Internet Marketing Optimization | SEO Expert

Three Basic Elements of Search Engine Optimization SEO! Code, Content and Linking (CCL)!

Search engine optimization effort can be categorized into three basic elements “Code, Content and Linking (CCL)” these three diverse elements play very important role in search engine rankings, you will come to know about their effectiveness and usability with some of the very useful tips in this article.

Code

Code of the website is the very first element that is unfortunately ignored by most SEOs, website code allows search engines bots to go through the webpage, and if bots will not be able to understand code they will not be able to access content of the webpage because content is kept within code, this is enough to tell you about the importance of website code.

Code of the website has to be clean and optimized, here i means that code like JavaScripts or CSS should be called externally, try to keep your code as short as possible and ignore too much nesting.

You must validated complete website code either everything is working fine or not, check for browser compatibility, orphan pages and broken links, don’t forget to have robots.txt and sitemap.

Content

Content is still king, no one can deny the fact that since the revolution of search engine in mid 90s, content is undefeated king. Content needs special treatment, today search engines automatically take keywords within content, they become more conscious about content, they follow basic fundamentals of writing techniques, such as headings, sub-headings, bullets & numbered, inverted commas.

Now it’s up to you either you are successfully able to give an impression of your important keywords to search engines, try to use your important keywords in headings, sub-headings and try to start paragraphs with important keywords.

Note: – Here content means selectable content, content on images can’t be selected and read by search engine bots.

Linking

Linking is one of the most important criteria to get better rankings in search engines specially in google. Linking is divided into two categories onsite linking and offsite linking. Onsite linking belongs to links that are mentioned at your web-domain either they are internal or external it doesn’t matter, they have to be declare at your website (domain). Offsite linking belongs to links that point your web-domain from a different web-domain, they are inbound or incoming links to your website (domain).

In internal linking you should try to keep web pages as close as possible to root, if you have a big site of over 100 pages or 500 pages then you have to make relevant directories and keep relevant pages in them.

In link-building you have to keep few things in mind that link has to be one way, and link title and description should be very focus, try to have incoming links from relevant sites, since one relevant link is equal to 100 irrelevant links, when submitting to directories, go as deep as possible and try to find most relevant category where you can submit your site.

What to do when website ranking stuck? How to keep improving positions in google, yahoo and msn?

It is seen many times that website rankings get stuck and some times started going down. Is it due to lack of SEO knowledge? Weak link popularity? Poor content? Pathetic coding? There must be a way to get things going. In this article you’ll come to know what makes your web ranking stuck and how to improve your rankings!

Search Engine Minimization!

The term search engine optimization is not valid specially after Google’s Florida update, in that update google introduced a new term called “Over Optimization” and it’s very well known today. Well there is no measurement tool to analyze either the practice is optimized or over optimized that’s why SEO should go for search engine minimization, what is search engine minimization? Search engine minimization is a technique that deals with basics and its primary purpose is to get the website listed in top 500 website rather looking directly for top 5 placements.

Focus on the Competitors!

When your website rankings stuck and you are short of ideas, what to do? How to move forward? The very first thing you should do is to not worry, but don’t get relax it’s time to keep an eye on your competitors, observe the top 5 competitors and the top 5 above of your rankings that means 10 for each keyword, look at them and try to find out either there is something missing what you are doing or your competitors are very intelligent enough. Your competitors can make you learn the best lesson sometimes.

There are certain areas in search engine optimization which should be improved with time, if you don’t take care of those elements, your website will be out-dated and miss-fit in front of your competitors, since all your competitors are fighting for top positions.

On Going Content Improvisation

Look at the content either your website has fresh original content with balanced keyword density, content is still king, never ignore the value of quality content, you can compare keyword density balance with your competitors.

Active Link Building Campaign

The more inbound qualified links your website has the better position it will get, never let your link building campaign die, link popularity is like oxygen for life, try to find out more relevant and qualified incoming links, permanent and one way links will be obviously preferable than temporary reciprocal links.

Optimized, Validated and Error Free Coding

Your website code is one of the very important element of your search engine ranking, you must check your website code for quality assurance periodically, sometimes everything looks fine but you never know your competitors, they might be doing something very special which you might have ignored.

Some other Tips to Get an Extra Edge over Your Competitors

• Increase domain registered period for at least next five years
• Keep the same address at website and at domain registration
• Apply proper formation technique such as H1, H2, Bold, Bullets…
• Don’t miss Alt tags
• Don’t miss title tags for image base links
• Proper directory and file structuring

Improve Link Popularity and Develop a Successful Link Building Campaign (Part 2)

It’s a two part article series, in part 1, I’ve already explained you about mistakes you should avoid in link building, how to categorized your database and create your own master database for link building campaign.

Few Lessons from Your Competitors!

If somehow you are finished with your database and you require more incoming links for your website, you shouldn’t worry about it as far as your competitors are there to guide you. You can easily see how many links are pointing to your competitors from search engines. Google doesn’t show the real figures but you can take it from Yahoo and Msn, now what you have to do is to find out where exactly your competitors are linked and start putting your competitors’ incoming links to your master database with all required fields.
After you finished with all your competitors, don’t waste your time start submitting your website.

Important Aspect of Incoming Links:

Incoming links are evaluated on certain criteria and weight, there are four major aspect of incoming links on the basis of them each links are considered more valuable.

1. Link Age
2. Link Text Relevancy
3. Link Page Relevancy
4. Link Domain Relevancy

1. Link Age

Link age is one of the factors your website or webpage is going to be tested through, the older the links are the better they will be reliable.

2. Link Text Relevancy

One relevant link is equal to 100 irrelevant links, you better guess how important is the link text relevancy, here relevant link text means the title of the link and very next paragraph after title.

3. Link Page Relevancy

Page relevancy is also very important factor, your pointed links should be placed on the relevant pages. The overall page content should be relevant with your page.

4. Link Domain Relevancy

Link domain relevancy is something that can’t be ignore, if your pointed incoming links are placed on the relevant domain and relevant page they will be highly appreciated and have more weight than your competitors.

Incoming Link Types and Styles:

Link type and style are very important, you should try to maximize their effectives and values in favor of your link building campaign, each link has different value and weight to search engine, and I’ve defined almost all types of incoming links with their styles. I’ve distributed links in five groups with descending order.

1. Title Anchor Links: Title anchor links are area or content focus incoming links on any particular page

2. Title Hyper Links: Title hyper links are those links where the actual linking area is title

3. Description Text Links: Description text links are those links where the actual linking area is description

4. URL Links: URL links are those links where the actual linking area is their website addresses or URLs

5. Static Links: Static links are placed on plain SEO friendly pages that have plain URLs, they are considered very important links

6. Dynamic Links: Dynamic links are placed on dynamically generated pages and considered to be less important

7. One Way Links: One way links can be either dynamic or static but they will be only incoming links, they won’t be linked with your domain

8. Reciprocal Links: Reciprocal links can be either dynamic or static but they will be linked with your domain, if you don’t put their links to your website, they won’t put your link at their website

9. Vote/Rank Base Links: These types of links vary with their reputation, people gives votes or ranks to links and on the basis of those votes/ranks their link position vary

10. Lifetime Links: Lifetime links are those links which will be active for life time as long as the domain is there

11. Periodical Links: Periodical links are those links which will be active for certain period (such as 1 year or 2 years) after that they will be no more, usually these types of links are paid links

12. Same Window Open Links: Same window open links are those links which open in the same window or they refresh themselves

13. Blank Window Open Link: Blank window open links are those links which bring you to blank windows and open the pointed links on them

All these link types and styles have different meanings and values to search engines, being an SEO you should try to utilize your best available resource and try to focus on the right direction rather getting just links coming to your page.

I hope this article will help you in developing a successful link building campaign, since I’ve tried to explain almost all types of links with their values and weight according to search engine.

Improve Link Popularity and Develop a Successful Link Building Campaign (Part 1)

Incoming links are like votes in election for your website but it’s not like majority is authority, quality incoming links are considered more valuable than poor links even if you have 1000s. One quality link is equal to 100 poor links, in this article you’ll come to know how to get qualified links which can strengthen your website ranking and also how to build successful link building campaign.

Do you want to waste your hard earn money on getting poor incoming links to your website? Even if you don’t spend money, are you ready to spend your valuable time focusing on those irrelevant incoming links pointing to your website? Choice is yours!

Mistakes You Should Avoid When Link Building

It’s never too late to focus on the right direction to get qualified incoming links. Now look at the mistakes why majority of the people go wrong when they start link building. They misuse their money and valuable time, here is a list of the few major mistakes that you should avoid in link building.

1- Focus on Quantity than Quality: If you are looking for healthy amount of incoming links rather qualified ones, you should focus on getting quality and qualified links. Don’t go for amount, it’s the quality of incoming links that will bring your website at 1st page

2- Link Exchange or Reciprocal Links: Link exchange or reciprocal links should be avoided specially after Google big daddy update

3- Ignorance of Check and Balance for Links: If you don’t check and balance your listings periodically, you may lose your hard gain incoming links

4- Purchase Bulk Links: Search engines become very intelligent these days, you can’t make them fool by purchasing bulk links, because search engine check your incoming links frequency as well with time

5- Paid Links: Paid links can be very healthy but if they are used as a part of the strategy, if you have no idea of how many paid links you are going to have, that can create big upset in your overall link building campaign

Do You Have Categorized and Simplified Database?

In link building campaign, your database is your key to success, it is the backbone of your overall link building strategy. If you have a poor database, which is not categorized and simplified, you can’t be comfortable from your link building strategy.

Try to have categorized and simplified database, make a master database with following mentioned fields.

Important Fields for Master Database for any Link Building Campaign

1. URL
2. Direct Link (Direct Link of Submission or Registration)
3. Industry Type (Show Biz, Construction, Telecommunication…)
4. Link Type (One Way, Reciprocal, Paid)
5. Link Style (Anchor link, Title Hyper Link, URL Link, Vote Link)
6. Link Period (1 Year or Life time)
7. PageRank (1, 2, 3…10)
8. Title Limit (Characters Limit)
9. Description Limit (Characters Limit)
10. Keywords Limit (Characters Limit)

Let Everything Come to Your Master Database!

Now your master database (structure) is ready, what’s next? You need to make it valuable by inserting data to it, it requires an on-going updates. Don’t let anything go away, if it’s not required right now that’s ok, you might need it for your future projects.

It’s a two part article series, in next part (Part 2) you’ll come to know, how to make a successful link building strategy, linking types, styles and their weights for you link building campaign.

Quick SEO Guide! 12 Steps of Search Engine Optimization Process

There are just 12 simple steps to follow basic Search Engine Optimization for SEO starters, expertise and in-depth knowledge of these steps can take you to the expert level as well, this article has just an overview of the basic SEO.

1. Research and select appropriate keywords to target
2. Effective page Title Tags
3. Effective and optimized META Description Tag
4. Effective and optimized META Keywords Tag
5. Integrate search keywords within Website copy
6. Web design elements to avoid ensuring your site is search engine compatible
7. Effective Alt Image attributes
8. Effective and optimized text navigation menus
9. Link titles and anchor link effectively
10. Set up search engine friendly site architecture
11. Creation of search engine friendly sitemap
12. Robots.txt and its META tag

1. Research and select appropriate keywords to target

• Collect the business terms
• Check keywords relevancy with industry and conversion
• Check competition
• Check count on word tracker and Overture
• Make estimate traffic chart using Google Adwords
• Distribution of keywords on the basis of their weight

2. Effective page Title Tags

Title tag is the most important tag, almost all search engines evaluate webpage with title tag and check the relevancy with other elements of the page as well, and search engines also present results of a search by displaying webpage titles as links in the first line of each query result.

3. Effective and optimized META Description Tag

Description tag is the very important tag, search engines take webpage description through this tag, though search engines don’t give any importance to this tag in their ranking algorithms but this tag can lead searchers to motivate and visit your website.

4. Effective and optimized META Keywords Tag

Keywords tag has lost its value, search engines keep getting smarter, they have set their own criterion to identify web pages with their relevancies, they take each word as “keyword phrase” that is presented at webpage and they keep those words in priorities with their densities. There is no harm in utilizing this tag for marginally better results.

5. Integrate search keywords within Website copy

Since a very early stage of search engine revolution, search engines were able to evaluate website with relevance to their content, though they were not very efficient and intelligent like they are these days, but they were able to read the content at website and content still plays very important role in top ranking positions.

6. Web design elements to avoid ensuring your site is search engine compatible

Usually a website is designed keeping few elements in mind such as user friendliness, attractive design, beautiful flash animation, easy navigation, client specific or functionality oriented. In fact all these elements are very useful and important but what benefit is your web site if it has no visitors, search engine compatible websites are designed and developed keeping search engine policies and algorithms in mind, which enable websites to be easily crawled and understood by search engines.

7. Effective Alt Image attributes

Alternate text commonly referred to as Alt, is a text description that can be added to the HTML tag that displays an image. The ALT text is displayed by the browser when the cursor is moved over the picture. If pictures are turned off in the browser, the Alt text is automatically displayed instead.

8. Effective and optimized text navigation menus

Navigation is a very important part of any website; it gives guidelines to website visitors and directs them to relevant part of the website.

9. Link titles and anchor link effectively

Link title is displayed text by the browser when cursor is moved over the link.
An Anchor link is a little different from a hyperlink, a hyperlink directs to a complete webpage but anchor link directs to a specific area of a particular webpage, it may be at same page or different page or even at different domain.

10. Set up search engine friendly site architecture

A Website’s information architecture can greatly affect on its search engine visibility. Specific page elements, such as the site navigation scheme, and design technologies, such as CSS and JavaScript, can interfere with search engines ability to spider a site.

11. Creation of search engine friendly sitemap

A site map helps visitors navigate large, complicated sites by showing its entire structure. It is also used as a master diagram of the Web site for Web designers.

12. Robots.txt and its META tag

Robots.txt is a file placed on your server to guide the various search engine spiders not to crawl or index certain sections or pages of your site. You can use it to prevent indexing totally, prevent certain areas of your site from being indexes or to issue individual indexing instructions to specific search engines.

SEO Copy Writing Techniques – Why Content is Still King (Part 1)

Writing is very specialized skill, it has different styles when it comes to different medias such as paper, television and web/internet, creative writers have no boundaries, no rules to write… but when it comes to get reward of their written material in search engines, they have to adopt certain guidelines, certain rules with standards so that their written stuff can get decent number of audience.

What is SEO Copy Writing?

SEO copywriting is nothing but just a topical writing where content writers always write for topics / sub-topics and those topics or sub-topics are called Keyword Phrases. There are some other techniques with this, which are kept in mind when writing for search engines, but whatever they write is topical as a result search engines can easily understand them and give them the most valuable positions. There is a proper procedure & technique for SEO Copy Writing which will be discussed later on in this article.

Why Content is Still King?

There is a very obvious answer to this question, content is still king because content is the major source of conveying message to search engine. Search engines read the content and then realize the importance of the content, they their-self understand the purpose of the website and then compare it with other related websites in their database, on the basis of your website’s content your website is given some rank in search engines, it could be at 1st page and could be at 100th page. There are plenty of other elements but content is one of the very important aspect of your website optimization, whenever writing for your website, keep in mind that your website is going to be evaluated not only by human but search engine’s bots as well.

How to Balance Copy Writing Keeping Users and Search Engines in Mind

Website copy can be liked and disliked at the same time by different human readers, there are plenty of external things that effect on human mind when reading such as mood, time, easy & flowery language and interests. But to search engines it’s entirely a different thing, they are built on artificial intelligence that’s why it doesn’t matter how difficult the words are, how boring the topic is, they have to read your written content time and mood can’t stop them.

I would never recommend writing for search engines, in fact search engines will never like it. Search engines have a very clear policy and that is “whatever is important for human readers is also important for search engines” that’s why always try to facilitate your readers but there is a simple guideline for search engines by following that you can make sure to balance your well written copy writing for both Human readers and Search Engines.

Who should I Write for Search Engines OR for Visitors?

Another very interesting question, there are many content writers who are worried to either write for search engines OR for website visitors? The answer is very simple, search engines don’t like them to feed, that’s why focusing on search engines is only a waste of time. But you can’t ignore search engines, since search engines are based on pre-defined algorithm (artificial intelligence) and they are compelled on certain things, such if your website code is not search engine friendly then search engines will be finding difficulty to read and understand website content. Content writers should focus on writing for website visitors but keeping search engines standards in mind, so that their content will have good impact on search engines.

Well Targeted Written Content is more valuable

Whatever you are going to write, search the right term to use, it may happen that your written content will get good rankings on certain keyword phrase but what if that keyword phrase is not searchable in search engines. That’s why you make sure that your written content should be well targeted, to search most searched keyword phrase in search engines, and you can use WordTracker or Keyword Discovery

It’s a two part article series, in next part (Part 2) you’ll come to know, SEO Copy Writing Techniques, Does and Don’ts of Writing, How to Develop a Successful SEO Copy Writing Strategy.

How to Write Effective META Description Tag for Better Positioning in Yahoo and Msn

Description tag is another useful meta tag which takes prominent place at your web site’s header. There are SEOs who think that there is no worth using this meta tag, but majority of them still agree that this meta tag helps in optimizing websites for Yahoo and Msn, in this article you’ll learn how to effectively utilize it.

What Is The Meta Description Tag?

It’s an HTML tag use to feed description to search engines, it gives description of webpage to search engines, it is declared after title tag of the webpage under head tag.

Example: <meta name=”description” content=“Your Home Page Description”>

Why Is The Description Tag Important?

Description tag is the very important tag, search engines take webpage description through this tag, though search engines don’t give any importance to this tag in their ranking algorithms but this tag can lead searchers to motivate and visit your website.

Tips To Write Effective Page Description Tag:

• Describe your complete webpage in one single line or in a small paragraph
• Forget about keywords, focus on “call to action” words with respect to page relevancy
• Avoid covering complete website in one paragraph, try to focus on page
• Use unique description tag for each page, since each page has unique content
• Keep your description tag’s limit under 160 to 250 characters, longer sentences won’t give any value but they can be hurdle in deep crawl of your web page
• Avoid using special characters such as ! @ # $ ^ & * ( }[ | ? /
• Avoid all capital letter, try to use sentence case
• Use motivational lines so that your listing will be clicked comparatively better than your competitors
• Don’t misguide search engine visitors, write what is available there at the page

The Secret to Ranking at the Search Engines (that’s really no secret at all)

How I despise those awful, cheesy pages promoting the “secrets” of search engine optimization. How I loathe the slick salesman pictured in fuzzy, 1980′s-style photography promising you “the hidden tactics SEOs don’t wan’t you to know.” When most search folks think of the “ultimate secret” in SEO,” they probably think about one of these:

• Keywords in the Title Tag
• Spiderable Links & Content
• Anchor Text in Links
• Links from Quality Websites

Those are all good pieces of advice, and important to high rankings, but even the last one (links from quality websites) doesn’t convey the most important part of successful ranking campaigns. If there is one key to high search engine rankings, a single piece of advice that unlocks the door to the top of Google & Yahoo! it’s this: Your website must appeal to a link-savvy audience.

Simple? Sadly, no. The truth is that the very best website in the world that sells your product, offers your content or promotes your cause may not be good enough to make it to the top of the engines. Why? Because the world of search has an inherent bias to those sites with more links. It’s not enough to build links now through manual link requests or link buying, nor is it enough to bolster these link acquisitions with a flawlessly “optimized” website filled with keyword-targeted pages. These strategies, while effective in the short term, won’t guarantee you success in the long run. To have a shot at keeping the top positions for years to come, you need a strategy that naturally drives links to your site again and again. The “secret” is that the audience most sites appeal to is NOT the same audience that provides links, yet this group (the Linkerati) has the power to make or break a site’s rankings.

Let’s walk through a brief history of search engines to see how this happened:

No, Hotbot Monster, back in the early days, you really weren’t. Measuring repetition of keywords and keyword placement and density led to some pretty bad results and a lot of cloaking and spamming.

With the arrival of Google’s PageRank and Apostolos Gerasoulis’ Teoma (now called ExpertRank), the search engines got smarter, mapping the link patterns of the web and giving higher ranks to those sites & pages with more inbound links.

Over the last 8 years, the engines have been refining the way they measure links, taking into account context, relevance, trust and other metrics to help indicate which links are worth counting towards a particular ranking.

All of this algorithmic evolution means that sites wishing to rank at the top of the engines must have high quality, naturally given, topically relevant links. Since search rankings are so valuable, massive amounts of time and money pour into campaigns for the most competitive queries, making the struggle for placement increasingly difficult. This brings us to the fundamental issue that site creators struggle against – segmenting visitors accurately and appealing to the “Linkerati.”

Above are three groups of visitors, applicable to nearly every commercial or goal-oriented website in existence. While most sites do a reasonable job identifying and targeting the 2nd group (in blue) from the first (in green), this isn’t the case with the 3rd group (in red). Those red Llinkerati are essential to your site’s rankings – they are the great “secret” of long-term SEO success. In order to leverage their power, you must create compelling content that appeals to their desires. This really is no “secret” at all. In every interview and on every stage, you’ll hear representatives from Google, Yahoo!, MSN & Ask repeat this same mantra (albeit without the benefit of colorful diagrams). As an example:

“…the sort of people who have been doing “new” SEO, or whatever you want to call it, that’s social media optimization, link bait, things that are interesting to people and attract word of mouth and buzz, those sorts of sites naturally attract visitors, attract repeat visitors, attract back links, attract lots of discussion, those sorts of sites are going to benefit as the world goes forward.” – Matt Cutts in an interview with Gord Hotchkiss

Why are these Linkerati so powerful? What makes their opinions and influence so important to average website owners? Easy – the power to control the web’s link structure.

The web’s content may still be overwhelmingly commercial and organizational in scope, controlled by exceutives at companies, museum curators, government taxonomists, etc. But, the link landscape of the web, particularly those links that point externally from sites, are dominated by the Linkerati. If your competitors or even organizations like Wikipedia, About.com, niche bloggers or industry news publications become more popular with the Linkerati than you, how can you ever expect to compete for search engine rankings?

This is the great “secret” of SEO – that (at least) some content on your website must be targeted to the Linkerati – fulfilling their unquenchable thirst for new material to link to and share and spread virally. Although they may be a vastly different population than your customers, you need their respect and approval in order to continue to draw in targeted leads from the engines.

Identifying the Linkerati

Oftentimes, when I describe the concept of linkbait to clients, it’s critical to also describe those folks who are the targets of linkbait – I’ll call them the “Linkerati“. Let’s explore the culture of these most valued of web-dwelling souls:

• Bloggers – probably the most targetable and directly influenced folks, bloggers are an excellent source of traffic, links and the spread of your content’s idea virus.

• Forum posters - although the links these folks put up don’t often result in great search engine value, the traffic can be positive and the possibility that other likely linkers will come through to visit is also high.

• Web News Writers – a rare species, but exceptionally valuable, these folks control the news outlets on the web, including places like C|Net, Wired News, Yahoo! & MSN‘s online news portals, etc.

• Content Creators – These folks are building or beefing up websites and are seeking valuable resources to link out to. Most frequently, you’ll find them linking to the sites they find valuable in the top 5-10 results at the search engines (another reason why “the rich get richer”)

• Resource Editors – Another rare breed, these folks work at government institutions, no-profit organizations and educational establishments and are looking to add content to their pages or directories.

• Social Taggers – These folks don’t provide direct links, but if they and their friends at Digg, Del.icio.us, Reddit & Furl love you, you’re in for a real treat – thousands of visitors and the opportunity to be in front of hundreds of link-hungry bloggers.

• Viral Connectors – The viral crowd doesn’t directly link to you, but by sending out a blast e-mail, posting to an IRC channel or telling their friends about your site over dinner, they’re spreading the word. Some of them can be very powerful, and they’re not demographically distinct – a well-connected grandmother may know people in the media, executives of businesses and other highly placed and valuable minds.

• Journalists - Online or offline creators of “news” content, these influencers are among the most valuable of all the linkerati. A reporter for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times or the Seattle Weekly all have reach and ability to create links to your site, although it’s often in a second-hand fashion (as some sites don’t directly link out, but many bloggers “pick up” news items and do).

Any others I’m forgetting about?

Best Practices for Title Tags

It’s been a while since I provided some straightforward, back to basics style advice and there can be little doubt that the title tag is worthy of attention for beginners and experts alike.  And so I present…

How to Make the Best Title Tag Possible:

1. Brand your traffic

Use the title of your site or brand at the beginning or end of every title tag to help searchers know where they’re going and to increase return visits. If you’re struggling to find justification for this component, think of all the ad studies showing that consumers are willing to pay more for a “brand name” product than an off-brand or store brand item of the same type – apply this logic to the SERPs and you’ll find that users will go further down the rankings to click on a “trusted” brand.

2. Limit length to 65 characters (including spaces) or less

There’s no reason to cut off the last word and have it replaced with a “…” Note that the engines have fluctuated recently and Google, in particular, is now supporting up to 70 characters in some cases.

3. Incorporate keyword phrases

This one may seem obvious, but it’s critical that whatever your keyword research shows as being the most valuable for capturing searches gets prominently included in your title tag. It doesn’t have to be the first words, but it should be the semantic and logical center of attention.

4. Target longer phrases if they’re relevant

When choosing what keywords to include in a title tag, I often like to use as many as are completely relevant to the page at hand, while remaining accurate and descriptive. Thus, it can be much more valuable to have a title tag like “SkiDudes | Downhill Skiing Equipment & Accessories” rather than simply “SkiDudes | Skiing Equipment” – including those additional terms that are both relevant to the page and receive significant search traffic can bolster your page’s value. However, if you have a separate landing page for “Skiing accessories” than for “equipment,” then you shouldn’t include one term in the other’s title – you’ll be cannibalizing your rankings by forcing the engines to choose which page on your site is more relevant.

5. Use a divider

When splitting up the brand from the descriptive, I like to use the “|” symbol (aka the pipe bar). Others choose the arrow “>” or hyphen “-” and both work well. At times, however, I’ve found it useful to use the arrow or hyphen inside a title tag, as with a title like “SEO | SEM | Articles and Keyword Research – A Beginner’s Guide” hence my love of the pipe bar.

6. Focus on clickthrough & conversion rates

The title tag is exceptionally similar to the title you might write for paid search ads, only it’s harder to measure and improve because the stats aren’t provided for you as easily. However, if you’ve got a market that is relatively stable in search volume week-to-week, you can do some testing with your title tags and improve the clickthrough. Watch your analytics and, if it makes sense, buy search ads on the page as well – even if it’s just for a week or two, it can make a huge difference in the long run. A word of warning, though – be wary that you don’t focus entirely on CTR. Remember to continue measuring conversion rates. As MindValley Labs showed us, a lower CTR can sometimes be the better choice due to a higher conversion rate.

7. Target searcher intent

When you’re writing titles for web pages, keep in mind the search terms your audience employed to reach your site. If the intent is browsing or research-based, a more descriptive title tag is appropriate. If you’re reasonably sure the intent is a purchase, download or other action, make it clear in your title that this function can be performed at your site, i.e. “SkiDudes | View Snowboard Sizing Chart” or “SkiDudes | Buy Discount Snoqualmie Pass Lift Tickets”

8. Be consistent

Once you’ve determined a good formula for your pages in a given section or area of your site, stick to that regimen – you’ll find that as you become a trusted and successful “brand” in the SERPs, users will seek out your pages on a subject area and have expectations that you’ll want to fulfill.

9. Repeat in the headline

Re-using the title tag of each page as the H1 header tag can be valuable from both a keyword targeting standpoint and a user experience improvement. Users who go to a page from the SERPs will have the expectation of finding the title they clicked – deliver and you’ve fulfilled that obligation. Users will be more likely to stay on a page they’re reasonably certain fits their intended goal or query.

Any other suggestions that you’d like to include? Disagreements? Valuable links I should point to?