UPDATE Feb. 5, 2010: It appears LeapFish is no longer showing the link in the footer of their website to their “directory” I wrote about bellow:

This change must have been implemented today as Bing.com’s cached page of LeapFish from yesterday February 4, 2010 still has the link:

LeapFish has also implemented robots.txt file on their website disallowing web crawlers from indexing the directory:

Few days ago I tried to to get attention of Google’s Anti-Spam Czar – Matt Cutts via his FriendFeed account. I wanted Matt to comment about LeapFish’s latest directory- but I realize, it may not be Google’s practice to comment on these sort of things publicly. That or you need to be Michael Gray, Aaron Wall or Andy Beard to get some one like Matt Cutts to listen to you.

So what is my latest beef with LeapFish? Their spammy directory located at http://www.leapfish.com/dr/ – my apologies for not providing a live link, I consider LeapFish to be an unsafe website. It also appears by my estimates that Google is indexing this new directory at the rate of about 50 pages a day- there are about 200 pages in Google’s index from this “directory” as of this writing.

So I invite those who are still with me to explore some of the pages from the above mentioned directory. One of the first pages from the directory that jump at me was “Shopping”:

Clicking through to the page on LeapFish.com you are given opportunity to “narrow” your search- so I decide to narrow mine to “Death Care”:

What do you know?!!! Now you can narrow your search geographically- naturally I selected New Jersey the state I live in:

How about that?!! LeapFish knows all the counties in the state of New Jersey- naturally my next selection would be the county I live in:

How about that?!!! Turns out LeapFish is so intuitive it knows about every city in my state- so just for the heck of it I decided to check and see what kind of death care shopping I can do in Jackson, NJ:

And the relevancy of my final destination in LeapFish directory? Google search results associated with the death of Michael Jackson?

What can I say? I am extremely disappointed. I am sure few results of local funeral directors or even a local WalMart with the line of their latest caskets would not be as disappointing. Since LeapFish is using some APIs from Google, they could have really impress me by showing me a few relevant products using Google Base API.

So yeah, I am desperate for the attention from Matt Cutts. Matt could you please explain to me how this sort of “directories” improve the State of The Index? In my opinion the LeapFish Directory does just the opposite- LeapFish pollute the Internet.

If you are interested to find out more about LeapFish I highly recommend LeapFish Review by Better Business Bureau.

This is something many web-masters struggle with. You create a new website that is going to knock every one socks off, but now you need Google and other search engines to notice it. The quickest way is to slap a few links on other websites you have that may already rank well and are well indexed by the search engines. But is it good idea? As Matt Cutts of Google explains in the video bellow, it all depends. If you have few minutes it is well worth watching:

Guest Blogger: Cole Pannell

Website: The Banson Pro

Title tags are arguably the most important on-page SEO factor for any web page. When utilized properly, they can really help to boost your site in the SERPs. But when they are abused or used wrongfully, the impact could be fatal.

For those of you who don’t know, a title tag is the actual title of a document or web page. It is the text content contained within the section of the HTML code. You can always tell the title tag of a webpage by looking at the upper-most bar of your web browser window, as the title of the document will always be shown there.

Also, title tags give the actual “name” of any web page that is displayed in the search engine results pages or SERPs. Not only are they read by the human reader, they are also read by the search engines as well.

As a general rule, you want to use no more than 70 characters for the entire length of your title tag (spaces included). And you will want to use no more than 2 keywords in any title tag. It is very important not to keyword-stuff your title, like many webmasters do. But we will get to that in a minute.

Using too many words can actually dilute the keyword effect of your title. So try to keep the “filler” words down to a minimum. Try to use basic symbols (dash, underscore, comma, or the pipe symbol “|”) to break-up your title, instead of words like “the, and, of, by,” etc.

A good title tag should follow a similar format to this: “keyword1 | keyword2 | company name” or “company name – keyword1 – keyword2”. If you have more than 2 keywords you are targeting (as well do) then you should create separate pages and implement unique title tags for those pages and keywords.

Please remember to include the company name or actual website name inside of your title tag. This is for the benefit of the human reader, whereas the keywords are more for the search engines. You can place you company name either before or after the keywords, as shown in the above format, just as long as it is included.

So let’s take a look at a couple examples of what good title tags should like. Instead of giving you examples base on theory, I’m going to base this entirely from real-world, cold-hard facts and evidence.

Look at the site: bransoncanyon.com.

The title tag reads “Branson Real Estate – Branson Missouri Homes for Sale – Branson Canyon”. Obviously, the primary keyword for this website is “Branson Real Estate” and the secondary keyword is “Branson Missouri Homes for Sale”. Branson Canyon is the actual name of the company.

This is a perfect example of an effective title tag – for both SEO purposes and for the human reader. It has good keyword placement and also clearly shows the website for the human readers.

Also notice how it keeps the filler words down to a minimum. Using something like “Branson real estate and Branson Missouri homes for sale here at Branson Canyon” is not as effective as the existing format using the “|” symbol to break apart the words. It also would have been just as effective to use “Branson Real Estate, Branson Missouri Homes for Sale – Branson Canyon” (or any other variation that utilizes a symbolic naming convention).

What evidence do I have to back this up? I was actually hired by Branson Canyon to do the SEO work for them. Before I started, they were at position #53 for Branson Real Estate and position #26 for Branson Missouri Homes for Sale (both in Google). They now show up at position #19 and #17 for the same keywords, respectively. And at the time of this writing, it’s only been 3 weeks! And they will continue to rise as the SEO campaign progresses.

Granted, I also built about 50 in-bound back-links for their site and used the same keywords for the anchor text. But that’s a different topic for a different day .

Now let’s turn to a good example of how NOT to use a title tag.

Check out: bransonwestrealty.com. This lame is using exactly 471 characters in his title tag. And it’s definitely one of the worst cases of keyword-stuffing I’ve seen yet.

His title tag reads “Branson West Realty | BRANSON + REALTY + BRANSON MISSOURI REAL ESTATE + Branson West Real Estate + BRANSON + MISSOURI + VACATION + INFORMATION + PACKAGES + Tri-Lakes Area-Reserve Branson Vacation Packages-Cabins, Condos, Motels, Hotels, Music Shows, Area Attractions and Information-BRANSON MO Nightly Rentals-Branson Missouri Attractions-Vacations + Golf, Lodging, Show Tickets – Branson West, Missouri -Branson Real Estate Locator–A Service of Branson 1 Realty-Welcome”.

If you visit his site, you can clearly see that there is something wrong with this dude. There is no real content on his site. It’s just a bunch of junk links. Also, if you view the source, you can see that he is using 5349 characters for his description tag (it’s recommended to use only 150) and he has 332 keywords in the keywords tag (out of a recommended 10).

This is blatant and disgusting abuse of meta tags in general. Not only is he harming himself in the eyes of the search engines (his SERPs suck) but he is also being unfair to his visitors.

This type of “SEO” can have seriously detrimental effects. The search engines can penalize you or even ban you from the index for pulling stunts like this. And it will NOT help you in the least bit.

To summarize, let’s go over the key points again:

• Use short, descriptive title tags (less than 70 characters).
• Always include your company name or the official name of the website – you are not only writing for the search engines but for humans as well.
• Use no more than 2 keywords for each page’s title.
• Title tags should be unique for each page in your site.
• Use common symbols instead of filler words.
• Do not keyword-stuff
• Don’t be a lame

Remember that effective usage of title tags is only 1 piece to the SEO puzzle. But when properly implemented, you will be well on your way to seeing your site rise to the top.

Thanks for reading!

-Cole Pannell

www.thebransonpro.com

If you enjoyed this post by Cole here are few more you might enjoy The Power Of Backlinks and Finding The Right Keywords For Your Niche.

This is a guest post by Janet Meiners Thaeler – Newspapergrl (online PR)

Have you ever thought of improving your online business with a press release? Press releases are great tools to help your web site rank higher in search engines. I’ve written press releases for national brand name real estate pros. Here are some tips to help you write and distribute your first press release:

1. Find something newsworthy to write a press release about.
   Right now the economy and saving money are hot topics. You may be doing some creative marketing in your area that would be a great story. If you need inspiration, search a site like PRWeb for “real estate” and see what others are writing about.
   Remember that news is something that exists in time – something has happened, is happening now, or is happening in the future. Sometimes people get confused and mistake a press release for an advertisement (not objective) or an article (not timely information).
2. Add quotes to your press release.
   Quotes are important because they say key points of the news “in your own words.”  This is the only time you can use “you” and “yours.” I like to use at least 2 quotes in a press release and make sure that they capture the news or an aspect of it. Be specific in your writing (rather than vague or generic) so that anyone reading the quote could know who you are, what the news is, and why it matters just from reading the quote.
3. Use Links in your press release.
   Many people make the mistake of not using links in their press release. Online it’s vital to use links because links are the currency of the Internet. A link is a “vote” for your web site in search engines. Use about one link for every 100 words.
4. Link to other pages besides your home page.
   It may be tempting to just add a link at the end of your press release that says something like: For more information, see  “www.yourwebsite.com.” So you only have one link and it’s just to the home page. Ideally you should link to related pages, articles, or blog posts. You should aim to use words as links, not just URLs. I usually add a link in the intro, throughout and then as the last sentence of the press release. S
5. Distribute your press release online.
   Press release distribution sites like 24-7pressrelease.com will let you add text links for about $50. It’s worth the cost to use a service like this. For larger distribution I highly recommend PRWeb’s $200 SEO visibility package. The submission process is a bit more involved but you’ll get traditional media and get the best online distribution on the Internet.

Hope these tips are helpful. I’m writing a book about online PR. Send me an email – janet [at] affiliateflash [dot] com and I’ll let you know when it’s finished and I’ll also notify you when I’m ready to give away a few copies on this blog.

If you have 30 minutes of free time, you can probably benefit by watching the video below from the WordCamp 2008. The presentation below is made by Stephan Spencer the founder and president of Netconcepts and the author of SEO Title Tag Plugin for WordPress, which I might add should be #1 plugin on your list to install if you are just starting to use WordPress.

(HT: ProBlogger)

UPDATE: To benefit from the above presentation download the PowerPoint Presentation that Stephan mentioned at the start of his presentation.