Using Keywords To Increase Website Traffic

by Myra Stacey | Feb 9, 2017 | Search Engine Optimization

These days there is a lot of competition on the Internet to get your attention. So, how do you create a website that will get seen by your target audience with so many websites on the Internet targeting the same visitors that you want? One way to increase website traffic on your website vs. your competition is using keywords.

A keyword is nothing more that the word or phrase that people use when they search on the Internet. For example: let’s say you are new to an area and you are looking for a veterinarian to take your pet to. How to you find one? You can ask your neighbor if they have a pet, where they take them. Or you can go to your computer, open up an internet browser and type something like: “veterinarians in + whatever city you live in”.

When you ask a search engine for something specific like veterinarians in your area, they go out and find all the websites that fit those criteria. So now you may be asking yourself, how do I tell the search engines that I am a veterinarian in a specific area?

Well, one of the best ways to do that is using keywords in certain places on your website. Some of the places you will want to have keywords are:

• The page title
• Headlines and subheading
• In the meta description
• In the body copy
• Image alt tags (I’ll have to explain what this is in another article)

The important thing to remember when you are putting keywords into your website is to not go crazy with them. The key is to use your keyword phrases in strategic locations on your web pages but still have the content sound natural to your visitors. For more information on using keywords, you may be interested in reading “How to Write a Blog Post Using Keywords”

Creating a keyword list for your business is probably one of the most important things you can do for your website.

Here are my 3 top reasons to create a website using keywords:

• Search engines use keywords to direct visitors to the correct site based on what they ask to see when they put a word or set of words into the search bar.
• Visitors are more likely to stay on your website if they actually see the keywords on your website.
• If you decide to do any advertising online, your costs will go down while your conversions go up.

Using the right keywords on your website builds a strong foundation for everything else that you do to get traffic to your site.

What Keywords Will Help Increase Website Traffic?

Now the question is “what keywords do I use?” The short answer is to use the keywords that pertain to your business that get the most searches per month but have the least amount of competition. The best way to get this done is to use what is called “long-tail keywords”. Long-tail keywords are keyword phrases that contain between two and five words. Let me try to explain that concept with an example.

I’m going to use “Gardening” as my keyword subject because it is something that I know very little about. Seriously, the only green plants that have a chance around me are made from plastic. So, let’s say that I am going to create a website for a small business whose main focus has to do with gardening. If you go to search Google for the word “gardening” (note that I put the word in quotes), you get 160 MILLION results. Every one of those results is the competition. Not Good!

Okay, if I build that website with only that keyword, my client may never get found and will never use my services again. With that as a result, I’m going to have to narrow things down a bit. The website’s main focus may be gardening, but what if we had a web page on “vegetable gardening”?

If you search “vegetable gardening”, you get just over 3.25 million results. That’s a much smaller number but still a huge amount of competition. Now let’s narrow it down even further. What if we create a web page on “vegetable gardening for beginners”? Now our competition is down to just under 700,000.

Do you see how using a long-tail keyword can get rid of a lot of competition? You will still have a website based on your main focus “gardening” but by using a more specific phrase you get rid of most of your Internet competition.

Remember to use keywords in your content so that your website is more easily found. That being said, don’t go crazy using your keywords to the point where your content doesn’t sound natural.

On Page SEO Checklist

by Myra Stacey | Feb 9, 2017 | Search Engine Optimization

Every business with a website has the potential to get found by more prospects and customers online through search engine optimization (SEO) and inbound marketing. Today I would like to provide you with an on page SEO checklist.

With so much competition online, it’s more important than ever to make sure that your SEO is as good as it can be and the best way to do that is to optimize your content by having a focus keyword that matches what people are searching for online.

In others words, know what words your customers are typing into a search engine and make sure those words get on the page. This increases the likelihood that you will reach those customers.

The Core Components of On-Page SEO

1. Start your title with a keyword – your title tag is the first thing that a search engine sees when it crawls your site, making it the most important on page SEO factor. Titles typically run about 77 characters long, so in general, the closer the keyword is to the beginning, the better off you will be.
2. User friendly URLs – have you ever seen a URL that ended in numbers? That would be an example of a non-user-friendly URL. An example of a good URL would be: http://www.printandwebdesigner.com/our-marketing-services and an example of a bad one would be: http://www.printandwebdesigner.com/p?123
3. Use images – when using images on your web pages, make sure to fill in the alternative text (Alt) tag and try to use your target keyword. It’s the only way the search engines can “see” your image. Images are also great to engage your target audience with and decreasing your bounce rate.
4. Use subheadings – include your focus keyword in at least one subheading and wrap it in an H2 tag.
5. Use keyword early in your content – Your keyword should appear in the first 100–150 words of your page content.
6. Meta description – while it may not help with your SEO rankings, it will help your target audience choose your site over the others on the search engine results page (SERP).
7. Use responsive design – Google started penalizing websites that weren’t mobile friendly in 2015. Besides with so many people using their phones to search with, it just makes sense.
8. Use internal and external links – link to older articles when you publish a new one and link to other people’s content. Keep in mind that the site you link to will reflect on you so make it a good one.
9. Boost your site speed – you have about 4 seconds to get your page loaded before someone clicks off of your site. Be sure to optimize your images to the correct size before putting it on your site. Images that take a long time to load are a good reason to leave your site. You can check your site’s speed using Google’s PageSpeed Insights.

So there you have it. On page SEO is about picking the best keywords to use on your pages and making it clear to search engines that your page revolves around those keywords. On-page SEO is something that you have control over whereas off-page SEO can a bit trickier.

Introduction to Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

by Myra Stacey | Feb 2, 2017 | Search Engine Optimization

What is SEO?

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving your website so that it attracts more visitors from search engines. The goal is to get your website to rank higher in the organic search results so that it is more visible to people who are looking for what you have via the search engines.

So, why is it important for your website to be listed on search engines? On Google alone, there are more than 3 billion searches done every day. Think about that. If your website is not indexed on Google, the number one search engine in America, you are potentially missing out on hundreds of chances for someone to visit your website and potentially buy your products or services. Practicing search engine optimization (SEO) can really improve website’s ranking and help you get found by your potential customers.

The job of a search engine is to provide you with relevant and useful information when you are looking for it. In order to find that information, search engines send out what are known as “spiders” to crawl through the web searching for that content. Those spiders try to figure out what each web page is about and from that data, they create a list of results that are relevant and useful to searches. Then they rank those results based on the popularity and authority of those websites. This ranking is what you see when you look at a search engine results page (SERP).

So, big search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo are constantly indexing hundreds of millions, if not billions, of web pages. How do they know what to show on the SERP when you enter something into the search box? The search engines think about two main areas when deciding what your website is about and how to prioritize it.

1. Content on your website: When indexing pages, the spiders scan every page of your website, looking for clues about what topics your website covers. They also scan your website’s back-end code for certain tags, descriptions, and instructions. For more information on where the spiders look, read “How to Write a Blog Post Using Keywords”
2. Who’s linking to you: As the search engine spiders scan web pages for indexing, they also look for links from other websites. The more inbound links a website has the more authority it has. Basically, every inbound link counts as a vote for that website’s content. Also, each inbound link holds different weight, sometimes called “link juice.” For example, a link from a highly authoritative website like Forbes (forbes.com) will give a website a bigger boost than a link from a small website.

If you were to do the same search query on different search engines, chances are you will see different results. That is because each search engine uses a proprietary algorithm that considers multiple factors in order to determine what results to show in the SERP when a search query is made.

A few factors that a search engine algorithm may consider when deciding what information to show in the SERP include:

• Geographic location of the searcher
• Link quality (reciprocal vs. one-way)
• Web page content (keywords, tags,)
• Historical performance of a listing (clicks, bounce rates, etc.)
• Back end code or HTML of web page
• Link type (social media sharing, link from media outlet, blog, etc.)

When developing an SEO strategy, it is best to split your plan into two buckets: on-page SEO and off-page SEO. On-page SEO covers everything you can control on each specific web page and across your website. Off-page SEO covers all aspects of SEO that happen off your website to get quality inbound links.

Improving Your SEO – Title Tags

by Myra Stacey | Feb 2, 2017 | Search Engine Optimization

Want to improve your SEO? Below is one way you can improve your on page SEO checklist.

Remember playing tag on those summer-time days with neighborhood kids, as a youngster? Sometimes we would tag the closest kid to us, or maybe our best friend. Then there were the times we would tag the person we wanted to notice us. We saw each kid, but we choose the one closest to us, one we knew well, or one that peaked our interest.

That’s exactly how people choose to click on websites after a web search, which is closest (or at the top), one we notice or peaked out interest, or one we already know. Title tags are used for improving your SEO as well as help to make a split second decision by the user.

Title tags are those words that you see at the top of your browser bar inside each tab. They describe what is on the Web page. Ideally, they consist of KEYWORDS. Keywords are the words, and sometimes, phrases in your web content that will be found when Web users type it into their SEARCH ENGINES. An example of a search engine is Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Search engines put great prominence on title tags and we all want to be top-ranking.

So how can you make your title tags to get noticed?

1. The format of a title tag should be:
   First Keyword or Phrase – Second Keyword or Phrase | Site Name or Bran
2. The length of the title tag that can be shown in most browser tabs is about 55 characters. That includes spacing.
3. Title tags are used in many social media platforms, including Facebook.
4. When deciding what to use as a title tag, first think of keywords, then think of how they will influence the reader. Combine the keyword into the influencer. An Influencer is a word that will help the user make a decision. It may or may not be part of the keyword. A person in Raleigh might use SEO Raleigh when looking for someone local to help with his or her SEO.

Here is an example of a Title Tag:

With the growing number of social media platforms, it is important to make sure your title tag contains not only important keywords, but words that will make the reader want to visit your site. In search engines, after the 55 character limit, you will get an ellipsis (…). However, longer title tags will work better in the social media arena with more CLICK-THROUGHS. Click-throughs is the action or facility of following a hypertext link to a particular Website.

Here are examples of how a title tag is used on Facebook:

Ready to go play tag?

Now that we have an understanding of title tags, let’s move on to how to create the Title Tags in both WordPress and Joomla!.

How to Create a Title Tag in WordPress:

Title Tags derive from the Site Title. Unless you use an external plugin, the Title Tag is the site name. You can get to the site name with the directions below.

1. Login into the backend of WordPress’
2. Go to Settings>General
3. Look for “Site Title”. Here is where you put your site title or for WordPress, your site name.

My recommendation is to use an external plugin like Yoast. This way, you can customize your title tags.

How to Create A Title Tag in Joomla!:

The Joomla! core files contain everything you need to create and manage your Title Tags.

How to use your site name as your title tag:

1. Go to System> Global Configuration

2. Locate “Site Name” and put your site name there.

3. In the same window, look to the right and locate “SEO Settings.” Under SEO Settings locate “Include Site Name in Page Titles” Here you have a choice of After, Before or None. Choice your preference.

In Joomla! you can customize your Title Tags per each page. We look at the menu item for that page.

Below is how you can customize your Title Tag per page.

1. Go to Menus> and choose the menu that has your page on it.

2. Find the page in which you wish to customize the Title Tag.

3. Locate Page Display. Type your Title Tag here.

Note: Depending on how you set your Global Configuration, is how the Title Tag will appear:

Example

Site name | Title Tag : if you set your Site Name in the “Before” position
Title Tag | Site Name : if you set your Site Name in the “After” position
Title Tag : if you set your Site Name in the “None” position

I hope this gives you a better understanding of title tags and how they can help improve your SEO. Be sure to always includes them in on page SEO checklist.

How to Write a Blog Post Using Keywords

by Myra Stacey | Feb 2, 2017 | Search Engine Optimization

If you know me or have attended one of my speeches or classes, then you know that I am a big believer in writing more content for your website if you want to get more traffic. My main reason for saying that is because the job of the search engines is to crawl websites and index pages by their topic and the only way you can get more web pages in the search engines, is to write more content.

If you want to kick your blog posts up a notch, then you’ll want to include keywords. Keywords are the words that people type into a search engine when they are looking for something. For example: let’s say that I am looking to plant an herb garden, (which I would never do because I kill everything that is supposed to grow in dirt), but let’s say it anyway and I want to know what kind of plants to grow. I would open a search engine like Google and type into the search bar something like: “herb garden plants.” In this example, “herb garden plants” would be the keyword phrase.

Now it’s time for the search engines to go to work and provide yme with some websites because they are responsible for delivering the web pages that are on the topic “herb garden plants.”

It just seems to make sense that if the search engines are responsible for indexing all the content there is on the web as well as provide the web pages for people to see and when people are looking for something, they use “keywords”, then you should always use keywords in your blog posts. How to Write a Blog Post Using Keywords?

Where to use keywords

Even though search engines may scan just about everything on a website, they do give more importance to some words than they do others. For instance, a title would be more important than a heading and a heading would be more important than a word in a paragraph.

So, here are some places you can use keywords in your blog posts that will help your rankings:

• Meta Description – the descriptions below the post’s title on Google’s search results pages.
• Page Title – this is usually your post title.
• Headers – also known as paragraph headings.
• Alternative Tags – provides alternate text when an image is used.
• Anchor Text – the word or words that link to another web page.

Some things to know

If you don’t write your meta description manually, the search engines automatically take the first 150-160 characters of the article. Even though meta descriptions aren’t a factor in Google’s ranking, they do give searchers a summary of what they will get by reading the post. So it may not help with SEO but it could help your click through rate.

When choosing the title of your blog post, keywords are important, but you also want to write your blog post so that it makes sense to your audience. So if the title sounds stupid with the keyword in it, then leave it out. No one wants to read an article with a title that doesn’t make sense.

Paragraph heading are used to give you an idea of what the paragraph is going to be about. They also break up the content so that it is easier to read. They are not to be used as a way to style your content. If you want some part of your text to bigger and bolder than the other part, don’t put that text in a “heading 3” just so it looks good. The rule is that there should only be one “heading 1” per article. You can only use a “heading 4” tag once a “heading 3” has been used and you can only use a “heading 3” once a “heading 2” has been used and so on.

People read a web page differently than they read the printed word. People tend to scan the web page looking for headings, bolded text, and bullet points.

Remember that it takes time for things to start happening. When you first have your website up, you won’t get much traffic going to it. However, the more content you write and put on your site, the more traffic you will get. So don’t fret, you may be the only one reading your blog posts in the beginning but it won’t stay that way forever.

Did you know that Print and Web Designer does keyword research?