SEO: The Power of Your Page Title

1. According to SEO expert Brad Fallon (of Stompernet fame), one of the most important SEO “on site” factors is using keywords in your page title. This is usually a really easy thing to do (particularly if your website has a WebCare Content Management System back-end).
   
   The page title is the name that is displayed for every page of your website at the top of your browser window. Brad says that he has researched the impact of changing the words in your page title and it has had a dramatic effect on his rankings. The mportant principle is as follows:
   
   Use your most important keyword/s first in your title.
   Use your secondary keywords later in your title.
   Don’t just keyword stuff your title - it also needs to have a bit of “filler” in it.
   So, using WebCare’s home page as an example.
   
   The title used to be:
   
   WebCare Solutions: Fixed Priced Websites
   
   What are the keywords here?
   
   “webcare”, “webcare solutions”, “websites”, “fixed price” - all pretty irrelevant (and thus low quality traffic) keywords!
   
   What I really want my website to rank highly on is high traffic keywords like “web design” and web site design”.
   
   So, putting Brad’s research into practice, I have now changed the home page title to:
   
   Web Design by WebCare - Creative Web Design Services
   
   This includes the keywords “web design” (which is my best keyword and so it is right at the front of the title) and “web design services”. So there is repetition of the keyword - “web design” as well as an additional keyword phrase “web design services”.
   
   Of course, you also need to ensure that you use the keywords you want to rank highly for throughout the text on that particular page (the earlier the better and the more prominence given to the keyword the better). Have a look at the webcare home page to see how often we use the words “web design” and the different formatting that we have applied to this keyword (particularly bold).
   

SEO Ranking Factors: The SEO Experts Have Their Say!

This is the perennial question - which SEO ranking factors have the most impact on your search engine ranking? Or, to put it another way, where should you focus your efforts?
A great site to help you answer this question is SEOmoz. This site brings together 37 SEO experts and asks each of them to rank (no pun intended) the importance of each of the factors that will affect your search engine ranking (particularly on Google). You can then learn from the combined wisdow of these 37 experts - very cool!

You can find the SEO experts views right here.

Without trying to spoil the surprise….here are the 10 Ten SEO Factors as identified by the SEO experts:

Top 10 Positive Factors

Keyword Use in Title Tag
Anchor Text of Inbound Link
Global Link Popularity of Site
Age of Site
Link Popularity within the Site’…
Topical Relevance of Inbound Lin…
Link Popularity of Site in Topic…
Keyword Use in Body Text
Global Link Popularity of Linkin…
Topical Relationship of Linking …

For more information on search engine optimisation visit webcare at http://www.webcare.com.au

Pay Per Click Advertising - Keyword Driven

Over the last few years, pay per click advertising (PPC) has leapfrogged free search engine listings and banner ads as the preferred method of online advertising. PPC is essentially the process of writing an ad, selecting various keywords, and paying a set amount each time a person clicks on your ad (and gets taken to the page you specify on your website).
The most popular exponent of PPC advertising is Google AdWords. Do a search for something in Google and have a look on the right hand side of the page - those little ads you can see are pay per click ads. This means, the advertiser will pay Google if you click on their ad!
Here’s an example of a typical PPC ad:

Brand name tennis racquets. Wilson. Prince. Head. Yonex.Free can of balls with every sale.www.tennisracquets.com.au

The sort of keywords you would use for this ad could be “tennis racquets”, “tennis racquet”, “cheap racquet”, “wilson racquet”, “cheap prince racquet”, “racquet Australia”.

The most popular (and still the best, despite its imitators), is Google Adwords. You can set up an account and create an ad campaign in about 15 minutes, and be generating traffic to your website within minutes of the campaign launching. Each click will cost you a minimum of AUD$0.05, but you could pay AUD$15 for a very popular key word!

You decide whether to pay more than the minimum to increase the ranking of your ad. Depending on how competitive each individual key word is, you could be anywhere from No 1 to No 100!
Obviously, if you are out of the top 10, the chances of your ad being seen will diminish quite rapidly. But, don’t feel you have to pay a ridiculous amount of money to be no 1. It is not worth it. For a whole lot of reasons, the optimal position is between 3 and 7.

here is a whole science involved in Google Adwords. Many people have written ebooks about how to maximize your advertising dollar by getting the best return from Google. The best Google guru around is the fabulous Perry Marshall. I was lucky enough to see him live at the X10 Seminar and the guy is brilliant!

y the way, I have recently received his Advanced Google course with Dan Crowther – and it really is awesome: filled with sophisticated tips and tricks to take your Google campaign to the next level.

For more information on search engine optimisation and pay per click (PPC) , visit webcare at http://www.webcare.com.au