Create Great Landing Pages Landing pages are those pages that potential site visitors reach when they click your PPC (or other)advertisement. These pages are usually not connected to your web site in any way. They are not linked through the site map, nor are they linked through the body of your web site. And to ensurethat they’re fully disconnected from all other methods of discovery, landing pages should also not be spidered .

It sounds like a disaster in the making right? It would seem that it would be. But the truth is, these landing pages are designed for two things: first, a landing page is designed specifically to reach a goal conversion when someone clicks your link; second, landing pages are designed as a way for you to keep track of how well your PPC ads draw not just qualified traffic, but converting traffic. If the goal of SEO is to draw more qualified traffic that converts more often than organic traffic, landing pages are your way to monitor whether or not that’s happening. A landing page also gives you an opportunity to create a relationship with a new site visitor who has clicked your link for one specific purpose. You meet that person’s needs, and then you can funnel the user into the remainder of your site to see what else you have available.

There is some debate as to the value of landing pages that don’t link to any other source on the
web site. Some experts think that once you’ve pulled visitors to the landing page, then the more
you engage them, and the more likely they are to return to your site and eventually reach a goal
conversion. That may be true. Using that assumption, there would seem to only be one kind of landing page: the landing page (like the one shown in Figure7-1) associated with a PPC campaign. However, there is a second type of landing page — organic — that’s primarily for users within your own web site who click through a link or advertisement you have created. These pages are designed a little differently than the landing pages used for PPC ads. Essentially, however, these pages require the same efforts during creation and testing that landing pages for PPC ads require.


The landing page shown in Figure7-1 actually does have live links that allow visitors to interact
further with the site. However, notice that the URL for the landing page:
http://www.ftd.com/5970/?campaign_id=google_yellow+rose&KW_ID=p36936100

is different than the URL that appears when the user clicks to another page in the site:

http://www.ftd.com/5970/catalog/category.epl?index_id=occasion_birthday

This is your indication that the page is actually the landing page for a PPC ad. It would appear,
then, that FTD has another way of tracking conversions from that page rather than from other
pages on the site.


One more tidbit about landing pages before going through the list of elements that should be included in such pages. It’s usually a wise idea to create several different landing pages and test them to deter- mine what type of page works best for your PPC ads. It’s even possible you’ll learn that your PPC landing page should be a dynamic one that changes with each visitor who clicks through the link in the PPC ad. This is a determination that you make only through testing.
When you’re creating your landing pages, you want them to be an extension of the PPC ad for which they are designed. For example, if you’re advertising Navajo turquoise jewelry, your landing pageshould first be targeted to the correct market. It will only confuse visitors if they’re expecting Navajo turquoise jewelry for people and they find turquoise jewelry for (or on) dolls. To further extend the concept of understanding your audience, your landing page should also provide what’s promised. If your ad promises Navajo turquoise jewelry and your visitors find anything else, they’re not going to stick around to learn about what is there. Finally, just as you would use a call to action with your PPCadvertisement, you’ll want to also use such a call on your landing page. The purpose of the landing page is to create conversions, and you have to ask for the sale (or other interaction) to receiveit. Keep in mind that your call to action might actually be for the user to sign up for a newsletter, or to participate in a survey. Whatever that call to action is, present it to your visitor on the landing page.

Here are some additional tips to help you design landing pages that convert visitors who click
through your PPC ads:

• Create specific landing pages for each PPC ad. Individual landing pages allow you to tailor the pages to specific audiences, which can increase your chance of conversion.
• Quickly orient the visitor with the purpose of the landing page by using direct and concise headlines. When users click through an ad to your landing page, they must immediately see that the page will help them reach whatever goal they have in mind. If they don’tsee this, they’ll just click back to their search results.
• Don’t overcrowd your landing pages. Too much information, too many graphics, and too many multimedia elements can make it difficult for users to load your landing page. Even if they do load it, they’re likely to become sidetracked by overstimulation. Keep pages clean and include plenty of white space.
• Include everything that visitors need to complete a conversion. That means users should be able to sign up for your newsletter, make a purchase, or fill out a form, all on the landing page. If users have to click much deeper into your site, you may lose them.
• Test, test, test. You’ll hear hat mantra over and over again associated with many different SEO strategies. For landing pages, you may have to test several versions before you find one that works for the ad you’re currently running. Then, when you change the ad, the landing page will need to change, too. It’s an ongoing process that’s never quite finished.

more

Writing Keyword Advertisement Text Before you can even begin to write your keyword advertisement text, you should have a finalized
list — or even multiple finalized lists — of keywords selected. If you’ve used a keyword research worksheet (like the one included in Appendix D), you can easily use this list to group your keywords according to topic. For example, if your keywords include dayspring, spa, aromatherapy,
lavender soap, relaxing herbal wrap, and mud bath, your groups will look something like those
shown in Table7-1.

It’s important that you keep your keywords grouped together, especially because they associate with the different pages of your web site. It’s these words that you’ll be working with as you create your keyword advertisement text. According to research done by major search engine companies, using keywords in your advertisement text can increase your advertisement click-through rates by as much as 50 percent. Keywords are important to your advertisement text, and the right keywords for the advertisement are vitally important.

Another thing to consider before you begin to write your keyword advertisement text is what you hope to accomplish with the text. Do you want visitors to buy something? Do you want them to call your office for more information? Do you want them to sign up for a newsletter or some other service? It’s important to know what you want users to do when they see the advertisement, because you’ll use some form of this in a call to actionin the advertisement.

It helps if you clearly write down several different sentences that express what you want the visitors to do. You don’t have to worry about writing the sentences in short form right now. Just get the ideas down on paper. You can whittle away unnecessary words as you move forward with writing the text.

Related Keyword Groups

Group 1 Group 2
Dayspring Aromatherapy
Spa Lavender soap
Mud bath Relaxing herbal wrap

One last thing to consider before you begin writing your PPC ad text is what the immediate bene
fits of your product or service are. These, too, will be used in ad text, so take the time to write out several benefits that you might draw from as you’re writing your ad text.

Once the preliminaries are done, you can begin to write your text. This job starts with your audi-
ence. Very often, when someone is writing ad text, they fail to take into consideration the udience they’re trying to reach. Each generation of people communicates differently, so different tones and styles of writing will be needed to reach them.

A good example is the difference between today’s teen generation and the senior generation. If
you’re trying to reach teens with your video editing software, you’ll want to write your advertisement in a language that will catch their eye and be understood. So, if your advertisement includes the call to action, “Show the world you’re an emo!” those teen users will immediately understand it means, “Show the world you’re part of the emotional crowd.” Senior visitors would not get that unless they happen to have grandchildren who have explained that the term emo in teen-speak is a designation for a group of people who openly share their emotions (incidentally, emo can also be a sub-designation for groups like Goths, Punks, and Metal Heads).

On the other hand, if you were trying to reach the seniors, your slogan might be something like,
“Share your precious memories.” To a senior, this says, “Hey, we can help you share your recollections with anyone you want.” To a teen, it says boring!

If you know your audience, you can write ad text that is specifically targeted to the most ualified potential visitors for your site. Sometimes, you’ll want to reach more than one group of people. In this case, you’ll want to write different ads for each group of people. Don’t try to reach everyone with one ad. You won’t. Instead, you’ll come closer to reaching no one at all.

Each PPC program has its own unique requirements for ad text, so take the time to learn the
requirements for the PPC program that you’ve selected. Also, the only PPC programs that rank
advertisements solely on the amount that the ad’s owner bids on placement are with secondary
search engines like Marchex and Kanoodle. Most PPC programs from major search engines use an algorithm that combines the amount paid for each click with the relevance of that ad and how
compelling the position of the ad is to the user. Ad position is everything. For example, Googleranks ads appearing in different places either at the top or side of a page. How relevant and compelling your ad is, combined with the amount that you’re willing to pay per click, will determine where in that placement scheme your ad will land.

The take-away is that if your ad text is well written and performs well, you could potentially pay
less for the ranking you want, or pay the same and achieve a better ranking than you expected.

There are, however, a few ad text requirements that will apply to nearly all PPC programs:

Include keywords in your ad text.As you’ve already seen, ads that contain keywords can perform up to 50 percent better than ads that don’t include them.

Make your offer.Tell potential visitors what you have and why they want it. Just be care ful not to exaggerate claims about the benefits of your products and services. Keep your claims accurate and compelling.

Call visitors to action.Study after study has proven that using a call to action actually does work. Include a call to action in your ad text to motivate the potential visitor to click through the ad to your web site to accomplish whatever it is you want them to do. One word of caution, however. Many PPC programs will not allow, or strongly recommend against, using the phrase, “Click Here Now.” It’s a seriously overused phrase that conveys no motivation at all.

Include keywords.Keywords should be used in both the ad title and in the body of the ad text if possible. Keywords are what make PPC ads relevant and compelling. And when your ads are relevant and compelling, you get far more exposure for a smaller cost per click.

Create a sense of urgency.It’s one of the oldest sales tricks in the book, but it still works amazingly well. Create a sense of urgency in your potential visitors by using words such as “limited availability,” or “expires soon.” Have you ever been told by a salesperson that you’re looking at the last or one of the last items available, whether it’s a car or television or something else? Did you feel a sense of urgency to make the purchase much more quickly than you would have if there were many of that item left? That’s the purpose of creating urgency — it drives the user to take whatever action is your ultimate goal with the advertisement.

Draw clicks, not views.Write your advertisement with the intention of enticing users to click on it. Though you shouldn’t use the phrase “Click Here Now,” that shouldbe the goal of your advertisement. The purpose in PPC advertisement is to draw potential visitors to your site. With that in mind, you should design your PPC ads to draw clicks, not simply impressions.It’s not enough for users to see your advertisement. You won’t build any brand recognition, and users won’t see it now and return to your site later. They’ll view it, forget it, and move on. Be sure that your ads are designed to collect clicks, not eyeballs.

Write your ad long and cut it.Writing your ad long is a copywriting trick that helps in reducing the ad to only the most relevant and enticing ad text. Begin by writing your ad in full sentences, using each of the preceding elements, and then cut those sentences down to only the strongest words that will entice potential visitors to click on them. Look at the ads that already appear in the PPC program that you’ve selected. This will tell you how long your ad should be and what works for others. You can then build on that to create ads that work for you.

Use strong, powerful words.Because you’ll have a very limited amount of space in which to write your ad, be sure that you’re using the most powerful words that you can conjure up. For example, instead of using the word “skilled,” use the word “professional.” And instead of “markdown,” use “discount.” Strong, powerful words convey more meaning and emphasis, and they do it in less space than other words or phrases.

Experiment tirelessly. Experiment endlessly. If your PPC ad is perfect right out of the gate, it will truly be an anomaly. What’s more likely to happen is that you write a PPC ad, it performs okay, and then you try something a little different. That’s how it should be with PPC ads. It akes constant attention and testing to find the right combinations of words, punctuation, keywords, and placement to hit the “sweet spot” in PPC advertising. And even once you do, you’ll likely find yourself having to readjust the ad frequently because of changes in your products or services. Plan a little time (an hour or two) to put into your PPC ad campaign. Only through experimentation and testing can you achieve PPC success.

PPC advertising has plenty of appeal. It’s quick, it’s effective, and it’s nowhere near as expensive
as other types of advertising. But don’t be fooled. PPC advertising isn’t all sunshine and light. It requires work and commitment to find the methods and combinations that work for you. Once
you’ve done that, you have to make the click worth the visitor’s time. And you do that by creating great landing pages.

by:bijesh kawan
Writing Keyword Advertisement Text

more

intro to keyword sucess It would seem that picking out the right keywords and then employing them in keyword advertisements would be an easy enough task. But don’t Ilet the simplicity of the concept fool you. There is much to learn about how to use your keywords effectively to draw traffic to your web site.

One of the biggest mistakes web-site owners or designers make is to assume that once the site is properly tagged and seededwith keywords, their work is finished. It’s not. There’s more to do. You can’t just throw your keywords into PPC advertisements and expect them to do well. There’s a fine science to writing the ad.

Then, when site visitors do see your ad and they click it to go to your site, what’s going to greet them? Your landing pageis as important as the text that you place in your advertisement. And sometimes, choosing the right advertisement text, based on the right keywords, requires some comparison testing.

Keyword advertising is not a simple process. It’s also not a process that you can do once and forget about. To be truly effective, you should be working with your keywords all the time. Only through regular, consistent attention can you increase your keyword success and maximize the return on your keyword investment.

Return on investment(ROI)is a term that you’ll hear frequently associated with keyword advertising (and most other types of advertising and technology, but we’re not interested in those right now). There is more detailed information in Chapter 9 about PPC ROI, but for now you should understand that PPC advertising is getting more and more expensive.

It is by no means as expensive as more traditional methods of advertising have been. If you have a small advertising budget and think that PPC advertising is going to be the best way to maximize it, you could be correct — if you keep up with the maintenance and ongoing efforts that are required for keyword advertising. However, it all starts with your PPC advertisement, so that’s where you must first concentrate on maximizing your return on investment.

more

Anchor text Probably one of the most important elements of keyword use is in anchor text.Anchor text is text found on a given web site that appears to be a hyperlink. Figure6-4 illustrates how anchor text appears on a page.

Chances are, you see anchor text every day. In fact, anchor text has become such a major inclusion on web pages that companies often use it without any thought as to how it could affect their search engine rankings.

How you use anchor text does matter, however, because anchor text is one of the most important search engine ranking factors. When a search engine looks at your web page, it automatically follows all the links that you have on the page. If those links (or even a large portion of those links) are text-based links, that’s even better, because then what the search engine sees is not just the link to another page, but also your keywords. It’s not enough just to make all your links text-based, however. There’s a fine science to taking advantage of the power of anchor text.

The first thing you should understand is that there are two kinds of anchor texts: yours and everyone else’s. I’m not being facetious here. It really is important that you consider not only how you link with other people, but also how they will link back to you. For example, if you do a Google search for the term “click,” you’ll find that the Apple QuickTime web site is at the very top of the list. This isn’t because Apple loded down the QuickTime site with the keyword “click.” What’s actually happened is that many people link to QuickTime using the word “click” in their anchor text. This isn’t hard to believe, because most web sites that use the QuickTime application usually include a text link to “Click here to download” or something similar. As you can see, it’s not just your own anchor text that matters. How your site is included in others’ anchor text is also important.
We’ll come back to how other people link to you. For now, let’s consider how you use anchor text in your web site. As we’ve already established, anchor text is the linked text on your web site. This text can be linked either to other pages within your own web site, or it can be linked to others’ web sites that are relevant to the content of your site. And that’s the real key to how anchor text can be so powerful — the relevance of the link and the words used to create the link.

When a search engine crawls your site, it’s looking at several different factors — the topic of the site as indicated by the words used in the text, the links leading away from the site, and the links leading into the site. Of course, these aren’t the only factors that matter, but they’re among the top-ranking factors, because how these elements are handled determines how user-friendly (and authentic) your site is. So if your site caters to gourmet cooks, the information on your site might include articles about gourmet techniques, gourmet recipes, and links to web sites where site visitors can purchase gourmet ingredients or tools.

When the crawler examines your site, it’s going to see that the topic of the site is gourmet cooking (which will be determined by the keywords you use in the site text). Then it’s going to follow all the links on your site. If those links happen to be text-based links that use your keywords, and they lead to web sites that are relevant to the topic of your site, you’re going to score well with the search engine crawler. The result is that you’ll appear higher in SERPs than you would if you didn’t have relevant keywords in your text and links.

You should use care when creating anchor text links, however. If you use the wrong words, you won’t get nearly the mileage that you need from the links. One mistake some web-site owners make is to create web pages with the anchor text “click here.” That phrase is in no way related to the content of the site, so when a crawler examines the anchor text, it doesn’t see relevant keywords, even if the links are relevant to web sites that are relevant to the content of the site. Think of your anchor text as a chance to showcase the relationships you have with related companies.

What works best is to use as many of the keywords as you can from the list of relevant keywords that you developed during the planning process. Going back to our gourmet cooking example, if you use an anchor text link that reads Gourmet Ingredients and links to a web site that sells gourmet foods, a search engines sees your key phrase (Gourmet Ingredients) and it sees a link that leads to a web site that sells gourmet ingredients. So for the effort of creating that small piece of anchor text, you not only have a valid reason to use your keywords and phrases, but you also have a link that leads to a relevant web site.

So if you’re adding the anchor text for Gourmet Ingredients to your web page, you must add a
piece of HTML like this in each spot where you want the anchor text to appear:

GourmetIngredients

Then, on your web site, what the user sees is shown in Figure6-5.

One more strategy for anchor text that you should consider is varying the anchor text. When you repeat the same anchor text over and over again on a given web page, it begins to lose its effectiveness, and in fact can cause a search engine crawler to rank your site lower in the SERPs. It’s much more effective to use multiple keywords and phrases as anchor text on a web page. This allows you to vary the anchor text, but to maintain a consistency in the keywords and phrases you use.

The other type of anchor text is that which others use to link back to your site. Many times, this
anchor text is overlooked as an SEO strategy; however, it’s one of the most effective types of optimization that you can use. Here’s an example: One savvy marketer on the Internet decided to see how quickly he could make his site rank high in the Google SERPs. So he used anchor text links on his page, and then solicited reciprocal links, based on highly targeted keywords and phrases that were relevant to his site. The result was that within four days, the web site had shot to the number four position in the Google SERPs.

There are two elements to consider in this story. The first is that the web-site owner sought reciprocal links. These are links to your page from another web site, in return for your site linking to them.

The reciprocal links are most effective when they come from sites that are relevant to your web site. But most often, you’ll have to seek the links out. Furthermore, in order to take advantage of all the value of reciprocal links, you also need to ensure that your site is linked to in a certain way. Instead of having another site just link to your main page, it’s most effective to provide a potential linking site with the code that includes the anchor text you want to use.

The second element of the story, to which you should pay special attention, is that the links used
by the webmaster were highly targeted keywords. In order to learn which keywords will be most effective for your site, you should refer to your keyword research. The keywords that are searched for most often, but are as narrowly related to your site as possible, are the keywords that you should consider using in your anchor text. The whole point of anchor text is to optimize your site to gain higher search engine rankings, which in turn brings visitors to your site.

So how often should you use anchor text on a web page? That’s one of those magic numbers that
no one really knows for sure. Different people will tell you different things. Some say no more than two or three times, others say no less than 10 or 12 times. A good rule of thumb is to use anchor text as many times as there is a solid reason to use it. Don’t load your content with anchor text just to have the links, but if you have a relevant link that can be included, don’t skip it just because you’ve used anchor text five other times on the page.

Determining what anchor text is essential and what isn’t is a personal decision. However, if you’re using a good analytics program that tracks the links on your web pages, you should be able to determine which anchor text links are most effective and how using them on a page affects your normal traffic flow. Anchor text is a good way to improve your search engine ranking, but as you’ve seen many times before in this book, your web pages should be designed with the user in mind.

One more note about anchor text before moving on. One of the most effective ways to use anchor text is in dynamic content.Dynamic content is content that changes regularly. Most often, that means blogs. Anchor text is well suited to blogs that change daily or weekly. This is fresh content (which is also a plus for improving your search engine rankings). It gives you an opportunity to change your anchor text regularly. Search engine crawlers get bored, too, and if you can provide them with dynamic content that contains relevant anchor text, those crawlers will look on you with favor.

CAUTION One anchor-text tactic to avoid is Google bombing (or link bombing).Google bombing refers to the methods used by black-hat SEOs to artificially inflate their web-site ranking by connecting an unrelated keyword to a specific web site. For Google bombing to work, more thanone eb-site designer must be willing to participate in a link exchange that will then grow exponentially because of the “apparent” popularity of the site. For example, if in September 2006 a user searched for the phrase “miserable failure,” that user was taken to the George W. Bush web site. A group of web-site designers got together and all of them used the anchor text “miserable failure” to link to Bush’s web site, pushing far more traffic to the site than would otherwise have gone there. Usually, Google bombing is politically related, though it is not exclusively political. And Google bombs aren’t limited to the Google search engine. Any search engine can be affected by Google bombing, which is also sometimes called link bombing.

Header tag content

Another attribute that should be included in web-site design is the header tag.Header tags are the attributes that set up the different levels of headings and subheadings on your web site. There can be as many as six different levels of headings, though most web sites use only about four. The debate about the value of header tags in SEO is a long-standing one. Some feel that header tags have zero value for impressing search engines about the importance of text on a page, whereas others feel that header tags are absolute necessities if you plan to put emphasis on certain keywords in the headings and subheadings of your web site.

The truth probably falls somewhere in between the two points of view. Looking at header tags from a strictly design point of view, you should absolutely include them in your site. Headers tell users what the topic of a page is and what the segments of body text are about. They also give readers an idea of what they should be taking away from the content they’re reading. For example, if you have a web site that contains an article outlining all the medical reasons readers should purchase a new mattress, your level-one header would likely be the title of the article. The level-two headers indicate the main subheadings within the article, and the level-three headers indicate the sub-subheadings. It might look something like this:

Losing Sleep Over Poor Sleep Habits?
Your Mattress Could Keep You Awake
Too Firm?
Too Soft?
Choosing the Right Mattress


That heading hierarchy reads like this:
H1: (Page Topic) Losing Sleep Over Poor Sleep Habits?
H2: (Main Topic) Your Mattress Could Keep You Awake
H3: (Sub Topic) Too Firm?
H3: (Sub Topic) Too Soft?

Headings on a web page behave the same way that headings on a page behave. They denote important information, and best of all, on a web page, they give you an opportunity to use your most important keywords in a contextually appropriate manner. Most specifically, search engine crawlers take into consideration the text within a header tag and how it fits with the body text around it (which is dis- cussed in the next section). Again, looking at the different levels of headings, first-level headings then should contain the most important keywords on your web page, assuming they can be used naturally within the heading.

It’s important to make that distinction — keywords should work in your headings. If they don’t,
avoid using them. It’s okay to include headings that contain no keywords at all. What’s most important is that the headers help readers to easily read the content in which the headings are included.

So if you’re using your most important keywords in level-one headings, lower-level headings (levels two through six) should contain decreasingly important keywords.
Don’t fall for the assumption that because level-one headings contain your most important keywords, you should use them all over your web pages. It doesn’t work that way. Most SEOs and web-design experts will tell you that you shouldn’t use a level-one heading on your web page more than one time. Using it more could cause a search crawler to decide that you’re spamming the search engine, which will result in lowered rankings and might even cause your web site to be delisted from search results entirely.

The heading tags are similar in format to other tags that you’ve examined to this point:

Header 1

Header 2

Header 3

Header 4

Header 5

Header 6

Header tags should be included immediately before the body-text tags of your site, and the text of the header goes in between the opening and closing tags. These are automatically sized headings, though you can change the size of the headings using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).Cascading Style Sheets are a language that allows you to create your web site using a specific style. For example, in some programs you can create a web site using a preset theme. This theme usually contains all of the CSS information needed to ensure that the design of the site — from text to layout — is consis- tent across all pages of the site.

If you’re manually coding your web site (writing the HTML yourself, instead of using predesigned sites from some application like Microsoft FrontPage or Adobe Dreamweaver), you would use CSS to ensure that your site is consistent from page to page. The nice aspect of CSS is that you can change your header sizes to suit your needs.

Unfortunately, some less-than-honest SEOs have determined that CSS can be used to artificially
implant header tags into a web site in a way that doesn’t actually change the size of the text included in the header tag. However, using this method to “fool” search crawlers into seeing more headings than are actually on a page could backfire, leaving you much lower in the rankings than you would prefer to be.

Body text
Body textis that text visible to readers of your site, but not included in a header. When you look at the pages of this book, for example, the text that’s between headings is the body text. It’s the same for web pages.

Although you’ve already used keywords in several places on your web site, body text is another
place where you’ll want to include your keywords when possible. There is no hard-and-fast rule
on the number of times that your keywords should appear on a page, but a good rule of thumb is
that you use them about once every paragraph or two, on the condition that they make sense in
the content of the site.

What many people who are optimizing their sites don’t realize is that all the strategies for SEO can be overdone, including the use of your keywords in the body text of your site. You should use these words regularly in your text, but don’t use them out of context or just as a ploy to improve your search engine standings. If the keywords don’t work in the normal flow of the text on the page, don’t include them. Nonsense will gain you no points at all with search engine crawlers.

Body text should be placed into your web site using the body-text tags: Insert Body
Text. These are not the only body-text tags that you’ll use, however. In addition to the
tags that indicate where your body text begins and ends, there are also tags that indicate special
formatting in text. Those tags are:

Bold
Italics
Strongly Emphasized
Emphasis

New Line in List

Each of these tags indicates special formatting for the word or phrase within the opening and closing tags, and the special emphasis makes a search engine crawler take notice of those words. Therefore, if you can use keywords within those tags, you should try to. But the same rule applies to these formatting options for body text: Only use keywords where appropriate and avoid stuffing keywords into your site simply to improve your search engine rankings. If you use those tactics, it’s likely they will fail.

Making your web site’s body text visible (or readable) to search engine crawlers isn’t all that complicated. Even so, many site designers still struggle with the issue, because there are certain text styles that cannot be indexed by search engines. These styles are often used on web sites in an effort to improve the appearance of the site. Some of the text visibility issues that site designers contend with include:

• Text embedded in JavaScript applications or Macromedia Flash files.
• Text contained in image files (including those with these extensions: jpg, gif, png, bmp).
• Text that is accessible only on a submission form or other portion of the page that requires some action or interaction with the user.

If search engine crawlers can’t see your web-site text, they can’t index that content for visitors to find. So having “seeable” content is essential to ranking well and getting properly indexed. In some cases, you must use a graphic, a special type of formatting like JavaScript or Flash, or even forms that contain text. If you must use these unreadable forms of text, try to optimize your site by using keywords in headings, title tags, URLs, and alt tags on the page. Just remember that you shouldn’t go overboard with embedding keywords into headings, or other tags.

CAUTION
Never try to hide text on your site in an attempt to “fool” search engine crawlers into thinking your site is something it’s not. If you try to include text on your site that’s the same color as the background, or if you use other types of CSS tricks, you run the risk of being detected by search engine crawlers. And even if those crawlers don’t detect your trickery, it’s just a matter of time before some competitor or even one of your users discovers your dishonesty and reports your actions.
Writing well for search engines is both an art and a science, and is covered in more depth in Chapter 11.

Alt tags
If you use images on your web pages, it’s good practice to include alt tagsfor all those images. Alt
tags are the alternative text that’s displayed on your site while a graphic is loading or if it doesn’t load at all. They also make your site more accessible to visually impaired people who might be using text readers. And these tags are another place where you might want to include your keywords to help boost keyword frequency and improve search engine rankings. Even if your site is already content rich and that content is tagged for optimization, alt tags allow you to reinforce your most important keywords within the context of the site content.

There is a lot of debate over how valuable alt tags actually are in search engine optimization. They have been drastically abused by some web designers who fill the alt tags with streams of keywords rather than accurate descriptions of the images they are meant to represent. But they are required for standards-based HTML web sites, and can play a small role in helping to improve your search

engine rankings. What’s more, alt tags should be used for every image on your site (even if they have no SEO value), because seeing what the image descriptions are helps those users who might have difficulty loading your site.

An example of an alt tag might be the description of a picture of the Mona Lisa on your web site.
Your alt tag, then, should look like this:
Alt=”Mona Lisa”




The image code breaks down like this:
: The alternative text that’s displayed when the image is not.

One more note about alt tags: To be really effective, these tags should be used for every single image on your web site. That could become an arduous task if your site hasn’t been properly coded to start with (and depending on the number of images that you have on your site). However, the addition of these tags should be advantageous to your SEO efforts as long as you don’t overstep the unspokenboundaries of alt tags.

Alt tags in graphic links
To this point, you’ve heard that alternative text for graphics (or graphic links) should always be
included in your web pages. Now is where you find out the exceptions to that rule. Alternative text, in the form of alt tags, is very useful in circumstances where visitors to your site are using text-only browsers, when those visitors have graphic capabilities turned off on their browser, or when they use screen readers to “read” your web pages to them. And that’s what makes alt tags so important.

However, if your web site features a lot of repetitive images, it might be redundant for you to use the same alt tag over and over again. What’s more, when you’re using graphics (like pictures and clip art) as links, visitors will quickly tire of seeing alt=”hyperlink”. Unless the graphics used
on your page and in your links contain information that is vitally important to your web site, you
can usually use one instance of a descriptive alt tag, and then for each repetitive picture, use an
empty alt tag: alt=””.

If you’re using alternative tags for graphic links, you can differentiate each one by using the web
site address that you’re linking to in the alt tag. However, don’t use web addresses that string on for three or four lines. Instead, use a basic web address (www.basicaddress.com). For example,
Figure6-6 shows what graphic links look like without alt text, and what both graphic links and
graphics look like with alt text.

You should avoid using overly long alt tags, no matter what type of graphic you’re using them with.A good rule is that your alt tag should be no more than one line long, and if you can create effective,shorter tags, it’s that much better.

If an image on your site is strictly text for example, a company logo that is stylized text — one
way to handle it would be to create stylized text using a style sheet to suggest some particular
properties through type face, size, or color. For example, using the CSS rule strongthe code for
your text might look like this:

{ background: #ffc none; color: #060; font-weight: normal; font-
family: “Comic Sans MS”, Western, fantasy; }

The problem with creating stylized text in place of a text-only graphic is that sometimes it just doesn’t work as well. The company logo that was mentioned earlier might be acceptable in a text-only format, but only if the logo was designed that way to start with. If the logo has any graphic element to it at all, even though it is text, changing the display to a non-graphic style would cause you to lose the brand recognition that comes with the logo.



Another problem that you may run into when creating alt tags is bulleted lists that contain decorative (graphic) bullets. One way to handle alt text for bullet images is to write the tag using an asterisk or a dash to indicate each new bullet point like this:
alt=”*”
or
alt=”-“

Your other alternative is to use an alt tag that actually describes the graphic used for the bullet point:
Alt=”black musical note”
Alt tags, whether you’re using them in graphical links or just in place of graphics, are one way for
people who can’t see your images to understand your site. Many times, graphics play a large part in how your site displays. But there are times when the use of alt tags is just redundant, and in those cases, avoiding them is the best option.

URLS and File Names

The URL (Universal Resource Locator) is the literal address of your web site on the Internet. It’s the address that site visitors type into their browser’s address bar to reach you. Or in some cases, it’s the link those users click to find you.

Ideally, your URL should be as descriptive as possible without being long and hard to remember.
So, as you’ve learned, a URL of www.atopkeyword.comis much more effective than a URL of
www.partofyourcompanynameonline.com.

But there is more to a URL than just the base name. For example, your site’s structure probably has several levels of pages and files. So the base URL will then include a path to additional pages and folders. Unfortunately, if you have a site that has hundreds of pages or dynamic content, you could end up with a URL that looks like this:

http://www.yoursite.com/o/ASIN/B00023K9TC/ref=s9_asin_title_11966_p/102-8946296-2020168?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center 1&pf_rd_r=1A562KV3VPEPKDF3Z65D&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=291577501&pfrd_i=507846

There are a couple of problems with that URL. The first is that there’s no way visitors will remember all of it. And the second is that you’ve lost valuable keyword real estate because the URL is an undecipherable collection of letters and numbers.

A better option with your URLs is to try to keep them as short and descriptive as possible. Say that the preceding long URL was one that leads users to a handmade red scallop shell necklace that you have for sale. Rather than creating a long URL that has no meaning at all, you could create a URL for the page featuring the necklace that reads something like this:

http://www.yoursite.com/products/necklace/shells/id=507846_red_scallop

That URL is much shorter, and it’s much more memorable than the longer one. Individuals might still have difficulty remembering the URL, but it’s more likely they will remember it than one that’s full of random letters and numbers. This illustrates the two key bits of advice we’re talking about: URLs should be descriptive without being overly long, and they should give visitors a good idea of what to expect on the page. Using this method of creating URLs for the pages in your web site, you open up the potential for including keywords in your URL, which not only helps as crawlers lookat your site, but also when your URL is posted as a link on other web sites or mailing lists.

Note that you should keep URLs limited to as few dynamic parametersas possible (like the product ID in the example URL). A dynamic parameter is the part of the URL that provides data to a database so the proper records can be retrieved. The product ID or category ID are good examples of dynamic parameters. Another good example might be the pages of a blog. Each page will usually contain one post, or posts for a week or a month. Those pages are most often created using dynamic parameters in the URL to indicate that the information stored in a database is what should be retrieved when a user visits the site.

The URL that you select for your web site and create for your web pages is an important piece of
text. Those URLs can be crawled by search engine crawlers, and they should be easy for visitors to use, to remember, and to understand. These tips, like many of the others covered in the book to this point, are all small parts of SEO. It’s when all of the small parts come together that your SEO efforts bring great strides.

more

pay-per-click-strategies Having the right keywords is far more than just ownership. Once you have them, you have to use them properly to gain any value from them at all. For example, you might know what the hottest keyword on the Internet is, but if you don’t use that keyword on your web site properly, it won’t do you much good at all.

Once you’re developed the perfect list of keywords, what are you supposed to do with them? In previous chapters, you’ve heard a little about the tags, text, and links where you can use your keywords. But it’s not as simple as just throwing a keyword in here and there. You must know where and how to place them on your site properly so that search engines will interpret them
properly and take notice of your web site.

Alt and Other Tags and Attributes

You’ve probably heard the term “alt tags” a time or two. It’s been mentioned more than once in this book. But hearing the term and understanding how it works are two different things.

The first thing you should understand about alt tags is that they’re not really “tags” at all. Rather, the proper name for these is alt attributes.The term “attributes” is used because these are (more accurately) different attributes that enhance the tags you use on your web site. Alt, which stands for alternative, is a specific type of attribute that refers specifically to the alternative text you may see in place of graphics.

Most people who are not professional web designers use the terms “tag” and “attributes” interchange- ably. That’s why you often see alt attributes referred to as alt tags.

Several different tags and attributes are used when placing keywords into the coding of your web site. This chapter covers five of them, but there are far more attributes on a typical web page. For example, although it’s not covered in this chapter, bgcoloris an attribute that’s often used on a web page to specify the background color of the page.

Title tags
Title tags are perhaps the most important SEO tags for any web site, and if you can place your keywords in the beginning of the title tag, that improves the effectiveness of those tags much more. The maximum number of characters allowed by most search engines for title length is 60 to 65 for proper display. However, a few search engines allow fewer or more characters in a title.

Search engine spiders use these title tags as the main source for determining the web-page topic.
Spiders or crawlers examine the title, and the words used in it are then translated into the topic of the page. That’s one reason it’s always best to use your keywords in your page title, and to use
them as close to the beginning of the title as possible. The text included in the title tag is also the text that will appear in SERPs as the linked title on which users will click to access your page.

For example, if you have an informational web site that provides guidelines for choosing retirement funds, and the most important keywords for your web site are “retirement funding” and “retirement income,” then a page title (which is the text used in the title tag) along the lines of “Retirement Funding Options to Increase Income,” is highly relevant to the topic of the site. Spiders will crawl your site, and because the title tag is the first element encountered, the spider will “read” it and then examine your site, as well as the keywords used in other places on your site (which you learn about shortly), to determine how relevant the title is to the content of the site.

That’s why it’s vitally important to target the most critical keywords in the title tag. You may use 20 keywords on your web page, but two or three of those keywords (or even just a single phase) are the most important keywords you’ve selected. These are the keywords that should be used in your title tag.

Another important factor to remember when using title tags in your web-site design is to create a unique title for every page in the site. Make the title as descriptive as possible, and again, use the most important or effective keywords you’ve selected for the page, because the words you use in your title tag will appear in the reverse title bar, or the tab title, of your web browser, as shown in Figure6-1.

Now that you know why you should use a title tag, the question becomes what exactly does a title tag look like, and where do you use it?


The best way to learn where you should place your title tag is to look at the source code for other
web sites. As Figure6-2 shows, the title tag is located within the head tag, along with the meta description tag and the meta keyword tag.

This illustration is taken from the actual source code for a real web site. However, it’s difficult to see exactly how the title tag comes between the opening and closing head tags, so here’s a little more simplistic view:

If you take this code apart line by line, here’s what you have:

: This is the opening head tag.

: This is the title tag, including both the opening and the closing code.

: This is the meta
description tag, where you place a brief description of your site, keywords included.

: This tag is where you’ll list the keywords that you’re using to describe your site. These could be either organic or purchased keywords.

: This is the closing head tag. It indicates that the information in the header of the page
has ended.

It’s important that the title tag appear somewhere within the opening and closing head tags. If the title tag is located in other places in your web-site encoding, it won’t render properly, and you’ll be left with a web site that doesn’t behave the way that you expect it to.

When creating your title tags, remember that the best title tags are those that contain targeted keywords, help develop the brand for the site, and are both concise and attention-grabbing. Usually, the text included between the opening and closing title tags also translates into the linked text that is displayed in search engine rankings. In other words, the title tag provides the first (and sometimes only) impression of your web page. It can either draw in visitors or cause searchers to choose a different search result altogether.

Meta description tags
Meta description tags are also important for every page on your web site. In some search engine
results, the text beneath the linked title (shown in Figure6-3) comes directly from the information included in the meta description tag.


Despite the fact that not all search engines use the description included in the meta description
tags, all of them do readthe description tag. They also use the description included there as one
of the factors considered during the ranking process.

The catch with meta description tags is that they work differently for different search engines. For example, Google gives very little weight to meta descriptions. Instead, the Google search engine looks at the text on a page. And on the SERPs, Google doesn’t display the meta description text either. What does show is the content surrounding the instance of the keyword on your site. Google calls this a snippet.

The Yahoo! search engine, however, does put weight on meta description text, and it uses that text directly under the web site link on SERPs.

So, what does this all mean? First, it means that your meta description tag isn’t the most important piece of coding your web page. However, it also means that you don’t want to skip over the meta description tag, because some search engines actually do use it.

So you should include the meta description tag on each page of your web site using the following
guidelines:

• Different search engines allow different description text lengths. A good rule of thumb is to keep your descriptions to around 200–250 characters. That’s about enough space for one to two descriptive sentences.
• Every page in your web site should include its own, unique meta description tag.
• Meta description tags should include keywords with high levels of importance or effectiveness.
• Meta description text should not be the same as the text included in the title tag.

Like the title tag, the meta description tag belongs inside the section of your web pages. Ordinarily, web-site designers include the meta description tag after the title tag and before the meta keywords tag, but that’s not set in stone. As long as the meta description tag appears between the opening and closing head tags, it will be read by crawlers as it should be.

When creating your meta description tag, this is what it should look like:


For example, the meta description tag that I might use for my personal web site would look like this:


It’s important to note that not everyone agrees on the value of the meta description tag. However, it takes very little time to include this tag (or any of the tags included in this section of the book) in your web-site coding; therefore, including it should be a given. As with many different strategies in SEO, these tags are not a sure thing, and they are not the absolute solution to ensuring that your site ranks well. But they are one more element that could affect your ranking, so including them should be automatic.

more