Begin the tedium that is SEO. I’ve found it’s easiest to set yourself little goals and not try to do too many things at once. Of course you are going to want to have plenty of keyword rich text and you are going to want to update it often to keep your site from going stale in the search results, but what about the other parts of your optimization? I am guilty of going back to fix the following after the website has been set up and implemented rather than beforehand. I do these edits by category one at a time going from page to page to keep from getting overwhelmed by trying to revamp everything on a page and then moving on to the next. The fact of the matter is, with SEO, there’s always something to do so you’re never going to be done anyway so you might as well do things one at a time.

• Day 1: Title Tags. My title tags are the very first thing I fix. Because I usually copy/paste a lot of my coding these all read the same thing until after the website is up and running. It’s a very bad habit but it gives me something to do just when I think I’m “done.”You want to make sure that your title tags aren’t all the same for a few reasons. First and foremost title tags help with your usability and website friendliness. You want your website to be friendly to your users don’t you? Well having “BestWebsiteEverMadeEver.com – The Best Website Ever Made Ever” for every single one of your title tags doesn’t tell the user anything about where they’ve navigated to within your page. Title tags should have a few keywords about what the page your visitor is looking at is about. “BestWebsiteEverMadeEver.com – Contact Information” or “BestWebsiteEverMadeEver.com – Reasons of Bestness” is far more appropriate than repeating the company slogan over and over again in the title tags of your website. Yes I know “bestness” is not a word and that .com address is a little ridiculous but you get the gist. Remember: most crawlers are looking for user friendliness. Don’t build your website for search engines. Build them for people and the rest will just fall into place.
• Day 2: Meta Tags. I never include meta tags when I’m building a website. This is yet another thing that I do after I’m “done” building the website.Meta Tags for keywords don’t carry the same weight that they used to because people abused them, but they are still important and they still need to be included. The easiest way to do this is to pick out the top phrases that describe the content of your website. You want to use about 10-15 of those words to build your keyword tags. It should look something like this:

  <META name=”keywords” content=”best website, number one, numero uno, none better, greatest, most elite website”>

  The description tags are very important as most search engines, like www.google.com, use them directly under the title in their search results. They shouldn’t be too long. Try to make them right to the point, like this:

  <META name=”description” content=”The best website ever made ever. You will search the globe and never find one better.”>

• Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, Day 6: Alt tags. I never use alt tags until the very end and I am confronted with the daunting task of going through and adding alt tags to every image and link within my site and that takes a very, very long time. If only I weren’t so quick to produce and spent a little more time with the coding I wouldn’t find myself going back and adding alt tags to everything.Alt tags are important especially for images because they tell the crawler, which is blind to the image, what the image content is all about. I tend to double up when it comes to the alt tags because I logically name all of my images based on what they are. The search engines do read what you name your image files. For instance, the HTML for the logo on the BestWebsiteEverMadeEver.com homepage would read something like this:

  <img src=”best-website-ever-made-ever-logo.gif” alt=”The logo for the best website ever made ever”>

  On an anchor (or link) tag, it would look something like this:

  <a href=”http://www.bestwebsiteevermadeever.com/you-are-in-agreement.html” alt=”I agree, this is the best website ever made ever.”>Click here if you agree that this is the best website you have ever seen.</a>

So, the moral of the story, you just learned a little bit about what kinds of things you can do to optimize your website for search engines and also that haste makes waste.

http://www.horangraphics.com

What it is that makes one website rank higher in the results than another is truely a mystery. Ranking is the search engine’s highly guarded secret because if everyone knew exactly how they categorized and indexed information, then too many people would take advantage of the system and the search relevency of their engine’s results would go out the window.

How then, without knowing how rank is calculated, are you supposed to get your website to rank higher?

First and foremost remember this: Content is King

The more content your website has, the better. This content however, has to be relevant to the website as a whole if you want it to rank higher and it must be keyword rich. Search engines categorize your website based on what its content is about. The majority of searchbots read all of the information on your page, follow links on your pages to other pages within your site and follow links into and out of your website. Searchbots tend to favor websites whose content is continually being updated also. A good way to drive people as well as search robot traffic to your website is to blog and blog and blog. The blogs should be relevant to the information on your website and not about what your cat Boots did this morning (no matter how darling Bootsie may be.) Make sure to include a link at the bottom of the blog back to your site so your readers can find more information about what it is you do and so the search engines will click it too. If your blog is on WordPress (wink, wink) or another site that allows you to leave comments make sure that your comments always have a signature. This can be something as simple as a text link leading back to your website or a banner picture (like I use.) Search engines index the blog comments too, and then follow those links back to your website as well. The content may not be actually listed under your domain, but it is still your content and the links will lead both people and search engines to where you really want them to be.

Another thing that I do is repost my blogs on my website. I’ve read on some blogs that reposting text like that can actually penalize you in the search results. It may, but its highly unlikely that it does. If you were penalized in the search results for reposting things that you had written in other places then your competition could just repost your blog without your consent 1,000 times and watch your search results drop like a rock. The fact of the matter is that the search engine developers take instances like that into consideration. Reposting your blogs in other places is more likely to help you than harm you.

Keywords, Keywords, Keywords

This is touchy ground for some. If you use them too little then the search engines aren’t going to index you the way that you want them to. If you use too many keywords, then the people reading the website are going to think there is something wrong with you because you keep repeating yourself and still, search engines aren’t going to index you the way that you want them to. Search engines can tell when something has been written for their robotic eyes and are likely to discredit something that involves too much repetition.

If you have webmaster capabilities on your website, it is definately to your benefit to label your files with names describing what they are. Searchbots do crawl your entire website if you give them time to do so. That’s why it’s in your best interest to name all of your directories and files with keyword rich file names. Rather than calling a picture file of a property you have listed with the address of 123 Fake St. something like “09373562.jpg” call it “123-fake-st.jpg.” and put it in the “/properties-for-sale/” directory This may seem tedious to you if your files are already an array of disorganized nonsense, but you can make a pact from this point to start doing this with your files from now on. The reason being is that the searchbots that will be crawling sneakily across your database is going to organize that file also. If your filing system doesn’t make sense to the searchbot its not going to recognize what file “09373562.jpg” is. If you really want to sell that shack on Fake St. you’re going to want to set yourself up for success so why not start with your filing system.

Many webmasters will tell you that naming your files with underscrolls, such as “123_fake_st.jpg” will accomplish the same thing and that is simply not true. Don’t believe me? You can try it for yourself.

Visit www.google.com and type in “Bart_Simpson_Chia_Pet” I did this earlier and the search returned 3 results.

Now try “Bart-Simpson-Chia-Pet” in the search box. When I did this earlier it returned over 2500 results…thus proving that search engines–at the very least Google.com (the biggest one)–recognize dashes as though they are spaces.

Now you may be wondering what this has to do with your website exactly. Well, when Google.com gets ahold of your sitemap.xml file (you do have a sitemap.xml don’t you? I discussed it in one of my earlier blogs titled “Search Engine Optimization Tips – Lesson #1″) and starts crawling your site, its going to crawl each page and that includes any subdirectories that aren’t restricted and graphics files on your website. Think of the possibilities! You could put two or three keywords in the filenames of each image file, whereby boosting your page rank because Google deems that you have more relevant information and that your pictures are part of the relevant information on your site than that of your competition who name their files with numbers and unassociated filenames. This being said don’t overdo it…three or four word filenames are probably more than adequate. Don’t forget these are the search engine’s tricks to begin with. You’re not doing anything its not seen before and if you overdo it it’s likely to realize and discredit you.

Just a little something you can do to optimize not only your search engine but your website’s file organizational structure. Thought it was worth elaborating on.

I could let all of these things…my mysterious missing Google listing, everyone being blind to the importance of my visually stunning website and the service I provide, and the tedium of submitting to search engines and search directories, which I am about to get into…I could let them slump my high hopes into a state of disreputable depression, but I’m not that naive. I knew in starting this firm, and more importantly, the website itself, that it would be me against the world…if you’ve got plans of starting a website of your own, the advice I have for you is this: suck it up. It’s always you against the world in the beginning. You can’t let yourself entertain delusions of grandeur and instant success  just because you and your website are open for business. For me the fun part, the designing, is over…now comes the endless submissions to search engines and search directories.

Search engines and search directories are two very different beasts and I’ll explain both in the case that their differences is a topic you are unfamiliar with. Generally search engines with their grubby little searchbots will get their spidery little fingers all over your website on their own without your permission to do so, like it or…well like it (provided your website has adequate links leading in…by adequate, the definition of the link in the previous sentence does not qualify. Links need to be keyword rich. Something more along the lines of, oh, for instance “HoranGraphics.com – Graphic Design with Small Business in Mind” or perhaps “Visit HoranGraphics.com, home of the fabulous new graphic design firm, horan|GRAPHICS, serving small businesses, Realtors and other real estate professionals. Offering classic to chic design styles for all of your brand marketing.“) Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, search engines, like Google.com, will go through your things without you asking them to, given links to tell them where your things are and time to do so. Search directories MUST (for the most part) be submitted to, and instead of rummaging through your things willy-nilly as they please, they will want you to submit them in an orderly fashion. Think of them as the search engine’s obsessive compulsive friend with the pantry categorized alphabetically with clear Rubbermaid organizers for everything, each of them labeled with things like “cereal” and “pasta.” The largest and most important search directory is the Open Directory Project (which if you ask me should be called exactly the opposite because when I went to submit to them last night, all of the categories that I thought my website fit into were closed and not allowing submissions so I had to pick something that was kind of obscure and probably not going to get approval.) Basically a search directory is kind of like the phonebook in the sense that your entire website is categorized based on its content, then alphabetized. When you submit to a search directory (most of which are updated by hand–bless their little hearts) you have to pick one category that your website fits into among thousands, you give them a description, you submit your url and they add you in about 6 months when they feel like doing it or they get around to it. There are websites where you can pay for them to do this, or there are directories that do this out of the goodness of their hearts. Because my brand functions on principals, of their most important, getting things done on the cheap (or better for me, on the free) as I submit to the search directories today, the most I will be paying is a reciprocal link.

I know what you’re thinking and you’re wrong…dead wrong. You’re thinking, But Matt, if you had to just explain to me what a search directory was because I didn’t know they existed, then how are they important? They are. Just trust me. You are right about one thing—and that one thing is nobody, but nobody uses a search directory. Everyone just uses a search engine now-a-days. Okay, I’ll give you that one, but here’s the thing: search engines are not going to just find you. You need to have other websites that are offering links to yours for them to find you. Therefore, you submit to search directories because search directories = links to your website. There is certainly something that feels a bit trashy or at the very least a bit tacky about doing this, but trust me, unless you have a few years to wait to get established there aren’t any other ways of getting noticed…at least not for free.

http://www.horangraphics.com

That being said, don’t overdo it. You want your keyword rich site to still be readable by people. Include keywords in your content, but make sure the sentences the keywords are used in make sense and aren’t redundant. Search engines, believe it or not, will penalize you if you overdo it. Try to keep it to 10 to 15 keywords per every 200 words of text. That’s about 5% to 7.5% of your content. If you overdo it with the keywords, the search engines can tell that you’ve built a website of only keywords and the higher the ratio of text to search words, the higher the likelyhood that your page will be discredited and placed lower in search results.

http://www.horangraphics.com

Home | Services | Portfolio | Profile | Blog | Contact

It hit me while I was driving on the freeway trying to figure out how my portfolio section was going to break free of the template I’d used as a placeholder. Wait a minute…if this website is being setup to promote my skill in graphic design, shouldn’t there be some graphics? Some design? Duh.

There was none of my infamous “pow” to this site. As a designer I’m a pretty out of the box thinker and usually my personal designs feature a little edge, a little bit of my own personal style, some unique feature that came naturally in the design process repeated to drive the look of the graphics home, but this website was design light and text heavy. I finally found a happy medium between the two. As soon as I reached my destination I drew a rough sketch that made everything fall into place…the only problem was that now that I had the solution to my “something is wrong with this but I don’t know just what…” dillemma, I was going to be completely without a computer for 6 hours. So what did I do? I thought and thought and thought and thought about the design for the entire 6 hours and then when I got home I sat at the computer until the sun came up working on my corrections.

This website isn’t even 24 hours old and already I’m performing major elective cosmetic surgery on it.

Also, its not even 24 hours old and the index.htm file has already been picked up by Google.com…and here I thought I was going to have to give it a few weeks for Google to get around to finding it.

http://www.horangraphics.com

 Home | Services | Portfolio | Profile | Blog | Contact

I really don’t have anything more to say.

http://www.horangraphics.com

Design your website with header tags, bold text and bulleted lists when appropriate. Use italics and differing font sizes for more important, keyword rich, phrases. These design impliments that normally draw the attention of your web viewers will also draw the attention of search engines. Use a header tag to tell what the page is about, place your keywords in bold when applicable and use bullets for any lists you include in the page.

Make sure all of your pages have a detailed title tag and discription tag somewhere before the body tags of your website. If all of that is jibberish to you, you would be best of either reading up on HTML or consulting a web designer to do this easy update for you. These are all aspects of your page that are read by engines but don’t actually show up on the page itself. All of your tags should be keyword rich descriptions of what the page is and why it exists, after all, if its out there it has some purpose and that purpose needs to be described for search engines to index it properly.

Visit freekeywords.wordtracker.com for a free list of 100 related keywords generated from your one or two keyword phrase. This tool shows you the top 100 common searches that contain your keyword and related words for free. Use this tool to make a list of keywords that will most likely enhance your website. Use these keywords in your page content, in your description tags and in your title tags. These are actual keywords people are searching for. Including them in your SEO makeover will greatly enhance your website’s ranking in the search engines.

http://www.horangraphics.com

Multimedia heavy sites don’t index as well as text rich sites. You’re better off without the tacky Flash intro to your site no matter how tempting it might be to add it to make your website visually stimulating. Web designers love to build these intros because Flash is fun to play with, but I’m sure you’ve noticed the little link at the bottom that says “skip intro,” well, like you do, most people visiting your site are going to skip the intro also. Believe it or not web browsers want the guts of your site. Not the flashy intro. Keep multimedia in its place… use Flash or video to demonstrate presentations when necessary, otherwise keep your designs simple and clean and text rich.

If you are the administrator of your website, employ a site map. Site maps are a useful tool to help search engines index your pages, especially if your links are image files and not text. Search engines cannot read text embedded into image files, so if you do use graphics for your page menus, make sure you include a text link to a sitemap on the bottom of your pages. This will allow the content on all of your pages to be indexed and not just your index.htm page. People’s brains compute things differently so I advise that you navigate your pages with as many ways around as possible. Use a site map or a table of contents organized either alphabetically, like an index, or by theme. As far as the search engines are concerned, build and submit a site map. If you are the web administrator and you haven’t done this then you should immediately. If you speak to your website designer/administrator and they haven’t done it for you, then shame on them and they should probably be fired. It’s very easy to build a sitemap and submit it. A great, and FREE tool that you can use is located at http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ it will build a sitemap for you to download in .xml format. You then upload this to your website’s server in the root folder of your site. You’re not finished there. Next you have to submit it to the search engines and wait…and wait…and wait…it took my sitemap three days to get indexed but I’ve heard of longer. It’s important though if you want to drive traffic to your website that the search engine can find you so it’s in your best interest to do this. Their directions are pretty self explanatory so I’ll just give you the addresses. http://www.google.com/webmasters/ https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com and http://www.bing.com/toolbox/ those are the three big ones you should worry about. They all have their own interfaces for you to setup. I thought the easiest was the Google one, ironically, being the largest search engine that exists at the time of this writing, it’s the most important too.

This ties in with the last idea; make your website easy to navigate. Don’t employ a menu structure that has invisible hotspots or links with wording that doesn’t make sense. If you’re linking to a company profile page, don’t call it something silly, have your links call it “The company profile page” not only will this make it easy for your web visitors to get around but its simplicity makes it easier for the search engines to navigate and index. Think about these key points…1.) Does the design make sense to a visitor? 2.) Can they find what they need quickly? 3.) Do you have broken links or orphaned pages? – pages without menu navigation or at the very least, links back to the main site? This last one is especially important because if someone finds an orphaned page via a search engine, they can’t find their way back into your website. That, among other reasons, is why I advise everyone to avoid navigation that uses frames pages at all costs. I give this advice and of course I am guilty of using inline frames on my own site, so this is one of those instances of do as I say not as I do. Many times these pages become orphaned and there is no navigation back to their parent pages which is bad news for the rest of your website. I also recommend that if you do use image files for your page navigation, as I usually do in my designs, make a smaller text only navigation at the bottom of your page. This will help the search engines find their way around your page. They like to click text links.

That’s it for Search Engine Optimization tips for now…check back soon…more to come!

http://www.horangraphics.com

With my computer currently out of comission and my design implimentation on hold, I’ve been doing a lot of catching up on my marketing reading.

Realization #1: Specialization is Key

Like many small businesses, I simply don’t have the budget to compete with the top dogs in the industry… I’m not kidding myself here when I say “that’s okay.” My brand focuses on a specialized audience. Namely, Realtors and other professionals in the real estate business in Central Florida. I have a lot of background in design in this field. I used to work as the IT for my father’s real estate brand The Resident Team where I was responsible for all of his design work. Though he doesn’t place nearly as many ads as he used to I am still the one he turns to when he needs a design job done. I am also at another advantage because I’ve taken the classes required to get my license, only later to discover that a job in selling real estate wasn’t what I was looking for. I was looking for a better understanding of my target market…and having immersed myself in that industry I have it.

Realization #2: I’m Good Enough, I’m Smart Enough, and Gosh Darnit, People Like Me

Again looking to my budget, I’ve come to another realization…if I’m going to succeed (and I will!) The best bet for my marketing efforts is to place the majority of them into networking and referrals. I’ve already gotten some of my design work this way and if I make it my main focus, I’ll get more. That is the route so many businesses are going these days…I definately recommend it, although it shouldn’t be the only route that I, or anyone else for that matter, depends on.

Realization #3: SEO Does Not Stand for Scary Evil Ogre. Search Engine Optimization is Not as Fierce the Monster That It Makes Itself Out To Be

Again, focusing on specialization is key. I’m not competing with all other design firms, that’s not my goal…I’m competing with all other design firms who work exclusively with Realtors and other real estate professionals. In order to get noticed, I need to focus on that when coming up with my search engine keywords…also this blogging should help because it is a keyword/content rich environment and that is something search engines love. As soon as I’ve got my site up and running (when my computer is fixed this week) I’ll start with the backlinking to my website and I’m working on an agressive brand marketing campaign to go along with all of these other things to get the ball rolling for the Horan Graphics brand.

http://www.horangraphics.com