Tag Archives: Google Visibility

What To Do When Google Messes Up The Title Of Your Site

BWMagic’s Internet Marketing News


What To Do When Google Messes Up The Title Of Your Site

In the past, I have always found it helpful to read about
other people’s problems with Google and how they solved them.
Maybe this won’t happen to you but in case it does, reading
about my experiences and mistakes might help you avoid them.

Yesterday morning, while nervously waiting for Google Caffeine
to drip into place, I got a rude awakening of just how abrupt some
of Google’s constant changes can bring to an online marketer.

Imagine this scenario: You have a site in Google’s index for over
four years which is ranked on the first page for some very competitive
keywords. Suddenly, one morning you check your rankings and they
have gone up a few notches but…


Google has changed the “Title” of your site in their index.


Google is no longer pulling the title from your “Title Tag” – the
name and words you want in the title and which has been in the Google
index for over 4 years. Instead Google has spidered your site’s main
page and pulled a generic title from your content.

Ouch!

Why does this matter? What’s the big deal you’re asking?

It’s a big deal mainly because I start my marketing funnel right
in the Google Serps, this is my first contact with potential
clients. You must pull in the right visitors to your site, visitors
who are of the right mind-set to buy a product or service.

Over the years, I have learned getting top rankings in Google for
lucrative keywords are only the first step in your marketing process.
Next, you have to have the right title and description in Google in
order to bring or attract the right visitors to your site.


I will explain further…


The site in question is a comparison shopping type site, where for
years the title said something like: Comparison of Product A Features/Prices

Then Google changes the Title to: What is Product A?

My site goes from being a comparison shopping site to an educational
site in the minds of those reading Google Serps. Bad news… very
bad news.

With this new title, my site is not only attracting the wrong kind of
visitor, but it goes from competing with small like-minded comparison sites
to competing with big sites like Wikipedia.

That’s probably a bit of an exaggeration but not really. It totally
messes up my marketing funnels for that site. Actually it cuts the
marketing down to just about nil since your conversion rates will
go down if you’re not attracting buyers.

Now, while it is very easy to blame Google for this change, I have
long learned – 9 times out of 10 – it is probably the webmaster or
marketer’s own doings which has caused the problem.

I have also learned when anything goes wrong, you have to first do,
a very detailed analysis of any changes you have made to any of your pages.
And I did make some changes to my index page for this site in question…

I added a link to an education site which is probably a big no-no in
Google’s mind. If you have a shopping comparison site… you should
not be pointing to a .edu site. This probably confused the robot in
some matter or triggered the nature of my site in the eyes of Google.

While checking this matter out further, I discovered that Google doesn’t have
to use your “Title Tag” at all. It can list your site anyway it sees
fit. Or rather it doesn’t have to accept your title if it believes
the page doesn’t relate to your title. It can comb the page and
decide a new Title for it… usually words appearing somewhere on
your page. Big Brother knows best and you have to play by his rules.

Here’s an interesting page from Google on this:


Google on Titles

I knew from the beginning that my title for that page was over the 65-70
characters allowed in Google, but Google would always list it and put
in the “…” at the end. Yahoo allows up to 120 characters and
that’s the reason I had the longer title in the first place.

Now, in the past with other web sites, changing the title of your
page in Google’s Index is no big deal. Usually after a few days, once
Google has spidered your page again, the new title appears in that
all-important index. I am chalking up the lost sales as a bad
mistake on my part.

I have made changes to the site in question and I wait anxiously
for Google to change the title back to the comparison shopping
angle which is truly what this site is all about. It does have
an educational element to it but that’s because I want any customers
to be fully informed about the products in question.

For me as an online marketer that first impression in Google’s Index
is crucial to my whole marketing process. And if you’re into selling
anything online or if you just want to attract the right targeted
visitors to your site – having the proper title and description are
essential to the success of your site.

You MUST give a lot of time and consideration to your title tag
and description. It is extremely important for attracting the right
type of visitor to your site. Get this wrong and even a #1 spot
in Google can be useless!

Here’s a handy little tool and site which will help you create your
titles and descriptions for search engines, mainly Google.


www.seomofo.com/snippet-optimizer.html



Use this tool to create your titles…

Then learn from my mistake and make sure your content and links
on your page is truly relevant to your title. Repeat your title
on the page in the “H1” headline is a good starting point, just keep
all content on topic so that Google’s robots and Algorithm doesn’t get
confused and mislabel your site.


Helping You Succeed Online Since 2002!

Kind Regards,
Titus

https://www.bizwaremagic.com

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Google Gives More Search Data To Webmasters

BWMagic’s Internet Marketing News


Google Gives More Search Data To Webmasters

You have probably heard about this already but it is very important,
especially if you’re like me and into search engine marketing.
Google thru its Webmaster Tools program is now sharing very detailed
search data for each individual search query made to your site.

What it means is this:

Say you have a site on “golfing” or “golf”.

You can now go to your Webmaster Tools account and click on a keyword
query such as “best golf clubs” which web surfers would use to find your
site.

Google will give you a break-down of its own search data:

– number of impressions

– your clickthrough rate (how many surfers click thru to your site)

– list of your site’s pages that were linked to in the results


Assuming all these numbers and data are accurate (there is a big discussion
going on right now, whether or not Google’s data is totally accurate), it will
give webmasters and marketers some useful information. It can help you improve
your conversion rate to get more visitors – which is the object of the game.

But a word of caution, don’t take anything coming from Google or any other
site on the web as gospel. I always like to compare any data with my own
web stats and weblogs… always make it a practice to cross-reference your
important stats with other sources.

Besides using your own site stats and Webmasters Tools, use Google Analytics,
use Alexa data, use your Adwords and your Adsense data… plus all your performance
reports from all your different affiliate networks you’re using like Commission
Junction.

By checking all these different sources, you will get a more comprehensive
view of how well your site is doing in regards to traffic and your visitors.

Regardless of how accurate it is, this new search data coming from Google is
well worth checking out and analyzing. Mainly because just increasing your
conversion numbers by a few notches can mean many more visitors to your site.

If you want to find out more about this topic and what it can mean for your
site, I suggest you check out this great page on WebProNews here:


If you’re not using Google’s Webmaster Tools, I more strongly suggest
you get it here:

Google Webmaster Tools


Helping You Succeed Online Since 2002!

Kind Regards,
Titus

https://www.bizwaremagic.com

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How Well Do You Know Your OWN Site?

BWMagic’s Internet Marketing News



How Well Do You Know Your OWN Site? Your Competitor’s?
These Handy SEO Tools Will Reveal All!

Needless to say, if you have a website, you will already know
it is becoming very competitive on the web. If you’re in a
lucrative niche market you will have probably already felt this
competition, not only from webmasters like yourself, but also
from major multi-billion dollar companies who have wised up
and SEOed up to take advantage of all this free organic traffic
coming from the search engines.

The competition is getting brutal.

For example, in some of my niche markets, I am competing to
get on the first page in Google for keywords that have over
220,000,000 competing pages. Hitting those first 10 spots is
where the money is located. You have to get onto that first
page in order to see your best results. And it is becoming
harder and harder to stay in those top 10 spots.

Of course, one marketing tactic is to simply NOT compete at
all, and go for the “long-tail keyword phrases” which have
less traffic but also less competition so you can get on the
first page of Google within a few days. This route will save
you a lot of frustration and sleepless nights.

However, if you’re like me and have held some lucrative keywords
on the first page of Google for over 4 or 5 years… seeing other
webmasters and especially big corporations come in and bump your
listing off the first page – totally ticks me off!

As the competition gets harder, you have to get smarter. Especially
if you have a small site with limited resources to spend on building
links and creating unique content. So you have to try and outwit your
competition.

Now if you know me, I am always pushing the “knowledge” button.
The more you know about your competition, the more able you are
to compete with them. And to a certain extent, the more you know
the more able you are to even beat your competition.

Over the years, I have used countless tools and software programs
to really get to know my competition. Thankfully, there are many
free programs you can use to discover most of what you should know
about your competition.

First, simply using the Google search engine will tell you who is
listed on the first page for your chosen keyword or keywords.
It will also tell you how many pages you’re competing against.
Now if you have a multi-worded phrase put quotation marks around
the “keyword phrase” and do an exact search in Google, which will
tell you the number of webpages which has this exact phrase
on them. This is probably your true competition.

Then you have to take a close look at your competition. Here is
one free tool that has been around since 2005 and you don’t even
have to sign-up to use it.


www.reactionengine.com

Just type in your site’s URL + a keyword and this tool will analyze
the SEO factors for you. They will even give you a “grade” for your
page!

But most importantly, they will give you some very valuable
information about your own site or your competitor’s site. You
can use this information to better design your site to hit all
the proper SEO signals which the search engines use to rank your
site.

In a recent WebProNews video interview, Matt Cutts said Google
has over 200 signals which it uses to rank pages. Now these
are the ranking factors that Google uses to rank your pages.

But really they are signals… give off the wrong signals and your
page will go down in the rankings. You really want all your
on-page SEO signals to be done right – simply because this is something
you have total control over.

For example, if you use the link above, it will tell you how
well you’re using your site against a certain keyword:


– is your main keyword in the title?

– is it in the meta tags?

– is it in the heading?

– is it in the body?

All these things do affect how well your site ranks in the
search engines. So it might be beneficial to take a look at
your site and see how will it does. And make any appropriate
changes.

Once you have taken a really close look at your site or page,
then you have to examine your main competition. Take a look at
how their site performs for your chosen keyword. What are
they doing differently from you? How are their pages optimized
for the search engines? See how they are ranked?

Now, look at how you can improve your site to better compete
with your competition. By first getting all your on-page SEO
factors/signals better optimized will help you compete better
with your competition.

Of course, there are many different sites like the one above
which you can use to find out more information about your
competition. I also like using:

www.compete.com
www.seotoolbook.com
www.iwebtool.com

Plus, as you probably know, I am a long-time user of the
Firefox Toolbar Add-on from

SEO Quake


This handy SEO toolbar gives me all the important SEO pointers
about a site while I am surfing. It does slow down your browser
a bit, but the information you get is as they say: priceless.

When I am checking out a site – either my competitor or when I
am looking for search partners, one thing I always check out on
this toolbar is the “SEMRush SE Traffic Price” this tells me the
worth of the search engine traffic this site is receiving each month.
If they had to pay for this traffic – that’s how much it would cost
them. Someone with $500,000 worth of traffic coming in each month,
probably knows what they’re doing when it comes to keyword positioning.

And another one is Alexa.com which I like to use to see the
traffic numbers, but also to check some of the links my competing
sites have. One marketing tactic, go out and try to get the same links
as your competition. If you want to truly compete with your competition
and beat them, you have to “out-link” them.

You also have to take a really close look at their whole site and
how it is constructed. What social network/bookmark sites are they
using? Are they using Twitter? Are they using Facebook? Are they
using Adsense? How many pages do they have indexed in the search
engines?

All of these things will add to your “knowledge” about your
competition. The more knowledge you have, the better you will
be able to compete…

Anyway, this is just some of the things you can do to check out
how well your site is optimized for SEO and also some ways
you can check out your competition. Go get ’em!


Helping You Succeed Online Since 2002!

Kind Regards,
Titus

https://www.bizwaremagic.com

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help spread the word – recommend this content by using
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