How to guarantee your blog post is ranked in Google

By Jonathan Camp

This article outlines part of the process to ensure that your new blog entry ranks well with the major search engines, including Google, Bing and Yahoo. These are all techniques that if you follow carefully will guarantee that your blog entry get to be viewed by as many people as possible. There are of course many other tools and methods involved to complete this process that all professional search engine optimisation and content management companies will provide to their customers – this highlights some essential basics.

If you follow this process from start to finish for each of your blog entries you will create blog articles that people will want to read and the search engines will want to index. This is partly mechanical (you have to follow these simple steps) and partly humanistic; content is always king. These steps will not rank an article that is not well written, but if you write good articles and blogs and follow these steps you will get good hits to your website. GOOD LUCK.

Quick Tips on Using Keywords – Be seen on Page One of Google

By Jonathan Camp

Let’s start by defining what Keywords are… keywords are those words and expressions that people use within the search engines to find stuff. They are usually looking for either Products or Problems (how to, where do I, what is the, etc.). Taking a step back it’s important to realise what all the major search engines do! Search engines have software programs that reach out into the web space and try to find everything that they think will be interesting to the public when they search – not only interesting – BUT also RELEVANT.

Keywords, as I mentioned, as those words and phrases that people type into the search box to find things – usually products and problems. Now, if your site has those keywords within the site; hopefully within the URL, title tag, first H1 tag, content, etc. (See my article on how to optimise your website for the search engines) then you stand a good chance of being discovered by the search engines and displayed on a search engine results page. Now, which page you’re displayed on is another matter! Consider that there are literally billions of web pages all trying to get to the first page of Google and Bing so that they can be found. A lot of them will be making sure that their keywords are optimised for their content – and as importantly – what people are looking for, so you have to make sure that your website is more optimised for those relevant keywords.

Keyword Optimisation is only one aspect of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). There are about another 20 key factors that affect how your page is ranked within the major search engines, some of these are outlined within the articles on this blog. You must make sure that your keywords are relevant to your content and that your content is unique, these two aspects always score well with the search engines. If you are the originator of content you will always be copied, but you have the originality – and Google likes this.

Quick Tips and Techniques to Top SEO Ranking

By Jonathan Camp

OnPage Search Engine Optimisation relates to those elements that you can do to rank your website within the search engines, by using elements contained ‘within’ your webpages. The on and offpage optimisation techniques form part of the much larger SEO Strategy that all websites should outline in order to rank well within the search engines. Before you start optimising your web pages for keywords and your onpage strategy you should also complete a full competitor analysis to see how your competitors are placing bettter than you with the search engine results pages.

Typical OnPage Search Engine Optimisation tactics

• Homepage Optimization
• Keyword Phrase Optimization
• Fixing the text links
• Image Optimization
• Keyword Research
• Header Tags Optimization
• Title Tag Optimization
• Meta Tag Optimization
• Alt Tag Optimization
• Anchor Tag Optimization
• Meta tags placement
• HTML Sitemap Creation
• XML Sitemap Creation
• Meta Tags Placements
• Suggestions on Content Optimization
• Complete Image Optimization
• Traffic Tracking Codes
• Remove Spam links
• Google Sitemap
• Optimization of textual content of your Home Page and key inner pages with keyword placement within content
• Creation of Internal Linking Network

Quick Tips on getting Ranked on Google – Title Tag

By Jonathan Camp

This article forms part of a series of quick tips for search engine optimisation on this blog. Please also see Quick Tips for OnPage Meta Descriptions and Quick Tips for OnPage Meta Keywords which explain more details about OnPage SEO Techniques for Search Engine Ranking.

The title tag is very important for your web pages and plays an important part of the overall ranking process within Google and BING search engines. The title tag is just one factor involved with OnPage SEO techniques (see other blogs for more details on other OnPage ranking techniques and tips).

The title tag shows on the SERP (search engine results page) when you search for something within Google or any of the other search engines. The title tag is shown as the first line for each result (for Google in blue) and forms the link to the actual website when clicked. It is important to ensure that your title tags are different for each page on your website, and that the title tag accurately describes the content of your page.

It’s important with all content on your website to try to keep a page strictly relevant to a particular topic. If you put too much information on a web page it will be difficult for the search engines to determine the conversation that’s going on and it will create mixed messages – which will not be good for your overall ranking.

Remember that the title tag can only display about 8 words before elipses will show on the line, so make sure that you have your keywords at the start of the text and DO NOT waste the text with the name of your company – if someone wants to find your business they will just type in your company name and this will NOT rely on the title tag. The title tag in combination with the FIRST H1 tag on your page plus your content text are just about the most important factors to consider for OnPage SEO. Content is always king, so make sure that you discuss completely relevant information on your page relating to the title tag.

Don’t add ‘stop words‘ within the title tag either! Stop words are words like; if, but, the, not, etc. these words are not required and are a waste of your title tag (especially when you consider you only have about 8 words). You can try putting keywords in CAPITALS to make them stand out when someone is looking at the search engine results page. If any keywords match the phrase or keywords entered in the search box, then these will be boldend by the search engine – so optimise your keywords for the topic and search phrase – perhaps using the Google Keyword Tool – freely available.

Quick Tips for OnPage SEO META Description

By Jonathan Camp

 The META Description tag is always placed in the HEAD section of your webpage and is not visible on the actual webpage.

All search engines will use this description on the search engine results page (SERP) when someone types in search terms. The description is shown below the link to your webpage – hence it is important to keyword enhance this text. If the search engine cannot find adequate text within the description (keywords, etc.) it will take the first 150 characters from the content of your website – which is not always what you want!

Although the description tag is not so important as the title tag, it is very important to ensure that you have relevant keywords within the description. These keywords (if matched to the search terms) will be automatically emboldened  on the search engine results page – which highlights your website against your competition – so make sure it’s correct for the content on your page. The description tag should be completely relevant to the content / title / H1 tags on your page and as such, should be different for each page.

• Always ensure you complete a full analysis of your website pages and structure
• The Meta Description has become less important to the search engines recently.
• The Meta Description is used within the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) as the main description – but only up to 2 lines (approximately 140 characters).
• Use the Google Keyword Tool to ensure you are using the correct keywords for your web page.
• Try to make sure you create a description that is ONLY 2 lines long and the most important KEYWORDS are at the start of the description
• Leave your COMPANY NAME out or put it at the end of the description – your KEYWORDS should be at the start NOT your company name!
• To code in the HEAD section of each page: <meta name=”description” content=”your description up to about 140 – 150 characters…”>
• If there isn’t a Description Tag the search engine will take the first 140 characters from the start of your content (NOT IDEAL!)
• Try to place the Meta “Description” tag as high as possible in the HTML code (just below the title is ideal).
• You can code accentuated letters in HTML (&eacute; = é).
• Create a description tag that has your KEYWORDS (at the start) and misses out irrelevant words such as “and, in, is, etc.) – BUT make sure it reads well.
• The “Meta Description” tags should be different for each page.
• If the search phrase entered into the search engine is found in the description tag, it will be shown in bold. So it is a good idea to enter keyword phrases that you think people are searching for.
• Make sure that the meta description phrases are relevant to your page CONTENT and Title Tag
• Put some of your special keywords in CAPITALS as this will make them stand out when someone is searching through the SERP (results page). You need to make sure that your entry on the search engine results page is more prominent than your competitors.
• Optimise your page so that your URL, Title, Description Tag and first H1 heading all contain similar keywords in the same order and optimised for your pages content.