Google, PPC, SEO and More

SEO Friendly, Google Happy Spiders

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 19:00:00 -0400

After doing a lot of searching for top positions on google ads, and top of first page placement in the organic listings, I have found some consistent themes within the source code of the sites that are holding these positions. However, I have also come to find something else of interest as well.

First of all are the Header tags, or H1, H2 and H3 tags specifically.

In many cases with top placing ads for common short tail keywords like "internet marketing" and "home based business" and others; the header tags could not even be found in the source code of the landing pages or even within the style sheets (CSS). On the other hand, when the header tags were there, I found the higher placement of these sites came from sites that had header tags in a specific order.

Make sure to use only one H1 header tag per page. Our landing page system uses the H1 tag (like Heading 1) for the page name by default. You can also decide not to use the page name. However, if you do not use it, I would advise that your first words on the page use the H1 tag. The other thing that I found is that there is a hierarchy...

H1 should always be first, and should be followed by H2. H2 can be followed by either H2 or H3, but do not jump directly from an H1 tag to an H3 tag...

Good:
H1
H2
H3

Good:
H1
H2
H2
H3
H2

Bad:
H1
H1

Bad:
H1
H3

Bad:
H2
H3

So, what do we write for our header tags then? Add your keyword phrase and synonyms.

H1 tag: Your Main Keyword Phrase
H2 tag: Synonyms (Other Related Keywords)*
H3 tag: Main Keyword Phrase AND Your Synonyms (Other Related Keywords)

synonym

one of two or more words or expressions of the same language that have the same or nearly the same meaning in some or all senses

*Important: Use the Google Adwords Tool to find related words according to Google. These are related Synonyms according to your main keyword phrase.

Please try to use some common sense here. Google is about relative and commonsensical content. If a person is not getting what they want, it may be because people are trying too hard and writing very specific keyword rich articles that have been very carefully written to include only the main keyword phrase. Google doesn't like that. Think about it! I believe google is looking for the synonyms after the main title keyword because it is more with natural speech and communication. No one talks or writes with such specific focus to one phrase, but splits it up into several common related keyword phrases. Learn this!

This can help Google AdWords identify what your content is about for organic search rankings, but it also helps the quality score bot (spider) understand that your landing page is in fact related to the keywords and phrases you are bidding on and/or using in your page content. I used one of my landing page sites for this example: http://homebasedbusinessccp.com/

Showing keywords grouped by these terms:

This list and quantities show how many times the keywords show up in the page or (optional site).
home based business (14), work from home (6), work at home (5), home based (5), home business (14), business opportunity (9), network marketing (11), small business (8), business opportunities (6), opportunity seekers (5), mlm companies (5), business (20), mlm (44), home (5), opportunity (5), leads (7), international (5), money (5), Miscellaneous keywords (21)

In the google keyword tool, use the left tab "Website content" after you have setup your page with your keywords to check how relevant your keywords are. Enter the URL of your landing page.

Bottom line, make sure you have most of your keywords on your page relating to your main keyword phrase.

What Is Google Really Looking For?

Many sites today use style sheets and div tag ids to make up the architecture of the page. However, I have also found pages that were placing high that were built on the tabulated structure of standard HTML of early sites. The reason sites moved to div tags and css was to help improve slow Internet connection speeds. This is really not an issue today. I have used the tabulated structure for years and get good results on websites that are meant to target a niche market. Our current system uses both of these styles within the same structure.

My thought is that Google knows there are perhaps billions of early structured websites on the Internet, and therefore will not rate a site higher or lower based on the architecture. That would put millions of people out of the game. I also believe Google looks at tabulated structured sites with a little more compassion than newer div/css sites, because the techy gurus out there are continually trying to beat Google, and are in fact what I believe on Google's most watched list. (Or watch out for, be careful of them list.)

Listen, once a person is caught doing a crime, they are typically marked for life, they have a history now. Google is all too aware of these people or these people types. Yes, I am sure they understand that there are plenty of white hat div/css developers, I am just saying that the likelihood of a highly intelligent website developer/guru using older methods to boost their site ranking will most likely use modern methods to do it. I may be wrong.

See Google Webmaster Guidelines for more information

Best Practices for Title and Description Tags

Fri, 31 Dec 2010 19:00:00 -0500

Due to being busy I have never written on this topic in detail like I am going to do here. When I really cared, I would enter my title and descriptions very specifically... and for google. This is about character length and keywords and how they are displayed in google organic listings. Note I said displayed. This article is not focused on keywords as much as on display.

While it is the keywords that make a listing show up in the first place, it is what happens next that is also very important. Someone needs to notice your listing so it gets a click. Right! This is more important at this point than even your landing page because the google visitor is not there yet.

Step 1. Proper keywords and site prep to make your listing show up
Step 2. Proper setup of your title and description content to make someone click
Step 3. A landing page designed to get attention and generate leads

The Title Tag

The title tag is the content printed to the top left of your browser window, found on the browser tab, and more importantly, used by google to display your listing in the organic (left side of the google search engine) listings.

The title tag must be made up with your main keyword for your landing page PAGE. Each page can and should have it's own title tag.

What do you want your title to look like on the google listing? This is your listing, and it is FREE. You own it. You heard me right, you need to look at this as real estate on google, the most powerful piece of real estate in the world, and you can have a piece of it; but it will take time and effort to stake your claim.

There are several purpose types of title tags...

Internet Marketing Business by Steve Nyhof (keyword plus branding)
Internet marketing Business | Looking For Partners Now (keyword plus call to action)
Internet Marketing Business for New Marketers (keyword plus target)
Internet Marketing Business | What You Should Know (keyword plus interest)
Internet Marketing Business (keyword only - best for higher ranking)

None are right or wrong. The title should tell what your landing page is about. All titles here have the keywords in them and should when possible be the first words in the title. Your title tag should be 64 characters or less in length. Using more words does not also mean better click throughs, concentrate on catchy, exciting and interesting titles of any length.

When someone enters your keyword phrase into google, your keywords will be shown in bold. This will get the persons attention.

Internet marketing Business (this specific title only without other words will rank better with google)

In the source code your title look like this... <title>Internet Marketing Business</title>

The Description tag

You would think that if you just get at least your keyword once in the description you will be fine.

Being in the construction industry, I design all new homes for resale when ever possible. Seems kind of silly while drawing a plan to be built for a client that we would care at this time about it's resale value. On average, people move every five years - resale is important.

What does it mean to design for resale? Well, it must be both practical for living as it is attractive. In fact, how the house looks on the outside (curb appeal) may be the deciding factor if someone will be willing to walk through the door. Hmmm. Written well, curb appeal, enter the front door, click to my site. Do you see some similarities here?

If you are just as interested in getting someone through your front door of your "home for sale", as you are in getting someone to click on your listing, you will want to make sure you have an attractive house - I mean description.

An attractive description? What the! Calm down, this can be kind of fun if you spend a few more seconds thinking through what you want to say, and then in how you want to write it. Your description should be written in 150 characters or about 25 words.

This rule is not true to all search engines, nor is the length of the field. Remember, we want to be impressive on google first and so we must use google for our guidelines.

I have never read anything on this before, never really searched for it, but I have been doing this for several years. The length of the google description field is about 92 characters long before the remaining description wraps to the next line. Can we take advantage of this? I think so. You see, I like to place my keywords into my description two time when possible. And I like my keywords to begin on the left when ever possible.

Title and Description 1.
Learn more aboout my Internet Marketing Business
People looking for an Internet Marketing Business are looking to get into an Internet
Business to help them gain financial freedom

Title and Description 2.
Internet Marketing Business for New Marketers
Internet Marketing Business for new Marketers and anyone that is looking to get into an
Internet Marketing Business that will help them gain financial freedom

Which listing has more curb appeal - attracts you more than others? Number 2. without question! All I did was change a few words to say the same thing and got my keyword to wrap and show up as the first bold text on the second line as well.

I want to end this with a thought that fits here. When we grew up each of the brothers owned beautiful cars, GTO's, Grand Prix's, Cutless 442, and others. However, when people would see and comment on our cars they would say that they just somehow look cleaner, sharper, beautiful. Why? Because we always painted the under-body of the car frame and wheel wells black. We always carried black spray paint in our trunks and stayed up on this. You could have the most beautiful finish that sparkles in the sun, but if the under-body was a little tan from the road dirt, it just didn't hold a candle to our cars.

My point. Do everything right, think about everything you are doing. Always be able to have an answer as to why you did or did not do something. Chances are, the extra small what seems to be meaningless details, will in fact be the difference on someone clicking on your listing and not someone else's.

Please leave a comment.

Google Website Optimizer and hubOpus

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 16:21:00 -0400

It was funny how I spent at least two weeks trying to figure out the script that could tell a user to go to landing page A or landing page B. I found quite a bit of information on the subject but realized that most of it was for gurus that know how to hard code and build their own pages. I can do that also, but I wanted to make sure that the guy or gale that doesn't know code could easily run a split test. Many of these references where older and out of date by what I was learning.

I was trying my own things, working through a possible php script or using the .htaccess file. In the mean time I had Google Website Optimizer (GWO) running on one of my sites. I began to wonder why I could not get to the "A" page after making some updates. Several more days passed before it hit me.

What! All this time Google Website Optimizer was doing exactly what I wanted all the time? What I learned was that GWO splits the "A" and "B" pages evenly between visitors. So if Frank is directed to "A", GWO puts a cookie on Franks computer so that if Frank ever goes back to my website, he will automatically be guided to page "A". This is so people do not get confused as to why a page changed.

GWO also only counts one hit to page "A" for Frank, no matter how many times he returns. As the system counts hits and conversions, I can then learn which landing page, page "A" or page "B" is the best performer. Once I am sure that page "A" or "B" is best, I take the looser and delete it, or at least unpublish it and make some notes. Simple.

Then I take page "B" and duplicate it, make a copy. Then make some other simple change that I believe will make it perform better than the last winner. Again, whatever page is the looser, gets removed and the winner gets copied and improved until I have a truly winning landing page which will convert better than any other website or blog.

Of course is doesn't stop there. Why would you stop at only one landing page? With our system, you can make another two pages and split test them, and then another two, and another two, etc.

But why would you stop there? You purchase another domain name based on a new target prospect and begin the process again, and again. From here you can do the math.

Make sure to read the other blog posts for more information related to this exciting way to improve your conversions.

Please leave a comment.

Google, SEO and your Landing Pages

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 19:00:00 -0500

There is one very important feature when selecting your domain name for your new landing page site. Because google wants relevant content, they also give more attention to websites that use a similar domain name or have some of the keywords in the domain name.

Below is an example...

If my targeted buyer is about internet marketing I would want to find a domain name that includes the keywords internet marketing in the name.

Before I would go after that domain name, I would do my research on my targeted buyer and find a number of long-tail keywords (keyword phrases) that will make up a number of landing pages.

Look for keywords with little competition...

internet marketing for beginners
home business and internet marketing
internet marketing business from home

Go to godaddy.com and search for a domain name that is related to these keywords. (Note: If you are planning on using this same domain name for PPC, you cannot have more than 35 characters. In a google ad, the display URL does not need the www or http - therefore the domain name can be entered as shown below - which is 31 characters. 35 characters total including the .us or .com, or .info - be careful)

myinternetmarketingbusiness.com

Now I am ready to setup my landing page site with that domain name. My first landing page should use only one of the keyword phrases from my list. I would focus on that keyword, but make sure that what I write reads well. Put your keywords in your page about 3 to 5 times evenly throughout the page.

Once I have my first page setup and tested, I will make a duplicate of the page (just a click of the mouse) and make just a few changes to the new landing page, maybe remove my reference to the income I make, or change the header, or remove it. Make sure you note the change in a spread sheet on google docs.

Setup my Google Website Optimizer and start your test. Done.

Work on the next landing page

I would then work on my next landing page with my next keyword phrase, until I have made 10 to 20 landing pages, all that fit with the sites domain name. This site will become very SEO friendly and be found in the search engines as well - not only for PPC.

Start Again, Don't Stop Now

The next step is to start another search for new keyword phrases and purchase your next domain name that relates, or has the keywords in the name...

As you can see, if you put only one website together and target a broader audience your site will rarely be seen, or you can use our landing page system that in time can be targeting 10 to 20 main groups (domains) with hundreds of (keyword rich) landing pages - all of which are very relevant to content, and google will love you for your contribution and service to their users.

Please leave a comment.