Finally! Google has added some volume estimates to their keyword research tool (located here). This is a good thing as you can get a better idea for the total volume of terms vs the relative strength of terms you would get through Keyword Discovery and Wordtracker (still important tools to have in you kit).

(more…)

I’m sitting in a presentation by Matt Cutts - mostly Q&A - but he showed Searchmash.com which I hadn’t see before. It is owned by Google, but totally separate and is a sandbox. Some of the interesting items are wiki results on the right instead of in the results. Same thing with images, blogs and videos. There is also a flash version.

(more…)

Header tags are HTML tags that help with the formatting of headlines and section heads in your content. They are also important for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) because they indicate to the search engines which pieces of text are more important than others on the page. Having your most important keywords in your header tags is an important part of getting better rankings for specific keywords.

(more…)

If you have never used Google Trends (www.google.com/trends) then you are missing out. This handy tools shows you the trend of searches for a single or group of keywords over time. The current version goes back to January 2004 and is now updated daily (used to be monthly and woefully behind in months). So, what is Google Trends good for?:
1. Looking at trends for your most important keywords: brands, specific products, generic works that drive your business, etc. This is a great view on why certain terms might be doing better or worse now than in 2005.
(more…)

What is one of the most important SEO goals for your Web site? Getting all of the pages indexed within the search engines. The biggest problem that most search engines face is finding all of the links buried deep within the structure of your site. The one simple solution is to create a sitemap. This provides one central location for the search engines to find links to all pages on your site.

(more…)

Title tags on a web page are critical page elements for two reasons:
1) It is seen by the search engines as a strong content element on the page because it is visible to the end user and treated as an important/headline type display.
(more…)

Wikipedia states, “Link popularity is a measure of the quantity and quality of other web sites that link to a specific site on the World Wide Web.” Most folks today understand what link popularity is but what they do not understand is that link popularity is an important factor in the visibility of a web site within the top of the search results. Some search engines even go as far to require at least one or more links coming to a web site, otherwise they will drop it from the index. Google, as an example, uses a special link analysis system to rank web pages.

(more…)