Search Engine Optimization

One thing that the search engines evaluate when they rank your site is the URLs. Search engines prefer clean, concise URLs because they are easier for search engine bots to crawl and humans to read. To make your website’s URLs more search-friendly, follow these 10 tips.

1. Use hyphens instead of underscores

Hyphens are preferable to underscores when you separate words in your URLs because the search engines consider hyphened words individual words. Thus, using hyphens in your URLs will help you rank better for target keyword phrases.

2. Keep your URLs short

Include no more than three to five words in your website’s URLs. If your URLs have more than five words, the search engines will give those words less weight.

3. Use static URLs

Avoid using dynamic URLs with symbols like “?” or “=” and stick with static URLs, which the search engines prefer. Use URL rewrites to change dynamic URLs into readable, static, and search engine-friendly URLs. If your site uses session IDs, which are bad for SEO, you can also use URL rewrites to prevent the session IDs from being presented to the search engines.

4. Use descriptive words instead of numbers to organize your content

Instead of numbers, use descriptive words to identify and organize the content on your site.

5. Include target keywords in your URLs

Include target keywords in your site’s URLs to increase search engine traffic to your site for competitive keyword phrases. An added benefit of including target keywords in your URLs is that it increases the click-through-rate.

6. Avoid using subdomains

Avoid using subdomains because they make your site’s URLs longer and more complex. Furthermore, subdomains are sometimes treated separately from the primary domain, which means that the primary domain’s link and trust value may not get passed on.

7. Use only lowercase letters

Unlike domains, URLs are case-sensitive. As a result, if you use upper case letters in your URLs, your site could suffer duplicate content penalties and lose link juice because most people will link to the lower case version of a URL. If your site currently has URLs with upper case letters, 301 them all to the lowercase versions to prevent confusion.

8. Be descriptive

Make sure that your site’s URLs are as descriptive as possible. People should be able to determine what a particular page’s content is about just by looking at the URL.

9. Don’t include unnecessary folders

If the web content on your site is grouped into a directory structure, the structure will be reflected in your site’s URLs. Since the algorithms of some major search engines give less weight to pages that are several levels down in the directory structure, don’t include unnecessary folders in your directory.

10.  Establish URL guidelines and stick to them

Stick with a single URL format throughout your entire site so that it is easier to navigate and understand.

Optimizing URLs is one of the simplest aspects of SEO, but many people fail to do it and don’t realize what they’re doing wrong. Follow the best practices for URLs above to ensure that your site’s URLs can be easily crawled and indexed by the search engines, as well as understood by users.

Blogging is an effective marketing tool for businesses with an online presence. Blogs cost very little to maintain, and they help you demonstrate your authority, communicate with your customers and prospects in an informal way, and increase leads and sales. To maximize the benefits of your business blog, however, optimizing it for the search engines is a must. After all, what’s the use of plugging away on your company blog if no one is ever going to lay eyes on it? To help your blog rank better on the search engines, follow these 5 SEO tips for better business blogging.

1. Include target keywords in blog post titles

The best titles for business blogs are ones that both grab people’s attention and contain target keywords. The titles of your blog post are among the first things that search bots index when they crawl your site, so including target keywords in your blog post titles will help your site rank better. The closer to the beginning of the titles that the keywords are, the more effective your titles will be.

2. Update the blog on a regular basis

Search engines reward websites with fresh, regularly updated content. If you want to help your website rank better in the search engines, blog on a regular basis. Shorter, more frequent posts are preferable to longer, more infrequent posts. A blog that is static and changes infrequently is less likely to rank well in the search engines. Furthermore, it’s easier to build a devoted audience that will share and promote your blog on social media networks if you refresh your blog content on a frequent basis.

3. Build links to your blog

Search engines judge the value of your site based on how many authority websites link to it, so building links to your blog is a crucial part of your online marketing strategy. The first and most important step in getting people to link to you is writing high quality content that is helpful and packed with value. It’s also worthwhile to link to other good sites often to get their attention and encourage them to link back to you. You can make it easier for people to link to your blog posts by adding social media share buttons and an RSS feed to your blog.

4. Link to earlier posts with keyword anchor text

To maximize the SEO value of your business blog and encourage readers to further explore your content, link to earlier posts using keyword anchor text.

5. Incorporate target keywords into your blog posts and tags

To make your blog easier to find in the search engines, do keyword research to find popular keywords in your niche and then target those keywords in your blog content and post tags. Using relevant keywords throughout your blog will increase the chances of your blog showing up in the search engine results.

If you use WordPress as a content management system for your blog, upload one of the many SEO-friendly WordPress plug-ins to make all of the above tasks easier to achieve. If you use Firefox as your browser, there are several SEO-friendly Firefox extensions that will assist you in optimizing your blog for the search engines.

Last week, we talked about how to write good title tags. Well, right under the title tags that you see in search results, you’ll find snippets of text known as meta description tags. A meta description tag is HTML code inside the <head></head> section of a web page. It is usually placed after the title tag and before the keywords tag.

Meta description tags are no longer given any weight in the ranking algorithms of major search engines, and you’re not obligated to use them. If your website doesn’t have meta description tags, the search engines will automatically generate a snippet of text from your web page to display on their results pages, depending on what the searchers type into the engines. But the more control you have over your search engine listings, the better. Therefore, it’s a good idea to write your own meta description tags.

Writing good meta description tags is important because it tells people what your web pages are about and helps them decide whether or not they should visit your site. If your meta tags don’t describe what is on your website, people will be less likely to click through, even if your page is ranked at the top of the search engine results pages.

Similar to title tags, meta description tags are like advertisements for your website. Meta description tags allow you to display more information about the content of your site that cannot be represented in the title. And whether searchers realize it or not, meta description tags are often what compel them to visit your site. Here are some tips for writing effective meta description tags.

Be Brief, Yet Descriptive

The search engines will display snippets that are up to 165 characters long (spaces included), so keep your meta description tags as brief as possible. Despite their brevity, however, your meta description tags should be informative and represent the content on each page of your site. In fact, every page of your site should have a unique meta description tag.

Include a Call to Action

When you write meta description tags, treat them like ad copy and include calls to action that entice people to click through. By doing so, you’ll be able to drive more traffic to your website.

Incorporate Your Target Keywords

Incorporate your target keywords into your meta description tags to show searchers that your website contains the information they seek. Put the target keywords towards the beginning of the descriptions.

Google bolds keywords in the meta description tag that match a searcher’s queries, so include a few keyword variations whenever possible. Just don’t make the mistake of stuffing your meta description tags with keywords. Make sure the description tags are readable and compelling enough to encourage people to continue reading.

Research the Competition

Look at the meta description tags of the top ranking competitors in your niche to brainstorm what to write for yours. Try to make your meta description tags stand out from those of the competition by mentioning special promotions or including unique calls to action.

A title tag is html coding that is used to sum up the content of a web page in one line. Optimizing your website’s title tags is one of the most important factors in achieving a high search engine ranking. Not only are title tags the first thing that search engine spiders see when they crawl your site, it’s also what searchers first see when they find your website in the search results. Optimizing your title tags can quickly improve your search engine ranking, as well as your website’s click-through rates. Follow these tips to ensure that your title tags are up to par.

Make Every Title Tag on Your Website Unique

Since each page of content on your site is unique, each title tag should also be original. The benefit of having unique title tags is that you can target several different keywords on your website, therefore spreading your reach across the search engines.

Don’t pull a line from a web page’s copy and use the exact same sentence as your title tag. Also, don’t use a web page’s main headline as your title tag. Write a 100% original title tag and make it compelling, not just factual. Use hyphens to separate the different keyword phrases.

Include Your Company’s Name in the Title Tags

It’s a good idea to include your company’s name in your website’s title tags, especially if your company is a well-known brand. That way, people who know of your company and search for your website will be able to find you in the search engines more easily. Even if you don’t have a well-known brand, including your company name in your title tags is advisable because it will help you build your brand and eventually grow it into a well-known one.

Don’t Stuff Title Tags with Keywords

Don’t stuff title tags with keywords because it will make your site look spammy and make your title tags difficult for people to read. You should never use a keyword phrase more than once in a title tag. As a rule of thumb, you should target three to five keywords per page. Just remember to always use your keywords in a way that pulls in traffic.

Make Sure Your Title Tags Are Compelling and Encourage People to Click

Don’t write boring title tags. Take the time to craft compelling title tags that entice people to click through and read more. Your title tags should be relevant to the content on each page. Furthermore, in order to encourage people to click through, you should treat your title tags like advertisements while incorporating the most important keywords towards the beginning of each title tag.

Another effective way to write a title tag is by asking a question because it will make searchers curious to know the answer to your question, which could increase click through rates. You can also increase click through rates by creating a sense of urgency or writing your title tags in a way that makes searchers believe that your website will help them or solve their problems.