SEO – Don’t Be a Keyword Stuffer

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logoshannon09sm3 SEO – Don’t Be a Keyword Stuffer Business Tips Guest Bloggers

This is part of out Search Engine Optimization Series by Shannon Steffens.

I am back talking about SEO. Today I am going to talk about your landing page. This is the page of your website you see when you type in www.yoursite.com. This is THE important page of your website. So not only do you want to have a great entry page that catches the clients eye, you want to also make sure your behind the scene coding catches Google’s!

I am going to talk about “keyword stuffing” this is the term Google uses when you use too many keywords or descriptors for your web site. If you use keyword stuffing Google will penalize you.

For most photographers the landing page is the same as your splash page. We will go over what to look for on your page title, Metatags and then finally how to write up that searchable text at the bottom of your splash page.

Your title. This is a very important this is what shows up on the upper menu bar of web browsers.

landingpage1-thumb SEO – Don’t Be a Keyword Stuffer Business Tips Guest Bloggers

For the tutorials today I used Jodi’s site as my example.

For search purposes your title should list what you do before who you are. Following this logic – Jodi’s title should be something like  “Actions and Photoshop Training – MCP Actions.” You can change this if you do seasonal work, putting wedding photography up when you are booking wedding clients and newborn photography when you are doing newborns. To avoid a penalty from Google, for keyword stuffing on your title do not use more then 10-15 words. In addition you should use a different title on each html page of your website, if possible.

Now you will want to see how your code is set up. To view your source code click on your landing page, then right click and view source. You will see your title near the top in a tag like this <title> Name and stuff listed here </Title>.

Jodi’s title puts her business first, before what she does – If I were doing her title I would change it to something like this:

<title>Actions and Photoshop Training – MCP Actions</title>

landingpage2-thumb SEO – Don’t Be a Keyword Stuffer Business Tips Guest Bloggers

landingpage3-thumb SEO – Don’t Be a Keyword Stuffer Business Tips Guest Bloggers

Then next thing to consider is your Metatags. Metatags have been abused and used incorrectly so while they are not ranked as high with search engines as they once were, they are still important.

To view what your tags are go to your landing page, then right click and view source. You should code near the top of your page that looks like:

<meta name=”description”

<meta name=”keywords”

Keywords are words or phrases that you think individuals will use to search for you on Google. You need to keep the number of key words or phrases to 5-10. You do not want to have too many, if you do Google may penalize you for “keyword stuffing”. I have to admit that this is something I need to work on and pare down, to a good number.

Examples for keywords Jodi would use are:

“ photoshop actions” and “online photoshop training”

If you look at the source code for her page you will see she has the following keywords:  <META NAME=”Keywords” CONTENT=”MCP, MCP Actions, Photoshop Actions, multiple choices photography, photography, photographers, actions, photoshop, workshops, training, photoshop training, online training, photoshop classes, tutoring, photoshop tutoring, photoshop elements, elements, elements actions, actions for photoshop, actions for elements, resources for photographers, eye pop, color pop, storyboard actions, storyboards, templates, scrapbooking”>

She has too many keywords and is could be getting penalized by Google for keyword stuffing.  No one knows the exact number that Google uses to qualify you for keyword stuffing, so try and keep it to not more than ten words or phrases.  So you want to make sure the keywords are the ones you feel your clients are most likely to use a search terms.   If this were my site, I would limit the keywords to just ten.  I might change them to:

photoshop actions, photoshop training, actions for photographers, online Photoshop training, photoshop elements actions, actions for elements, resources for photographers, storyboard actions, storyboards

For a better idea of what terms to include I would see my Google Analytics statistics for what searches brought clients to my website. Then I would consider what I want clients to search for and find me. Jodi could decide that using the keywords or phrases “photoshop actions for elements” is not as important as putting in other terms that return more clients for her.

coming up next — the rest of your main page …

MCPActions

No Comments

  1. joesmith on April 4, 2009 at 3:58 pm

    Actually to be honest, it doesn’t matter how many keywords you use in your meta tags, Google doesn’t use them. Google searches through the content on the pages and grabs keywords from there instead. It is more important to have a good title to your page, a good page description and good content throughout the site rather than focusing on the keywords meta tag. You could even leave the keywords tag out and still rack well in Google.

  2. Christy on April 5, 2009 at 2:57 pm

    How do you change your title?

  3. joesmith on April 7, 2009 at 3:38 pm

    @Christy- To change the title on your page you need to have access to your site and have a basic understanding of HTML. Once you have the page opened in a editor you look for the tags. Add your site name in between the tags and save the file. You have now changed your title.

  4. Just Right Fitness on April 7, 2009 at 8:59 pm

    Just found your site- really great!

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