You mean I have to “market” my website?
February 27, 2012 | Shawn Smalley
Yes. That's exactly what I mean. Off-site marketing and promotion is the single biggest thing that can help your site’s rank and traffic. It has mattered since the beginning (and is how the “big guys” got the way they did), but matters even more these days even for a self-built, small website. Since the search engines are focusing less and less on the technical things that used to go into search engine optimization they are using your “online reputation” to figure out who is actually worthy of attention rather than whose site has had the most “tricks” done to it. If they keep hearing about you...
The thing about search engines….
February 20, 2012 | Shawn Smalley
is that they’ve been all over the ‘net and are smart enough to know that they have been fed a particular bit of contents before. If you’re relying too heavily on pre-written content pages then your site won’t rank well because they don’t feel you bring enough new contents to the table. If most of your site’s contents are already available elsewhere then why should they promote your version of it? You have to have mostly unique contents or you won’t stand out. Use should always use pre-written content as what they're intended for....a starting point.
The same thing goes for uniqueness, as...
Summing it up with page titles
February 06, 2012 | Shawn Smalley
Happy Monday everyone! It may seem obvious to summarize your page in the title, but you may not know why it's so important. And that's why I'm here...
A “page title” shows in your browser’s title bar when your site is open, which is where you’ve most likely encountered the page title. However, it’s more than that. The page title is also what search engines turn into the clickable link to your website when you come up as a search result. So before anyone even pulls up your site the title of the page sets a first impression as they read it before seeing any of your site’s other contents. If you...
What’s in a search phrase?
January 30, 2012 | Shawn Smalley
As I said
in the beginning, there's a lot to cover and we're about half-way through. Today, we'll cover why it's important to include your area name since it's usually half of your search phrase.
If you’re looking for a dog groomer you don’t just type “dog groomer” and hit Go – you type “dog groomers in Oklahoma City” so that you only get results you care about. With this in mind the search engines care a bunch about making sure your site is obviously relevant in a specific area. First and foremost you have to mention an area somewhere on your site or you just won’t be a match. Find a way...
