When you write an article, you place it in a category.  A category is a general concept that the post fits, such as healthcare or IT.  A tag is more specific and helps people find hot or popular topics…such as Apple iPad, hospital care, influenza…etc.  In programs like WordPress your tags will actually create pages titled with this tag keyword…and showing only stories related to that keyword…great for search engines and for giving people a way to scout hot topics.

Check out the tags I used on this article and see how this could be useful for you and your readers.

Its time to start looking at some of the elements of your website that are critical to search engine success.

Next to the website’s URL, the site’s title tag ranks very high on the mythical search engine favorability chart.  Title tags show up in two very important places.  First, if you bookmark a page or look at the top of your browser, you’ll see the title tag prominently displayed.  But the other place a title tag is used is in your organic listing in Google, Yahoo! or Bing.  If you have the right stuff in your title tag, including those juicy keyword phrases you just spent that money on…it can make your organic listing as eye-catching as your AdWord advertisement.

So what should you put into your title tag?  How should you format it?  Here are a few tips for those wishing to use this powerful element.

• First off, don’t go overboard
  Google, Yahoo! and Bing on average only show 60-70 characters.  The other words will still get some power, but your tag will be cut off in search engine results.
• Use keyword phrases
  Okay, pick one or  two keyword phrases that are related to your page content (especially the main title of your page…the <h1> tag to you coders).  Make sure you use these keywords in your page and meta description tag also.
• Divide your content for easy viewing
  When I used to work in radio, I would cut my ads up with hashes so I knew where to breathe and how to see where things stopped and started. Having your phrases | separated | makes them easier | to read.
• Feed what they are looking for
  If they are wanting to buy, use keywords like “shop” “purchase” etc.  If your page is a catalog or information, provide more keywords related to the content.
• Put your company name last
  The beginning of a title tag is more powerful than the end of it.  Make your keywords show up first and then use your meta description tag your company identifier.
• Choose a format and stick with it
  Nothing gets more annoying than going to a site where things change drastically from page to page.  Same with your title tag…make sure it uses the same format throughout your site.

If you use a content management tool, make sure it allows you to customize your title tags or ask your developer how to affect them.  In our content management system (CMS), when you type in a title to your page, it is automatically distributed to the title tag and to other critical parts of the page for SEO.

It is also critical to make sure you are using the right keywords.  Just because they seem powerful to you, doesn’t mean they are going to get results.  There are plenty of great secondary keywords and keyphrases that can be just as powerful as the main ones.  A good keyword analysis will get you off to a good start with your title tags.

Happy editing!

My answer is usually not as simple as just “avoid it.”  I like to give advantages and disadvantages to my clients so they can make an informed decision.

So with that in mind, I also looked for some credible resources to feed their opinion on the subject.  In a world where SEO techniques are growing more and more in demand, I find that drives the decisions of most people.

My main arguments against Flash for full site design include:

• many Flash sites reside on one page which means bookmarks are useless,
• search engines like Google are learning to spider Flash but sometimes you get very undesirable results,
• it becomes very hard to maintain your own content which ties you to a web developer,
• it is another program that not everyone has access to (a bug with IE8/Vista on my computer refuses to install it) so some people may miss your whole site,
• you have 10 seconds to win someone over to your product – most Flash sites I’ve been on take 3-5 seconds to bounce up a navigation…unless you’re selling “Loading” and percentage rates, you’re wasting valuable attention grabbing time, and if your site doesn’t respect their time – do they think your product will?
• customers don’t care about cool effects – they want to know if your product is worth while, if you are selling Flash design then maybe it is worth demonstrating, but most of my clients are trying to sell something else,
• Flash is costly to develop and update,
• and with JQuery you can do many of the things Flash can do to a lesser degree but with much better search engine results (see one of our customer’s non-Flash pages).

For Flash in general, I am also not a big proponent.  I can say that I’ve been to some very nice Flash sites…but I have never bought anything from one of them because their site has a fancy Flash presentation.  In the business world, that speaks volumes.

So what are my pros for using Flash?  It makes me a lot of extra cash as a web developer….it looks nice if done right, and it is less annoying than having a site with white text on a black background (I start seeing spots when this combo happens!  …by the way, if you like this combo…bookmark this Google page for your searches: Blackle)

Other articles to read:

• Search Engine Journal Article
• SEOmoz Article
• Conversation Marketing Article

Have something to say on this subject?  Leave a comment below, we’d love to hear from you.

Well, surprising to me, in the highly competitive market of Greenville, SC we were able to jump in with both feet and within 2 1/2 months the site hit #3 in Google under the keywords “Greenville Web Design.”

This was our goal when we started, since we had pretty much completely ignored our own website’s optimization to focus on our clients instead (funny how web design companies always forget to focus on their own sites).  But a slow economy made us realize that good search engine placement is critical at all times, because you never know what will happen tomorrow and you don’t want to be playing catch up when you need the business the most.

In the Greenville market we had always been around page 3 or 4 in Google results, so it felt like a triumphant achievement when be broke onto page 1 of Google, let alone the result of hitting as high as #3 ahead of some firmly established web design companies.

Yet it was even more surprising when we looked at our Asheville, NC results the other day.  Asheville is where I grew up and we have a couple of customers there, but it has always been a very creative market and one that I thought was untouchable.  In fact, our search results there were non-existent.  In January, you couldn’t find us as deep as page 10 in Google.

Today, I looked and we were #2 under “Asheville Web Design.”  I must say, this was a lot more than I was expecting.

But this proves that in some cases good search engine optimization and a lot of patience (it took 5 months to get here) alone can get you to the results you desire and maybe better.

The key is, use your website’s strengths to leverage the results you desire and decide up front where you want to focus your energies.  Then hyperfocus on that goal.

A single plan of conquering a couple of keywords or markets can really help you and your web designer take your site to the next level in SEO.  But don’t rest on your laurels.  There is another website soon to sniff out your techniques.  SEO takes patience, but it also takes some care and maintenance.

For more information on how to achieve your SEO goals, I’d suggest trying out our Free Web Report, from EvolveYourSearch.com.  It will give you a little food for thought and help you decide if SEO is your next logical step.

Both services use a “nofollow” attribute on their links to your site.  There are some ways around this, but for the novice or casual business owner who isn’t getting guidance from an SEO professional or web developer in the know are most likely wasting their time putting links in these two mediums.

Apparently Google developed the “nofollow” attribute to fight spam.  Years later, many business people don’t realize that Twitter, Facebook and Wikipedia have all agreed to use this tag to stop spiders from reaching through your posts to find your web site.

So in the end, it seems Google has chosen the Blog as the preferred medium for delivery of timely content.