link:

(Example)

If your search query in Google is link:www.domain.com, you’ll see a list of URL’s that link to domain.com that Google has indexed.  Unfortunately the list of URL’s that you see is not the total number of websites that are linking to the domain you enter.  Also, some of these URL’s might be of your own site.  In order to only list those URL’s that are not from your site, you can use a site: operator combo.  So the search query that you would use would be link:www.domain.com –site:domain.com, which would show you the URL’s that link to your domain that are not from within your domain.  I believe this is in order to prevent people from looking up their competitor’s links and usurping all of them.

(Exceptions)

The link operator must have a URL in the search query and must not have a space between the link: operator and the URL.

(Best way to use it)

You can use the link operator in combination with the site operator to get a glimpse of the URL’s that are linking to your domain.  If you spot a URL that doesn’t look familiar, you can visit the site and see why they are linking to you so you can possibly duplicate what you did with future strategies.  Another thing you can do is to use the operator with your competitor’s websites.  See who is linking to them and see what they are doing correctly.

related:

(Example)

If your search query in Google is related:www.domain.com, you’ll see a list of URL’s that are indexed and seen as related to the topics of your website by Google.  This isn’t 100% accurate so take it with a grain of salt. 

(Exceptions)

The related operator must have a URL in the search query and must not have a space between the related: operator and the URL.

(Best way to use it)

This would be an interesting way to see what Google thinks of the content on your website.  I have used this operator in the past to find new competitors that my clients never knew about.  You can also visit some of the URL’s that show up and see if you can’t establish any partnerships as long as they aren’t a direct competitor.  If you aren’t seeing any competitors that you recognize or sites related to your industry, you may want to consider looking through your content and making sure you have relevant topics.

allinurl:

(Example)

If your search query in Google is allinurl:chocolate bars, you’ll see a filtered list of results that are indexed and contain only the keywords “chocolate” and “bars” in the URL.  The thing you need to note is that order of keyword placement doesn’t apply here.  So Google will return results that either have chocolate before the bars or bars before the chocolate.  They don’t even need to be next to one another.  You may get a URL listing that is http://www.candybars.com/chocolate

(Exceptions)

Combining this advanced search operator with others will return no results so be sure to only include your keywords (which can be one, two, three, or more actual words).  A variation of this advanced search operator is the inurl: command.  Although these two search operators essentially do the same thing, the difference is that the inurl: command only filters out based on the first word in your keyword string.  So for example, if your search query in Google is inurl:chocolate bars, you’ll see a filtered list of results that have chocolate in the URL and has bars somewhere within the content of the page.

(Best way to use it)

This would be an interesting way to see how competitive your keywords are by looking for specific listings in which the URL is the keyword itself.  I saw this a lot in the travel industry while I was at Expedia.  A lot of affiliate marketers would purchase www.lasvegashotels.com or www.seattleflights.com or any other variation of a destination + travel combo.  If you don’t see a listing that is in the form of your keyword, you can see if the domain is taken if you’re feeling a little advantageous to capitalize on an exact-match domain by creating a micro site.

site:

(Example)

If your search query in Google is site:www.domain.com, you’ll see a list of URL’s that Google has indexed within your domain.  You can combine this search operator with a keyword in order to show you which pages on the domain mention the specific keyword that is within your search query.

(Exceptions)

The related operator can either have the full URL or just a portion of the URL in the search query.

(Best way to use it)

If I want to see how many pages are indexed on a specific domain, the site: operator is the perfect candidate to do so.  Also, you can use the site: operator to view all of your URL’s to see how well your title tags and meta descriptions are written.

allinanchor:

(Example)

This one is rather tricky to understand at first, but let me give it my best shot.  If your search query in Google is allinanchor:chocolate bars, you’ll see a list of URL’s that are indexed by Google and that contain “chocolate” and “bars” in the anchor text of its backlinks.  Did you get that?  So let me try to explain it in a different way.  Those results you see in Google when you use the allinanchor: operator have a number of backlinks each and at least one of those backlinks contain the words “chocolate” and “bars”.  I’m sure you know this, but anchor text is the text on a page that is linked to another web page or a different place on the current page. When you click on anchor text, you will be taken to the page or place on the page to which it is linked.

(Exceptions)

Combining this advanced search operator with others will return no results so be sure to only include your keywords (which can be one, two, three, or more actual words).  A variation of this advanced search operator is the inanchor: command.  Although these two search operators essentially do the same thing, the difference is that the inanchor: command only filters out based on the first word in your keyword string.  So for example, if your search query in Google is inanchor:chocolate bars, you’ll see a filtered list of results that have chocolate in the anchor text of their backlinks and has bars somewhere within the content of the page.

(Best way to use it)

For your top keywords, you can use this advanced search operator to see which URL’s seem to have the greatest amount of backlinks with the anchor text you are interested in.  If you’re feeling a bit advantageous, you can even combine a couple here.  For example, a search query for “inanchor:chocolate bars site:www.godiva.com” will show you all of the pages on Godiva.com that have links with chocolate the anchor text and bars somewhere within the content.

allintitle:

(Example)

If your search query in Google is allintitle:chocolate bars, you’ll see a list of URL’s that are indexed by Google and that contain “chocolate” and “bars” in the title tag.

(Exceptions)

Combining this advanced search operator with others will return no results so be sure to only include your keywords (which can be one, two, three, or more actual words).  A variation of this advanced search operator is the intitle: command.  Although these two search operators essentially do the same thing, the difference is that the intitle: command only filters out based on the first word in your keyword string.  So for example, if your search query in Google is intitle:chocolate bars, you’ll see a filtered list of results that have chocolate in the title tag and has bars somewhere within the content of the page.

(Best way to use it)

For your top keywords, you can use this advanced search operator to see a more realistic sample of how many sites may also be targeting this keyword.  If you’re feeling a bit advantageous, you can even combine this search operator with the inanchor: search operator, which will typically show you a much more approximate sample of those sites that may be targeting the keyword.  For example, a search query for “intitle:chocolate intitle:bars inanchor:chocolate inanchor:bars” will show you all of the pages that are indexed by Google that contains chocolate and bars not only in the title tag, but also in the anchor text of their backlinks.

Maximus says: Got a question about SEO consulting? If you have a few minutes, let's chat!

[SEO is guaranteed]
There is not a single SEO consultant who fully understands Google’s, let alone any search engine’s algorithm.  Let’s just say it’s slightly more complicated than A+B=C and in fact, even the head engineers only know portions of the algorithm.  In a nutshell, SEO success is built off of educated trial & error but you do have to know what the heck you’re doing.

[SEO is simple]
Learning the fundamentals of SEO are simple because they simply don’t change.  Good SEO is not just about applying the fundamentals, but rather the quality of links that are built to the site.  This part is not as simple as you would hope unfortunately.  A general rule of thumb that I have is that there is a general correlation of the level of difficulty of obtaining an inbound link to the quality and value that it brings to your site.

[SEO has instant results]
This would only be true in the case that SEO were magic.  Contraire my friend, SEO is actually a very time-consuming process.  The earliest I’ve seen results on a website I have worked on has been a little over 4 months with an average being roughly 6 months.  Put it this way, one night of healthy cooking will not result in 6 pack abs the following day.  You need months of consistent healthy meals and solid exercise to see those kind of results.

[SEO is a one-time thing]
If you’ve ever invested any marketing dollars, you might agree with me that one single campaign is simply not enough to sustain your business.  I suppose if this weren’t true, large companies wouldn’t need to pay an entire marketing division to continually come up with new messaging.  SEO is no different than any other marketing channel in that on-going maintenance is required to keep your competitors from outranking you in the search engines.  Bottom line, SEO is not a one time thing.

[Participating in excessive link exchanges with other website owners is acceptable]
According to the official guidelines set out by Google and I quote “Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging (“Link to me and I’ll link to you.”)” are considered as link schemes.  I suppose to an extent this is OK as long as the two industries are relevant, but don’t put all of your eggs in this one technique.

[Stuffing the meta keywords tag with a ton of keywords adds tremendous potential to your search engine rankings]
This tag wielded some influence about 10 years ago, but not anymore.  That was until a few Viagra affiliate dummies decided to stuff their meta keywords tags with a ton of unrelated keywords.  Many people have run experiments with this tag (including myself) and the majority consensus seems to be that the meta keywords tag has no benefit in providing any benefit to your website.

[Pay per click campaigns will influence Google to give a good organic listing]
I’ve been surprised at how many companies seem to think that a pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns will entice the search engines to bump up your organic listings.  If that were the case, there would be nothing “organic” about the organic listings at all would there?  PPC campaigns are definitely beneficial and have their purpose, but my opinion is that they should be done once SEO is finished.

[A large quantity of links will get me top rankings]
Remember, I said “quantity” not “quality”.  This is what distinguished Google from every other search engine on the market.  They assigned every URL on the internet (that they could crawl) a unique rank termed “Page Rank” which calculates a value based on the quality of inbound links.  I always like to say that 1 inbound link from CNN.com is much more powerful than 100 links from some random, brand new blog.  One important factor I don’t want to neglect is that if you want to obtain a ranking for “best Seattle restaurant”, getting other sites to link to yours with the keyword “best Seattle restaurant” as the anchor text of the link helps more substantially than if the anchor text was simply the name of your website.

[Higher PageRank = Higher search rankings]
I think those who obsess over PageRank are either brand new to SEO or haven’t spent enough time doing enough of their own research.  To be fair, the majority of the case studies I’ve performed have shown that the results that show up high for popular keyword searches does indeed have high PageRank.  Many times I’ve performed a search and a website with a lower PageRank actually outranks the website with the higher PageRank.  In my opinion, PageRank only tells me how effectively a website channels and distributes the domain PageRank through its internal architecture (how a site links to other pages within the site).  At the end of the day, it’s just one of the hundreds of ranking factors that the search engines use in their algorithms.

[Content should be written for the search engines only, meaning they should contain lots and lots of keywords]
Although I believe the idea of “keyword density” is now dead, I believe that the emphasis needs to be on the visitor.  One of the rules of thumb I still remember and believe to this day from my AP English teacher was that word choice is critical in any writing piece and believe it or not, a word that is used repetitively loses its punch.  Do you BELIEVE me yet?    When you write content for your website, make sure it is tailored to users and not the search engines.  Your goal is to make the user come back to your website because the crawlers will come back whether they want to or not…after all, it is their job.

[Since Google has over 68% market share, optimizing for Bing and Yahoo doesn’t really matter]
It’s like an independent travel blog trying to compete against Expedia or Trip Advisor.  There’s no point right?  Wrong!  Not everybody likes Expedia nor does everybody like Trip Advisor.  Likewise, not everybody likes Google.  In fact, I had a client that got mad at me that I used screen shots of Google’s search engine results page in a report to show them their results.  The ranking factors overlap for the most part, but there are subtle differences that unfortunately do not mix well.  I will say that Google has started taking steps in the direction of awarding search engine placement for user experience.  I’ll share more on this in another article.

[You can avoid duplicate content penalties by changing and swapping around a few words]
There are so many syndication sites for people to submit their content to.  The question is how often do you submit your content to these sites?  Also, what the heck does “syndication” mean?  Ever seen a commercial that was played on two different television stations?  How about the same advertisement in two different magazines?  That is a prime example of syndication at its prime.  This unfortunately doesn’t work as well with content.  When Google detects duplicate content, it essentially looks at both sources and tries to determine who the original source is.  Google will typically pick the one they feel is the original and label the other pages as mirrors.  These mirrored sites automatically get a PageRank of zero.  I’ve seen this happen for the majority of syndicated sites, but there are others that have multiple copies of content over the internet that show a decent PageRank.  Conclusion, I think if you do want to syndicate your content, it might behoove you to actually re-write the content and either subtract/add a topic.

[There is no point in obtaining a no follow link because they have no value]
If you don’t have any idea what a “no-follow” tag is, it’s simply a link attribute that sits inside the link tag that tells the search engines not to pass any PageRank to the URL it is linking to.  Remember, each unique link to your site acts as a vote of trust in the eyes of the search engines.  So now that we’re all on the same page, what would the point be to obtaining links that have the no-follow attribute?  My testing has actually shown that no-follow links actually do help with your rankings.

[Keyword research is only needed if you don't know your customers or products]
Keyword research is a necessity by all businesses regardless of size, shape, color, or smell.  Whether you have no idea who your customers are or you know your customers a little too much where it borderlines creepiness (haha just kidding), determining which keywords are actually being used in the search engines is critical.  For example, do you think “cheap flights” is a better search term or “cheap flight”?  A quick use of the Google keyword tool shows that “cheap flights” gets roughly 25 times more search volume than “cheap flight” does.  This was one of the simple changes that I made that caused a ridiculous 450% increase in online bookings.  Even large and very established corporations sometimes need to go back to the foundations beginning with good ol’ keyword research.

[Linking out to other pages "leaks" your page rank - so avoid it at all cost]
If you spend a little bit of time reading through very established blogs, one common trait I see all of them share is the fact that they freely link to other blogs and websites.  The average blog post from a popular blog has a rough average of 3-7 links to other websites.  Part of being an expert in your field is knowing the right resources to link to that will provide maximum benefit to your visitors.  Although the act of linking to other sites provides no SEO benefit, what I’ve noticed is that whenever I link to other blogs, I either get referenced in future articles from those sites or I simply get a unique visit with a “thank you” for the reference.  This part is a bit of speculation, but I like to think of each page on your website as a lake.  If there are lots of inlets and no outlets, the water become polluted (information becomes all one-sided and has no other insight).

[Site loading time doesn’t matter]
Recently Google has launched a new tool called Google Page Speed.  They’ve also made some statements that page load speed may definitely become a ranking factor in the future because it falls under the user experience category.  It makes sense that Google is going to put a heavy emphasis on user experience of a website as their job is to deliver the best websites for particular keyword searches right?

[If you have the keyword in the URL, you will rank #1]
I have dozens of affiliate websites that have exact match domains, meaning that the domain of the website is a strong keyword.  Once I made the website live on the internet, I linked to the website from one of my test sites that were already indexed and on day 19, it was on page one of Google for the keyword search even though I had built no links to it.  I let it sit for another 2 weeks and it got bumped to position #13.  I built a few links to the site and today it sits at #3.  I don’t anticipate beating Amazon anytime in the near future, but considering the ranking I achieved for such little SEO work, not too bad.  All this to say that having your keyword in the URL will help, it’s not the be-all end-all solution to your SEO strategy.

[The search engines see singular keywords and a plural keywords the same]
Remember how we discussed the difference in search volume for “cheap flights” and “cheap flight” earlier?  Many people think that singular/plural keywords are not a significant factor to look at but as we saw it can be a significant one.  Another example would be “Seattle restaurants” and “restaurants in Seattle”.  Guess which keyword gets over 6 times more search volume?  “Seattle restaurants” does even though “restaurants in Seattle would be the keyword I would use off the top of my head to target”.  So think of a few keywords that you think you would like to target, visit some of your competitors and “borrow” some of the keywords they are targeting, or simply ask your friends/colleagues what they might use to find you in the search engines.  Compile a list of these keywords and see if any of them overlap.  It’s likely that the ones that overlap will be your strongest keywords.  Then write as many singular/plural versions of those keywords and run them through the Google Adwords keyword tool.  Of course this is only 15% of the keyword research process, but at least it gives you a good idea of what the potential demand may be.

I’m very curious to know if any of these come as a shock to you?  If you have a fuzzy idea of SEO that you aren’t 100% sure on, post it here and I’ll address it in the comments section.

Maximus says: Got a question about SEO consulting? If you have a few minutes, let's chat!

Doo doo doo…actually I’m going to go grab a glass of water.

Okay back…good to see you’re back also.    Let’s get to it.

These days, SEO is starting to get a pretty big hype and of course that means that everybody and their mom are trying to get involved in the industry.  In that mix are a ton of developers trying to make a small fortune by creating the next best SEO tool that is going to revolutionize the industry.  Don’t get me wrong, there are a TON of great SEO tools out there but in all honesty, I honestly don’t believe that a mere tool can outperform the skill set of an experienced SEO professional.

I’ve seen so far too many websites lately that don’t rank for competitive keywords.  When I say competitive keywords, I’m talking about keywords that your potential customers would typically use to find some information regarding your industry.  I call it, the art of keyword research.  Whether or not you show up above your competitors is all up to you.  If you are in the music industry, to rank #1 for the keyword “music” over your competition of 1.5 TRILLION websites would be the gold mine.  Do you think Yahoo! got to the #1 spot for the keyword “music” by just deciding to become #1?  Sure, that was the first step but Yahoo started with a SEO plan to rank over sites such as Pandora & MTV.  Well, MTV hasn’t played any music since Beavis & Butthead so I guess that doesn’t count. 

While there are many factors that we’ll go over in the future, let’s stick with the foundation of SEO which is choosing the right keywords.  You can go pay a couple hundred bucks a month for a piece of software that isn’t always reliable or you can spend a little bit of time to learn how to use this powerful tool from Google and enjoy a steak dinner at a fancy restaurant with the couple hundred bucks that I’ll save you every month.

Google Adwords Keyword Tool

This is my keyword research tool of choice.  I’m going to show you a few screen shots and list the things you should be aware of in bullet format.

1. Click “Edit” to change the language and country settings (see below for more info)
   
2. Enter your keyword ideas (see below for more info)
   
3. Click filters to set limitations on your keyword ideas
4. Fill the captcha and click the button
   

1. Language settings for your region of interest.  (for example, if you’re in Canada you could do some keyword research with English & French)
2. Country settings for your region of interest.  (for example, if you’re in America and wanted to expand into Australia, you would set this to “Australia”)

1. Once you’ve clicked the filters button, this is where you enter your negative keywords (in other words, enter in the keywords that you DON’T want to show up in your results)
2. From the 2 check boxes, unless you’re running an adult XXX site (which I really REALLY hope you aren’t), you should only concern yourself with the first checkbox.  Check this box if you ONLY want to see the search volume numbers for the keyword ideas you entered.
3. Click the “Get keyword ideas” button to get your keyword ideas!

1. Once your keyword ideas generate, you have the option of clicking the drop down menu to uncover a ton of additional information for more advanced research.  To keep this tutorial short & sweet, I will plow through these advanced options as a training module for my subscribed members.  The general rule of thumb you want to follow here is to see if the keywords you are currently ranking for have any search volume and to find closely related keywords that might have better search volume.

1. These are your keywords
2. This metric does NOT show you how competitive this keyword is…I repeat this does NOT represent the competitiveness of this keyword.  I’ll try to explain this metric as best as I can.  Let’s take the keyword “boxer dog training”.  The estimated average CPC (Cost Per Click) as defined by Google Adwords is $1.23.  If every advertiser bids at or above $1.23, this Advertiser Competition would be 100%.  If only half of the advertisers bid at or above $1.23, this Advertiser Competition would be 50%.  Make sense?  Don’t worry, it’s a tough one to understand at first.
3. This is the search volume data (as in “how many times did this particular keyword was used in Google.  Local Search Volume denotes the search volume for the prior month.  Global Monthly Search Volume denotes the total amount of times this keyword was used over the past year divided by 12.
4. This shows how the search volume has trended over the past year.  Very strong metric to see if the keyword is hot or not.
5. You can see different match-types for the keyword.

• Broad - Allows your keyword to show data for searches on similar phrases and relevant variations
• “Phrase” - Allows your keyword to show data for searches that match the exact phrase
• [Exact] - Allows your keyword to show data for searches that match the exact phrase exclusively
• -Negative – Ensures your keyword doesn’t show data for any search that includes that term

1. You can export this list in an excel sheet if you so choose.

If you didn’t check the “Don’t show ideas for new keywords” box, you should’ve noticed that there are two sections of keywords

• Keyword related to term(s) entered – These keywords are the exact keyword ideas you entered or variations of them
• Additional keywords to consider – These keywords are suggestions from Google that closely match your keyword ideas

Well, I hope this has helped you a little more to figure out if your webpage is targeting good keywords or not.  A common question I’ve heard many times is “so now that you’ve explained this tool, why in the world would anybody want to pay you to do their keyword research??”

That’s a very fair question and my answer is in the form of another question, which is “why WOULD you want to hire me?!”

With all jokes aside, keyword research is one of those things you want to make sure you do correctly the first time otherwise your SEO efforts from that point on are futile.  Remember, keyword research is an art.  It takes years to not only get good at testing keywords & their variations, but to also see what kind of competition you will have with other competing websites for that specific keyword.  And remember, you can’t tell how competitive a particular keyword is from this tool alone.  The main idea is finding keywords and performing analysis on them based on a certain set of criteria.  A subscription to Ranking Channel gives you exclusive access to Keyword Research Buddy, a tool that I created which will do all of the analysis for you and help cut  lots of cost from your SEO bill.  The choice is yours and however you decide to go about your keyword research, I just hope I have helped in some way or another!

Maximus says: Got a question about SEO consulting? If you have a few minutes, let's chat!

Google Adwords Keyword Tool

• Obtain monthly search volume not only for keywords you input, but also for related keywords that Google suggests
• Match-type

  • Broad – Allows your ad to show for searches on similar phrases and relevant variations
  • “Phrase” – Allows your ad to show for searches that match the exact phrase
  • [Exact] – Allows your ad to show for searches that match the exact phrase exclusively
  • -Negative – Ensures your ad doesn’t show for any search that includes that term
• Under the “Choose columns to display” drop down menu, select “Show all” and you get this:

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Google Search-Based Keyword Tool (SKTOOL)

• Allows you to tailor a keyword based on your language or country settings.
• The keywords are organized by category so you can see the most-searched keywords for your particular industry.

---

Google Trends

• See trends in how people are searching your particular keyword.
• The data goes as far as 4 years back.

You can see if a particular keyword is losing popularity

On the flipside, you can see if a different keyword may be gaining popularity

---

Google Insights

• Allows you to compare search volume patterns for up to 5 keywords at a time across specific regions, categories,  or time frames
• A great way to see how popular keywords & their variations are by POS
• While Google Trends did a great job of showing the trends and the areas that people were searching from, Google Insights also does that and a few other things
• A list of the related top searches along with the top rising searches
• A graphical world heat map which displays the search volume index (normalized)

Give it a go, if you would like to see some video tutorials let me know in the comments section.

Maximus says: Got a question about SEO consulting? If you have a few minutes, let's chat!

Everyone knows Starbucks.  Their business is coffee.  Likewise, Boeing’s business is airplanes, Microsoft’s business is software, & my business is to help other small business owners drive more traffic to their websites and convert those new visitors to increased sales.  Man, that REALLY sounds like a cheesy business pitch…I can assure you it IS! 

Do you know who else has a business…possibly one of the greatest businesses in the entire world?

Google.

Their business is to give their customers the best websites available on the internet for every possible keyword variation.  With nearly 70% of people flocking to Google to find their answers, it just might make sense for your business to know what the most commonly searched keywords are for your industry, yea?

The art of finding these top keywords is called “keyword research.”  Performing keyword research has a bit of an analytical approach to it, but like I said before, keyword research is an art.  Good keyword research should target 3 different types of people.

1. People who BROWSE
   • These keywords should be a general snapshot of the company’s overall mission.
   • Example: “SEO”
2. People who COMPARE
   • These keywords should categorize & structure the content.
   • Example: “Seattle SEO”
3. People who PURCHASE
   • These keywords will be long -tail & extremely descriptive (i.e. “training schools for dogs to learn to sit and stay in Seattle” – these long keywords are referred to as “long-tail”)
   • Example: “Keyword Research Expert SEO in Seattle”

Bottom line is that without a good keyword research campaign, on-page SEO changes and even future link building strategies are wasted effort.  Think of it this way.  If you go overseas to a foreign country and speak a random language, you’re probably going to get a very small handful of people who speak your language.  The fact of the matter is that the majority of the population is not going to understand what you’re trying to say.  If you want people to find you on the internet, you need to be speaking their language.

The keyword research tool that I use is the Google Adwords Keyword Tool.  A great tool to use, but you need to know it’s power and also it’s limitations in order for it to be useful.

What are they saying?

How are they saying it?

In a nutshell, keyword research is the process of finding the right keywords that people are using to find websites like yours!  If you want to be found on the search engines, start with good keyword research.

Maximus says: Got a question about SEO consulting? If you have a few minutes, let's chat!

“Stand for Something or Fall for Anything”

The meta description tag is quite possibly the 2nd most important on-page SEO factor behind the title tag. Let’s take a look at a Google search for “meta description.”

The snippet of text under the title tag (blue underlined link) is the meta description. If your meta description has your targeted keyword in a search query, Google will automatically make it bold (So very thoughtful of them). My experiments have shown that it is the second thing that a potential customer will see when they perform a search.

A few guidelines with the meta description tag:

1. Keep in mind that search engines typically display between 150-160 characters of the meta description in the SERP’s.
2. Include at least 3 keywords that the page is targeting.
3. This is what the searcher will see as they weed out the irrelevant websites & decide which website to click on so make sure the meta description is readable by humans.

The average customer will come to your site, spend about 10 seconds looking around and will affect your conversion rate based on your content. The meta description is your opportunity to prepare your potential customer with whatever you want them to know before the 10 second timer begins ticking.

A well-written meta description is a crucial step in giving your potential customers what they want, when they want it.

Maximus says: Got a question about SEO consulting? If you have a few minutes, let's chat!

My engineering career didn’t last long.  The theory of it was extremely interesting, but the actual work itself sure wasn’t.

>>>>Fast-forward 2 years later and here we are today.

As a former mechanical engineer (no offense to current mechanical engineers), I used to absolutely despise business networking.  Here was a typical conversation for me:

Other dude: “So what do you do?”

Me: “Oh, I just work at (Fill in your company here)”

Both: “……” *Glances at watch and laughs hesitantly*

Me: “This is really good food”

Other dude: “Mmm hmmm…”

Sound familiar?  It haunts me just thinking about how painful it was.  It wasn’t until I got into SEO (Search Engine Optimization) where I actually started to enjoy business networking.  The single aspect that I most enjoy is the look on people’s faces when I tell them I get websites to the top of Google & get paid to use Facebook & Twitter.  The follow up question I undoubtedly get all the time is:

What is the single-MOST important thing you can do to get better results in the search engines?

My Answer:

Changing the title tag is one of the most important fixes you can do to your website to get better search engine results.  What makes the title tag so powerful?  I’m going to show you what the title tag is first, then I’ll answer this question.  Think of the last time you performed a search in Google.  As a matter of fact, go do a Google search right now for any keyword.  In case you were too lazy to do the search, check out the graphic below.

Notice the blue underlined links?  That’s the title tag!  What makes the title tag so important is that the eyes of a potential customer are immediately drawn to them when they perform a search.  Not only do they have a bigger font size, they’re BLUE!

A few ground rules with the title tag:

1. Google will only display 60-70 characters of the title tag in the SERP’s (Search Engine Results Page).
2. Include at least 2 keywords that the page is targeting.
3. Make the title tag readable by humans.

In order to stand out from the crowd, a well-written title tag is a crucial step after performing good keyword research if you want to give ‘em what they want when they want it.

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