Google’s Matt Cutts explains a bit of the history, and makes it very clear that Google does not use the keywords meta tag in its web search rankings.  This has been the case for quite some time now, but people continue to put a lot of stock in the keyword tag when the time and energy could be better spent.  Click Here to see Matt talk about this in a Webmaster Central video.  Let us know if you have any questions or thoughts.

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If you are new to the realm of owning or managing a website, it can be a daunting task to begin your SEO.  Where do you start?  Here are some basics for getting the ball rolling:

-Content, content, and content:  Well written content containing your specific keywords is what is ultimately going to get/increase/keep your rankings.  Just don’t go overboard with your keyword placement.

-Title tags, also know as page titles:  This is the first thing a search engine sees when it finds your page, and is what lets them know what the page, or your site is about.  Make sure every page on your site has a unique title whenever possible.

-Relevant backlinks:  Links to your site from other sites is a very important part of any online marketing campaign.  The more relevant the site, and the link, the better it will be for your site.  Avoid link farms at all costs.  The search engines can/will ding you for using them, especially if you suddely have a ton of links to your site in a very short period of time.

That should be good to get you started.  For more on these and other things you can and should be doing, check out our other posts.

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Still have questions about what contributes to your website’s search engine rankings? Here is an article that covers some big factors:  SEO Ranking Factors.  Check it out and let us know if you have any questions!

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We get a lot of questions about how or why you should use social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace to promote your website or business. And some people just don’t recognize yet the potential there is in using sites like these as a marketing tool. Here are some quick tips on what you should be doing, and why.

The first thing to realize is that having an account on these sites isn’t just for getting in touch with old or current friends. Having personal accounts is fine, but set up accounts on the various sites that are strictly for your business.

This is an opportunity for you to set up a free profile in multiple directories that are searched and navigated by thousands upon thousands of people a day. And each social networking site has its own search features and ways of finding or suggesting things or pages of interest to the user. By setting up pages on these sites, you are exposing your business to potentially millions of people that may not otherwise ever find you.

Setting up profiles on social networking sites also provides you with ever important backlinks to your website, from sites with typically very high PRs (Facebook currently has PR of 9 and MySpace has a PR of 8). This can help both your search engine rankings, and your PR.  Things that don’t go hand in hand, contrary to what many people believe.

So, the answer to the question, “why should I use social networking sites to promote my business?” is simple: Free advertising in directories with potential exposure to millions of people around the world, better search engine rankings, and higher PR.  Make sense?  Let us know if you have any questions.

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Lately I have noticed that many people/businesses still don’t understand meta tags, and how to use them effectively to improve their search engine rankings. So I thought I’d post a quick review of the three main tags and their importance.

The Title tag is the first, and most important in the eyes of the search engine spiders.  This is the first thing the spiders see when they get to your site, and is your best opportunity to tell the search engines what the page is about.   The title tag should be brief and contain the main keywords that the specific page contains or is about. And yes, your meta tags should be different for every page

The next meta tag is the Description tag.  This tag isn’t used by the search engines to get keyword or phrase info, but rather it is what is displayed on the search engine results page under the title of the listing (which is your title tag).  So the description tag is important for conversions.  It is what will grab the user and entice them to click on your link.  If you don’t have a description tag, the search engine will grab a chunk of content on its own.  Sometimes this works out ok, but wouldn’t you rather have a say in what is shown?

The third meta tag I will mention here is the Keyword tag, which has become the least important of the meta tags due to a combination of abuse and common sense.  Google and MSN claim to completely ignore the keyword tag, but there is some evidence that Yahoo still uses it as long as the keywords used in it also appear in the content of the page that the tag is found.  So in general it is still a good idea to have the keyword meta tag.  Just make sure you limit the keywords you use for it to the ones that can be found on the page you’re working on.

Some don’ts:
-If you have a newly live site that was built by a company for you, make sure your site doesn’t have that company’s meta tags in.  I have seen sites that have dummy meta tags in the system when it first goes live until the owner replaces them, which isn’t so bad.  On the other hand, I have seen newly live sites with the meta tags of the company that built the site, as if the company would somehow benefit from that.  Aside from being shady, this represents a fundamental misunderstanding of how meta tags work.  And not only will the company that built the site not get credit for the meta tags, but the customer’s site that they are on will be dinged for having completely irrelevant info in their meta tags.

-For the keyword meta tag, don’t use a string of keywords a mile long that includes every keyword on your site and every keyword you’d like to be found under even if it doesn’t appear on your site.  Remember, keep it to a list of the keywords found on the page you are working on.

To get some more info on meta tags, check out one of our earlier posts here: Meta Tags and How They’ve Changed Through the Years. Let us know what you think and if you have any questions.

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Happy Valentine’s and President’s day weekend from the Mobile Penguins team!!!

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Here are some quick tips from GetElastic on how to ensure you earn your potential customers’ trust.  Make sure you answer these questions on your site before the customer has to ask them:

• Quality of the product
• Quality and reliability of your customer service
• Will the item arrive on time?
• Will the product be as described or as appears on screen? Is it the right color or size?
• Will it fit? Is this item true to size?
• What if the product needs to be returned?
• Is this site secure (privacy, credit card information)?
• Is this really the best price?

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Everyone wants to be at the top of Google’s results, but let’s take a look at Google for a moment to see what that actually means.

When you do a search on Google, you type in your search term in the search box and hit “submit”. Then you get the results and some information telling you exactly how many results it has pulled up for you, but most people only care about the first page… some, if not finding exactly what they’re looking for, will search back several pages deep to try to find whatever they are looking for. However, let’s focus on the first page, as that seems to be what most people want to be on.

The very top listings on your results page are contained in a shaded rectangle and there is a light gray label on it letting you know that it is part of Google’s paid search advertising network. This means that someone has paid Google to let their listings be at the top for the search phrases they want to be listed for. At this point you may be thinking that all you need to do is put up a website, give Google some money and you’ll be good to go with lots of traffic and purchases! There is more to it than that, however so please read on.

Paid listings are fantastic for generating traffic right away. However, many of the techniques required for running a good paid listings campaign are also good for natural SEO.

“Natural listings” are those that appear under the paid listing box. They are listed for free by the search engine for being popular and relevant to the search term you entered. You may wonder why anyone would choose to pay for listings when they could get listed for free, but consider that most paid listings are listed in a day or two, while natural results could take a year or more to properly cultivate! Natural listings get more attention from searchers, however, as most searchers know that natural listings are typically more relevant to what they want to find out, and that the website is established and trustworthy.

Really, the best SEO campaigns are those that combine a paid search element with natural SEO efforts. With the two working together, you can get better relevancy to your paid ad campaigns (which, on Google, will lower the cost and increase the traffic conversion of your ads), and your SEO specialist can use the results from the paid campaign to help target the natural efforts. To succeed, a website will need the combined efforts of the owner, the web master and the SEO professional to help guide their efforts.

The natural listings should be the goal of websites that sell just one type of product that never changes. For instance, if you were to specialize in the sale of flowers and seeds all year, you would want to get to the top of the listings for flowers and seeds of various types. However, if you sell random items that you can offer for a very good price, then paid listings will be your friend to help you liquidate inventory more quickly!

People use the paid ad spaces for items that they won’t hang on to for very long, but strive for the natural listings for information and products that will be around for long enough for the search engines to pick them up. Learn to use the tools the search engines (like Google) give you to succeed!

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We have mentioned the importance of establishing your site as an Authority Site in various postings here. Here is an article that discusses this further: Write SEO Copy Like an Authority.  It focuses on the topic of Link Bait, which is the practice of writing good content that makes people want to link to your page or site.  Take a look at the article and let us know your thoughts, or if you have any questions.

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Google has become THE search engine for the majority of web surfers, as well as the focus for online marketing companies world wide.  We thought it would be interesting to take a look back at where it all started.  Click Here to take a look at the history of Google.   Let us know your thoughts on the search engine that has become a staple in so many of our everyday lives.

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