High Performance Title Tags for SEO

May 31, 2011 – 10:21 am

A title tag is a shorthand description of the content of a webpage and is one of the key tools in Search Engine Optimization. If you want to improve your SEO rankings in a jiffy, strengthen your title tags. This is what the search engines will look at to understand the webpage’s contents. The title tag is also the first thing users will see and will more likely determine whether they will click through to the actual webpage.

With a strong title tag, you can enjoy improvements in overall traffic, as well as in search engine rankings and click-through rates. The key is in striking a balance between “searchability” for search engines and being catchy enough to capture the interest of human visitors.

Here are some tips for high-performance title tags:

Don’t:

  • Leave the title tag blank on any page.
  • Repeat the same title tag for different pages in the website.
  • String together a title tag composed of only keywords.
  • Have a title tag that is not relevant to the contents of the webpage.
  • Have a title tag written only for the search engine.

Do:

  • Make the most out of every single character. Title tags have character limits (70 for Google) so do make sure that all characters are optimized. Avoid words such as a, the, of, that and so on.
  • Use keywords at the beginning of the title tag.
  • Add action words to compel the user to click through to the webpage. Some examples include read, discover, learn, find, try, download, enjoy, buy or get.
  • Add secondary keywords or variations of the primary SLC SEO keywords.
  • Test your title tags by regularly measuring changes in rank.
  • Put your title tag as the first item under the <head> section.
  • Incorporate keywords into the title tag so that it reads naturally.
  • Stick to the 70-character limit. Think of newspaper headlines – catchy yet short.
  • Write the title tag for human visitors as well.  Convince them to visit your website.
  • Accurately describe what the webpage is about.
  • Include product names, manufacturers, services you provide, etc.

Adaptivity Pro for your SEO needs

For help in drafting high-performance title tags, you can count on Adaptivity Pro. Adaptivity Pro specializes in Utah SEO and Utah Web design. It has since partnered with businesses and establishments in Salt Lake City and other areas in Utah to provide great value services such as Pay-Per-Click Management, Social Media Marketing and E-Commerce Marketing.

 

Posted in Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »

Google Maps Guide

May 9, 2011 – 7:27 am

Putting the location of your business on Google Maps can be very beneficial to you. It allows for your business to be discovered more easily by making it visible in anyone’s web browser. It will provide your potential customers with important information such as contact information, business locations, and driving directions.

Increasing your availability to potential customers and making it easy and convenient for them to find and talk to you or your offices means that you can do more business. Now that you have an idea of what a Google Map listing is and what it is good for, the only question now is to learn how to set one up for yourself. Below, you will find step by step instructions that will guide you through the process so that you too can start to gain from the many advantages that Google Maps can offer.

Checking for and Claiming an Existing Listing

1.       Find out if you are already listed – use the google.com or the Google Search tool bar on your browser and type in the name of your business. If you get results that show your business along with a small Google Map beside it, then you know that you are lucky enough to have already been listed.

2.       View your listing – if there is already a listing created, below it you will see a link saying “reviews, directions, and more.” Click on that in order to view more info about the listing. Look at the top right and if you see a link called “Business Owner?” instead of a name, you will know that the listing has not yet been claimed. You would be well advised to claim your listing as soon as possible so that another person cannot.

3.       Claim your listing – click the “Business Owner?” link and then select the “Edit my business information” option from the list that will be presented to you. Then click continue. From there you can begin filling out information concerning your business.

Creating a New Listing

1.       Your Google account – you will need to have access to an active Google account. Either you will need to create an account if you don’t have one, or you can log into the account that you already possess.

a.       Created a Google account – first of all, visit google.com and click the sign in link at the top right of the screen. Below the sign in box, there will be a “Create an account now” link. From there, simply fill in the required information.

b.      Log into your existing Google account – after you have created your Google account, or, if you already had a Google account, you only need to sign into it.

2.       Google Places – once you are logged into your Google account, visit the google.com web page. You will see your gmail address on the top right of the page. Click your gmail address. In the drop down list you will see the “Account Settings” link. Click on that and look down the page to the “My Products” section of that page. There you will see a link to “Google Places.”

3.       Add a new listing – On the right side of the “Google Places” home page, you will see a “List your business” option. Click it. This will take you to a page requesting your country and phone number information.

4.       Fill in the categories – After you have entered your country and phone number, you will be taken to another page that is full of many more information fields. You should fill in as many as possible. The more of these field that you use, the more information that will be provided to your potential customers and the higher the rating of your listing, which will go far in helping to get it recognized and ranked highly by the Google search engine.Basic Information– fill out the basic information so that customer get a general understanding about what business you are and where you are located. Your contact information is also included here so that they can get in touch with you.

Country

Company/Organization

Street Address

City/Town

State

ZIP

Main phone

Alternate phone

Mobile phone

Fax

Email address

Website

Description

Category

Service Areas and Location Settings – this information lets the customer know if you provide delivery or if you make house visits to customers.

Hours of operations – this lets people know on what days and at what times your business is in operation.

Payment options – you can let a person know what types of payment you are willing and able to accept.

Photos – you might find it rather helpful to provide photos of your business or building in order to give others a better idea about who you are

Videos – a picture is worth a thousand words, but a video is worth even more. You can give a visual description of your business and even give demonstrations of the services that you provide. This can be very effective in persuading potential customers in purchasing your products and services.

Additional Details–this section allows you to elaborate a bit more on the various services and products that your business has to offer. Here, you can name specific items and give brief descriptions to each.

5.       Verify listing – Having completed all the information fields, you may then click on the submit button at the bottom of the screen. You will then be required to verify that you are the rightful owner of the listing that you have just submitted. You can either do this by phone, or by postcard. Now you are on your way to marketing your business over the web.

 

Posted in Search Engine Optimization | 1 Comment »

Online Classified Ad Marketing

May 4, 2011 – 9:25 am

Classified ads can both be online and offline. We will primarily be discussing online classified ads. These are small spaces of advertisements that use just a few lines. A potential customer can click on a link that will bring them to your website, sales page or to an auto responder page. The challenge of classified ads is that you have to catch the attention of the reader using just a few words. You also need to fit what you need to say in that small space allotted to you.

The great thing about online classified ads is that they are free and fairly easy to produce – you can even generate ads automatically and post it on classified ad sites. If used properly, online classified ads can be effective in directing traffic into your website and traffic into your store or sales office. After all, people go into classified ad sites because they’re looking for something. Also, it is easy to target local customers since they can easily filter their search down to the city where they are located.

Classified ads also allow you to provide updates and announcements, as well as tell customers about the latest deal. You can also use classified ads to gauge the reaction of your target market with regards to a new product. This allows you to “get your ear on the ground” before you decide to stock up on more of the new merchandise.

Targeting Local Customers: Do online classified ads work?

It depends on where you put your ads. Popular classified ad sites such as Craigslist.com, Gumtree.com, Webcosmo.com ad Adpost.com have shown positive results. However, due to the success of these sites, there is a tendency for your ad to be pushed out since there are more new ads coming in.

Designing your ad

With so much information bombarding us nowadays, it gets more and more challenging to come up with something that catches the eye and the attention. If you fail to grab your target audience’s interest, chances are, they won’t get to see what your ad had to say.

Here’s a few tips in designing your ad:

-          Know your target market. Before you hanker down to writing the ad, you should understand what your customers needs and wants. You should also be able to identify how your products can meet their specific needs. Get to know your customer’s profile – including his lifestyle, income, age and geographic location.

-          Sign up with the popular classified ads sites and also to social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Digg and StumbleUpon.

-          Design many eye-catching headings. It should provide one concrete and exciting benefit for the customer. Observe: “This facial cream has anti-wrinkle properties.” vs. “Look forever young and flawless with this facial cream!”. The second one has more appeal because it showed a benefit that the customer can get from the product.

-          You should have several versions of the headings so that you get variations of your ad to be seen in the classified sites. Use strategic keywords to drive more traffic not just for the ad but for your website as well.

-          Write different texts for your ad. The main goal is for you to convince them to click on the link pointing them to your sales page or auto-responder page. If you can, add pictures. Remember that if your ad is badly written and designed, chances are, no one will read it and no one will be interested in what you have to offer.

-          Put out a varying combination of headline and inside text – mix and mix and match! The reason why you can’t use the same headline and text is that most online classified ads sites don’t allow duplicates within a certain period. You can only get more ads into a site if you create more unique ads.

-          Read the guidelines of the site and be sure to follow these guidelines. There are some practices that are not allowed in some sites – such as the posting of affiliate marketing links. Violating the rules may result in your being banned from the site.

-          Tag your URL whenever you can – this will result in your link being visible in a number of social networking pages. These back links are useful in driving traffic to your site.

-          Put your ad in the right category. Ad sites are classified according to category. To make more targeted approaches to your local customer, you should also put the ads where your customer is more likely to be looking for them. Or, be on the lookout as to where your customers are searching and direct some of your ads there.

-          Make sure you have auto-responders. In today’s Internet age, people expect answers the moment they ask their questions – even if they ask it while you’re offline. Auto-responders allow you to provide basic information and a sales pitch to those who were interested enough to click on your links.

Checking the Success of Your Online Classified Ads

Of course, you don’t just product ads and leave it at that. You should also measure the success of these ads. It will help you formulate your strategy with regards to these classified ads as you become more aware of which ads your market is responding to.

-          Try a Google image search on your picture which is tagged with a niche keyword. This tells you that the free ad is doing what it’s supposed to do – making you easier for people to find in the internet.

-          Track the responses to your ad. Identify which ads are bringing in the inquiries. This helps you point out the keywords that are effective with your target market.

-          Retry and retest. For those ads that generated a positive response, modify the texts and then send it again to test.

-          Try new niches/categories and see how effective each of the categories are.

Other online strategies

Using online classified ads is just one of the strategies to increase the level of traffic to your website and ultimately, to your cash register. Other ways to drum up buzz and increase Google search results would be Search Engine Optimization, sending articles to known article submission sites and marketing through known social networking sites such as Facebook.

Adaptivity Pro is your expert when it comes to online marketing strategies. We are a Salt Lake City, Utah web design and SEO firm that will work to drum up more attention to your website and more business for your added growth. Adaptivity Pro also provides content writing for websites and blogs.

 

Posted in Search Engine Optimization | No Comments »