How many times should you use your keywords or key phrases in your web pages? Some people new to website seo (search engine optimisation) tend to overdo using their key phrases. Not only is this a waste of time, but can also get your web page flagged as spammy.

First of all you should only concentrate on one or maybe two key phrases per page. If you need to cover more phrases then start a new page. Especially as the more pages your site has the more ranking juice there is to push around.

Don’t whatever you do have text colours the same as your page background; thinking that you are tricking the search engines – you’re not! Using ‘black hat’ techniques like the previous example will only get your site slapped by the search engines and your search engine rankings will suffer.

A rule of thumb I stick to (usually) is to use keywords or phrases in the following areas:

1. Page title
2. Page URL
3. In the header tag, e.g. H2 or H3
4. Once in the first paragraph, last paragraph and possibly in the body text if a longer piece of text.
5. Page meta description
6. Page meta keywords
7. Page tags (if the site supports them)
8. Image file names, image title, possibly in the alt text and caption

The above might seem too many to some and too few to others. As stated at the top of this post, this is a rule of thumb and not something that should be followed religiously, but rather a guideline of where to use you keywords and seo.

I hope this beginners seo tip has helped you. If so why not add a comment below.

Every page of your website needs a unique title. Seems obvious right? But when you have a website with a ton of pages it gets tricky sometimes making sure that each page’s title is unique. This is where Google’s Webmaster tools come in very handy to point out any errors. I will be covering that side of things in a future seo tips post. This seo tips post is more about how to write a good seo title and how to get maximum search engine rankings impact from them.

What Is The Page Title?

It’s the descriptive text that you see at the very top of the browser window. This should be in one of the following formats:

1. Your main key phrase, pipe symbol, key phrase variation, e.g. Roadrunner Acme Widgets | Blue Roadrunner Acme Widgets
2. Your company or website name or your product name followed by the pipe symbol and then your main key phrase, e.g. Micro Widgets | Blue Roadrunner Widgets

In case you are wondering, the pipe symbol is the vertical line key: “|”. This is used as a separator rather than a hyphen because the search engines do not see it.

I tend to use the second version when I am trying to build brand or product value. The maximum number of characters you should use is 60 as most search engines will crop titles any longer than this.

How To Change The Page Title

If you are using a cms (content management system), such as WordPress, Joomla! or Drupal then adding or changing the page title is very simple to do. If you are using any of these platforms and you are unsure then visit the respective forum and you will find your answer there. If you are using some other system, then the easiest way is to get in touch with your web designer and ask them to change it for you.

Why You Need Good Page Titles

The page title is a strong signal to Google as to what the page contents are about. If your competitor’s web page is equal to yours all other respects then having well search engine optimised page titles can be all it takes to have your page rank higher than theirs. I have seen web pages make dramatic jumps once the page titles have been optimised.

In this series of posts I am going to highlight some of the tips and good practices you should use on your own website to help you get better search engine rankings.

SEO Tips And Techniques

These SEO tips are the very same search engine optimisation techniques that we use on our client’s websites to help them rank better in Google. All of our established clients enjoy page one rankings for different key phrases; so we know that these techniques definitely work.

One point to note though, is that most of what you do in terms of seo won’t feed through to the search engines for quite some time, sometimes as much as many weeks.

If you are serious about improving your search engine rankings (and why wouldn’t you be?) then the tips you follow here should be done, where appropriate, often and consistently.

Black Hat SEO or Whit Hat SEO

Much of what you read about seo, especially so on the web, is often untrue, unproven, and potentially dangerous. If you use black hat seo techniques you are risking getting your website de-indexed from Google’s search results. So, whilst tempting to get a quick win in terms of your rankings. You should bear in mind what effect having your website disappearing altogether from Google would have on your business.

I will try to explain these seo tips in a way that is clear to everyone, especially the complete beginner to seo.

Scaffolding Birmingham came to us looking  to promote their new scaffolding business in the east midlands. They toyed with the idea of using Yell, Thompson and similar online directories. They decided to use our search engine optimisation services once we explained our money back guarantee seo option to them.

Within two months of using us they were on page one of Google and picked up a contract  worth over half a million pounds to them. This has to be the best investment ever!

Scaffolding Nottingham Is another business of the Health & Safety Scaffolding Company targeting the Nottingham area. They came to us wanting a new website design. They realised that there is no point having a website if no one can find it. They were looking for visibility in the Nottingham area.

We designed them a new website and ran our search engine optimisation secret recipe and got them onto page one for their key phrases. We are continuing to improve the rankings for their chosen key phrases and will then target additional key phrases.

They have already landed a major contract that is worth over half a million pounds from someone finding their new website.

When You Should Use Adwords

Adwords or often called ‘pay per click’ or even sponsored listings can be very good for testing the water if you are about to launch a new product or service. It can be a very quick method of testing the effectiveness of your key phrases.

And When You Shouldn’t Use Adwords

It can be very expensive to drive qualified traffic to your website in significant numbers. Depending on whose figures you believe only 8 to 13% of people will click on the ads. Therefore if you can get onto the first page of Google’s natural search results you could be looking at up to a ten fold increase in traffic to your website.

If you are looking for a real increase in traffic to your site and have tried sponsored listings then you really should look at seo services and get your website onto page one of Google for your keyphrases.