No Title! No Business!

Without exception – everyone who owns a web site should know these three SEO techniques. If not to work on your own web site, at least to make sure that your web designer has completed the most rudimentary, yet most vital elements of your web site.

1. Title
2. Description
3. Keywords

If your web site is missing these three KEY elements the chances of it ever getting minimal attention by search engines is practically ZERO.

Spring 2010: I talked to a man who asked me to look at his web site. He asked me if I could help him get better rankings in the search engines. I told him that I would look at it and get back to him with a quote.

When I looked at the web site – I was SHOCKED!

The web site (which I will not reveal at this time) was apparently built in 2009. 2009! Let me add a small disclaimer at this stage because I do not know yet if the client created it (from one of those DIY packages), or he paid a professional web developer to create the web site for him. Also, the screenshot above is not from his web site but another that I was also asked to look at for a free web site analysis.

Aesthetically, the web site wasn’t bad. If it was a freebie template, it was a simple design. Not necessarily a modern design. It didn’t really ‘pop’, but it wasn’t bad.

The outside visual appeal was simple. A header graphic across the top. The navigation was easy and concise, and the contact information was clearly visible.

However, if I hadn’t been given the web address I never would have found it on the Internet.

This web site is a prime example of one of the three types of web sites on the Internet that I always talk about. [see types of web sites]

This web site would fall under the second category: an advertorial web site that you send people to visit. It is like a big business card with indepth information. A business card only works if I give it to someone. And this web site only works if I tell someone:

1. That it is there, and
2. How to get to it

As I looked through the web site page-to-page, I found numerous ways in which our company could help them.

However, the first major hurdle I saw was that it had NO ‘title’ inside the Title Tag, on any of its pages. As I said before, I was shocked. It had absolutely NO ‘description’ tag and NO ‘keywords’. You could try to market this web site until you were blue in the face, but unless you changed these three things – people would probably just call you “blue boy”.

Unless those three things are changed, or in this case at the very least added to your web site, it’s like a car with four flat tires – you can push and push and push but you’re not going to get very far.

<meta keywords=”insert primary keyword, secondary keyword, one additional keyword </ >

Search Engines have been using ‘keywords’ to index your web site into ‘relevant’ topics since the beginning days of the Internet Boom.

A Brief History

Early web designers, and programmers who were savvy to keyword tags, used this technique to prosper early in the online revolution, shooting their way to the top. Other, less reputable programmers used a technique known today as “keyword spamming”.

Email Spamming

We have all heard of email spamming – the process by which individuals, collect and mass market email offerings to thousands and millions of email addresses unwanted and un-ask for. For a short time a similar technique was used in the keyword meta-tags.

Keyword Spamming

Developers, marketers and programmers of that time, believed that the more words you had in your ‘keyword meta-tag’ the better. They would use hundreds of keywords (many of which were not relevant to the content of that individual web page), and they would even go as far as putting the entire text content in the keyword section.

Search engines collecting data about web sites were getting inundated with lots of (for lack of a better word) garbage text – spam. It was slowing down search results, filling up servers, increasing their bandwidth usage and giving poor or unrelated results.

Relevant Search Results

As search engines became familiar with unsavory programming techniques, they quickly changed the way they seek, store and post results. Relevant search results are results that relate to the specific terms you put into the search engine in order to get a specific result.

Search engines began to vary the amount of ‘keyword’ data it would collect. Google.com even implemented human follow up on web sites as they were getting indexed. It was (and I believe that it still is) kind of a hunt-and-peck system of human verification as new web sites were being discovered, but when a web site was found that was using less than reputable SEO practices it often resulted in either a ‘time-out’ in the infamous “Google Sand Box” (which they still deny exists), a bad ranking (if any) or banishment from the Google database – oooh!

How to format your ‘keywords’ meta-tag properly:

1. Keep them concise
2. Make sure each one relates to the topic of the web page you are using them on
3. Use no more than 3 or 4 keywords or phrases – see example below
4. Choose at least one major keyword or phrase – be specific
5. Choose at least one minor keyword or phrase – be specific
6. Choose a general topic phrase – more general to your topic
   A specific search term might be
   “#search engine optimization” or
   “#seo strategies“;
   “#internet marketing” or
   “#internet marketing services” is a more general category, but still related.

A good keyword meta-tag for a search engine optimization company may look something like this:

<meta keywords=”#search engine optimization, seo strategies, internet marketing services, oklahoma</ >

This short set of keywords is actually crammed full of useful variations. A search engine can put words together like:

• search engine strategies
• seo services
• internet marketing
• internet marketing strategies
• seo oklahoma
• etc…

Although as we mentioned, the first keyword has more weight to the search engines than the last keyword, they can be helpful in almost any of the combination’s that you can think of. So without repeating words, and using strategically chosen words or phrases, you actually increase your marketing ability.

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#Search Engine Optimization:

#SEO, as search engine optimization is a continuing process that must be massaged and tweaked in order to stay up with current trends in the search engines for good search results. It is not a one time deal.

Search Engine Optimization is a long term effect to good online business practices.

Unfortunately, many companies offer services and make them sound like an easy, one-time fix and all your internet worries will be over.

Search engine optimization is one of the most common terms used in (usually after) web site design & developement – and one of the most misunderstood. It is our belief at CIDA Enterprises, Inc. that:

1. Good SEO begins before the first bit of code is ever written for your web site.
2. It should be an intricate part of the entire design process and
3. It is a living, changing organism that must be nurtured and fed continually for the future growth of your business.

“If you don’t have time to do it right the first time – when are you going to have time to do it again?” Or, “why pay twice as much when it should have been done right from the beginning?”

Ask the average internet user: “What is SEO, or search engine optimization?”, and you will get a response similar to this:

“Search engine optimization is getting placed in the top rankings in Google.”

“SEO is putting in meta-tags, and lots of keywords…”

“SEO is link exchanging – if we have lots of links pointing to our site then the search engines will be able to find you quickly.”

Each of the answers in and of themselves may be true – however, they are hardly internet marketing solutions that offer favorable or long-term results when standing on their own.

Wikipedia – the free internet encyclopedia describes “search engine optimization”:

So what is the difference between “#search engine optimization” and “#Internet Marketing“?

SEO is one of the marketing tools available to increase visibility on relevant search engine listings. Internet marketing services are the conglomeration of tools to market your product and/or services throughout your web site.

SEO is just a branch of the root that needs to be optimized. It is at the foundational business plan and overall business marketing schema that SEO must be built in. CIDA Enterprises, Inc. understands this difference and helps you to understand it. Our exceptionally trained consultants begin with business optimization which feeds into the body of the oak tree of the type of business you are trying to build. One of those branches will inevitably be web site optimization – and that stage is where your SEO schema must come into play – otherwise you are just wasting your time and your money on a web design.