Search Engine Optimization – SEO Help

Everyone is always telling us what we SHOULD be doing with our website promotion and what we should buy and how we need links and that our on-page optimization is wrong and we need to buy this program or that.

Today I want to talk about WHAT NOT TO DO as far as your On-Page Optimization. Lets Imagine today that we are a used car dealer in Altoona PA. Our websites example location is http://www.joesgreatcars.com/.

Do Not put your URL in your Title

The reason is… it is wasted space. Google only reads about 60 characters of your title and Yahoo only 80. So why put in something that no one is going to search for. If they already knew to search for xyz.com then they would just put it into their browser and not bothered with a search.

A lot of people would put into their title 

Joe’s Great Cars | www.joesgreatcars.com

The better way of doing it is

Joes Great Used Cars Altoona Blair County PA 814 16601 16603

We have kept to our character limit and we put in the extra phrases that people do search for. No wasted space. If you want to target another 20 characters to the Yahoo Search Engine you can then add that info to the end of the existing title.

Please Note: I do believe that Google will actually index up to about 255 characters in a title but only the first 60 to 70 appear in the results pages. Also I have found that keeping the title tag to 60 characters or about 12 words works best.

Do NOT stuff phrases into your Description

A lot of people use their description to just toss keywords out. There are 2 problems with this. The first is that without an interesting description even if you come up high in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS) nobody will click on your listing because it looks like spam.

The second problem is that when you are given a high results ranking usually a human at Google will look at it at some point and give you a penalty for spamming the description. The other side of this coin is that when you are given a high listing, lets say you are at position 8 on the front page of the Google Search Results for Used Cars Altoona PA and the sites at position 9 and 10 are getting more click from the searchers then your site. Google will eventually downgrade your site until your clicks there match your position.

So do a description that not only contains your primary targeted phrases but entices someone to click your listing. As an example:

Buy a Used Car from Joes Used Cars located in Altoona PA 16601 Call us at 814 555-1212 and mention Google and get an extra 10% off your purchase

We are under the display limit of 155 characters and we have used our prmary key phrases. A lot of people say that Google doesn’t index the description, I do not believe this at all.  Also there are  rumors that Google is going to and may now be in some instances, lower the limit from 155 characters to 95 characters displayed. So make sure the first 95 characters are the most important characters in your description. 

Do NOT Repeat your key phrase or parts of your key phrse more then 1 1/2 time in your title and no more then 2 times in your description

This can get confusing. In my opinion Google reads each word of a phrase as a part of that phrase. So the phrase Used Cars could be penalized if we used either word or both words to excess in the title and description.

Lets look at our title first:

Joes Great Used Cars Altoona Blair County PA 814 16601 16603

Each word of the phrase is used one time so thats good.. If we changed it to:

Joes Great Used Cars Cheap prices on Cars Altoona Blair County PA 814 16601 16603

We now have used the phrase 1.5 times. One occurance of used and 2 occurances of Cars. Still acceptable.

If we change it again to read:

Joes Great Used Cars Cheap prices on Used Cars Altoona Blair County PA 814 16601 16603

We now have 2 instances of both words or now we are at 2 times which is about .5 times too many.

Now lets look at our description tag. The same rules apply but instead of 1 time we can use the phrase 2 times here.

Buy a Used Car from Joes Used Cars located in Altoona PA 16601 Call us at 814 555-1212 and mention Google and get an extra 10% off your purchase

We have used each word 2 times so we are good. However if we change the description to read:

Buy a Used Car from Joes Used Cars located in Altoona PA 16601 Call us at 814 555-1212 and mention Google and get an extra 10% off your next Car purchase

No instead of 2 times we have used the word USED twice and Car three times or a total of 2.5 times. This is hitting the unacceptable level.

DO NOT Repeat your key phrase twice in a row anyplace on your page.

No matter what NEVER NEVER NEVER repeat a key phrase or part of a key phrase 2 times in a row. ALWAYS put at least one word of 4 characters or more between the repeats of a phrase.

A lot of people stuff tags like putting their key phrases like: used cars, used cars, used cars on their pages.  You will get a penalty for this. Also I see a big problem when people use a headline tag so their paragraph looks something like this:

Joe’s Used Cars

Used cars at low prices all day long every day. Stop in and see us soon!

It does’t seem like a repeat. It is a sub title on the page and then the description of that subtitle. Guess what? To a Search Engine its a direct repeat. Make sure you don’t do ANY repeats.

Well thats todays tips. Please stop back to see more soon!

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