SEO Newsletter in Stores Now!


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The SEO Newsletter for May 2010 has landed in inboxes. In it you’ll find search and Internet news from the past month and articles with guidelines for small business SEO and Meta tags.

FEATURE: Understanding SEO for Small and Local Businesses

With 40 percent of search engine queries containing some local intent, small businesses would do well to position themselves for search engine success. At the same time, those managing a small business often don’t have the time or resources needed to manage an SEO initiative. In these situations, it may make sense to hand a website over to a qualified and reputable SEO professional to optimize a site for local and organic search.

When a small business owner trusts a professional to make necessary changes, he may or may not want to understand why each effort is being made and why it will improve their site. For those who do want an understanding of basic SEO methodology for small business sites, an outline of best practices can provide a useful background. This article provides an overview of keyword and competitor research, facets of a small business SEO strategy, and how analytics is used as a guide.

On the other side of the size spectrum, this week Bruce Clay will be presenting a webinar about managing expectations and defining success for SEO in large organizations. The hour-long Search Marketing Now webinar is this Thursday, May 20, at 1:00 p.m. Eastern. Register to hear Bruce’s recommendations for integrating SEO throughout an organization, setting realistic expectations and ROI tracking.

Small Biz Discovery Contest logo

And by the way, don’t forget to get in your article entries for the Small Biz Discovery Contest, happening now through May 31. The grand prize winner gets a pass to SES San Francisco, plus we’re giving away seats in SEO Training for runners-up. It’s a great opportunity, if I do say so myself!

BACK TO BASICS: The Ins and Outs of Meta Data

Meta data serves a very important role in search engine optimization. Meta data is, essentially, data about data. The search engine uses it to “read” the page it’s on to better “understand” what that page is about. That’s why having well-written and optimized Meta data is so important; if you’re targeting keywords and phrases on any given page, you want to tell the search engines about it. An easy way to think of Meta data is as the advertisement and the page content as your product. Essentially, what you say in your Meta data should give a clear and compelling picture of what to expect on that Web page.

If you’re using HTML code to make updates to your site, the Meta data will live in the Head section of the Web page. If you have a content management system (CMS) for your website, there may be a Meta data tool that allows you to plug in your Meta information and it will generate tags for you. Meta data as it relates to SEO contains important components like the Title tag, the Meta Description and the Meta Keywords tag. This article looks at the Head section of a Web page and best practices for Title tags, Meta Description tags, and Meta Keywords tags, along with examples of the HTML code.

You’ll also find an article from Bruce Clay Australia highlighting takeaways from SMX Sydney 2010. Find out what tips for linking, social media and Universal Search got a lot of attention at the big show Down Under.

Hope you enjoy this month’s newsletter — the easiest way to catch up on the month’s happenings in search and Internet marketing. If you want to get the SEO news from BCI in your inbox each month, just enter your e-mail address in the “Subscribe to our Newsletter” box over in the left-hand sidebar there. Happy reading!

Virginia Nussey is the director of content marketing at MobileMonkey. Prior to joining this startup in 2018, Virginia was the operations and content manager at Bruce Clay Inc., having joined the company in 2008 as a writer and blogger.

See Virginia's author page for links to connect on social media.

Comments (2)
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Still on the hunt for actionable tips and insights? Each of these recent SEO posts is better than the last!

2 Replies to “SEO Newsletter in Stores Now!”

Google does not take meta description or keywords into account when looking at rankings. So this might help to give a beter description to your readers, but wont help to get you on the top of the search results…? do you agree?

Virginia Nussey

Hi Werner, thanks for your comment. :) I have to say I disagree. Meta Descriptions are indexed and may be displayed in search results, so they can directly affect the way a user perceives a site from the SERP. SEO is concerned with more than just rankings — it’s also about traffic. A Meta Description may be a user’s first impression of a site, either enticing them to click through or to move on.

Meanwhile, the Title tag is a part of the ranking algorithm. Also, Google has been known to filter out pages from SERPs if a Title tag is duplicated, which basically wipes out any chance for those pages to rank. That’s why we consider Meta tag optimization a basic best practice for SEO.

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