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I’ve been doing SEO along time and keywords have been around since the first boolean searches. The premise is simple. You add a word to a page and the Boolean search comes along finds those words and returns the answer. Though the years, keywords were that one talking point that SEO companies used as a metric of success. After all to some degree SEO in the old days centered around the more keywords the more traffic and therefore more success. And although I can say that the more keywords ‘may’ cause more traffic the reality is that it does not always mean more success. The layers are much more these days.

So about a week ago I got a lead from our website (and the Houston West Chamber of Commerce). The call went like this. We are having our web site designed (by someone else) and well someone said I needed to find keywords and I really don’t know what they mean. So it got me to thinking that I haven’t really talked about keywords in a really long time. The core reason why is that the complexity of keywords now and how they are used to be effective seemed to be something that a rookie was going to get. And, I didn’t want to promote this idea that keywords should be a metric for success for SEO. Simply that is not correct. Yes, some will argue that it measures success but honestly my web hosting site ranks on 1000s of keywords but there is only one that will ever net me money, web hosting (seems kinda obvious doesn’t it).  It has been that way for 20 some years and counting.

What is that the the fuss about keywords for SEO?

I can make the argument that keywords are the single most important element of a website and without them you site is destined to a life of mediocrity. I’m sure that there will be some SEO people that want to come and talk about the death of SEO and why keywords are not as important as they used to be, all the while making sure they put keywords in their title tags (because of course if they aren’t there the page won’t rank). What they may argue is that the contextual words on the page may null and void the need for the keyword. And while that is true in come niches (ie, movers),  in most cases, if they are looking at all the pages on the website a keyword there is a set of keywords that will prevail and be thought a site, almost like a thread that that holds everything together.

Now my friends that’ll will also argue about the importance of links my also feel links are singularly the most important ranking factor. That is a case that can be made but, naked links and links devoid or keywords have far less impact that just simply having a link. Often you make a link containing a keyword in it. So although we can argue one for the other, one is far more effective with a keyword in it rather than not.

In this episode we talk some on keyword history and how we got here. We also talk though how to properly identify keywords and why they are important. But, I also make the point that you should pick about 20 money terms and build around that. Just like this site. I want to rank on SEO and Web Design. Anything past that is gravy to me and my posts usually include some allusion to one of those two words each and every post I make. Additionally you will see me link them to other pages inside my website.

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Using the right permalink and how to build one is often lost in modern day web building. For those of us that have been around 20 years, we remember the days of building a site with actual directories and publishing with dreamweaver or Microsoft Front-page. Now with CMS system like WordPress, the old directory structure is mimicked inside the permalink functionality. What most folks don’t understand this is the impact on seo that can be gained from properly structuring you’re URLs.

In today’s episode we take a look at how to do that and how to make that work right for SEO all while still using a CMS system. And why it’s important and the signals it sends.

Also I decided to talk about SSL. I always get people calling the hosting company talking to me about how a website is secure or insecure. In most cases to them it means can the website be broken into or how secure their website is. As a web hosting provider as well as a digital marketing agency. We understand those are two really separate things. An SSL certificate does not make your website ‘more’ secure how average users mean it. The SSL certificate protects the data being transferred from the website to the end user. So while it is true that is less likely that a password or credit card number can be stolen over unencrypted channels, it does not mean a brute force hack is stopped. It does not mean a DDoS attack is stopped nor does it mean a malware/pfishing attack is not launched from or at your website. So I talk about what this is and why in my opinion Google was so insistent to get this done and how it benefits them.

What I will tell you is this thought. Everyone has been trained to look for the padlock. Browsers are popping up warning saying “danger Will Robinson” …well really they say that the website may not be safe. This of course discourages users. So while the warning is a little over the top, most users are not savvy enough to discern the danger or lack there of.

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Episode 112 is something I speak about a lot which is what web building tools or platform is good to use.  As I teach these classes many point out their tools/platforms don’t have the ability to do what I’m suggesting. That is because they are platforms that have the most rudimentary SEO functionality built-in but little more and simply do not need the standards that are needed.  Additionally it is estimated that 94% of all sites built with tools like Squarespace, Wix Weebly, Web.com or even Shopify are not even indexed by Google let alone appearing in SERPS. Even WordPress.com has these issues.

This bugs me because, in my opinion, they are marketing to unsuspecting small business owners promising a pretty site but there is little consideration for the success of the website. Inherently the website and the story about a tree falling in the woods are similar. If no one comes to your pretty website how effective is it. Additionally and for example, I looked at a 1000+ page website on Friday built in Shopify and every page on the site was marked at no index. And, better yet the images, which are ranking, were coming off the CDN for Shopify.  These are the type of problems you can run into using tools like this without an experience level on par with someone like me. Telling Google not to index your site is not the right path and it was not done on purpose.

Although I don’t discuss them directly here Hubspot’s platform, touts being able to do SEO but in no way is that correct. It is in an inbound marketing tool and does that very well.  and most Hubspot Users use WordPress in conjunction with HubSpot, which can be a winner. But all these platforms and tools are not built with Google quality guidelines in mind, in my opinion, and you have to ask yourself if your listing to people like me talk why would you choose a vehicle that will not even get out of the starting gate.  You can look pretty and rank well but online tools like this are really not the right way to go.

So I do have very strong opinions about this topic and the questions I am being asked was by a group of folks that are very small business owners. Please feel free to leave any questions you may have below.  Oh and I am going to apologize because Harley decided to express his displeasure with the neighbor kids. Sorry for the barking, I tried to kill a lot of it but I didn’t want the sound to get inaudible.

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Todays’s podcast covers a bunch of different SEO topics as we work on our ultimate end of the year checklist for 2020. (I know it’s a few months away but it’s coming fast!)

Google Webmaster Tools

1. 1. 1. We talk about webmaster tools and why every site should have it set up. The easy way to do this is by using Sitekit from Google.
      2. We reviewed how and why you should add a sitemap to your website
      3. What are some of the more problematic errors you can see and how do you fix them
      4. What are core web vitals
      5. See detailed Webmaster Tools Class

Bing Webmaster Tools

1. 1. 1. Remember to add Bing to your arsenal now because it’s almost a 1/3 of all web searches. You can set this up here: Bing Webmaster Tools

Set up Google Analytics and StatCounter.com

1. 1. 1. It’s an important function and all websites need to have solid statistics. We recommend adding both because it’s sometimes good to see all the traffic not just what google is omitting.

Rank Math vs. Yoast

1. 1. 1. 1. 1. Yoast has been around many years but Rank Math is starting to turn heads. A lot of them. I like the rank math interface better than Yoast. It also does a better job of assembling the interlinking of pages and I think its much easier to understand for beginners but has the flexibility for experts. It also adds schema by default so if you forget it remembers. Overall I think Rank Math is the better route, but i fully expect Yoast to not concede and up its game.

Make a Keyword Checklist

1. 1. 1. Keywords matter. Long-tail keywords matter.  We talk about how to select them and some of the best practices for them

Create a question that people want the answer to

1. 1. 1. Talked about some online forums that help us as well as sites like Ask the Public

Create SEO Friendly URLs

1. 1. 1. Why does this matter and how should you go about doing that. Why it’s bad to make things too wordy. The shorter the better but keeps it keyword rich but don’t overdo it and stuff

How do you position your keywords in the Title tag?

1. 1. 1. So the position of the keyword is very important based on what your objective of the page is
      2. Consider adding delimiters to the title tag like the year of the word best that help mirror more what searchers do. This will help you land better in the search results.

Use your keywords in H1, H2 or H3 tags

1. 1. 1. But don’t overdo it.
         1. 1 H1 at most

Optimize Images

1. 1. 1. We often rank #1 on our terms so I am often reluctant to do this, however, its a good practice and it does help land you in image search. If you have a product specifically that would be searched for by image, we talk about how to optimize images in both alt text file name and really size still does matter. The smaller the better.

Learn the art of Synonyms and LSI keyword

1. 1. 1. Google is big on signals and there are words it expects to see on a page and others it doesn’t learn what those words are and how to effectively use them. They are not in place of keywords but rather in support of them

 External links

1. 1. 1. Although I’m not a huge believer in linking outward, I will say that at times there are reasons to do it. For example, I did one above. Or on our home page, I linked to our sponsor partners. It makes sense.

Part 2 will  be posted at the end of August as we continue down our ultimate SEO Checklist

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In this episode, we take a look at the importance of six  specific items that will make or break your Google rankings:

1. Content – Why content is important and how Google may now go as far as to exclude thin or. underdeveloped/uninspired content. Without a strong content footprint, it is very difficult to have a ranking website on any meaningful terms. We explained why quality content helps and used the example of our Chamber of Commerce podcast we did that helped explain how Chambers affects local SEO. 
2. Cultivating Backlinks – If you create great content a good solid natural link profile should occur. We also talk through the buying of links and why this should not really be needed if you create really good content that makes people want to link to it. 
3. Keyword Spamming – The natural inclination is to spam keywords and overuse them or forget to use them all together, there seems to be a hard time finding a happy medium. We talk through how you should approach the use of keywords on a page and what the proper keyword ratios might be.
   
4. Search Engine Friendly Web Design – We talk though standard web design issues we see. How to properly construct navigation and why search engine friendly transcends a title tag, meta description and alt image tags. We also talk about why SEO should be planned first and not bolted on to a website after the fact. 
5. Quality Links – What are they and why they are important 
6. Page Speed – Why is page speed now more important than ever and why it transcends the end-user and cell phones.