Welcome to this week's MIND Your Business Podcast, presented by the minds at MIND Development and Design and our friends at Fresh Roasted Hoasting. Thank you for listening to this podcast on iTunes and Stitcher...thank you for the magnanimous interest on Pinterest. Whiff Roasters in Lititz, PA...thank you for existing, so that I might have your coffee and chicory goodness keeping me caffeinated and blissfully coherent. You know, until I discovered Whiff...which is only about 4 blocks from my house...I hadn't had coffee and chicory since I lived in Louisiana. Nobody seems to take it seriously up here, but I'm glad Whiff does:) Mmmmmmm! U GOT THE LOOK!!! Does your website have THE LOOK that GoogleBot and the other search engine bots are looking for? There are onsite factors that change in relevancy EVERY YEAR and those factors determine how you look to the search engine bots. They don't see all the pretty pictures and graphics...they see a flurry of code that they must interpret as an adverb...to decide how, when and where your website should appear in the SERPs. This is what we're focusing on this week...a list of the onsite factors that you MUST CONSISTENTLY be aware of and be ready to modify. Your website is now, more than ever, an interactive arena and more and more the search engines are looking for indicators that you give a damn beyond "how much money can this website make me?" Believe me, EVERYONE gets it...you're a business and you expect your website to generate traffic which equals revenue for your business. This is precisely WHY the act of getting found in search engine results has become such a dad-blamed jigsaw puzzle. Because EVERY IDEA that YOU can think of to take a shortcut and game the system and get a perceived advantage has already been thought of, exploited and now YOU have to listen to ME blathering about how to do it the right way. What a conundrum! Hey, I realize that the act of getting your website designed, developed and up and running is time consuming and a lot of you listening here don't even want to deal with it. So....to keep with that negative mentality, I'm going to start this week's podcast off with a short checklist of the things you DON'T want to be hyperfocused on. Like the great webmaster geniuses REO Speedwagon said, You Gotta keep on rollin'....roll with the changes. Some of the things you thought you could take care of and never worry about again need some attention because things really HAVE changed in the last 5-plus years. So, here are some things you need to stop worrying about...or at least stop spending ALL of your energy on them...and you're going to be surprised at some of them. 1) STOP placing all of your focus on keywords. Hey, keywords certainly still matter, but they are not the be-all-end-all that they used to be. Thanks to all of the spammers we rightfully LOATHE, keywords themselves don't matter anymore like they used to...which sounds like a contradiction...it's a mystery, inside a riddle, wrapped in an enigma. YES, you want to be ranked for specific keywords that people type in when they're searching for you, but there's more at work here as AUGMENTING key words serve to strengthen the validity of the keywords themselves. Yes, I know your head is spinning right now and really it should be...this is all unnecessary if everyone would just be honest. Truth is, if the word Barack Obama appears on a page on your website, the search engine bots also expect to see the word "president" or "American president" or something to that effect on the same page to back up the fact that his name doesn't appear on the page for any other reason than he is legitimately being written about. Sounds crazy, but think of all those pages you've seen where it's an obvious Ad-Sense page but an attention-getting set of keywords that has nothing to do with the page itself appears on the page for the sole purpose of getting illegitimate ranking. Yes, the search engines know better. Bottom line...give legitimate information and write for your readers and you'll be okay! And oh, by the way...GREAT article about this by Barry Schwartz on Search Engine Roundtable from May 18...he was writing regarding Roger Montti's thread at Webmaster World that approached some of these things and I just thought it was a nice opportunity to put all that info in one place for you and add a couple of my own suggestions... U Got The Look...that's what the legendary webmaster Prince once said. "U got the look...it musta took...a whole hour just to make up your face, baby." See, Prince UNDERSTOOD...before the Internet was even in our HANDS...he understood that it takes TIME to make your website look good for the search engine bots. And it's an ongoing process... 2) Second big tip...and it's actually a mash-up of two tips...STOP focusing on longtail keyword phrases and STOP focusing on ranking for specific keyword phrases! See...what was good 5-10 years ago is not necessarily good anymore. Some things are...these are NOT two of them. While we're on the subject of the past, I'll tease next week's podcast where we will talk about how your website is NOT Ron Popeil's Showtime Rotisserie...you can't "set it and forget it." And don't even get me started on the Slap-Chop, but that was What may have worked as a focus a few years ago is not as important as it used to be. YES, you MUST have the keywords you want to rank for on specific pages on your website, but NO...that should not be your primary focus! You may want to rank for specific keywords or keyword phrases, but that doesn't mean putting those words on a given page a dozen times. The search engines are looking for augmenting keywords like I mentioned earlier. Those words show the depth and gravity of your content. And for cryin' out loud...please stop focusing on longtail keyword phrases. I can't emphasize this enough...longtail keyword focus is detrimental to your ranking efforts for two main reasons...1) emphasis on these longtail phrases usually makes your content hard to read as far as making sense. It becomes quickly evident to readers that your focus is on keyword phrases and NOT actually helping them, and 2) the longer the keyword phrase, the more likely it is that there will be typos when people are doing searches, which renders those phrases virtually useless. We have a lot of bad spellers out there and THEY are looking for your product or service, too. You can't control how good of a speller someone is, but you CAN control making your content more search friendly by focusing on the READER and helping them. NONE of this is as cut and dried as it was a few years back...NONE of it. Keywords DEFINITELY matter, but you have to look at the big picture and realize that these words in and of themselves are NO LONGER the be all end all like they once were. One more thing you want to stop...if you haven't removed Flash from your website, PLEASE do! You should have done this a couple of years ago, to be frank. Google doesn't like flash and it can hurt your site speed and performance...I don't wanna be calling you Webmaster Flash because you took a Furious Dive in your rankings. When we come back...we're gonna wax positive with the onsite search factors you WANT to be focused on! ======================================== We are back on the MIND Your Business podcast and we've been talking this week about those onsite ranking factors you want to STOP placing ALL of your focus on. Well, what about the factors you DO want to be focusing on? NUMBER ONE: and I'm putting this number one because it's really the foundation for everything else...invest in strong, QUALITY site design and development! You don't have to break the bank to do this if you're a small business, but you don't want to cut corners, either. Truth is, WIX and other turn-key platforms that you've seen on Super Bowl commercials and elsewhere have major limits when it comes to actually getting ranking. No matter how good you THINK your website looks, etc., NO ONE is going to see it if it can't be properly indexed by the search engines. With user experience being SUCH a major focus with Google this year...and beyond...you owe it to the future of your business to do it RIGHT with your site design. Yes, I know these turn-key platforms that are being foisted upon us sound like a great idea...especially when Jeff Bridges...gives his stamp of approval. And I love Jeff Bridges...but he has an advantage when using a platform like he did with SquareSpace...people already know who he is and that's a high profile that YOU are not starting out with. Gotta look at it with perspective. It's not going to be as cheap to get a website designed and developed for you, but it's worth the extra expense because it will pay dividends down the line with better online presence. NUMBER TWO: Original images! Yes, I know you're not a photographer and necessity may dictate that you need to use some stock photos. HOW-EVUHH...don't forget that the search engines LOVE crawling your site and finding images that they can't find elsewhere, because those images are attributed to YOU! If you spend much time on the Internet, you've undoubtedly seen those stock photos that seem to pop up everywhere...my favorite is one I've seen on my credit card websites and other credit-oriented sites with the dark haired woman with the big smile holding two thumbs up right in your face! Congratulations...we got your money! I don't know who she is, but she loves her some credit. Anyway, take time out to take your OWN pictures and put them on your site. Besides the search engines liking them, your visitors will like them as well because it's that extra personal touch that they're ALL looking for. NUMBER THREE: Keep your title tags short! Your title tags are still the FIRST indication the search engine bots have as far as what your site is all about. If you don't know what yours are, just bring up your website in your browser...preferably Google Chrome or Firefox...and hover your cursor over the tab at the top of the page. What then pops up is your page title. Sorry...your business name and slogan just don't cut it. No one is searching for your slogan, people...especially when they have yet to find you in the first place. Business name is okay, but there must be a few defining keywords there, as well. I know...I said earlier to stop focusing on keywords, BUT I also said they're still important...there's just a time and place for them and this is one of the times and places. Rule of thumb is that your title tags should be no longer than 60 characters. With Google liking shorter title tags, you might even want to reduce that number to 55 or even 50. NUMBER FOUR: Make your meta descriptions...well...more descriptive. Your meta description is what appears in the SERPs underneath the clickable link, which is your title. Are your page meta descriptions TRULY indicative of what a visitor can find on that page? It's really as simple as that. If your answer is YES, then keywords will naturally appear in that description. Bear in mind that the MAIN keywords that you want to rank for are NOT going to necessarily be pertinent for EVERY page on your site. A really good way of doing this is to use an excerpt from the actual content on a given page...an excerpt that best represents that page. Hey, if Google doesn't like your description they're just going to pick the first line or two on the page anyway...and RARELY do those first couple of lines truly represent the overall page content. And finally NUMBER FIVE: Provide ORIGINAL and ENGAGING content that truly informs with useful information and provides ANSWERS to legitimate questions. I'm not going to belabor this point because we've done FULL podcasts on this topic, but I can't emphasize ENOUGH how important it is to put thought, time and effort into your onsite content and blog posts. This is your opportunity to SET YOURSELF apart from your competition by giving YOUR professional take on Frequently Asked Questions, current events pertinent to your line of business and to give some helpful How-To's. Don't be afraid of giving away some information, people. There really aren't any secrets anymore...people can pretty much find whatever they're looking for online, so they might as well find it on YOUR site so YOU are top of mind when they need the product or service that YOU have to offer:) Thank you so much for listening to this MIND Your Business Podcast, presented by MIND Development and Design and our friends at Fresh Roasted Hosting. Thank you Whiff Roasters in Lititz, PA for the delicious coffee and chicory blend. Thank you for listening on iTunes and Stitcher and for the interest on Pinterest. We all really hope you found this information helpful and empowering to get more out of your website and your online presence. Send us your questions through Facebook, comment on our podcast page, email us at info@minddnd.com or just click that ask a question button on the right side of our podcast page...it stays crunchy in milk. See you here next week!