SEO Tips
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on March 8, 2010
Wordpress is such a great tool for blogging and building websites alike. But do you sometimes get tired of reading the same old SEO tips for Wordpress? Yeah. Well I do too! This time I’m going to tell you about a couple of tips you won’t likely hear anywhere else. To be honest with you, I learned both of these shortly after I had already started blogging here. Which kinda sucked because it usually takes a lot more work to fix up your website after you’ve created a handful of blog posts.
These two search engine optimization tips are for making the most out of your permalinks in Wordpress. However, theoretically they can also be applied to other blogging platforms and content management systems. I figured both of them out by carefully studying what some of the most well-known SEOs were doing. Then tested them out for myself. I didn’t read them in how-tos, on any blogs, or in any books. It seems as if these are some the trade secrets you’re not supposed to disclose. I don’t know. But it did surprised me to see only the best of the best were doing it. Regardless, here are two awesome ways to use more effective permalinks in Wordpress – for the search engines, and of course, your users.
SEO Tip #1 – Change Default Permalinks
Now I know you’ve probably heard this one before, but I bet you weren’t told to use a Custom Structure, and you’ve probably never been told to set it like this: /%postname%.
You’ll will find your permalink settings under Settings >> Permalinks >> Custom Settings.
So what does that do?
It changes the default url structure of your posts to something like this:
http://www.nameofblog.com/name-of-post
Which has a few major advantages:
- Makes the URL easier to read by the search robots
- Makes it easier to read in the search engine results page
- Gives more weight to the words in the URL
You’ll likely notice most people optimize the permalinks in thier Wordpress blogs to look something like this:
http://www.nameofblog.com/year/month/day/name-of-post/
Compare that to our optimized URL:
http://www.nameofblog.com/name-of-post
Do you see how far away your keywords are from the root domain in the former? Can you see how unnecessary the directory structure and the date is? That doesn’t tell us or the search engine robots anything important about the post, and it also doesn’t include any helpful keywords. It’s really a waste!
Typically search engines give the greatest weight to the most prominent words in the URL, and considers each word slightly less important the further it is from the beginning.
Now let’s take it even a step further.
Do you ever optimize individual post URLs? Most people don’t. But with all else being equal, don’t you want to find an easy way to get a leg up on the other guy? Well, that’s what I’m going to show you next.
SEO Tip #2 – Optimize Permalink For Individual Posts
This step is pretty straight forward and is set on individual post pages, as shown below:
This allows you to customize individual blog posts and remove unnecessary words. For example, some times you might have a blog post title that gives you a default URL like this one:
http://www.nameofblog/i-think-these-were-the-best-cars-ever-made
And compare that to our optimized URL:
http://www.nameofblog/best-cars-ever-made
Can you see how many unnecessary words are in the former? Doesn’t the latter look a lot cleaner, giving only the important keywords all of the weight? From my experience, this is a much better way to structure your URLs.
Note: If you decide to go back and update your established blog, just be sure to permanently redirect the old URLs to the new ones using a 301 permanent redirect. That way you make sure the old link-juice gets passed on to the new pages.
Well I hope you’ve appreciated these two SEO tips for Wordpress. Please feel free to leave me a comment or subscribe to my blog if you liked this post!
Thanks!
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on March 2, 2010
Today, on the office Google Webmaster Blog, Google released their SEO report card which aims help Google’s product teams identify potential areas for improvement in Google’s product pages. Previously only released internally, this report card has been released publicly and includes a great deal of SEO related information.
The summary of the subjects covered include:
- Search Result Presentation
- URLs and Redirects
- On-page Optimizations
It’s a PDF doc; about 49 pages worth of interesting details. I encourage you to take a look for yourself, and you might even want to print it out!
http://www.google.com/webmasters/docs/google-seo-report-card.pdf
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on January 11, 2010
When you are ready to build a website for your business there are a a few simple search engine optimization tips you should consider as soon as you purchase your domain name. Implementing a few things correctly, right from the beginning, can slingshot your website into top search rankings within just a few months of launching.
These are my top ten highly effective SEO tips which you can apply to your website for free:
- Choose a short descriptive URL with your primary keywords in it (if possible).
- UPDATED: Only target 1-3 major keywords on each page.
- Separate keywords with hyphens in the url – with the domain name being the exception, preferably.
- Use Keywords in your navigation links where they make sense, however, like always, don’t overuse them.
- Optimize your title tag – a good rule of thumb is up to 70 characters with your most important keywords first. Separate phrases with a “|”.
- Optimize your meta description tag – One or two sentences max; using a keyword variant or two.
- Provide a substantial amount content on each page and use a few keyword variants within the content.
- Install Google Analytics.
- Add a blog to your website and post to it at least once a week – don’t use a separate domain name for your blog, make it a sub-directory or sub-domain and fully integrated into your main site.
- Get links pointed to your website using keywords in the anchor text related to the page they link to – AboutUs.org, DMOZ.org and sending a free press release are a few good ways to start.
Do you have any SEO tips you think should have made it on my top 10 list?
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on December 21, 2009
Well, kinda. SEO is a lot about getting links. In fact, getting a few select links can get a poorly optimized website ranking for just about anything. But getting that caliber of link is nearly impossible unless you’ve got serious connections or you’re filthy stinking rich.
However, this blog is true testimony that a well-optimized website can rank highly in a competitive industry with only a fraction of links, comparatively.
Since I started posting here regularly only a few months back, I have made no major attempts (offering payment) to get it listed in the high-authority, SEO-friendly web directories. Nor have I manually requested links from anyone other than a few free blog directories – most of which use nofollow anyway – so they don’t even count. And yet, this blog still ranks really well in Google for a lot of SEO related search queries.
It doesn’t make much sense for me to spend money or time link-building on this blog right now. I don’t make any money from it; it is just a side project at the moment. A place for me to centralize the tools I use regularly and further my writing skills. If I had time to monetize this website I’d definitely spend a lot more of it adding tools, content, and link-building.
Let’s take a quick look at the on-page factors contributing to why this site ranks so well for related search queries: (I’ll put them in order of importance)
- Domain name contains two primary keywords (and more variants)
- Keyword variants are used in the title tag
- Blog posts and pages stay on theme
- No overuse of keywords throughout internal linking
- Useful out-bound linking to related web pages
- No keywords stuffing
Yes, there are plenty of other changes I have made to the blog template to properly optimize it (and some I still need to do), but the list above covers the most heavily weighted, competitively.
So, is SEO just about getting links? Absolutely not! Links are very important, however because of the rise in information pollution and linking misuse, on-page optimization is gaining its importance again.
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on November 27, 2009
They answer to the best way to structure your URLs may vary a little, however I think most SEOs will recommend something very similar what I recommend.
When structuring your URLs two things to consider are how memorable it will be to the end-user, and how it will be treated by the search engine (including how it will be displayed on the SERP). Other than the root domain name, I think the latter is more important than the former. However that could all change in the future.
For now I’ll discuss the basics on good URL structure, and what works best for the average website.
Here are a few URL structuring tips:
- Keep your URLs short (3-5 words)
- Use descriptive keywords in the URL – where possible.(i.e, domain name, folders and file names)
- Separate each word with a hyphen. Hyphens are better than underscores.(although I don’t recommend using hyphens to separate words in the domain name)
- Don’t use capital letters
Typically it is going to be easier to search engine optimize your static URLs than it is your dynamic ones.
Example of a bad URL:
http://www.example.com/caterogy1/subcategory4/productgroup3.html
Example of a good URL:
http://www.example.com/clothing/mens/dress-shoes.html
Not only does this type of URL structure help with user click-through, it also helps the search engine identify what your web page is about. And now your website’s URL is search engine optimized.
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on September 28, 2009
More specifically, SEO is like a can of Campbell’s Vegetable Beef soup.
Why Campbell’s Vegetable Beef soup? Call me crazy but I love the stuff. I’m not going to lie, I also hate to cook. Actually, I dislike cooking so much I usually eat my soup right out of the can. I know, that’s not really cooking anyway, and how about EWWWW!
If you can, think of the juice as the Internet; you need the juice to make soup, and you need the Internet for SEO.
The vegetables are like SEO best practices. We all know we need our vegetables, just like we know using best practices is the healthiest kind of SEO. Usually we choose to ignore them, that is, until we grow wiser and accept the facts which are essential to our livelihood.
The meat is like gray-hat SEO. Many people choose to stay away from it for fear of the long-term risks; however there are plenty short-term, and even many long-term benefits too. Either way, you have to consider the potential consequences. You could be damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
Last you have the sodium which is about 85% of our daily value and it’s not really that good for us. But it’s also what keeps the soup “fresh”, and that sort of “freshness” is why I get to keep eating my cans of soup. Similarly, there is a ton of content on the web today, but about 85% of the content created is crap. But that crap, is fresh, and to the SE’s that freshness isn’t crap. So as long as there’s crap to compete with, I’ll get to keep my job as an SEO.
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on September 16, 2009
Are you wondering if the Keyword Meta Tag will help with your SEO efforts?
Well Google reportedly doesn’t take note of your Keyword Meta Tag, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use it.
There are many companies out there who say the keyword meta tag is worthless, and to some extent, I agree. However, when you have a more holistic view of SEO you may find there are several benefits to using the keyword tag:
- Helps maintain focus of the page
- Easily identify what the page was previously optimized for when updating it at a later date
- Each consultant working on the page can quickly identify what the page is optimized for
- Used to auto-populate form fields in various time-saving software programs
Here is a list of Meta tags Google does look at.
A Few Tips Regarding the Meta Keyword Tag
- Doesn’t increase ranking in the major search engines
- Should contain the major keywords the page is targeting
What reasons do you have for using or not using this tag?
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on August 28, 2009
You may be wondering if the Description Meta Tag helps with SEO. Well, the answer to that question depends. What is your definition of SEO? Is it just increasing your site’s search engine ranking; or is it increasing your site’s search rankings, visitors, quality of visitors, and conversions? Well if you answered the latter – as you should have – then the answer is yes it does help with search engine optimization!
While having keyword rich descriptions may help with your search engine ranking on some of the smaller search engines, I wouldn’t expect any visible keyword-ranking increase on the larger ones.
However, that doesn’t mean there’s little value in optimizing your meta description tag. Here are a few great reasons to have a good description:
- Telling searchers what the web page is about
- Increase click-through rate
- Increase conversion rate
The description meta tag is found in the head section when viewing the HTML code of your web page, and it can be edited there. However, the most common place it is viewed by humans is on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) right below the title of your page, and this is what you should optimize it for. Here is SEO Rankings on Google’s SERP:
(I just realized I don’t like my description very much and changed it as I wrote this post. 
)
Generally, a good description is written in full sentences, describes what the page is about, and contains variants of the keywords the page is optimized for. The description should be different on each web page. If you can’t update the description on every page, then in some cases it may be better using no description at all, rather than the same description on multiple pages.
If Google doesn’t think your meta description tag if relevant to what the searcher is searching for, but your web page is, they will usually grab a snippet of text from somewhere else on your page and display it on their SERP. While, this is helpful, it’s not nearly as good as having searchers see your personalized attention grabbing meta description.
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on August 24, 2009
The title tag is VERY important for SEO; perhaps the most significant on-page search engine ranking factor.
Just check out this recent survey taken by 72 top SEO experts. According to my experience, and this survey, using keywords in your title tag holds the most significant weight when determining a page’s search engine ranking. Almost as significant – where you place keywords in the tag.
So, as you can see, once you’ve determined which keywords to target, the title tag should be the first place to start optimizing for those keywords. I’ll go into optimizing your title tag shortly.
Where is the title tag found?
Typically, the title tag is one of the first tags found in your page’s source code; it is located in the head section, and will look similar to this:
The title tag is also one of the first tags read by the search engine spiders as they crawl your website. It is used to identify what the page is about, similar to the title of a book.
When a user views your website they will find the page’s title at the very top left-hand corner of your web browser and on the browser tabs. Also, when a user searches for your product or services they will see your page’s title on the search engine results page (SERP), and that will link them directly to the related page on your website.
Google only shows the first 70 characters of the page’s title on the SERP; and I don’t recommend using more than 70 characters in your page’s title either.
How to optimize your title tag
There are 4 important criteria you should consider when optimizing your title tag:
Keyword Prominence – measure of keyword importance indicating how close a keyword is to the beginning of the title.
Keyword Density – measure of the percentage of keywords to the general number of words in the title.
Keyword Frequency – number of times your keyword is used in the title.
Keyword Proximity – how close keywords that make up a key phrase are to each other.
While it is important to understand the four main criteria – in my opinion – and according to the above noted survey; the most significant criteria to focus on is prominence, i.e., how close your keyword is to the beginning of the title. A good rule of thumb is to always put your keyword at the very beginning. If you remember to do this on every page, then you will have already done most, if not all, your necessary title-tag search engine optimization.
Posted by Wesley LeFebvre on July 31, 2009
There are many companies out there who claim they will get you top rankings by submitting your web site to thousands of directories and search engines for little to nothing. While that may help a little, the impact will be minor, and you’ll likely be very disappointed with the results. Here is a list of 5 major components that should be addressed if you want to increase your organic search engine ranking and drive targeted traffic to your website from the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and Bing.
1. Keywords
2. HTML Tags / Code
3. Site Structure / Page Layout
4. Content
5. Website Popularity
1) Keywords
A very important part of this focus area is keyword selection and where you place those keywords on your web pages. In order for your target audience to find your web site on the search engines, your web pages must contain keyword phrases that match the phrases your target audience is typing into search query forms. You can do this using a keyword research tool. One free tool is Google’s keyword research tool. While it is important to focus your content around specific key phrases, it is equally important that you provide unique, valuable content.
Once you have your keywords, it’s now time to start optimizing your pages. Be sure to use your keywords wherever reasonably possible in each of the following components.
2) HTML Tags / Code
- Tags (title, description, h1)
- Attributes (alt, title)
3) Site Structure / Page Layout
- URLs
- Internal linking
- Headings
4) Content
- Be sure to add unique, valuable content to your website, and update it frequently. If frequently updating your website doesn’t make sense for your business, be sure to add a handful of helpful content related to your industry.
5) Website Popularity
- Get Quality Inbound Links
This is just a brief summary of the components to address when optimizing a website. I could never hope to cover every aspect of SEO in one blog post, but if you start with the components outlined here, you will be off to a great start!
Note: I’ll be providing optimization tips for individual components in subsequent blog posts.
