IMPROVE YOUR WEB PERFORMANCE WITH
SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO)

Here’s a critically revealing test for your Website. Imagine you are a potential customer for your product, and enter your product category in Google or another major search engine. Chances are you will not show up on the first results page. Or the second. And maybe not even in the top 100 listings.

Find out why this should be important to you ...

By Grant A. Johnson, Johnson Direct
Guest Contribution by Kosana Stojcevic

The fact is that search engines are the way most people (85%) find new sites, and the way most businesses find new sources for products and services. If you depend on your Website for lead generation, or for direct sales, or simply competitive product information, there are two ways you can drive new customers to your site. One is through aggressive promotion. The other is through Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

The question is, if you can double your site traffic with a fairly small expenditure in SEO, is it a good investment? The answer will depend on your own ROI calculations based on conversion, sales, etc.

But consider this: How much would you have to invest in traditional promotions such as direct mail, banner advertising, e-mail campaigns or space advertising to spike your response numbers by 100%? That should quickly put the answer in perspective.

More importantly, if you are going to be a player on the Web, Search Engine Optimization is simply something you are going to have to do, because your competitors will almost certainly be doing it. Otherwise your web investment becomes less valuable the further down the rankings you slide. To find out how you can do it and how much it will cost, contact us to talk with a competent Website developer. You could be just a Google search away from a dramatic improvement in your Website performance.

In the meantime, brush up on your Meta Tag DOs and DONTs. What’s a Meta Tag you say? According to Webopedia, a Meta Tag is a special HTML tag that provides information about a Web page. Unlike normal HTML tags, meta tags do not affect how the page is displayed. Instead, they provide information such as who created the page, how often it is updated, what the page is about, and which keywords represent the page's content. Many search engines use this information when building their indices.

5 Common Website Meta Tag Mistakes
by Kosana Stojcevic

An important part of search engine marketing is to optimize your website code for the search engines. Search engines send out “spiders” periodically to index web pages into their databases. Optimizing your website’s source code allows those spiders to crawl through the site smoothly. Thus allowing a thorough indexing of your website’s information.

Meta tags are optional HTML tags that contain basic information about a web page. There are three main meta tags, the title, description and keywords. These are placed at the beginning of a website’s source code.

The title tag is a short phrase that pertains to web page content and company name (especially if it is a well branded company). The description tag is used to provide both search engines and potential visitors a concise description regarding your company’s product and/or services. The keywords chosen for the keywords tag should reflect not only your company and product/services, but also the content on the web page. When choosing keywords it is important to consider what a potential customer will type into a search engine when looking for your product.

Search results are often derived from these tags combined with content on the web page. The search engine spider will index snippets of the meta tags and website content. On the search results page, the user will then see the title tag first. This is followed by the snippets of information that the search engine garnered from the description tag and website content. Consistency and relevance is key. Be consistent when creating meta tags and website content. Use these tags to target your customers.

Five of the most common mistakes when creating meta tags are:

1. Title and description tags are too long.
The information placed in the title and description meta tags is most often indexed by search engine spiders for use on the search results page. There is a limited amount of space for these. If they are too long, they will be cut off in the search results display.

2. They are filled with sales copy.
The title tag and the description tag need to be clear and concise pertaining only to the company’s product or service. Descriptions that tout how long a company has been in business or how quickly orders are turned around do not tell the potential customer anything about what the company does.

3. The meta tags are completely ignored.
Often there are no meta tags at all. On their own meta tags don’t count much, but in combination with website content they can help to improve a website’s ranking in search results.

4. Too many keywords
Select a few specific keywords that are relevant to both, the company’s products and services, as well as the web page content.

5. Only put them on the home page.
Search engines index individual website pages, so it’s a good idea to choose a title, description and keywords that are specific to each page in the site. If the website is extremely large (500+ pages), then optimize the tags for the main page of each section. Choose a title specific to the content of each page. If the company name is well branded, place the company name in the title as well. Write a separate description for each main page. Utilize keywords in all the meta tags where possible.

Although there are many components used to increase your company’s visibility on the World Wide Web, meta tags are a good place to start when implementing a search engine marketing campaign.

Kosana Stojcevic is a Search Engine Marketing Specialist with SpinGroup, a digital media design firm located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

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