SEO and Names

<p>So I'm working on SEOing my site and I can't seem to get my name anywhere near the first page of Google. my name (John Cox)+ any tag on my site works but not John Cox by itself. I have been tagging my name as two separate tags, (is that the right way of doing this?) I have no real reason to post my name on my site (more than I am), but how big of a difference would that make?<br>

For reference here is my site;<br>

www.theworldexposed.com</p>

<p>Any help would be great,<br>

thanks,<br>

John</p>

<p>If you want people to find your site via your name, you will need to use your name on your pages inside h1 or h2 tags, for instance and preferably refer to your name several times. It looks like adding it to the meta keywords tag is not enough to get any SEO rating with modern engines like Google or Bing. Add an About page and write about yourself in the 3rd person and make sure people can easily navigate your site from there if the search engine brings visitors to the About page. <br /> Join the free Bing and Google webmaster sites, the Bing one does give suggestions about SEO. This is what I did for my blog: <a href="http://monochrome.me.uk/blog/about">http://monochrome.me.uk/blog/about</a></p>

<p>Thank you very much</p>

 

<p>Just a couple quick related questions<br>

1. For meta tags, Should I be tagging phrases as individual words ( IE: Black, and, white) or full phrases (IE: ,Black and white,) <br>

2. Can I put an entire paragraph in an H1 tag (IE <> the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog <>)? WordPress resizes this so it isn't much of an eyesore.<br>

In any case, thanks again,<br>

John</p>

 

<p>Hi John, <br /> I'm no SEO expert but have been trying playing around with my blog to get a better ranking. <br /> I think you can use both the individual words and the full phrases, but like I said, I don't think any of the search engines are using them anymore, instead they try to figure out keywords from the text of the page, see here: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_element">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta_element</a><br /> According to the Bing Webmaster Centre's SEO Analyser (under Diagnostics & Tools), the Title, H1 and H2 are used to pick the most significant words on a page, I guess it will spot if the text is too long which might result in a lower ranking. Another thing it recommends is to use ALT text on images and make sure the page titles all differ. <br /> This is what I learned:</p>

<ul>

<li>Make sure you have an XML sitemap (several WordPress plugins can do this for you)</li>

<li>Make sure that other sites link to your site (this explains the constant comment spams in blogs that have been going around, people are not really hoping you click through on them, they just want to improve their SEO by having tons of links to their page)</li>

<li>Use a <META NAME="TITLE" CONTENT="...."></li>

<li>Use a <META NAME="description" CONTENT="...."></li>

<li>Use a robots.txt file (google for it)</li>

<li>Use a free service like Attracta.com for sitemap submissions</li>

</ul>

<p>I use google analytics as well and keep an eye on the keywords that bring people to my site and learned from that. For me those keywords were quite surprising and it became clear that pages with text I wrote myself were favoured by the search engines; the more text the better.</p>

<p>The meta tags should contain the words you want people to search and find you, preferably unique words to you or your Website, but not too many where you're lost in the shuffle or you mislead people about your Website. That's what Google indexes for its database than the body of Web pages since many are created on demand than being static Web pages.</p>

<p>Then register your Website to add the Google analytics. Google prioritizes its Website list now, mostly to registered users and then the rest of the world, especially when you update the Website and send Google an update notice. And of course there always is the other option, pay Google to put it at or near the top. They'll take your check. ;)</p>

<p>Website is down. PHP/SQL issues? <br>

Meta tags are outdated, don't put much more than a cursory thought towards them.<br>

The biggest things are title tags (just make sure there's a keyword in there not just "The World Exposed;" make sure you're dropping keywords in your website copy (but don't make it obviously optimized i.e. make it readable); build links (Google doesn't care about your website if it's not linked to. As far as Google is concerned, it doesn't exist); be patient - it takes time for effects to take hold.</p>

<p>Hi John,<br>

I just recently shared this post on another network and figured I would share it here as well. Some of the past comments have already recognized the importance of H tags which I reference here as well. Hope that this contribution is useful.</p>

<h4>Key Word Strategies</h4>

<p>Before I was paid to blog, I didn't think about the language I was using and how I formulated this into a "key word strategy". If you haven't worked with this before it can be a little intimidating at first (I think it has made me a better blog writer though :) A key word strategy involves a few key items.</p>

<ul>

<li>A searchable title: Use language that others would type in when searching about the topic that you are blogging about e.g. (instead of using a title like "What I’ve <strong>learn</strong>ed about <strong>portrait photography</strong>” try a more searchable title like “<strong>Five Tips</strong> to <strong>Improve</strong> your <strong>Portrait Photography</strong>”. The difference between the two is in regard to audience. People that will benefit from your blog post are looking for how to become better portrait photographers. They are more likely to type in words searches like “How to <strong>improve</strong> my <strong>portrait photography</strong>” or “<strong>Tips</strong> for <strong>becoming a better portrait photographer</strong>.” I have highlighted the keywords in bold to help illustrate the words that Google is going to pick up when people are searching.</li>

</ul>

<ul>

<li>Use H1-H6 tags to help Google find your content. Google search uses what are called "H" tags to find keywords and content. Throughout your posts you can headline different sections with these H tags. These tags add another level of search-ability in your post. With our blog we use H4 tags (it makes the text format size more manageable) to separate the different sections.</li>

<li>Try to reference these "key-words" and phrases throughout your blog. For me, this was the trickiest part; how do I reference these words without my blog post reading like it was written by a robot? I would suggest that over time it will get easier. Do multiple revisions of the same post and try to integrate some of the key words and phrases throughout. Eventually you will begin to think about your content through a filter; you'll begin to write in a way that is easier searched and understood.</li>

</ul>

<h4>Using Inbound Links to Enhance your SEO</h4>

<p>We use inbound and outbound links to help people find relevant links. As I'm going to do right now to help everyone in better understanding how Outbound Links can be used. Often times as we talk about the photographers that we represent we will use a link to showcase his/her work or an example of the content we are discussing. When Google looks at your page it will recognize all of these links, AND, all of the links back to your site. Herein lies the importance of developing good content; the more people you can get to link to and from your site the better.</p>

 

<h4>Fill in all of the Word Press all-in-one SEO pack</h4>

<p>We use a lot of diligence when filling these sections in. The "Title" is of course the title of your blog post as it appears in search engines. The "Description" dialogue box will be what shows up in Google search description below the title. We often use similar "key-word"esq language in this section, again to enhance SEO. The "key-words" Dialogue Box will come from the key words that you used in your title (and hopefully throughout your post and h tags). <br>

If you haven't already <a href="http://www.seomoz.org/blog/21-tactics-to-increase-blog-traffic-2012" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">read this article</a> by SEOMoz I found it to be the most informative and accurate online guide yet. I hope this helps.<br>

<br />All the best,<br>

Sam Eriksmoen<br>

Sam@livebooks.com</p>