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!

How to deal with paid budget cuts

I've just realised that it's already been a month since my last post, I definitely need to make a better job of writing...but with xmas coming, not sure how this is gonna go...oh well, there are always new year's resolutions.

Alright, today's post is going to be about something that most marketers dealing with paid search campaigns will know, especially during a recession; budget cuts.
As you probably already know if you're running ppc campaigns with Google Adwords, Yahoo search marketing or Bing, changes in any elements of the campaigns can have a very big impact on results, so here are a few tips to make your reduced budgets go further:

• Whatever you do, do not pause your campaigns - Google especially likes consistency, so it is always best to avoid stopping campaigns as it could take you months to rebuild history and raise your quality score again. Even running a very minimal budget is better than stopping everything.
• Bid on brand terms - although many people may question the fact of bidding on your own name, results are very often showing that brand terms /keywords are some of the bets performing ones. And they are cheap, especially if you've trademarked your name, so go ahead and use your name. This will also help you display results in both paid and organic rankings for the same search, increasing customer confidence.
• Focus on top converting keywords - This is a bit of an obvious one, but if you lack budget, make sure you bid on keywords that have converted for you in the past (conversions being sales, sign ups or whatever other metric you use for performance).
• Look at visitors click path if available - I know this is not really easy to get, but if you can, find out which keywords your users have searched during their research. The keyword they converted from may not be the one they searched for the initial phase of their product research. Visitors may initially use a very generic keyword and as they learn about what they really want, they will tend to use more specific, long tail keywords. Knowing the click path will help you bid for these all important initial search terms.
• Optimise your landing pages - Again this should be standard practice, but make sure your campaigns are as optimised as possible, from keywords, to creatives to landing pages. The more relevant the search keyword is to your creative and your landing page, the higher your quality score will be. This in turn will have an impact on your ads rankings.
• Look at your competitors - look at what your competitors are bidding on and if need be, bid on their brand terms. Remember that you cannot use your competitors' brand in your creatives if they are trademarked, but nothing stops you from displaying a creative by bidding on their search terms.
• Use common sense - as in everything SEO related, use common sense when managing your paid campaigns, and as the market recovers, so will your budgets.

Enjoy your Sunday