Knows Best

A Discussion of SEO Best Practices

and How to Use Them

Hall Web Services

Who We AreHall Web Serviceswww.hallme.com

10+ Years in Business Over 80 Search Marketing Clients 98% of Customers "Very Satisfied"

Kasi GajtkowskiOrganic Search Specialistkasi@hallme.com

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What We Expect You To Know:

• What "SEO" Means (Search Engine Optimization)

• The importance of having a site that does well in search engines

• What “keywords” are (and you should have some ideas around what the keywords are for your business/website)

What You'll Learn: An overview of what the basic SEO “best practices” for on page SEO elements

How to apply them to a website

What longtail keywords are why they help drive qualified traffic to a site

How Does It Rank?

How Best Practices Work

On Page SEO Optimization(What the heck is that?)

“On page” just refers to the elements, text, and content of a web page.

“On page SEO” means optimizing this information so that it is easier for search engines to find those web pages.

And the important elements are...

Important Elements of a Web Page for SEO

HTML code that provides information about each web page:

•Title Tag

•H1 Headline

•META Description

•META Keywords

•ALT Image Attribute

Source Code of a Web Page

Title Tag

Title TagONE OF THE MOST IMPORANT THINGS A SEARCH

ENGINE LOOKS AT!

• 5 to 12 words in length (or 65 characters)

• Use the keywords that describe the content of that specific page

• Title Tags should be unique for each of the different web pages of your website

BAD TITLE TAG

The title of this web page is: “Home – A WebsiteBuilder Website”

GOOD TITLE TAG

The title of this web page is: “Maui Condos, Vacation Rental Villas, Hawaii Vacations”

GOOD VS. BAD TITLE TAG

H1 TagHere is what it looks like on a web page

(it's a heading):

Maui Vacation Rentals, Condos, Hawaii VacationsExplore all of our glorious vacation rentals, condos, and other properties for

your Hawaiian vacation.

H1 TagThis is the HTML code for a “heading” in the content on a web page

Straight from the horse's (Google's) mouth:“The Google ranking algorithm dictates that if you're using a <h1> tag, then the text in between this

tag must be more important than the content on the rest of the page. Here's a quick example:

<h1>Google sees this text as more important</h1>

<p>... than this text</p>”

• Use the keywords that describe the content of that page – be specific

• Can be similar to the title tag of the page

Bad H1

Good H1

Maui Vacation Rentals, Condos, Hawaii VacationsExplore our beautiful Maui vacation rentals, condos...

Welcome to our Vacation SiteWe specialize in vacations.

META Description Tag

often appears here

META Description TagDescription of the web page

• Used to describe what the web page is about

• Google often uses the description tag as the “snippet” of the web page in the search results

• Important place to use keywords of the page due to the "bolding" that occurs in the visual snippet of the search results:

Bad META Description

Good META Description

Welcome to our vacation website. We specialize in vacations.

Vacation rentals in Maui including condos and vacation villas...

META Keywords TagHidden from web users except when a web page's source

code is viewed.

• It's a tag in the HTML code that contains the keywords of a web page (2 or 3 most important terms)

• Google and other search engines ignore because of previous abuse – Google confirmed that it does not look at this tag when ranking pages.

• Yahoo! does still use it to a very small degree, but Yahoo! Search technology will be replaced by Bing next year.

• I am personally phasing it out due to it's diminished value.

Alt IMG AttributeThe text used to describe an image on a web page

(Not visible to the eye unless you mouse over an image in Internet Explorer or right-click and view “Properties”)

• Text-voice software for visually impaired uses this text

• Search engines can index the alt IMG text that is supplied

• Use 1 or 2 keywords in your alt IMG attribute to help contribute to web page's relevancy for those search words

Bad Alt IMG Attribute

Good Alt IMG Attribute

“Missing”

Maui Vacation Rentals – Aloha Villa

A Few Words on Keywords• Short Tail Vs. Long tail

– 1 or 2 words vs. 3-5 words

• Generic Searches vs. More Specific

– 4-word searches grew 2% in the past year (source: Hitwise Report Feb 24th, 2009)

• Longtail = less visitors but they're more qualified

Maui Condos: Longtail

• Maui vacation condos

• Maui vacation condo rentals

• Maui vacation condos Kihei

• Beachfront Maui vacation condos

Time for a Recap!

Title Tag: - most important element- use 2-3 keywords- unique for each web page

H1 Headline: - “heading” in content- use keywords- can be similar to title tag

META Description: - description of web page- use keywords for web page- will be bold in search results

META Keywords: - contains the keywords targeted on web page- I don't recommend using it (Google doesn't look at it)

ALT Image Attribute: - text description of an image, use keywords- search engines & voice readers can process the text

Longtail Keywords: - 3 to 5 words in length- drives less traffic but the searchers are more qualified

Learn More!

= Free Professional Look at Your Website

• Free Internet Strategy Consultation: http://www.hallme.com/free-internet-strategy-consultation.php

• Web Vision Blog - http://www.hallme.com/blog

• Webinars – http://www.hallme.com/webinars

• Follow Hall on Twitter - @Hall_Web

• Call us! 1-877-425-5932 (HALL-WEB)