SEO and Social Media Learning Tips from Real World Applications
During a recent Search Engine Optimization training seminar I was asked several questions. I felt the discussion might be beneficial to others out there that may have similar questions. Please feel free to send me your questions regarding SEO and/or feedback on this SEO discussion, and I will post them on this page for further review.
Q:
H1 tag can contain up to 100 characters, correct?
A:
As far as I know, I don’t think there is a limitation to the length of characters used within H1 tags. I would add, that if the headline seems long, create a subheadline with more description and use H2 tags…
Q:
Can you further explain the upcoming Facebook notes change and how we might use that functionality to our benefit?
A:
Facebook is moving into the search arena with it’s own search engine called Graph Search. This search tool is designed to compete with Google on some levels. Therefore, it won’t be enough to just focus on Google search, especially since Facebook has 1.1 billion users and the most heavily used website on the planet. So, I recommend having a strategy that incorporates both Facebook and Google, adding text based content to Notes would be part of that strategy.
Facebook is currently transitioning the “Notes” node into becoming a blog, to compete with Tumblr and Twitter to some extent. Any Note and its content will be transitioned to essentially a blog post. This content will provide an SEO boost within your Facebook search results. Initially I recommend repurposing existing content and posting it as notes, since Facebook will be looking for content to populate it’s growing database…
Q:
I learned a lot in the second SEO training session. I especially found the coding/CMS fields information helpful. I do think it would have been helpful for Michael to explain the idea behind posting through Google before walking us through the actual process.
A:
Google has a tag called, “Author”. This tag is new and is used to declare authored content. Like you would use H1 or Alt tags the Author tag gives proper SEO benefit to the writer of the content. There is a specific format for setting this up and this is what we looked at during the training. We also discussed building “Authority” for ourselves and this is one way of doing that.
The primary reason for posting to Google is the additional SEO benefit your content can receive because of declaring it as good unique content and posting it. In order to use the Author tag correctly you need to post the link to your G profile…
Q:
He touched on a few things where I thought I had been going wrong and it was good to hear that actually I was going right, and of course good to hear how you can do things better. One area that I feel was not resolved however was with the Google rankings, High, Medium and Low. I am still not clear whether to go for High or Low, and the suggestion of using a combination seemed a little like a non-answer, perhaps I need to go back and look again to understand better.
A:
Ultimately it would be great to have many keyword phrases with lots of traffic and little competition. However this is rarely the case, so it’s important to vary your keywords across related keyword search phrases. If there’s a relevant phrase with a good amount of traffic and low competition, but closely related to a high competition, high traffic phrase then you should target both search phrases in your code setup and content.
It will be easier to rank for the low competition, low traffic phrases and by doing so you can build credibility for ranking in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP’s) for the tougher, more competitive phrases as time goes on. Look at this as both a short and long term strategy for your content. Combine “author” based content and you will increase your SERP visibility even more. Remember the Google Keyword Tool is only one way to analyze keyword phrases…