June 9, 2004
In
This Issue:
1. Put Your <title> to Work
2. In the News - Google's User Loyalty
3. More News Headlines
4. This Week's Q&A - HTML Editors and Search Engines
5. Wrapping It Up
_________________
Put Your <title> to Work
A group of webmasters and search engine optimizers was asked
recently what they would change on a web page if there was only
one thing they could change to try to get better search engine
rankings. It's an impossible and almost silly question because
improving search engine rankings requires a lot more than just
tweaking one thing. But, given the limitations of the questions,
we all (myself included) answered: the page title.
With this newsletter, we're going to dive headfirst into a series
of informational mini-articles about what you might call some
basic elements of web page design and search engine optimization
(SEO).
What we find out quite often is that what we think is "basic" actually
isn't. Hopefully you'll learn a lot as we go, and as always, email
any questions you may have.
Page Title - What Is It?
In most browsers, the page title shows up at the very top of
your browser -- above the address bar, function buttons, etc.
On our owtweb.com home page,
for example, the page title is: "web design, web hosting,
search engine optimization - OWT - One World Telecommunications,
Tri-Cities, Washington". In the source code, the title
sits inside the <title> and </title> tags.
Why is it important?
Couple reasons: from a user's perspective, the page title is
often (in most browsers) what will be saved when someone
bookmarks a
web page. Beyond that are the search engine and SEO-related
considerations. In most search engines, the page title is
what gets the most
prominence in your listing and it also appears as the main
link to your site.
In Google, for example, the page title is shown in a font
size twice as big as the rest of the information about a listing.
How do I use it for the most benefit?
The page title should be no more than 60-80 characters long.
Since it will appear as the bookmark name in many browsers, you
probably
want
your company name somewhere in the page title. But more
importantly is the page title's impact on your search engine
rankings,
and this is where you can use it for great benefit. It
is the most
important element of the page where search engine rankings
are concerned.
Your page title must include the most important search
word or term for that page. Just as the content of each
page on
your
site is unique, the page titles should be unique, too.
When someone searches for "green widgets", pages
with that term in the page title will rank higher than
pages without it
(all other things being equal). These key words and terms
should appear first, before your company name. (Unless,
of course, your
company name is the key search term.)
Your page title should be as targeted as possible. On owtweb.com,
there's only one keyword phrase in the page title for our "Hosting" page.
Here's that page title: "web hosting - OWT - One World Telecommunications,
Tri-Cities, Washington". Your site may have different needs,
and it's okay to include multiple keywords and terms in the title
if they fit. Just make sure the words in your page title match
the content of the page. Otherwise, it's a waste of space.
If your target customer is regional, it's important to
include regional words in the title. We chose "tri-cities" for
owtweb.com. Keep in mind that there are many "Richland"s
and "Pasco"s in the world, so if you target at the city
level you must include the state name, too, for the most accurate
targeting.
And, since the page title appears as the most prominent
element of most SERPs, it has to be reader-friendly.
It has to be
captivating and make the searcher want to click through
to your site. DON'T
USE ALL CAPS. Uppercase or all lowercase is fine -- no
search engine is case-sensitive.
There ya go - the basics of your page title. Feel free
to email any questions or comments to questions@owtweb.com.
_________________
In The News
The more you read this newsletter, the sooner you'll figure out
that I'm not much of a fan of statistical surveys. They usually
don't offer much in the way of real insight, but if nothing else,
they make for good conversation. And so we'll keep mentioning them
every now and then here in the newsletter. The latest is a S&P
survey out this week that shows just about 50% of search engine
users who were surveyed prefer Google, compared to 20% for Yahoo
and 14% for MSN Search. That's all fine and good, and maybe even
fairly accurate across the web.
The survey goes on to say that more than 6 out of 10 Google users
would switch if a better search engine came along. That might
seem obvious -- "Duh, of course they would." It's been the
subject of great discussion on some webmaster forums I take part
in, where the focus has shifted to the 40% who wouldn't leave Google
even if told there was a better search engine. Wouldn't we all
love to have such loyal customers?
You may find that hard to believe -- 40% of the people surveyed
would continue to use a product they were told is inferior. But
I'm not surprised. As a people, we don't always gravitate to
whatever's best out in the marketplace. I don't sit and watch
Discovery Channel
or PBS all night, even though I know the programming is better
there than on the channels I watch. I sometimes buy generic tissues
even though I know Kleenex is the best product. With Google,
people have developed an unusual level of comfort and trust.
It's become
part of the web landscape. We don't "search" for information,
we "google" it. So when someone says "Would you
switch if a better search engine came along?", Joe Surfer
might decide "better" doesn't necessarily mean "as
comfortable" and "as trustworthy."
The question for you business owners is How many of your customers
would switch if they were told there's a better widget? What
kind of customer loyalty have you created? It's like we say (repeatedly)
on owtweb.com -- you have to make it easy for your customers
to
do business with you. That's what Google does very well.
Here's a link to the Reuters article about the S&P survey.
Google
Leads Web Search But Challenges Loom - S&P
Other news -- Yahoo is playing follow the leader and has started
testing a new design for its home page. Google, you'll
recall, was found to be testing a new design earlier this year
...
and eventually debuted a streamlined site design in late
March. (See
Newsletters #5 and #6 for a reminder.) The new Yahoo test
design isn't dramatically different from what they're using
now, just
a little bit cleaner. And that's pretty much exactly what
we said a couple months ago about the new design Google was
testing.
Lastly, if you only click on one article in the next section,
click on the USA Today article, the second one listed.
_________________
More News Headlines
Here are a few news headlines worth your time to read.
These are just some of the headlines we've posted
to OWTweb.com in recent
days.
Inside the Google search machine
June 08, 2004 - BBC
Google does not just have one copy of the entire web, it has
several to help with reliability and ensure results are returned
quickly.
Executives see swell of Net offerings on horizon
June 03, 2004 - USA Today
This next decade's going to be really when the Internet comes
home to the average American. This is the decade you see
the applications,
the gaming, the video coming to the home.
Google gains overall, competition builds niches
June 03, 2004 - ClickZ.com
Google continues to gobble market share from Yahoo! and other
search competitors.
More headlines: http://www.owtweb.com/news/
_________________
This Week's Q&A
Matt,
What HTML editor do you use at OWT? If I'm building a web site
for our company, and want the site to do well in search engines,
does it matter what program I use to make the web site? Thanks.
Bill
Hi Bill -- When we build web sites, there are usually a handful
of different software programs involved -- from real powerful
software like Photoshop (for the initial design ideas and all
graphics work)
all the way down to basic text editors which are needed to edit
a lot of the dynamic "pages" and code that an HTML editor
wouldn't be able to handle. That said, my editor of choice is Dreamweaver.
It does just about everything I need an editor to do, and only
has a couple really annoying things I wish it did differently.
As far as developing SE-friendly sites, I'm not the type to try
out every piece of software that comes down the pike, so there
are dozens of editors I've never used that may or may not deserve
to be mentioned here. But, generally speaking, the editor you
use shouldn't matter unless you're using Microsoft Front Page.
FP creates
bloated pages with a lot of unnecessary code, and that just
means more garbage for a spider to crawl through and analyze. All
other
things being equal, sites with clean code will rank better.
And Front Page doesn't make clean code. (Have a question? Email questions@owtweb.com)
_________________
Wrapping it Up
Some of our clients are getting emails from "WDRP Compliance" with
information about the domain(s) they own, and a link at the bottom.
In this day and age, a couple clients are wisely hesitant to click
on the link and, instead, are asking us what the email is about.
Unlike most suspicious emails, this one is actually okay. Domain
registrars are required to contact domain owners to remind the
domain owner to keep their contact information current. In fact,
the first sentence of the email says it all: "This message
is a reminder to help you keep the contact data associated with
your domain registration up-to-date."
if you get an email like this, please do review your contact
information. If you're on OWT customer, we can probably make any
changes for you. Otherwise,
contact your web host company or login to your registrar account
and update the information yourself. See you next week! Thanks for reading,
Matt McGee
The OWT Newsletter is a weekly service offered free to anyone
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