Posted by: David Dittman
November 17, 2007
Issue #284

SEO Tips That Make Sense!

Hello and welcome back to Working IT Out! Today, I’m going to continue talking about usability, but with an SEO twist. Nothing frustrates me more than when I am forced to sacrifice a useful part of a website to accommodate for the new latest great, cure-all SEO trick.

I say no more!

Today, I’m going to show you how to have your SEO cake and eat it too. Here are ten SEO tips you can start using immediately that are both sound SEO practices and great ways to improve the usability of your site.

I will say one thing before I jump in, Google changes constantly. These are ten sound SEO practices. Google, Yahoo, MSN and other search engine crawlers all act differently. These are meant to be timeless changes that can help keep your site both relevant and user friendly. These are not tips that are tailored specifically to Google.

SEO Concept 1: Descriptive Headlines

One easy way to improve the overall reader’s experience and give the search engines a little help is to use descriptive headlines that help clue the reader into what you are trying to show them.

For example, if you are about to talk about SEO, you should mention that in the title.

Now, this appears easy, but is much harder than it first seems.

Headlines are tricky, they should stop the reader and make them compelled to read on. In many cases it’s hard to accommodate SEO and provide an attention grabbing, must read headline.

Here are two examples,

This report will save your life!

Or …

This report is on heart medicine.

Clearly, one is much more compelling than the other and will entice you to read on a bit. However, from a search engine’s perspective the second headline tells me a whole lot more than the first headline.

The solution is a happy medium.

This report on heart medicine will save your life!

Now, don’t get hung up on how you can improve upon my example here, just remember you have two distinct audiences, humans and search bots.

SEO Concept 2: Avoid Duplication

Complete duplication of any piece of your site, whether it’s your META tags or your page title is a mistake in the long run.

Most search engines will frown upon this and make it more difficult to get indexed if your META tags are the exact same throughout your site, specifically your page title.

Duplication on this level seems to be a big issue with Google. They want to know that your pages are different and it will affect your page rank if they are duplicated.

If you are using a content management system or have a blog style site this is usually done for you to a high degree.

It is important to note however, that your page title is not the only thing that shouldn’t be duplicated. The body content is probably more important not to duplicate in its entirety.

The bottom line is, take some time to ensure that each page of your site varies in page title, META description, and content.

SEO Concept 3: Directories

Web Directory Submission has been a popular way to increase SEO and page rank for years. It’s easy and in most cases helps relatively fast.

A big consideration for you and your business should be the relevancy of the directory compared to your site.

Directory is most effective when it’s a relative site that lists you. For example, if I have a site selling plants, I want to be listed in respected botany directories.

Do some research on the directory before you submit and check their page rank. That will clue you in on if this will help you use their strong page rank to increase your own.

Here are a few directories that are safe for most businesses:

Yahoo! Directory

DMOZ

Business.com

Be sure to check the popular trade organizations to see if they have directories you could participate in.

SEO Concept 4: Create a Widget or Two

A widget is simply a useful tool that other sites can download and place on their site. We’ve all seen mortgage calculators, Google search bars and other useful tools that provide users with a service of some kind.

The key is that these widgets all have static links back to the source, i.e. the creator of the widget.

That means if you develop a great widget and other people put it on their site, they are in essence linking to you and every time that widget is used, someone is essentially “clicking” on your link.

SEO Concept 5: Press Releases

Admittedly, this should be used in moderation and probably isn’t for everyone, but it can be an effective tool if used correctly.

You don’t need to send a press release everyday or no one will take you seriously, but couple a press release with a product launch and it could have some great effects.

The key is to find news sources that will syndicate the press release to other sources, such as iGoggle, my.Yahoo.com and other common sites.

SEO Concept 6: Get Bloggers to Help You

Don’t be afraid to get on blogs and forums talking about your site.

The fact is bloggers are people, and people like it when other people think like they do.

Now, I’m NOT talking about scamming people. What I’m saying here is if you sell a great financial newsletter on option trading, you should find likeminded bloggers that are already talking about option trading and join the conversation.

And don’t be afraid to echo their sentiments and play to their egos a bit because if they like you they may mention you later in other blogs.

SEO Concept 7: Affiliate Programs

A good affiliate program can be a great tool.

Now you won’t get direct effects from the affiliate links themselves in most cases. This is simply because most affiliate links are actually done off of your site.

For example, our affiliate program is hosted off of our main site, when an affiliate links to us using their affiliate link, from Google’s perspective, they are linking to your affiliate’s service site, not yours.

That being said, you still get the traffic once the affiliate redirects to you, so you still get a boost in traffic directly proportionate to the amount of traffic affiliates are sending you.

The real win with affiliate programs is that you get people actively promoting you, specifically promoting the selling of your products.

SEO Concept 8: Social Bookmarking

This is another way to get more people to link to your site.

Places like Dig and Technorati can be a great way to drum up some additional traffic to your site.

Once again, if you are using a content management system, there is probably a component you can download that will put “chicklets” at the bottom of an article that allow users to easily submit the article to many popular social bookmarking sites.

A great example would be the chicklets at the bottom of this article … I know it’s a shameless ploy to get you to click on one, but hey can you blame me?

SEO Concept 9: AdWords and Media Buys

This is yet another way to send traffic to your site. Remember that there are other people in your trade that will be looking at what you’re doing, making you more relevant.

I’m going to get a little “conspiracy theory” for a second – (in hushed voice) I think that if you are spending money with Google and using their services, that helps in both page rank and search engine placement. I’m not saying that it’s some kind of huge factor, but I think it helps.

SEO Concept 10: Donate

There are a lot of implications here:

1. If you donate to causes you are doing good. This is a great bonding tool that shows that you are giving back. I always feel better spending money when I know that the corporation is legitimately trying to do good (Or at least convinces me that they are).

Take Paul Newman’s company, Newman’s Own. They have a great PR team that convinces people that, if you are going to buy salad dressing, why not choose us? We’re just as tasty, reasonably priced and we donate huge amounts to charity.

This kind of PR is invaluable for your overall company branding.

2. Many charities will link to you, acting like a directory of sorts. Large charity sites have great page ranks that you could benefit from.

So that about wraps it up for me this week. I hope you found these tips useful. Don’t hesitate to comment or send me an e-mail at the support box with any questions or comments.

Until next time…

Thanks and have a great weekend!

Editor, Working IT Out
THE TOTAL PACKAGE

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1 Comment »

1. Pingback by The Grammar of SEO Titles « The Aware Writer — May 15, 2009 @ 1:44 pm

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