Do’s and Dont’s of Meta Tags

February 27th, 2010

Recently I have come across clients who have come in contact with the new SEO editor who is new to Search Engine Marketing.

These newbies are bothering me as they review the homepage meta tag and inform  the client this is not the way to do keyword optimisation. You don’t do this and that, this just leaves the client confused about what has been working and what has not been working with the search engines.

These newbies to the SEO world are simply missing the point in keyword optimisation strategy and simply adding a title tag in the meta tag. This means you are left without a meta description and meta keywords. What google does is use the prominence in the title tag and use the keywords from your body content.

There is no right and wrong way of doing this but your body content must have a good keyword prominence otherwise you will see your page ranking on page 4 instead of page 1. If you have SEO editor please contact them first before any changes are made, he can assist you with ranking report and if you need to adjust the meta tags.

The title if introducing your keyword will prove to be prominent enough but you can only keep a title tag restricted to a limited number of characters.

If google are not penalising website for fully utilising the meta tag description and keywords then use them keep it short so that the google bots will also read the body content for keywords.

Sometimes when you see your listing in Google you see parts of a sentence which contain your keyword and the message is not getting across to your searches  as it is reading from your body content. In my 10 years of experience of being SEO Editor I would take advantage of the Title and Description and write a short neat sentence for both keyword rich content that makes sense google will pick this up and you will have a good title and description in the search engines.

Google does not read the meta keywords but Yahoo Slurp uses the keyword phrases thus assisting with keyword prominence and good ranking in the Yahoo search results.

Please avoid using duplicate Title tags on all your webpages this also may reduce your ranking. Ensure each webpage has a different keyword rich title tag.

admin From Effectiveness to Greatness

Google Penalties for Domain Alias and Redirection Tags

February 27th, 2010

Now you have registered a handful of domain names and possibly all keyword related domains. We have discovered that Google will penalise you for duplicate content if you have all these domains set up as a domain alias or use domain forwarding at the registra. The best way to get around this is to use a 301 redirect which tells  googlebots the domain name has moved. This is the most SEO friendliest approach.

Majority of registras have a redirection facility to simply enter in the forwarding domain tag but after research and finding that Google penalties will apply even if using this facility.  The url redirection is the same as domain name alias which can be classed under duplicate content. A 301 redirect script is the only way to avoid a penalty.  
 
I am going to do my best to explain in simple terms why I keep insisting on about how much this will affect your ranking if using the registra and a domain alias.
 
If you have inbound links pointing to your main www  you may get ranking weight and Pagerank vote to both your www and your www domain redirect. This would divide your ranking weight and Pagerank between two files. Thus losing ranking on your main domain.
Please see your SEO Editor about using a 301 redirect also for http://domain and www.yourdomain.com
With and without the www.  google will pick up as seperate domains.
The scripts I use for 301 redirect

PHP Redirect

<?
Header( “HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently” );
Header( “Location: http://www.new-url.com” );
?>

 

ASP Redirect

<%@ Language=VBScript %>
<%
Response.Status=”301 Moved Permanently”
Response.AddHeader “Location”,”http://www.new-url.com/”
%>

ASP .NET Redirect

<script runat=”server”>
private void Page_Load(object sender, System.EventArgs e)
{
Response.Status = “301 Moved Permanently”;
Response.AddHeader(”Location”,”http://www.new-url.com”);
}
</script>

JSP (Java) Redirect

<%
response.setStatus(301);
response.setHeader( “Location”, “http://www.new-url.com/” );
response.setHeader( “Connection”, “close” );
%>

Redirect Old domain to New domain (htaccess redirect)

Create a .htaccess file with the below code, it will ensure that all your directories and pages of your old domain will get correctly redirected to your new domain.
The .htaccess file needs to be placed in the root directory of your old website (i.e the same directory where your index file is placed)

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=301,L]

Please REPLACE www.newdomain.com in the above code with your actual domain name.

In addition to the redirect I would suggest that you contact every backlinking site to modify their backlink to point to your new website.

Note* This .htaccess method of redirection works ONLY on Linux servers having the Apache Mod-Rewrite moduled enabled.

Redirect to www (htaccess redirect)

Create a .htaccess file with the below code, it will ensure that all requests coming in to domain.com will get redirected to www.domain.com
The .htaccess file needs to be placed in the root directory of your old website (i.e the same directory where your index file is placed)

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
rewritecond %{http_host} ^domain.com [nc]
rewriterule ^(.*)$ http://www.domain.com/$1 [r=301,nc]

Please REPLACE domain.com and www.newdomain.com with your actual domain name.

Note* This .htaccess method of redirection works ONLY on Linux servers having the Apache Mod-Rewrite moduled enabled.

 

admin From Effectiveness to Greatness

May 4th, 2009

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admin From Effectiveness to Greatness

Domain Names

April 6th, 2009

I have just had a big domain name rush and I think its because keywords are so competitive. I have just gone and registered a bunch that I thought would assist me in gaining some valuable search engine ranking.

The domain editundo.com has been unused for about 5 years now. I have been offered money for the domain I think it fits into the equation of a brilliant domain.
1. It is short and sweet
2. Easy to remember
3. I think if someone heard it on a radio or television they would remember.
4. It fits in with my industry as I am always hitting on edit undo in webbased programs.
5. It is a .com which is the most popular extension worlwide and is typed into browsers by default. Don’t get me wrong .com.au is valuable. If you saw a friend on the street if your business was Edit Undo 95% would guess editundo.com.au Only 4% would say editundo.com and 1% would say editundo.net.au.

If you are appealing to an international audience a .com is necessity.

admin From Effectiveness to Greatness

Google Adwords

April 2nd, 2009

I would like to get a small discussion happening on how google adwords has impacted the way you do business. Do you have any success stories in using google?

admin From Effectiveness to Greatness

Traditional and Online Methods

April 1st, 2009

Business Owners now is not the time to abandon your website. The abandoned website is one that has been built and still has the frames instilled from a designer setting up your business 10 years ago or has a animated graphic of flash intro with click here. Believe me I had to revamp a website  just the other day on a resort website. My client had his tariffs dated back in 2006. The only thing that kickstarted him was a visit from a sales rep deploying the new online resort management technology (which was in the high end budget reigns). On the same day another resort I was working with locally on the Sunshine Coast rang me to let me know they are going ahead with the highend budget quotation system. The same guy has been calling and appointment setting with all local resorts here.  After a week or so later with a few tweaks to his website designing an online quote form and implementing keyword optimisation and  advertising online in Google Maps. All under $500.  I was out shopping at Woolies and was delighted to hear his resort has been booked out for the last two weekends.  This only goes to show that it is crucial to the success of your online business to keep your website interactive.  Fresh content is the key to repeat user traffic as well as new visitors.  Innovative ideas, specials, bonuses and create action to phone and not email. Not only will this appeal to your visitors entering your website but Google is monitoring the activity with your site.

admin From Effectiveness to Greatness

Creating Google Map Profiles

April 1st, 2009

Google Map Frenzi.

Setup a business profile with google maps. Create a short paragraph about your business, hours of operation, business address, up to photos.

Your listing will appear in minutes not weeks.
For more information on google map’s please email admin@auwebgroup.com .

If you currently have a google map and not getting what you want or just need to update your profile our reps will point you in the right direction.

We welcome any comments here also.

admin New Google Features