Many webmasters forfeit potential traffic by not properly naming their images. It is very common to see images labeled as ‘img’ followed by a bunch of numbers. By doing this you can lose out on potential traffic from image searches. Google Images is an example of an extremely popular image search engine. By using our keywords and phrases in our images, it gives us another opportunity for getting noticed by search engines for those particular words and phrases. So as an example of image names, this folder shows you what we want to avoid using with our images. This folder shows you examples of good, keyword rich image names. This is not one of the most critical aspect of your SEO campaign, but it certainly will not hurt you to give your image files descriptive names. You may be pleasantly surprised by the amount of traffic you can gain by this simple tweak.
For those who’s business targets a local customer base, it is always a great idea to include the cities or towns that your business serves, somewhere on your site. This will assist you in coming up in searches where the users types a key-term as well as a city or town name. There are many different ways you can do this. You can include your address in the footers, the city or town names in the title tag, and even a Contact Us page that has a more detailed section of where you operate and which cities or towns you serve. We will be discussing the footers, and title tags later in on the video.
In the first of two tutorials for the Planning Stage of our SEO process, we are going to discuss how to choose proper keywords, and an easy way to organize them. Remember to visit video course page, which will have all the tutorials outlined in a very organized manner.
Video Transcript
The reason we are starting with keyword research is because we will be using our keywords throughout all three stages. So to begin our keyword research, open up your web browser and go to google.com. Next, type in the search phrase “google keyword tool” and click on the first result, which should be the Google Adwords External Keyword Tool.
This will take us to the Google AdWords keyword suggestor tool. Type in the Captcha if the popup box appears for you. In the box that tells you to enter your word or phrase, type in a keyword or two that you think most closely relates to the content on your site. As an example, I will type in golf clubs.
After just a few seconds, a long list of potential keywords shows up. Let’s start with the first keyword we see. To the right of this keyword, we see that there is a green bar under Competition. What this means is that this particular key-term has many advertisers competing for top placements in the sponsored links section of a Google search. A key-term with not as much green in its advertiser competition bar will not have as many advertisers competing for the sponsored links section. What this indicates to you as you are creating your web site, is that targeting a key-term with high competition may be an extremely tough challenge, and as a result, you may find more success targeting a key-term with not as much competition, which would be indicated here by a smaller amount of green in its bar.
I’m going to just pause this demonstration of Google’s keyword tool, to show you a good way of double checking that the competition is in fact low. So let’s assume that the keyword I have found with low advertiser competition, and a high search volume is “golf tour club.” I will go to google, and search for this term. The first thing I will notice, is the number of results. This term actually has a relatively high number, so that might indicate to me that this term may be too competitive. The next thing I will do, is check out the sites that rank highly for this term. What you want to be asking yourself, is whether or not these sites are of high quality or low quality. If they are high quality sites, this is another indicator to you that this phrase may be hard to compete for. If they are low quality sites, then thats when you might decide to target this phrase. To figure out if they are high or low quality sites, it will have to be a judgment call by you, but you can visit the site, and see if it is professionally done, and then also see if it is a site that has a lot of incoming links, or even see if it has a high page rank. We will learn more about incoming links and page rank later on in the video. For now, let’s get back to Google’s keyword tool.
Beside the advertiser competition is the Global monthly search volume. This number is based on an average of the global monthly google searches for each key-term performed over a 12 month period.
The figure beside the Global monthly search volume is the Local monthly searches. This number is based on the 12 month search average for your targeted country and language. The search I am showing here is targeted for the United States, and English.
Finally, the Local Search Trends bar graph shows the monthly fluctuations in searches for this term. It is also based on your targeted country and language.
Another cool feature that Google has added to the keyword tool is the availability to sort the keywords. On the right side of your page, you should see a drop down menu right beside the words Sorted by. The default will be set to Relevance, however, you can change it to any of the options you see here such as keyword, competition, and global monthly searches.
As we scroll down the list, you will begin to see all of the other suggested related terms, along with their advertiser competition and search volume. It is highly recommended that you spend some time going over some of these key-terms, creating new ones, and figuring out some good terms that you can use that are still highly searched, but do not have as much competition associated with them.
When you see phrases that you like and want to use, click on the check box which is located on the far left side of the keyphrase. Repeat this for all keywords that you want to target. Once you are done, you can download these keywords. Click on the button that reads Download and choose Download Selected. Choose whichever format you’d like, and download your keywords. Keep this list handy as you will be referring back to it throughout your optimization.
The first video in our RapidWeaver SEO Video Course outlines what this course is about and what you can expect from all of the tutorials in the course. Remember to get visit the video course page, which will have all the tutorials outline in a very organized manner.
Video Transcript
Hello, my name is Jeremy and over the next little while, I will be showing you how to properly optimize your RapidWeaver web sites so that you can have the best possible chance of ranking at the top of search engines.
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO for short, is the process of attracting more visitors through search engines. You will notice how I do not define SEO as having a top ranked site. This is because even if you have a site that ranks at the top of all search engines, there is no guarantee that searchers are typing in the specific keywords you rank for, and will even click your website in the search results. In this series of tutorials, we will cover the basics of how to discover highly searched key-terms and how to determine which ones are best to target.
These tutorials have been created to help you to understand the major optimizations, and how to implement them on your site. With so much information available on the web, search engine optimization can seem very confusing and time consuming to learn. These tutorials are to-the-point, and allow you to visualize what needs to be done, so that you can have a better understanding at a much quicker pace than if you had to sift through a 400 page book.
SEO is a process that we must go through in order to achieve our desired results. It’s not something you do once and just forget about. It’s a form of marketing and if you want to keep on improving your chances at success and growing your business it is something you will constantly evaluate. Remember, if SEO were an easy thing to do, every site would be number one in search engines, which is simply impossible.
This video will be broken down into three stages. The first stage, called the Planning stage, will be the briefest. We will go over a couple of things that we should do before we even begin optmizing our website. The second stage will be the on-page optimization stage. This is where we will be looking at the different methods for making our actual site more search engine friendly. The third and final stage will be the off-page optimizations, where we go over different methods of getting our RapidWeaver website noticed by search engines.
The video will be shown in step-by-step format. This does not mean that you must follow this plan perfectly, but it is setup that way so that those who require this type of instruction still have that opportunity.
I want to make a note that the applications I use in this video are available to purchase or download for free at www.ragesw.com. You are not obligated to purchase any of these applications. The work can be done by hand. That is, you can still complete the tasks without the applications, however, using the applications will make your life a lot easier.
Remember, if you have any questions or do not understand one or more of the concepts, you can start a thread in our SEO forums, or submit a ticket through our support system.
Google’s campaign to make the web faster puts some web masters in a tricky situation. When optimizing our sites for search engines, we are very used to doing the basic things such as having lots of great content and getting many high quality links. Now we must also consider another thing, and that is the speed of our websites. But how do you know how fast your website loads? And how do you make it load even faster
The video tutorial below will touch upon these two questions and give you the answers you need. When you are done watching, you can read up more about WebCrusher and see first hand how it can give you a faster loading website.
Video Transcript
Did you know that one of Google’s criteria for ranking websites involves the speed of a website. Many websites can load very slowly, and as a result, can be penalized by search engines. There is a great way to check to see if your website is slow loading or not.
For those of you who have a Google Webmaster Tools account, you can get a good idea of what your website’s current speed is. In your Dashboard, press the plus sign next to Labs and select Site Performance. Here you will see the speed performance of your website.
Google believes that anything that falls below 1 and a half seconds is considered to be fast. Anything slower than 1 and a half seconds is considered slow. The faster your site is, the better off you will be.
So how can you reduce the load time of your website? RAGE WebCrusher will do this for you automatically, in the easiest way possible. Simply drag your website folder into WebCrusher, and at the click of just a few buttons, you can greatly reduce the size of your website. Be sure to check out WebCrusher and see how it can help speed up your website.
For a full tutorial on using WebCrusher, please see the video tutorial available in the iWeb SEO, SEO Video, and RapidWeaver SEO video courses.
Hey WebCrusher Owners! Have you been keeping an eye on the speed of your website? Google finds the speed at which at website loads to be very important. As Google continues with its campaign to make the web faster, so should you. By ensuring your website is loading at an optimal speed, you can give your site an advantage over your competitors by loading quicking, and moving up in the search results.
Watch the following video tutorial to see how you can check on the speed of your website.
Video Transcript
One of Google’s latest search ranking criteria is the speed at which a website loads. You have already taken a step in the right direction by taking an interest in WebCrusher. I hope that you have used WebCrusher and continue to use it whenever need be.
For those of you who have a Google Webmaster Tools account, you can get a good idea of what your website’s current speed is. In your Dashboard, press the plus sign next to Labs and select Site Performance. Here you will see the speed performance of your website.
Google believes that anything that falls below 1 and a half seconds is considered to be fast. Anything slower than 1 and a half seconds is considered slow. See where you are, and make sure you run your website through WebCrusher for optimal speed.
Don’t forget to check out our SEO Video Courses which will walk you through the entire process of optimizing your website for the best possible search engine rankings.
If you are an iWeb user, be sure to check out the iWeb SEO Video Walkthrough Tutorial. If you use anything else to build your website, be sure to check out the SEO Video Course. RapidWeaver users can now purchase the SEO For RapidWeaver Video Tutorial as well.
This video tutorial is going to show you how you can make your RapidWeaver URL shorter by eliminating the folder name that shows up in the URL. Learn how to get your RapidWeaver website ranking high in search engines with the SEO For RapidWeaver video tutorial.
Video Transcript
When you first create a website in RapidWeaver, you will notice that as you navigate to other pages on your site, the URL in your address bar will show your domain followed by the folder name followed by the page name. Some of your folder names and page names will look different, as these items are easily customizable, but I have left mine as is to show what the default folder names and page names are.
If you want to shorten this URL by eliminating one of these items, follow these simple instructions. What we are going to do, is shorten the URL by getting rid of the folder name. Once again, the folder is this second one which comes right after the domain name.
So to get rid of the folder, open up RapidWeaver, and highlight the page on the left hand side, and then press the Page info button. In the text box next to Folder, delete whatever is in there, and put in a forward slash. Repeat this process for the remaining pages on your site. You will notice that the homepage does not contain anything in the text box next to folder. You do not need to add a forward slash to the home page. Just leave it as is.
Now, when we publish our sites, that folder name will be gone, and we will be left with a smaller, nicer looking URL in the address bar. To learn how to get your RapidWeaver website ranking high in search engines, be sure to check out the SEO For RapidWeaver video tutorial at ragesw.com
Your website is ranking for keywords you may not even know it is ranking for and you can instantly boost the number of visitors you are getting from search engines with a single change to your site.
So you have your XML Sitemap file submitted to your Google Webmaster Tools account. Now, login to your account to see what search terms your website is appearing for AND what search terms people are actually clicking on to visit your site.
The trick is to find the relevant search terms that are appearing a lot in search results, but that customers are not clicking. By simply changing your Title Tag and your description tag, you can dramatically improve the number of visitors who visit your website.
Watch this step by step video tutorial to learn exactly how to do this;
Make sure you have created and submitted your XML Sitemap file. If you think you’ve missed a step and feel a little lost, we have our step by step walkthrough SEO videos which explain everything you need to know about optimizing your website for the best possible search engine rankings.
So in part 1 of this series you learned about the importance of your web page title tags and how to use them to attract searchers to your site. Now we need to learn the second part of the equation to ensure searchers are actually clicking your search result and coming to your website.
Once you have grabbed a searchers attention with your title tag, the next thing they look at is your page description, a short snippet of what the page they are about to visit is all about.
Your page description needs to include a brief summary of what they will find when they visit your site. If you don’t have a meta description, or it doesn’t accurately describe what is on the corresponding page, Google will provide a description from your page content that may not make much sense to a potential visitor.
This video tutorial will explain how a description tag works and why you need one;
Now that you know about your meta description tag, learn how to add one to your website and what makes a good meta description to help entice users to click your web page link when searching. Check out our walk through SEO video tutorials to learn how to improve your website’s search engine rankings.
You’re walking in a shopping mall, among the hundreds of stores competing for your attention, one catches your eye.
Have you ever walked by a store and been so intrigued you had to go in? What if you could do the same thing with your website?
When someone does a search in Google for a keyword related to your site they are presented by hundreds of thousands of choices. Even on the front page they have 10 results to choose from. How can you make sure they click your site even if you may not be right at the top?
Your website title tag is the very first thing your visitor will see. That is why it is so important to make sure you have the perfect title tag for each of your pages. A title tag that both attracts web searches but also has your keywords for the best search engine rankings is extremely important. This video will explain in detail what a title tag is and how it is used.
Once you know why you need the title tag, you can learn how to create the perfect title tag that not only gets people clicking to your site, but also includes the keywords your customers are searching for you. Check out our walk through SEO video tutorials to learn how to improve your website’s title tags.
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