by admin on December 1, 2009
If you’re in the business of building links to your own or your clients’ websites then you will know how powerful some attractive link bait can be. And competitions are a magnet for both links and traffic.
Christmas is a great time to run some seasonal contests. Prizes can be almost anything, but the more generous you can afford to be then the more attention your competition is likely to attract.
A good example is the current Hornby Trains Competition that has just been announced by Sussex model retailers Modelzone. They’ve timed this competition to coincide with the ‘James May’s Toy Stories’ episode in which Mr May, along with 400 volunteers, re-build the long lost rail link between Bideford and Barnstaple in Devon using Hornby OO gauge track. All you have to do to be in with a chance of winning an excellent Hornby Train Set is answer one simple question, and the answer is in the competition blog post.
Competitions like this don’t cost a great deal to set up and administer but they can generate a lot of buzz and attract some very valuable traffic. For useful backlinks my preference is to set up ongoing competitions that change, maybe every month, with a dedicated competitions page on the site.
Publicising your competition is, of course, very important so here are a few sites you might like to check out:
www.hotukdeals.com
www.netfreestuff.co.uk/
www.freeukstuff.com
forums.loquax.co.uk
www.theprizefinder.com
www.ukcompetitions.com
www.ukwins.co.uk
www.crazycompers.co.uk
www.competitionslist.com
www.myoffers.co.uk
www.competitorscompanion.com
www.discountedorfree.co.uk
www.freesuperheros.co.uk
by admin on November 16, 2009
I find it surprising that, although it is well known, documented and understood that web page titles are ultra-important to search engines, many site owners still persist in presenting useless and inaccurate titles that do nothing for search engines or for the people they hope to attract to their sites.
Only last week I was involved in a meeting, with a prospective client, who was seriously considering spending good money on expensive SEO services yet he recognised that the page title of his main site index was useless. He’d built the site himself, had managed to establish some popularity in his market niche yet hadn’t implemented a genuinely descriptive main page title, instead using the single word ‘Home’.
Site owners like him are not uncommon. My partner, lady K., provides freelance copywriting services, primarily writing web content for small business owners and she encounters websites like the one I’ve just described every week. Optimising web page titles is something that many small business website owners can actually do for themselves without the need for expensive, specialist SEO services.
Optimal Page Titles
The Google Webmaster guidelines tell site owners:
“Make sure that your <title> elements and ALT attributes are descriptive and accurate.”
Luckily there are some excellent ‘best practices’ guidelines regarding how to write and structure your page titles along with plenty of examples of how important keyword use within page titles can be. Here are a few:
Newbie Tweaks Title Tags – Improves Rankings
Search Engine Ranking Factors V2
SEO Best Practices: SEOMoz’s New Policies Based on Updated Correlation Data
On Page SEO – The Google Way
If you don’t have the time or you are not inclined to read these guidelines here is a simple technique that you can use to come up with some page title candidates for your site pages:
- Write down between 1 and 3 words or phrases that accurately describe the content of your page, that are used within the content of your page and that people use to describe and search for your products or services;
- Use each as a search query and copy the page titles of the top 5 web pages presented in the search results for each search;
- Look for web pages that have appeared in the top five for all of your searches and highlight their page titles in your notes (these can provide valuable insight into the factors that the search engine favours in this particular market sector);
- Copy those page titles that most closely describe the content of your own page and modify to make them more accurate, descriptive, engaging and compliant with size constraints (65 characters total, including spaces, is recommended).
If you complete this little exercise you should have a list of page title candidates ready to be tested. Refer back to those that were highlighted (if any) at stage 3 above and try to pick those from your list that are close in style and structure to those that appear to be favoured by the search engines.
Iterative Page Title Testing
Iterative testing simply means going back and forth doing the same test over and over. What we hope to achieve through this form of focussed testing of the page title element is a title that results in a more prominent position in the SERPs for search queries that relate to the content of your page.
Start by recording the position of your page for each of the primary search queries that you want your page to rank for. The most important of these phrases or keywords should be the first in your page title; it should accurately describe the topic of your page and be used appropriately within the page content.
Having benchmarked your current positions in the SERPs you are ready to test a new page title. Select a new page title from your list that you think, based upon the research you have just carried out, is most likely to result in the most significant positive shift in the SERPs.
Make the page title change and carry on with whatever link-building you may (or may not) have been carrying out toward your site pages.
How Long Before Effects Become Apparent
Having changed your page title you will have to wait for the search engine bots to revisit and cache your page. This can happen very quickly, but sites that are not frequently updated or are very new may have to wait longer. As a rule I would expect the effects of a page title change to have become apparent within 2 to 4 weeks, but generally much sooner if a site is already indexed.
If you are optimising for Google you will normally only have to wait until Google has re-cached your page. You can see which version of a page is currently cached by Google by entering:
Cache:yourwebpageaddress
Into a Google Search box.
Rinse and Repeat
If you have seen a positive movement in the SERPs, fantastic. If your page is now at number 1 in the SERPs for your primary key terms, better still. If you are not quite as prominent in the results as you would like to be perhaps an additional tweak to your page title will result in further improvement so maybe try another title candidate. If you have seen a fall in positions for some terms but improvement for others then maybe an alternative title in combination with some revised content will give your page the boost you are looking for. If you have seen no positive movement or a fall in positions for a range of terms you may want to revert to the original page title and then take another alternative for a test-drive.
Page title optimisation is a small but nevertheless immensely significant aspect of SEO that many website owners can do for themselves. It’s very satisfying to see a web page shoot up in the SERPs as a result of a good, descriptive page title and this is well within the capabilities of most site owners.
