtually assured that people on the web will figure it out, link to you in different fashions, confuse themselves, their readers and the search engines (with duplicate content issues), and then complain about it.
Example Time
The following are some grievously heinous violators of the guidelines above:
- http://www.target.com/gp/detail.html/602-9912342-3046240?_encoding=UTF8&frombrowse=1&asin=B000FN0KWA
Target (who’s powered by Amazon) doesn’t describe their content, use keywords, or keep it short. That and the horrifyingly useless data that can be removed from the URL without changing the content make this URL downright ugly.
- http://etsy.com/view_item.php?listing_id=477443&pic_id=2
Despite being one of my favorite sites, Etsy’s URLs provide no descriptive information, use multiple dynamic parameters and separate breaks with underscores.
- http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=98115&ie=UTF8&z=12&om=1&iwloc=A
Google should be ashamed – their guidelines for URLs practically set the town for the recommendations, but their maps feature is almost unusable due to inefficient, bloated URLs (when they must know that millions want to copy those URLs into emails)
These few below are doing a considerably better job, but could still go the extra mile:
- http://men.style.com/news/gadgets/092006
It’s almost there, and one could almost argue that the subdomain use here is justified for branding purposes. It is too bad they gave us so much data, but then cut out keywords and descriptives right at the end
- http://www.nasa.gov/home/index.html?skipIntro=1
Nasa has uselessly appended dynamic parameters onto the page, and added /home/index.html for no logical reason
- http://www.newyorkmetro.com/fashion/fashionshows/2007/spring/ main/newyork/womenrunway/marcjacobs/
They’re trying to be descriptive, which is great, but not separating words and going 7 folders deep is really pushing it.
These last examples have done nearly everything right:
- http://www.wahidqazi.com/seo-help/
Brilliant – it’s short, descriptive, static and obvious.
- http://blog.wahidqazi.com/11-best-practices-for-urls/
Despite the subdomain, everything else is near perfect.
- http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/jk35.html
I’m letting the White House off the hook for not using “john-kennedy” as the page title, because they’ve wisely also provided his number (the US’ 35th President).
URLs seem like one of the most simplistic parts of SEO, but I find myself returning to this issue with nearly every client. Hopefully these guidelines can help a few folks make use of best practices before it becomes an issue down the road.
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Many people in SEO groan at the thought of meta-tags.
After all, meta-tags for ranking is dead for SEO, isn’t it?
Not quite.
In fact, meta-tags have begun a startling revival.
A couple of key points about why you should consider taking meta-tags more seriously:
1. Google duplicate content filters
Google has had real problems this year in determining what may or may not be duplicate content.
Sites with generic, or absence of, meta-description tags, may find themselves going supplemental, or simply not showing properly for their content.
Heck, even well-known sites such as SEOmoz and Threadwatch may have issues here.
Going supplemental is an invitation to traffic loss, so take pre-emptive action by setting up unique meta-description tags on your pages.
2. Clickthrough rates
There’s no point ranking for good keywords if the description under your search engine listing sucks.
Absense of a meta-description at best leaves search engines looking for a random sampling of text that may be relevant.
Why leave it to chance?
Increase your clickthrough rates from listings by actually better controlling the text with the listing by setting up unique meta-descriptions tags for your pages.
And try to ensure you include a marketing hook very quickly in the description tag.
If you are ranking, tell search engine users why your page is so relevant for their query.
3. Ranking
Google doesn’t appear to use meta-keywords to rank webpages/sites.
But Yahoo! does.
Yahoo! still commands a respectable 30% of US search traffic, and even where the market share is really small (such as the UK), strong Yahoo! rankings can still prove very cost-effective.
So add some spice for Yahoo! Search by focusing on your meta-keywords tag.
No, I’m not advising you keyword stuff the tag – but at least make the effort to set up keywords in your tag that Yahoo! can process that for ranking purposes.
Overall
All too often people can get fixated on the details rather than the bigger picture. Decent meta-tags are a part of that bigger picture.
This is especially when it comes to clickthrough rates. After all, what’s the point of ranking for competitive keywords if you leave clickthroughs to chance?
Search engine users want a quality experience – offer them that by taking care of the details of your site that can help work best in the big picture.
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