The Rank Magic Blog

SEO Tip: Use Heading Tags

July  30, 2009 ::: Almost all web pages have headings and sub-headings. On this page, "The Rank Magic Blog" is a heading.  So is "July 2009", "How to Write for Search Engines", and so forth.

All too often, web designers code these headings with font information: basically saying "make this text large, bold, centered, and blue". That works well to have the heading stand out for human visitors. But it doesn't tell the search engines that those words constitute a "heading". And we want to tell them that. If we've got our keywords in these headings, telling the search engines they're headings causes those words and phrases to be treated as more important than the normal body text on the page.

Heading tags come in six varieties: h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, and h6. H1 is typically the largest and most prominent, and the other tags are usually progressively less pronounced, visually. If you've written your content well, you will almost always find your keywords in headings. Make sure the search engines know that by including heading tags in the code around those headings.

How to Write for Search Engines

July 24, 2009 ::: Site Reference recently published a thought-provoking article about how to write for search engines. It covers some good ideas, but I want to give you an important principle before we discuss any of that. Always write for your target market  – people  – before you even think about search engines. Keyword stuffing and awkward prose will drive visitors away from your web site before they even consider doing business with you.

With that caveat out of the way, here are some of the items of value from this article:

1. It's all about content. And that's more than just the words on the page. Content includes headings, page titles, tags, and links (both to other material on your site and to external sites).
2. A keyword-rich and compelling Page Title is essential.
3. Use heading tags for your headings and sub-headings, and use your keywords in these headings.
4. Focus. Keep to one topic per page.
5. Use your keywords naturally in your body copy.
6. Use keywords in the meta description tag, in link anchor text, and so forth.
7. Get to the point quickly.

   

Raise Your Rankings in Bing

July 19, 2009 ::: Bing is the new replacement for MSN Search (Live Search), and it appears to be somewhat focused on shopping. The current issue of Website Magazine discusses some ways to improve your rankings in Bing, and this one caught my eye. I can see this being of benefit to some of our clients and have alerted them to it via email. Here's a  brief excerpt for your benefit with my comments in brackets.

How to Detect Fake SEO Consultants

July 14, 2009 ::: We're always interested by articles that tell people how to tell good SEO companies from bad ones. There are a number of reasons for that. For one, we're very confident that these articles will demonstrate that Rank Magic is a good SEO company. For another, I find it disturbing that there are so many bad SEO companies out there -- companies that over-promise and under-deliver (or worse). The more people know about how to identify those bad apples, the sooner they'll disappear from the scene and I won't have to feel like I'm in the same business as a bunch of hucksters.

Anyway, Site Reference recently published an article with the same title as this blog post. They highlight five sure-fire giveaways. If you're considering hiring an SEO company, this article is worth reading. These are five things fake SEO companies may do:

Hiring an SEO Company

July 9, 2009 ::: In a May newsletter, noted SEO expert Jill Whalen wrote some sage advice on  hiring an SEO company.

5 Tips for Avoiding Bad SEO Companies

July 5, 2009 ::: Sometimes I feel like I'm in an industry that has more than its share of charlatans. Small Business Trends reports on five dead giveaways that you're dealing with an SEO company that practices deceptive or "black hat" SEO.

Their descriptions of these telltale signs is worth reading. This is just a very quick listing of what they are. I encourage you to read the article to better understand the implications.

Search Engine Share : Google Gains

July 1, 2009 ::: March search engine share was recently reported by Cnet, and Google has expanded its dominance.

 Out of 9.5 billion searches, Google handles 64% , Yahoo! gets 26%, and MSN/Live search (now Bing) gets 10%. Google's share is up 28% from a year prior and Yahoo's share is up 2%, and MSN's share is up only 0.3%. Coming in at #4 is AOL Search (powered by Google) at 4%, and Ask is at 2%.  The share of all of these was up from last year, which means that it's come out of the share of smaller search engines.

Other blogs of interest

The Computer Lady