SEO
How Important is PageRank in SEO?
“PageRank” is not the same as Search Engine Results Page (SERP) Rank. The latter refers to whether you show up as the first result in response to a specific Google query, or the fifth, or the twentieth, etc. The former, PageRank, is one of over 200 factors Google uses to rank pages. PageRank has many flaws, but in general is a complicated formula to determine a web page’s reputation based on the number and quality (as judged by PageRank) of pages linking to it. Matt Cutt’s post on PageRank Sculpting gives an overview of how PageRank works. How important is it to getting to the front page of Google? SEOmoz crunched some numbers and wrote an article...
Read MoreIntroduction to SEO
Search Engine Optimization Strongly recommended reading: Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is, quite simply, figuring out how to get your website to be at the top of the list when people Google for your business. When people search for something, they almost always look at only the first ten results (the first page); in fact, usually they only look at the first few results, so going from #11 to #10 or #10 to #7 or #7 to #3 can result in a huge difference in website traffic. Yes, there are a multitude of other search engines, but Google is by far the most important. Most search engines get their results from...
Read MoreWhat are Meta Tags?
Meta Tags When you look at the HTML source code of a web page (ctrl+u, page > source or view > source in some browsers) you may find some lines with “meta” in them. <meta name="generator" content="WordPress 3.1.2" /> <meta name="description" content="Find out how you can have San Antonio web design services better, faster, cheaper for your small business." /> <meta name="keywords" content="San Antonio web design, Texas web design, web design, San Antonio website development, web designers, web development, web design company, web designers, web developers" /> …or many other meta tags, such as “owner,”...
Read MoreDon’t Put Your Web Designer in Your Footer
Putting One’s Door in the Footer You’ve most likely noticed, when looking at a small business website, some sort of link at the very bottom of the page (the footer) on every page of the site. It will show the name of the company, or perhaps the link will say “web design” or something similar, and will link to the website of your web designer. What’s so bad about that, you might ask? After all, if Joe does a good job and didn’t charge too much–you think–then what does it hurt to have something small and unobtrusive to send him possible clients? It doesn’t look professional. Think about this: when a company makes a...
Read More10,000 Sites, 1,000 Search Engines, 0 Value
There Aren’t Really 1,000 Search Engines Many sites or web design companies will offer to submit your site to a vast amount of search engines. The truth of the matter is that very few search engines matter, and those that do will find you whether you submit your site to them or not. From the Net Marketshare report, as of April 2011, Google has 83.82% percent of the global market, Yahoo has 5.58%, Baidu (a Chinese search engine) has 4.48% and Bing has 3.92%, with all other search engines in the extreme minority. To make it even worse, almost every search engine other than Google or Bing pulls their results from one of those two. Even Yahoo gets search results from...
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