One of the tricky things about SEO is that your site’s rankings can be severely impaired by a couple small mistakes. If you have any of the following on your website it’d be in your best interest to set some time aside today to get started addressing these issues.

Default Title Tags

Default title tags can be the result of a CSS default, or it could just be a way to cut corners and save time. Regardless of how they got there, it’s important to replace poor title tags.

Bad

If the title tags of your website pages are simple descriptions like “Home”, “Services”, or “About Us” followed by your company name, you definitely want to write more descriptive title tags. Title tags play a huge role in search engine rankings, and having cookie-cutter titles really harms your site.

Worse

If your title tag is just your company name, then are you providing no useful information about the specific page, and this is even worse than having cookie-cutter descriptions.

Worst

You don’t see this too often, but it is something that you should never see. If your title is the filename of the page, then you are not only providing the users and serach engines with no useful information, but you’re actually sending the message that maybe you’re not quite ready for the web.

Redirects

No website stays the same forever, and when things change you have to set up redirects. If you don’t know if your site has a redirect, you can either ask your web designer, or use a free online tool like SEOzio.com. While this is a little more technical issue than title tags, it is a much more black and white issue.

Good: 301 Redirect

When a page is moved or renamed the best thing to do is to set up a 301 redirect to send users to the new content. This provides a seamless transfer for users and has virtually no negative effects for search engines.

Bad: Everything else

All too often when a page is moved there is a 302 redirect set up, which can cause significant ranking problems. A 302 redirect technically means “Temporally moved”, so search engines do not pass any of the value assigned to the original page to the new page.

Other alternatives, such as using a meta refresh are just as bad. Finally, never, and I mean never, just delete the page and let the page go to a 404 error. This is bad for the user experience, and can hurt your rankings as well.

Make Sure You’re Building on a Solid Foundation

If you have problems with title tags or redirects you want to fix them ASAP. Once you get those cleaned up you can get to work building links and optimizing on-page copy, but if you ignore them you won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.

On one such bonding session, I decided to “stumble” for the duration of “Ellen” and half of “Opera”. Hey, did you see the one where they found all these guys in Lowe’s and gave them complete makeovers? Amazing… (NOT!)

Anyway… Here are some interesting stumbles I came across. I edited out all the bad ones, or at least the ones I didn’t like. Some of the sites I listed here are creative and some are not. Most are at least entertaining or informative. If nothing else, it will illustrate my blue collar interests…

Great stumbles

Online Converter – Converts any type if measurement into something else. Very useful

14Brilliant Minimalist Ads

The most brilliant outdoor campaign ever

Fonts Used In Logos of Popular Websites

A Gazillion Resources For Web Design

40 Free High Quality Hand-drawn Fonts

Daughter dating application – Very funny

Web design tips

Norman Rockwell’s Photo Realism

Slide Clock (total waste of time) (get it…? )

17 Guerrilla Marketing Ideas for Your Website

Five Minute Upgrade – Making Your Design Pop

Ten best free applications that you probably didn’t know about

Quotes by Winston Churchill

TOP 100 funniest one-liners on the internet!

70 Excellent Logo Design Tutorials and Resources

David’s comprehensive motorcycle web index

Web designers heaven (links for web designers)

Web development resources

If you’re into motorcycles, ya gotta watch this guy ride…

Excuse form (funny / useful)

49 ways to build your brand using online marketing

Welcome to CSS Basics

Amazing photography Portfolio! )

So there you have it, one night’s stumbles, at least the good one, and Mama’s still happy!

If you have any good sites to add to the list, just leave them as comments!

Create a List: People are attracted to titles like “Top Ten Ways to ___” or “Learn ___ in 5 Easy Steps.”  Lists of helpful tidbits are easy to read and attractive to the busy reader.  Information that could be turned into a list includes names of experts, strategies to accomplish a goal, tips and resources.  Including list-like articles in your electronic newsletter or blog boost readership and drive more traffic to your Web site. Also, it makes readers more likely to share your articles with others. Make sure to include a link to your site or blog within the article some where to ensure you provide easy access to the rest of your site or resources to maximize effectiveness.

Article Submissions: Writing articles and submitting them to various article submissions sites is one of the best ways to get exposure.  Targeted groups may stumble upon your article and consider you an expert.  These practices build trust in readers and, in return, boost traffic.  Some sites to check out include EzineArticles, GoArticles, and iSnare. Make sure your content is current, relevant and easy to follow. Being proactive and submitting your existing articles is a win-win.

Social Bookmarking: Sites like Del.icio.us, Digg and StumbleUpon are becoming more and more popular.  These sites offer ways for Internet users to store, organize, share, search and, more importantly, rate your site’s content. In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share.  If a site that is related or linked to yours is tagged, there is a good chance that interested readers will find your site also. Make sure to get clients, prospects, friends, family, and co-workers to bookmark your site and rate it. The more  ratings, the more you show up in searches within these sites.

Blog Marketing: If you have a blog on your site or associated with your business, it is very beneficial to have a plan in place for marketing it. Since blogging is such a popular media outlet today, maximizing traffic is key. There are blog directories out there that you can submit your blog to. This will propel it into automatic distribution which will boost traffic significantly. The most used blog directory we’ve come across is http://www.metafilter.com/ (Don’t forget to check for my next post on Blog Marketing How-to’s, available on March 15)

Local Links:  Don’t forget to check that you have a link from area organizations too.  Chambers of commerce and libraries usually have outgoing links to area businesses.  If you’re part of member organizations, a link on their site is normally a part of  membership rights. Also, Local.com and Google Local Business Center is a great way to get listed locally and submit a Web site link.  Do a simple search for local business directories.  Keep track of all these great links you are bringing in by keeping a spreadsheet.  There is nothing more encouraging than the taste of success, so keep up the good work and track your results.  

Heather Jewell is the VP of Business Development of NuRelm. As an integral part of NuRelm’s Online Marketing department, she has an extensive background in promoting Web sites and writing for the Web. NuRelm is a Web software and services firm that focuses on helping non-technical professionals utilize on the Web to build business. For more information, please visit www.NuRelm.com or email heather@nurelm.com.