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It happens all the time. Someone asks their web designer or web team, “Is our site Search Engine Optimized?” The answer is usually, “Sure”, or “I’ll do it right now”. Unfortunately, their site isn’t optimized, and what needs done takes much longer than a day.
It’s disheartening, but we still come across people who think their site is optimized, when it really isn’t. So how can you tell if your site isn’t optimized? Here are a couple red flags.
Title tags are one of the most important things for Search Engine Optimization. If you have titles on your website that look like the ones above, you’re in trouble. Additionally, if your title tag is just your company name, there is much work to be done.
If you have the knowhow to check out your meta description and meta keywords you know more than a lot of people. If not, this one might require a little assistance. You want to take a look at the meta description and meta keywords for a couple pages of your site. If they look like the example above, that’s another red flag. The meta description should be a couple sentences describing the webpage, and the meta keywords should be a collection of 6 to 10 keywords. Also, if you see the same meta description for multiple pages, this is something else that is a sign that your site isn’t optimized for search engines or users.
If it turns out your site isn’t actually optimized, it’s time to call in a professional.
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In the world of SEO there are big things and there are small things. Title tags, quality content, and backlinks are big things. Yet, you don’t want to focus on just the big things, because there are plenty of other factors that can help your website not only rank better, but convert better.
One of these “smaller” things is the speed of your website. High-speed internet has made the internet run a million times faster than it did back in the 90’s, but it has also changed people’s expectations. Waiting 1.5 seconds for a website to load now feels awkward.
There are many ways to check your website’s load speed. Google Webmaster Tools offers a feature which shows your website’s load speed over the span of several months.
Website Performance Graph
This graph shows one common trend. Websites usually start off pretty quick, and then pick up more and more elements that slow them down. After a while it becomes a messy conglomeration of months of work. Going back to clean up scripts, remove unnecessary code / files, and compress existing code / files can help immensely.
Speeding up your site has two main benefits
• Having a slow site can affect your rankings. GoogleBot may be a non-sentient (we hope) program, but it’s got places to be. If a page is holding it up, there is no guarantee it will get through all of it.
• Speeding up your site can increase conversions. If your website slows down at key points in the conversion process, you could be losing countless interested visitors just because you’re making them wait too long.
If your website performance needs a tune-up either you can add it to the to-do list for your web team, or you can enlist the services of an internet marketing firm.
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Google was never one to turn a deaf ear to complaints. Proof of this point is the “Latest Results” feature which was recently rolled out. This feature makes it possible to get content in Google as it happens instead of waiting for it to be indexed.
Latest Results Feature Popping up in SERPs
This update is surprisingly easy to miss. Not only does it only pop up with terms which have a fair amount of buzz surrounding them, but Google did a great job of making it fit in seamlessly with the other results.
The Latest Results section takes up about as much space as two normal results, and constantly updates with Tweets, blog posts, and articles about your search term. This is obviously designed to address the bad press Google received for being “slow” to index information about Michael Jackson’s passing.
It’s a nice feature, but it probably won’t be drawing many users away from Twitter clients or Digg. What it might do is draw in more casual web users into real-time news services.
It’s not 100% clear how these results are chosen or filtered. It seems that there has to be something in place to keep people turning the clock back to 1995 by name dropping whoever is a popular search and proceeding to talk about your product.
Many people are wondering if it is it possible to perform SEO for these results. The best way to get noticed in these results is the same way to get noticed in other Social Media venues. Provide your followers with consistent and useful updates.
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