Technical SEO - More than just tags..

I often find it amusing when I hear some one speak of having completed all their necessary SEO tasks by saying that they've "Done their tags". There is apparently some mis-understanding out here as to what SEO may in fact entail.

Here is a brief, certainly not all inclusive list of things you must keep in mind when considering your total SEO presence and strategy:

• Domain name
• Length of time you've owned the domain
• Was the domain owned before you owned it
• What neighborhood is your domain in
• What neighborhoods are the sites linking to your domain in
  
• How many hops from a search engine data center is your hosting provider (little known indexing factor)
  
• The length of time you have your TTL (Time to Live) set for
  
• What type of web server you're using and its URI re-writing capacities
• The type of coding performed on your pages (Clean code, spaghetti code)
• Speed of your page loads - which now implores you to specify height and width attributes to all your images for faster downloads
  
• Type of CMS (if any) and the types of URI strings it produces
• Do you use session IDs
• Etc.

There are generally considered to be over 200 different contributing factors to the ranking and placement in search results of any given web page, the vast majority of which have little or nothing to do with the Meta tags.

So next time your thinking of having some optimization done, remember that you can't just play "tag" and go. You have to get more technical than that.

Google Showing More Results Per Domain

Google recently updated their algorithm to show more organic results for a given domain. If you are interested in Ten Golden Rules, for example, you are likely to get eight pages listed within the site links beneath the normal search listing, as shown in the image below:
So what can you do to increase the number of links displayed to your domain in Google's search engine results page? One basic approach you can take is to optimize multiple pages for a single search phrase. Your most important phrase should appear on all of your top level pages. In addition, build links to those pages using variations of the phrase as anchor text.

Google Updates Search Results As You Type

Google appears to be slowly rolling out an update that allows results on their search engine results page to change as you begin entering a new search query. Whether or not this feature will make it through beta and roll out to all Google search users is still up in the air, but a representative from Google confirmed to Techcrunch that this is indeed being tested.

So what would this update mean to your current search engine optimization efforts? First off, you may experience fewer click-throughs from a search engine results page if people begin modifying their query. The best thing to do is ensure that if your website is ranking for a particular phrase, it is also ranking for all close variations.

For example, if your website ranks #1 in Google for "search engine marketing company" you will want to ensure you also rank for "search engine marketing companies", "search engine marketing company in..." and "search engine marketing company services".

In order to rank for the variations, make sure there are several variations on the page that is ranking by working them into the body copy. Also, try to build links using all the keyword variations as the anchor text of the links. Even if Google does not roll out this update to everyone, it is still good practice to rank for all the variations of a given phrase.

InternetMarketingClub.org Presents Advanced Search Engine Optimization Strategies

Join Lee Roberts, The Web Doctor® of Merchant Metrix, and Margie Schneider, VP Operations of TenGoldenRules.com as they present “Advanced Search Engine Optimization Strategies”.

This presentation will explain the following topics:

• Benefits for Measuring Article Quality for the Search Engines
• Understanding What Determines Author Authority
• Best Practices for Writing Valuable Articles
• Advanced Tactics for Ensuring Article Readability

Lee Roberts and Margie Schneider will show you how to propel your web pages, with Advanced Search Engine tactics, into Top Search Engine Placements using articles.

This free webinar will take place Wednesday, July 28, 2010 12:30pmEST – 1:30pmEST. To register and for more information please visit: Advanced Search Engine Optimization Strategies