First let me explain what a title tag is for those who do not know. The title tag is the link that you see on the search engine results page (SERP), it is just like a newspaper headline so it should grab the users attention. You set the title of a page on your website with the tags. You should develop a different title tag for every page on your website, this tag should focus on what the user will find there.

For example if you have a clothing site your homepage may warrant a title like -Jim’s Discount Clothing | Great Clothes at a Great Price –

A subpage for sweaters should let the user know that page is about just that – Jim’s Discount Sweaters | The Best Price for Sweaters Anywhere -

A deeper page from the sweaters page that is all about wool sweaters - Jim’s Discount Wool Sweaters | Sweaters made from 100% Angora Wool -

Remember that your home page may not always be the page that ranks highest for a particular keyword so by properly defining the title of each page you not only give more information to the search engines but to the visitor.

If you are not sure what I am talking about, anchor text is the text that shows up on a web page that is a link to your/or someone else’s website. example – Super Web Development Website . That link points to the home page of our website but the text gives you an idea what the site is about. If the link just read www.ititans.com a user might not know what it is we do and pass over the link.

So why alternate it? There are a few reasons:

First anchor text helps pass information to search engines as to what the target page is all about. This is a nice way to get yourself up in rankings for keywords that you are targeting. By alternating the text you can pass information to the search engines about several relevant keywords.

Second if every inbound link to your site has the same anchor text the search engine, especially Google will give them less value as they look automated or like spam. You want your links to look as natural as possible to search engines so they give them more weight.

How to properly target a keyword

Let’s use an example keyword here, suppose you want to target Nike Shoes. By alternating things like Inexpensive Nike Shoes, Nike Crosstrainers, Best Deals on Nike, and Nike Basketball Shoes. You focus on your main keyword and add weight to several longtail key phrases. You should on occasion also just link in with something like your domain name or address and also on less specific phrases without the keyword – Inexpensive Crosstrainers. This will make your links look a bit more natural to the various search engines and should give you far better results.

I bet your first question is “Why tell me how to do something that iTitans charges for?” Simple. We are glad to share our experience in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) with others. Some will see the monumental task that it is and hire us, others will be thankful for the information we provide and come back many times perhaps needing us for something in the future. Either way we are not helping our readers if we keep what we have learned over the years locked away in some top secret vault.

So the time has come to begin testing your website, remember that optimization is not only about how your site appears to search engines, but how it is useful to you potential clients. So where do you start? What is the first step? Following are some do’s and don’ts that will help you develop a successful testing strategy.

Do Test your site properly: Just because your sales shot up 60% after some minor changes to the Home page does not mean the tweak is responsible for your new success. There are many variables to consider in a case like this, Had you sent out a newsletter or email? Was a sale running? Before you can determine if your new page is truly out performing your old page you must test both pages by running them at the same time under identical conditions. A split test using something like the free website optimizer by Google will give you the data you need to determine if your success is indeed coming from your new page.

Don’t be afraid of failing: When optimizing your web site, failure is success. If you develop a new landing page and find that it is underperforming compared to an earlier version or did not bring any noticeable results that is a success. Remember to test properly and use what you have learned on your next design. As your site continues to evolve you will find more of what works and what does not.

Do Be Patient: Once you start a test (between 2 versions of a page) let it play out until you have a clear winner, fight the temptation to end the test if the version you prefer is edging out another. You are best not to check results until the end of the test, or at least a predetermined milestone (x number of sales) before making any such decision. If at the end of the test you still have no clear winner you may want to go back and retool your newest version again until you have one.

Don’t Waste Time on Disagreements: Let testing settle them, properly testing your pages is the ultimate argument settler. Why waste time arguing with team members, managers, or clients about what the best route is when you are basing that on opinion and not hard data. Get away from the “let’s do it” attitude and move over to a “let’s test it” method.

Do Test High Priority Pages First: Start with pages that get the most traffic and are higher in the conversion funnel. Look first to pages that have the highest bounce rate or exit rate. After you have tested all of those move on to pages that customers spend the shortest amount of time on. If they are spending so little time on the page is it even necessary? Finally test the key pages of your site, your spotlight product, site registration page, checkout, etc.

Don’t Deploy Too Many Versions At Once: While you can certainly develop many versions of a page and test them all at the same time it is very easy for the data to become to scattered to determine a clear winner. You should not really test more than 3 versions of a page at the same time, if none of them outshine the others significantly then you can add a new version into the mix.

What separates a poor site from a good site from a great site is site optimization. If you adhere to the steps above you will find that job much easier.

An online entrepreneur would like his website to be the first name in the result that search engines throw up for relevant topics. At times, you must have come across a certain Search Engine Optimizer (SEO) that guarantees a place of your website in the top 10 results. This is exactly what you want, but exactly something you musn’t buy!

No company on earth can assure you a forefront place in the search engines. There exists no SEO tools that can make your site attain overnight popularity, but what exists are merely some tricks, which some SEO firms use to make some quick bucks. However, their ‘work’ will do your site anything but good. Assume that this works and your site is right on the top of the search results, and stays for quite a period of time. But eventually the search engines come across these tricks and will impose a penalty. That’s what a black hat SEO is – fooling the search engines. For the benefit of one’s own business, one should shy away from such SEO firms and avoid the following things:

Overstuffing pages with keywords:
Cramming the pages of your website with the main keywords and offering little more then a page of ‘tags’ will get search engines to drop you in a heartbeat.

Invisible/ Hidden Text:
This is almost the same as cramming the key words. Invisible text is considered a serious no-no by the search engines and can be extremely harmful for your website, so why use it in the first place?

Doorway pages:
These are the non-existent or the fake pages which are designed for specific words or phrases which are viewed mainly by the search engines rather than the visitors. The entire logic behind the building of a Search Engine Optimizer is to enhance the experience of the user, and getting web pages that no living person can ever view will surely not be viewed well. Many main search engines like Google, etc. have severe policies to combat doorway pages.

Link Farms:
Many popular search engines are against artificial linking like link stuffing and link farms, etc. So linking farms will do nothing but get your site banned from the database of the search engine.

It can be concluded that whatever the search engines view as being spam or junk, is banned by them. Most of the techniques are bound to get you result in the short-term, but in the long-run, a ban or a flag is all that you will get. Moreover, using a black hat SEO also raises serious doubts on the credibility of your website and business that you’re pursuing online.

So rather than opting for a SEO, its better to get your site fixed by page optimization. And while doing it, it’s better not to keep in mind the search engines. The main priority should be the benefit of your end-customers. If you’re being loyal to them, the net result will automatically follow and instead of gaining popularity by immoral means, you’ll gain it even without these SEO, and the search engines respect that!

Ever wonder whether you should use a dash versus an underscore in your URLs? Following is the definitive answer given by the almighty SEO guru Matt Cutts.

Recently we recommended to a client that they change their web site URLs from ‘keyword1_keyword2′ (using underscore) to ‘keyword1-keyword2′ (using dash).

You are wondering why right?

Well according to the almighty Matt Cutts, the master of how Goggle interprets your site on the web, he recommends using dashes for Google.

In his article, “Dashes vs. Underscores“, if your URL reads ‘keyword1_keyword2′ Google will only return that page if the user searches for ‘keyword1_keyword2′ (which almost never happens).

If however your URL reads ‘keyword1-keyword2′, that page can be returned for the searches for both ‘keyword1′, ‘keyword2′, and even ‘keyword1 keyword2′.

So there the answer is, in dash vs underscore, dash is the clear winner.