An important component of your Internet marketing strategy is "search engine optimization" (a.k.a. "SEO"). This is a fancy term that just means - "What do search engines like Google see when they look at your website."
Among the factors that Google uses to rank you website and it's webpages are keyword terms and how those search terms are structured. If you want to "see" what Google sees when they visit a page on your website, check out this free online tool:
This is one of the simplest tools that you'll find to help you with your website and webpage development. On this site, you just enter the webpage that you would like to analyze, and click "Parse URL." Immediately, you'll be able to see how Google views your page when it sends out it's little robots to find key words across the Internet.
As an illustration, here's an image of a page from BlogbytheBay.com (Ginger Wilcox in Marin, CA):
Now, when I run this page on seo-browser.com, here's what Google sees:
Notice how Google only sees the text, not the images? If the key words on your website are embedded in images or in Flash animations, Google can't see them! Also, your key words should be in the headings - the bold print in the output that seo-browser.com provides. (This webpage I'm using to illustrate on Ginger's website was built using the Altos Research "MyWebpage Builder" tool on her account. These pages are pre-built and already "SEO-optimized" for some of the key terms for each area such as "Kentfield Real Estate Market.")
You can use seo-browser.com for any individual webpage on your website, or even for specific blog posts. It's a great way to see if your blog post is hitting the "long tail" key words that you're hoping to focus on. (And if you don't know what "long tail" means, check out this article on Wired Magazine from a few years ago.)
Play around with a few of your webpages throughout your website to see how each page varies. This will give you a set of "to-dos" that you can quickly fix to help with SEO. Keep in mind that optimizing your website for search engine key terms is not the only factor that Google examines, but this certainly will help you incrementally.
Give me a call or email if you want to discuss strategy!
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