AxtellArt | Web & Graphic Design

Here is the video release of Google Caffeine.

What is Google Caffeine?

Basically, New content will get indexed faster, providing the web with newer, fresher, and more relevant data.
Google can also index more pages, quicker, and with more ‘meta-data’.

Here is a working collection about the key elements to search engine optimization and increasing website search engine ranking. Read on, comment, use and enjoy!

SEO myth, legend, and fact

I’ll start by saying that I don’t believe myself to be an authority on the matter of  Search Engine Optimization, however I have been researching and implementing learned seo strategies for some time now.

Reaching ” first page result findings” can be a daunting, aggravating, and time consuming process.

Hopefully these tips will save you some time and money.

Lets start at the beginning of your website..

Website Domain Name / URL:
Keep it simple. Not everyone knows how to spell your last name.. (trust me! lol) , keep it easy to remember, spell, and stick to .org .com .net domain name extensions if possible. I have recommended having keywords in the name if possible. However, it is said by many that this will barely help your sites ranking so don’t lose sleep over it.

Time: I’ll make sure to mention now, that sites take time to be indexed by google and other major search engines. Don’t expect your site to be found right away, or even reach first page for months, unless you have a niche product or service with little competition out there.

PPC | Pay Per Click: If you have the money for a google advertising plan, then go for it!

These PPC campaigns are an aggressive way to quickly get indexed and gain hits, traffic and decent search engine results.

*For the rest of us that don’t have 500+ a month for advertising..

ORGANIC SEO:

The best, “free”, and most important way to increase your sites visibility among major search engines is to design your site correctly and to google guidelines.

We’ll go over some important “Organic SEO” practices.

Description Tags: Your site should have a good description tag in the head section of your webpage.
This should not be a reiteration of keywords over and over either, but do include your top search phrase.

*make sure description tags for EACH page are UNIQUE, to better tell search engines what that page is about and better assign a ranking.

META-Tags: I’m just gonna say that these barely do anything anymore. Robots today are going to index the content on your site and assign it certain weight whether you include meta-tags or not.
*One of the highest ranking sites I work on has none.

People often think if they cram there keywords in here that it will somehow help. Worry more about having those keywords correctly on your site.

Web page TITLE: I believe the title and description are some of the most important elements.
Make sure not to list words, and run on forever, or include stop words (ie, and, the, for, pro).

*Do include top search phrase in TITLE as well.

HEADER / BODY (top): I’ve seen many websites lose out on seo by not properly designing the top portion of their web page correctly.

**Google is looking to the beginning of your document to not only back-up the title and description from above, but also to know what the particular site is about.

H1 & H2 HEADER TAGS:

The first thing search engines read on your website is super important to the success of your site. Make sure you are using a good flow. Starting with H1 tag; include a well chosen sentence here and Again, input key search phrase or keywords into “smart” sentence, (not a list of words!)
Paragraph text: It is recommended that each of your web pages contain a minimum of 250 words, with a good concentration of key words and key phrases within.

ABOVE THE FOLD:

Having a great banner, image, picture, or flash at the top of page is popular, as web viewers rarely actually read very much at all.
However, try to find some balance. You’ll get the most out of your content if your text and keywords are located closer to the top of the page or “above the fold”.

IMAGES: Great! so you have some great content.. now make sure to put an image (that relates to your text), close to keywords and make sure to use ‘alt’ tag description with image.  *I typically include 3-5 keywords within ‘alt’ tag. *Don’t go too nuts, as search engines and google don’t take nicely to it. ** This ‘alt’ description is actually for the handicapped web browsing and shouldn’t be taken advantage of.

Flash: Isn’t it great! Too bad Google can’t see anything within a flash video component. You’ll get an “Alt” and “Description” to play with, but thats it!
*CSS-3 allows for some really cool animation effects as well.

Lists: Lists are great! They break up text, making it easier to read and skim over, as viewers do. They also are given more weight by search engines. Including your top search phrase and keywords in some lists is always a good idea. Which brings me to..

Named anchor tags: Within a paragraph, find a keyword / phrase or two and link to an other page within your site. These are big.. almost as big as..

BACKLINKS BACKLINKS BACKLINKS: Unfortunately, you can have the greatest site in the world with all the original and informational content in the world, but without having links out there to your site. Your outta luck. You’ll lose to the bad page with a bunch of quality links every time.
Couple problems: in the past people could gain some of these links posting to blogs and etc. – Well, now most blogs and other posting sites do not allow for a ‘good’ link. A rel=”nofollow” tag gets place along with your link. Your then given no credit really for having that link out there. *You may get some real click throughs but thats not what we’re looking for right now.
Having a link out there on LinkedIn, Facebook, Digg, Reddit, and others will help however, as these sites do still allow for these “good links”.

I also have some concern about posting articles as many people do to increase links. I have recently read that if you post an article with a link to your site and the article is first indexed on the ezine site, then when the same content gets indexed on your site, you will actually appear to google as a copier and not the original author. *still not 100% sure about this though but thought I’d mention.

I also recommend that when you create these links to the various pages on your site, that you don’t use the site url as the clickable text, but instead use an other meta-tag / key-word / key-phrase as the link text.

*This is a good example – if your link said www.axtellart.com , that wouldn’t help half as much as your external links reading ‘graphic designer’.. get it?

I’ll try to keep adding to this post and answering any questions, but its a good start.

I also have many great SEO resources and links available on the top of my homepage. Just click the resources tab.