Business owners are often asking how they can be ranked #1 on Google, or if they should trust the company that told them they would guarantee a first place ranking. A common turn of phrase is that a company told them they would “put them #1” on Google. If only it were that easy! I always steer clients away from such offers, tempting as they are, and try and explain the complexities and many factors involved in ranking. Google didn’t get to spawn its own verb by enabling folks to ‘put’ any ole’ site at the top!
SEO
Basic SEO for Blogger – Adding Alt Text To Images
I personally use and am a huge fan of WordPress – I made the switch from Blogger many years ago. However I do have a couple of clients that use blogger to publish their blogs – they find it simpler to use. But simplicity comes at a price. Although it is owned by Google, Blogger does not do a great job at providing SEO features by default. One of the basic things it lacks is an easy way for the user to add alt text to an image they are uploading.
Adding alt text to images is important for 2 main reasons:
1) Accessibility – visitors to your site that don’t see well and are having the page read to them need alt text to understand what the image is all about.
2) SEO – the alt text is the only way a search engine knows what the image contains. It cannot ‘read’ an image by itself and relies on alt text. Additionally you can attract traffic from Google Image Search with well-optimized images.
Online Marketing Terms – SEO Edition
A Guide To Online Marketing Terms – Part 2
This is the second part of my developing series on online marketing terms explained. This time we focus on some basic SEO-related terms you might come across.
SEO
Search Engine Optimization is the process of fine tuning your website so that when your target internet surfer types a phrase into the search engines, your website is deemed to be among the most relevant for that phrase, and is displayed at the top of those results. Lately SEO has also come to refer to a person that performs SEO services, or a ‘search engine optimizer’.
Why You Should Care:
SEO can provide your site with lots of free, targeted traffic. What could be better?!