I know what you’re thinking—“It’s 2011 and this guy is writing about meta descriptions?” You better believe I am. Yes, I’m fully aware that Google doesn’t use meta description as a ranking factor, but that doesn’t mean that it’s totally unimportant.
Remember, searchers still see the description meta tag whenever they’re looking for your products and services. So it’s important that your descriptions catch their attention and draw them in.
Here are 5 tips for writing better meta descriptions.
Think of it as ad copy—Your search listing is competing against about 14 other listings (including PPC ads) for a click. It’s your job to stand out from the crowd and earn that click. That’s why you need to think of your meta description as a mini-ad. You have to give people a reason to click your link. Don’t just have some boring, generic description. Focus on a benefit and get them to take action.
A lot of the mystery about SEO can be solved simply by getting the information straight from the horse’s mouth. Yes, that’s right! One of the best SEO resources comes direct from Google. Specifically Matt Cutts. For a few years he has been uploading very helpful videos on the GoogleWebmasterHelp channel on YouTube. There are over 300 in fact. If you haven’t subscribed to the channel, I recommend doing so. It’s personally one of my favorite resources and something I place the a lot value in.
The channel has a variety of different videos, but the ones that I like the most are the QNA videos done by Matt Cutts. In these videos Matt answers questions that people have sent in. Matt has an excellent way of explaining things. He often breaks things down in ways that everyone can understand. You can quickly tell that it’s important to him that his message is understood well. The videos are recorded in a very relaxed and casual setting which really allow you to concentrate and absorb the information being shared. Here are a few examples.
In the world of SEO, often you hear about link building. It’s an important aspect of SEO. It’s so important that there are a slew of products, services, and tactics that claim to help people with building backlinks. Some of these products may work, but it’s a safe guess that many do not. Most of the services are very expensive, and I suspect that most fail to deliver what is expected. Lastly, it seems that there are only a few tactics that are truly effective. That said, have you ever considered learning more about different ways to build links yourself? Matt Cutts has recorded an 8 minute video that talks about just that. Here is the video below:
What about keyword spam? Specifically using multiple versions of the same phrase and rewording it multiple times in your content? (i.e. SEO Hosting, Hosting SEO, Search Engine Optimized Hosting, Optimized Hosting For Search Engines, etc.) In other words, does Google consider it keyword spam when you target multiple variants of the same keyword phrase? The reason why people do this is because in most cases each variant can return different results in the SERPs. Let’s see what Matt has to say about that:
A couple of years ago there was a lot of interest with converting a standard WordPress blog into a DoFollow blog. Meaning, the nofollow tag is either manually removed from the code or a plugin is used to achieve the same result. The purpose is to reward people by passing PageRank in exchange for leaving a comment on your blog post. This is still done today. But what does Matt Cutts have to say about this? Let’s find out. Pay attention to the point made at 2:00 minutes into the video:
Have you ever wondered why it takes a long time for Googlebot to come back to your site to reindex it? I have personally played around with this a few years ago and jokingly have called this Training the Googlebot. In other words, after Googlebot crawls your site, a short period later it will return to check for new content or changes in existing content. Over time, if new content isn’t available, or if the existing content hasn’t changed, Googlebot will stop visiting as often as it did before.
Knowing this, I “trained Googlebot” to visit many of my sites quickly by controlling the flow of new content being published. Meaning, if I wanted Googlebot to index new content FAST, I would train it to believe that my site was busy simply by published new content very often. The result ended with new content getting indexed within minutes of being published. A great example of a site that has a fast recrawl rate is Digg.com. New content on Digg will get indexed almost instantly. A great of a site that doesn’t get recrawled very often would be an old GeoCites webpage –if they still existed of course. Here’s what Matt Cutt has to say about Googlebot recrawl rates:
These are just a few of 300+ videos that can help you with solving the mystery with SEO. Many of these videos have less than 10k views. I really find that strange because the information is extremely valuable. The great news about the low view counts is that you will be learning from a resource that many other people don’t know about. This gives you an advantage over your competition. As mentioned in the beginning of this post, I strongly recommend subscribing to the channel. It’s a very valuable resource to have if you’re interested in learning more about SEO.
As a blogger, there’s many times when I need to create online video tutorials to share with my readers. Adding videos to your blog posts can help capture people’s attention, add different incoming traffic ports, increase the number of people who read and subscribe to your blog, and boost your organic ranking in search engines. The question is, where is the best place to upload videos to?
I can say that determining the best place to upload your videos to is up to you. The reason is because there are advantages and disadvantages with using different services. Below, I have included a copy of the same video that I uploaded into multiple online video sharing sites and also included are my opinions about each. You can review each video and read my opinions about each and determine which online video sharing site is best for you.
YouTube.com
YouTube.com is the most popular online video sharing site online. I would recommend using YouTube because of the added SEO value and traffic you can pipe back into your web site and pages. The disadvantages of using YouTube is that your videos will degrade in quality, and they can NOT exceed ten minutes in length. Because of the time limit, I was not able to upload my video to YouTube.com. Another thing that bothers me is that YouTube.com doesn’t inform me that the video isn’t going to process.
Yahoo! Video
I was actually quite impressed with Yahoo! Video. It has similiar qualities to YouTube.com, but doesn’t have the time restriction. The quality seems to be the same as YouTube.com. The disadvantages, in my opinion, is the lack of traffic, and SEO value. Uploading and processing the video didn’t take long at all, about 15 minutes.
MotionBox Formally AOL Video
AOL Video has been discontinued and traffic is being redirected to a service called MotionBox.com. I decided to give MotionBox.com a try and I am pleased with their service. The process of uploading a video was very clunky and not very systematic. The end result was a video higher in quality compared to YouTube.com and Yahoo! Video. The audio didn’t render quite as well. The disadvantages of using MotionBox.com is the clunky interface, lack of traffic, and I am sure lack of SEO value.
Vimeo Video
I enjoy using Vimeo a lot. It’s one of my favorite places to upload videos to. The interface is very user friendly and the uploading process is conducive to productivity. The problem I have with Vimeo is that it can take up to 30 minutes to batch videos if you have a free account. While this is annoying, I do understand and appreciate their business model. A premium account can be had for under $60 / year, which is very fair. The video and audio quality is amazing. The sharing features are brilliant. One of the things I enjoy most about the sharing features is that Vimeo will do the math for you when you’re customizing proper sizing.
Viddler Video
Viddler reminds me a lot of Vimeo but slightly lesser in quality, but much better than MotionBox, YouTube, and Yahoo. Viddler doesn’t quite match the quality that Vimeo can produce, nor do they offer the robust sharing features. A neat feature about Viddler is the fact that you can record videos on the fly, meaning you don’t have to use desktop software, such as Camtasia, to create the video. With Viddler, you can use record directly on their site.
Where Is The Best Video Sharing Site?
My vote goes to Vimeo. I would recommend upgrading to a premium account simply because it’s affordable, gives you a ton of more features, and it supports their efforts and helps keep them online. In my opinion, even the free account is superior to the other services.
After publishing this article, my strategy will be to use YouTube.com for it’s natural resource of traffic and SEO value. From there I’ll use Vimeo to actually display the videos direct on my pages so that readers can experience the best quality and ease of sharing with others.
I just found out about this and figured it would be an excellent opportunity for you to learn more about SEO. It’s a free online Webinar being offered by Jason McDonald. This online training course will be covering the top ten free SEO tools. It’s one thing to have free SEO tools floating around the Internet, but it’s a complete different ball game when you know how to use them. Jason McDonald aims to change that and teach Webinar students about some very good SEO Tools and most importantly, how to use them.
Jason McDonald is a search marketing teacher and trainer with eg3.com and a hi-tech publisher. He is a well known journalist in Silicon Valley and has managed eg3.com’s SEO, Internet and search marketing, and pay-per-click advertising programs since 1994. Jason McDonald is very qualified to teach this class, and I have no doubts that students will leave the Webinar having gained a lot of knowledge.
There’s two classes available. One on Thursday, Oct. 8th at 11:00 A.M. and the last class on Oct. 12th at 9:30 A.M. In order to attend the Webinar class, you’ll need to register ahead of time. Attending the class is absolutely free. The only thing you need to bring with you is your ears and something to write with to take notes. To view full details and to sign up, visit Jason McDonald’s SEO Webinar Registration Page. Drop a quick comment and let us know if you’ll be attending.
Keyword research is one of the most important factors in the success of your SEO or PPC campaign. When done properly, it will improve both the quantity and the quality of your website traffic. But if you make mistakes when conducting your keyword research, you could be shooting yourself in the foot.
Which mistakes should you avoid? Here are the 6 most common keyword research mistakes.
1. Targeting keywords that are too broad- Let’s say you own a company that sells tables. As nice as it’d be to rank #1 for the term “tables,” that’s not happening in this lifetime. Instead, you need to go after long-tail keywords like “glass top dining tables” or “contemporary dining tables.” Focused keywords like this will give you a better chance of ranking well and receiving targeted traffic to your website.
2. Choosing keywords with no search volume- Long-tail keywords will be the bread and butter of your website traffic. However, there is a fine line between a good long-tail phrase and a keyword that no one ever searches for. If a keyword gets no search volume, don’t waste your time targeting it. (more…)
