Will Blog Comments Improve the SEO of My Website?

Can comments on your blog help you improve the SEO of your website? The short answer is: Yes! When comments are allowed to be posted on your blog, the chance your website will be listed higher on the search engines is greater. Not all blog comments are good comments however, and we’ll discuss how comments can help, but how others can hurt.

Content is the food that feeds the search engine robots. They scan your website and look for those keywords and phrases that help get you good pagerank. Those who comment on your blog often will use keywords in their writings, making your website stronger. The more a keyword is realistically mentioned on your website or blog, the more likely web surfers will find you. We use the word “realistically” because just pasting a keyword over and over again is not a good SEO practice. It should be well-written and flow with the content.

Should I Monitor My Comments?
You should welcome comments by legitimate website visitors or patrons of your small business with open arms. Their keyword and key phrase usage in their posts will only help the SEO of your small business design. However, you should monitor your blog comments. Blog comments can increase SEO ratings to a certain extent, but there are some comments that are just spam. Their job is to post multiple times on blogs with a link to their website in an effort to use your blog comment section to drive traffic to their website, which is more than likely an unsafe or illegitimate website. You will see a lot of these posts on blogs where the comments are not monitored. They often suggest you follow their link for “free software” or online pharmacies. These will do nothing for your rank, but will show legit visitors that your blog is in desperate need of housework. In your comment settings, make it so that you have to approve any post before making it visible for other viewers to see.

What is Nofollow?
Nofollow is a code that is placed within a link. If you saw the code by itself, it would look like this:

rel=”nofollow”
The more commonly known blogging websites will already have nofollow code placed into comment links. Its main purpose is a spam repellent. Spammers will [hopefully] leave your website alone if nofollow is present. Their links won’t work to gain them rankings. When the search engines robots climb through your website or small business blog, they are looking for links. They use links to help determine pageranking. When the nofollow code is in place, the bots will skip over the links, so no spammer can gain good pageranking by placing their link on your comment section. They won’t gain anything from your hard work, thanks to the nofollow code.

categories SEO | | datetime June 1, 2011 6:48 am | comments Comments (0)

The Role of a Meta Tag in Search Engines

Meta tags are a great way to boost the search engine ranking of your website. Know that while they’re not the magical answer that will bring you high website traffic, when you apply meta tags with other SEO techniques, you are helping your chances of good-rankings considerably.

The big question for the not-so-web design-savvy: What are meta tags? The phrase itself sounds confusing and intimidating. However, meta tags are fairly simple to understand, but have been misinterpreted a lot since their debut to the world wide web in the 1990s.

Meta Tag Description
A meta tag is a way to get information into the head of your website. You may be familiar with title tags or headline tags, and meta tags are doing something similar to what your links within your written content do. Meta tags are not visible. They relate information that may not be of interest to your small business website visitors, but still important. You can incorporate a list of keywords that you wouldn’t necessarily want to just slap onto your webpage. Search engines will read it appropriately; clients won’t have to see random words on your website in an attempt to get traffic.

Below is an example of an HTML Meta Tag for a hypothetical website selling flower bouquets:

<HEAD>

<TITLE>Flowers 4 You</TITLE>

<Meta name= “description” content= “Flowers for every occasion.”>

<Meta name= “keywords” content= “flowers, floral bouquets,

flower arrangements, online flower shop”>

</HEAD>

Important Meta Tags you must use:
The Title meta tag is the most important one to help you improve your SEO rankings. This is what people and search engines will see first after they performed a search for what they’re looking for. Make sure to use your keywords when writing a Title tag. Also be sure to work on your description meta tag and write a compelling description that will make people want to click through to see your website.

Not All Meta Tags are Created Equal
There are a lot of “other” meta tag types floating around out there, but know that not all of them are good for the SEO of your small business design. The role of meta tags in search engines are to boost your chances of getting better rankings. Know that using the wrong types of meta tags can do just the opposite, causing search engine bots to skip your website entirely. Stay away from meta tags that deal with scripts or cookies. They’ve been known to do more harm than good.

Remember that meta tags are not the final solution for increasing small business website traffic. Combine them with other reputable SEO techniques to get better webpage ranking and better search engine results.

categories SEO | | datetime May 24, 2011 12:25 pm | comments Comments (0)

Year-Round Holiday Promotions for Your Small Business

It’s always important to make sure you stay ahead of the game regarding your small business. This means taking advantage of every opportunity to boost your sales. Every holiday is a great occasion to promote your product or service. Mother’s Day is quickly coming up on May 8th, 2011. Unlike the big holiday season, these smaller holidays often leave people shopping at the last minute. They’re not thinking about Mother’s Day sales weeks ahead of time. That’s why it’s up to you to promote your Mother’s Day specials early and remind them not to forget Mom, or your website!

Timely promotions as part of your small business design is essential growing your clientele. Want an easy way to endorse your business? Consider the simple art of newsletter design to let those on your email list know what specials your company will have for Mother’s Day shoppers, or any holiday. They are not difficult to create and it’s really efficient at getting your information across to interested parties. What’s the difference between constructing a newsletter as opposed to just creating a newspaper ad or a social networking ad? It’s not that those are bad ideas either, but when you present a newsletter, you can share a lot more information than you can cram into a small, pricey ad space.

Electronic newsletters are great because if you make them yourself, it’s free! You can include everything you want your customers to know about: your promotional deals, your contact information, website link and even coupon codes. There’s no postage needed and no paper wasted. It’s a very smart way to promote small business success.

It cannot be stressed enough that when holidays or events roll around that can bring in revenue, you need to be well-prepared, ahead of time. This doesn’t mean a week before Mother’s Day; if your small business newsletter hits inboxes promoting free shipping, you would probably be too late. Try shooting for the 3-4 week mark. Finding that sweet spot that isn’t too early or late to contact customers can be discouraging, but the payoff is worth it.

Now, just because your newsletter or ad is out there for potential customers to see doesn’t mean you’re in the clear. You need to make sure your website is ready as well. Do this by making sure the promotional material or deals are listed on your homepage. Why else is this important? It not only reassures your newsletter readers that the promotion is valid, if they pass your website information on to other potential clients who didn’t get the newsletter, they’ll want to make sure they’re at the right place.

Every holiday is a reason to celebrate your small business and promote your products or services. Stay on top of upcoming promotions and let your clients know about your specials in a timely manner. If you’re interesting in learning more about newsletter writing, check out a helpful article on how to properly write newsletters for your business without having them sent to SPAM folders.

categories Business, email marketing, Website Content | | datetime April 12, 2011 9:25 am | comments Comments (0)

Black Hat SEO: Not Worth the Risk

Many small business owners run their websites on their own. This means they handle all of the work, including the SEO or “search engine optimization” on their own. There’s a lot of information on the web about SEO techniques to improve website traffic, but know that a lot of the information out there is not helpful and possibly even harmful. We call this: Black Hat SEO.

Link Exchanging
“Hey, put my link on your webpage and I’ll put your link on mine!” This practice of link exchanging was popular for quite a long time, but search engines are wising up. There is nothing wrong with relevant links on your website to lead visitors to other great products and services, but when you make a career out of getting reciprocal link deals, it can mean the end of your small business URL. Search engines know when link exchanging is going on and they are not a fan. This is one of the biggest SEO techniques gone bad; black hat SEO all the way. Yet, some SEO businesses are still trying to sell this tactic to business owners, promising higher page ranks and more business. Don’t fall for it. You don’t need pointless link exchanging with websites. Don’t pay for pointless links to wreck your small business website design; just say no!

Hidden Text
Once again, this trick worked back in the day, but search engines are aware of this black hat SEO practice. This is when you hide links and keywords on your website by having them be the same color as your website’s background. You can also type the list of links and written content in super small font, so it’s not “hidden,” it’s just not readable. It is still considered hidden text and is caught by the search engine bots that crawl around your website. Improve your SEO for your small business website with professional, relevant written content that contain a few keywords in each paragraph. Boost your SEO some more with a well-written blog that contains helpful and interesting content that you can also add a keyword here and there. Those are the text/link practices you want to be using.

The list of Black Hat SEO techniques goes on for miles, but just remember that a legitimate website with fresh content and realistic key wording (not key word ‘stuffing’) will get your website where it needs to go. Black hat practices almost always get you nowhere these days, and in some cases, they will get your website completely banned from search engine results.

These techniques are still being used; some “legitimate” SEO companies are trying to sell these packages to uneducated business folk. Don’t be fooled by these companies promising to help you increase your website traffic, you are throwing your hard earned money away. Remember, to have a successful website, you need fresh, well-written content with relevant keywords placed comfortably within the text. If you have trouble with writing, or simply do not have the time, hire a writer to help you out!

categories SEO, Website Content | | datetime April 5, 2011 9:00 am | comments Comments (0)

A Clean Website with a Clear Focus

You may have a lot to tell visitors that come to your website, but you need to know when enough is enough. Putting too much on your small business website can be distracting to your clients. Learn to focus on the important things that your customers will want to know. With well-designed, organized web pages, you should have plenty of room to say what needs to be said, and it will be appropriately placed.

The most important webpage a small business needs to tend to is the homepage. This is the first thing potential customers see. It needs to be fresh, fast-loading and it needs to be relevant. Slow graphic downloads will send people back to the search engines. If content on the home page is dated and is a few years old, it’s time to add some something new. Make a webpage for archiving if you want to keep old news on your website, but don’t have it showcased on the homepage. Out with the old and in with the new. How often should you be putting fresh content on your website? There really isn’t one right answer. If the year on the article doesn’t match the current year, pitch it.

Blinking, flashy graphics all over your homepage as part of your small business website design is also a bad idea. You would see this type of design a decade ago, but like white eye-liner and slap bracelets, it was a fad. It’s distracting to have little blinking gadgets all over your website, enticing visitors to “click here.” Now, more than ever, clean should be the theme of your website. Clean-looking websites are not only going to be well-organized, they also appear safer than the glitzy, disheveled websites of the past. Website bling (if overused) can give a sort of feel to the website that makes it seem unsafe, juvenile or selling a poor product. If the product or service is good, there is no need to bombard your website with flash, jazz and glitter. Less is more.

When your small business website design is complete, it should easily take your customers to what is important: the product. It should do it quickly, effortlessly and cleanly. It can sometimes be difficult when you’re selling a product that might not be very unique and you want that niche that makes your small business website stand out from the rest. You won’t get first place for adding banners, tickets and animations all over your website; find another way to stomp out your competition. Make sure your website is organized and ready for the 2011 business year.

categories Design, Website Content | | datetime March 29, 2011 9:15 am | comments Comments (0)