Facebook: Most Popular Search Term & Most Visited Website in 2010, Hitwise Says

Who said predictable? Facebook has overtaken Google.com as the most visited site in the US in 2010 and is the most searched keyword 2 years in a row...No wonder google is trying to crack the social media market, but what would happen if Facebook decided to do search? Something to keep an eye on in 2011.

Happy new year everybody and see you in 2011 for more SEO, search and online marketing joy!

Writing HTML Title Tags For Humans, Google & Bing

Back to SEO basics once again with this great article from Search Engine Land...today, all you need to know about title tags. As many people still seem to be confused by this core element of any SEO strategy, it is great to see a list of do's and dont's when writing title tags.

Think users AND search engines

Once thing to always remember is that while meta tags are great to improve your search engine rankings, they should also be useful for your website visitors. After all, visitors bring revenue, and without revenue there is no business.

Keep it simple

Although the temptation to over optimise your title tags is great, keep them simple, to the point and relevant to the page. Keyword stuffing doesn't work and will only confuse your visitors (and damage your rankings)

Keep it unique

Each page title should be unique and contain the same keywords as the page content itself. Keep things consistent, coherent and it'll all be fine

Stability is key

Meta tags including title tags do not need to be changed often, and frequent changes will potentially confuse search engine spiders. As long as you get your keyword research right there shouldn't be any need for you to revise your tags for a while. Of course you can tweak and refine as you go along, but refrain from updating your tags every month.

Feel free to share you title tags stories as I'm sure your experience will help others and until next time, have a great xmas!

SEM Trends For 2011: What To Expect & What To Do

Some very interesting insights into next year's trends. These demonstrate once again the need to understand cross channel marketing and ways to report on activities as the last click wins model is officially dying!

I'm really curious to see how Bing will perform in the UK market as this will definitely affect onsite optimisation for a lot of companies.

Back to SEO Basics With Keyword Research

As you probably know by now I'm a big fan of getting the basics right when doing SEO, so this article from High Rankings should be really helpful if you want to know more about keyword research.