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Website Search Engine Tips:
Six Easy Ways to Better Search Engine Placementby Brenda Stone 10/25/04
Disclaimer: This is an editorial comment on the subject of SEARCH ENGINE PLACEMENT. The information you are about to read was written by Brenda Stone, a Bryan-College Station, Texas resident, who is also a Brazos County Notary Public in and for the State of Texas. The author is also a Notary Loan Signing Agent, and a Litigation Support Agent. The author has no formal training in finance, law, or real estate. . Use any information in this article at your own risk. Information from this article may not be reprinted or used without written permission from the author.
Better Keyword(s) in Domain Name
Better Keyword(s) in Web Page Titles With Better
Content with lots of good Keywords (and Other "big" words)
Link Popularity (Links TO your site.)
Submit Your Site to www.dmoz.org
Meta Tags - Keywords and Descriptions
...And, a Couple More Little Webby Tidbits
#1 -Websites With Better "Keyword" Domain Names
If I had it to do all over again, the name of my company might be "TexNotary" but my domain name would be www.1-texas-notary-brazos.com or www.1-brazos-texas-notary.com. The reason is pretty obvious now that you can compare the two to www.texnotary.com and read what follows.
It is doubtful that anyone will do a search on "texnotary" because it is not even a word.
So, I have definitely missed a good opportunity to be seen by the search engines at the level of my domain name when keywords are searched for. There will never be a keyword search for "texnotary" by a new client that has never heard of me.
On the other hand, I have a lot of relevant content on www.texnotary.com and that pulls me up to the first page of www.yahoo.com. Well, I should say it is content plus the links I have worked to get TO my site.
If I do a search on "brazos county texas signing agent"
www.texas-signing-agent.com makes it onto the search results as well, but shows up after TexNotary.com because of the keyword-rich "articles" on my site.
#2 -Web Page Titles With Better "Keywords" in them
The html "title" of my webpage should be "Texas Notary - Brazos County - College Station - Bryan" but it's not--I need to work on that soon!
I usually use FrontPage to program my websites and I forget to change the html coding for the title sometimes. For a few months, one of my pages on TexNotary.com had a title which stated: "Brenda Stone - Mobile Notary Ass." I have no idea where the "ass" came from, but "Thank you, FrontPage" I am sure there were a couple of folks that probably enjoyed that on the search engines.
If someone does a search for "brazos county texas notary" on Google.com, the ficticious website name I have mentioned above would be a perfect match. Google would look at the domain name, then the content of the page. As noted above, the "1" I suggest in the domain name is because it will get listed higher based on the criteria of listing order of: 0-9, then abc.
Then, there are some other things like percentage of keywords appearing in the web figures in, but this one little number of "1" would index it higher in sort order, and it would push sites closer to the top. It would be pulled up to the top, IF, I had some "good content" on the site and a few links back to it.
As it stands now, when I plug in the keywords to search Google.com, I note two things:
(1) My site at www.texas-signing-agent.com does not come up.
Why not? Because there is very little "content" and there are very few links going into www.texas-signing-agent.com . Thus, Google.com and Yahoo.com probably deals with it as if it is not a page with "good content" or valuable information on it. It will get put back in the 7th page, or so, when a search is done on those keywords. (My placement results are improving daily, however, so this could change!)
(2) My site at www.texnotary.com DOES come up on the first page of Yahoo.com, but on the 5th page of Google.com.
The reason #1 TexNotary.com is coming to the top faster: Exchanging Links! And, reason #2: TexNotary.com does appear is because of this page which has very good content:
The search turned up: Link:
Annual Percentage Rate for Notary
Bryan-College Station, Texas resident, who is also a Brazos County
Notary Public in and for the State of Texas. The author is ...www.texnotary.com/apr.htm
#3 - Content is "KING" They Say...
Refer to the link above wherein I have written an article on Annual Percentage Rate for Notary Signing Agents. One of the first blurbs on the page is as follows:
Disclaimer: The information you are about to read was written by Brenda Stone, a Bryan-College Station, Texas resident, who is also a Brazos County Notary Public in and for the State of Texas. The author is also a Notary Loan Signing Agent. Be advised: The author has no formal training in finance, law, or real estate and holds no college degree. Consider this to be an article created from an uneducated opinion. Use any information in this article at your own risk. Information from this article may not be reprinted or used without written permission from the author.
That is not just a disclaimer. My disclaimer is "content" with key words that folks use when looking for a notary signing agent. However, it has other good (larger) words mixed in which makes it appear very informative to the search engine. With the "good content" websites I am linked to on that page, I get a little boost by Google.com and with all the larger business words I have in the disclaimer, it got a nod from Google.com and has really helped me out with hits on my site.
#4 - Link Popularity
Get links directed back to your site, THEN, get links back to your site. Trade links with good link exchange sites that will compliment yours.
In the next few weeks, I intend to collect many sites to trade links with and I will publish them.
There are some very good web sites on the 'net that will trade links with notaries. I will report back to you when I get a decent list. To check your currect link popularity go to www.marketleap.com. If you want to know who is linking to you, Go to Google.com and search for "links: www.texnotary.com."
If you want to try your hand at a link exchange (other than www.notarylinks.com which is great!) go to http://texas.uscity.net/Notaries/. I am indexed on their site and getting pulled up on the 'net after putting my info into their system only a week or so ago.
Other good ones: www.url.biz, and www.amortgagedirectory.com.
Let's Exchange Links!!! If you have a website, it will definitely help your placement. It will help mine also.
#5 Submit Your Site to http://www.dmoz.org - From this site, you will be indexed by HotBot.com, Msn.com, AltaVista.com, AllTheWeb.com, Ask.com. Also, there is a new site that's sending me hits called http://www.thumbshots.org/ which is using www.dmoz.org to develop an index of sites online. Thumbshots.org develops snap shots of websites indexed at dmoz.org - They are nifty little links to browse through.
#6 Meta Tags - Keywords and Descriptions
Finally, I want to mention that underneath the pretty face of a webpage buried in the html code lines, there are "meta" tags that can be customized for better search engine placement.
I left this one until last because I remember how overwhelming all of this was before I understood a little more. I hated that word "meta!"
I could not make myself stick with the books giving me advice on this matter once I saw that word "meta" or phrase "meta tags." If I heard the word, I just wanted to go to the other room.
One reason for this aversion is because I subscribed to "Submit It." at Microsoft.com. Every few days I got an email telling me that my site did not have good meta tags in the code. I tried to do it right, repeatedly, but never got it right. And, I never got any decent help from that little $24.95 per month email bashing I subjected myself to each week.
So, you can pay $24.95 a month and still not know what the heck is going on. Or, you can follow the steps in in this fairly simple article "for free !" and watch yourself get recognized. Later you can tackle the Evil Meta Words.
Here's a look at the way meta tags would appear in the coding of a website on "stamps."
SE"< META name="description" content="Everything you wanted to know about stamps, from prices to history.">
< content="stamps, stamp collecting, stamp history, prices, stamps for sale" name="keywords">"
And, a Couple More Little Webby Tidbits
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Don't mourn your ad dollars spent on sites that have not sent you referrals. Even if you do not get assignments from sites such as www.usanotaries.com, www.notaries.org, www.notaryrotary.com, or www.50statenotary.com, they are savvy about search engine placements and they are serving up notary profiles. By having a profile there, you are likely getting boosted to the top of the heap when a search is done. Their sites are well indexed, and well designed for the search engines, and you are definitely getting website exposure from them. On a Yahoo.com Search, www.Ringsurf.com for Signing Agents is also a good (and free) place to hang a link. Be sure and put your link at the other ones I have mentioned here that are free. AND, put some thought into doing a link exchange with us all. I'll betcha if we did that, it would make our website placements on the search engines give our respective competitors a fit. And, in a shorter time than you might imagine.
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Clean up your broken links--it will definitely make things more favorable for the search engines.
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Finally, the last tip I have is to consider putting GOOGLE ADS on your site. Google will love you for it; and, in addition to coming up on Froogle.com here and there, every time someone clicks through the ad, you will receive a few pennies for your trouble.
[Note: As soon as I can, I will be putting out some more info on making your website a marketing tool. Also, I am learning of a few very cheap webhosting sites that I will try to have ready in a week or so.]
Brenda Stone
TexNotary.com
979-739-2690