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SEO by Chris Estes

Search Engine Optimization information for Business

About US

Search Engine Optimization by Chris is a Birmingham, Alabama based search engine optimization company serving clients around the globe. Birmingham SEO, our sister company, serves our local base of clients. You can contact Birmingham SEO Service through through their website contact form, here. Either service can help with your online marketing needs.

Wal-Mart SEO & SEM

This Post is geared towards Fellow SEO’s

Back in December there was a lot of talk about Sam’s Club offering SEO and SEM services. I haven’t seen a follow up on the service and wonder how the service is working out. I have not seen or heard of a business actually using the service.

Over at Search Engine Journal they discuss “Sam’s Club Search Marketing: Good or Bad for the Industry?” I haven’t seen a follow up since the rumblings started. I would like to get a hold of a solid review of the service.  Let me know if you can review it objectively and show proof of the service.

SEO isn’t Spam

Today “Google’s Spam Cop” Matt Cutts admitted that search engine optimization isn’t spam. Matt Had this to say:

I’ve always meant to do a post to say that search engine optimization (SEO) is not spam and that Google doesn’t hate SEO, but I never seem to get around to it. This presentation gave me a chance to slip those facts into the minds of several thousand tech-savvy folks.

This is first omission or at least direct omission I can remember from a Google Employee of the nature. Matt said this in a keynote presentation.

You can read Matt’s complete story on his blog along with seeing the video here.

SEO by Chris only practices White Hat SEO practices within the realm of standard Webmaster Guidelines.

New Design

I have decided that the blue and neon theme of before was enough. I have switched to another. I am not 1 hundred percent behind this one either. What do you think?

Give me some feedback. This came off the shelf template from a free service. I preserved all the links if you want to go hunting for them.

Tell me what you think.

. 08 May 08 | New-Design, SEO | Read on | Comments (0)

SEO Meta Tags

Meta tags are frequently talked about. Why? Meta tags are arguably the most important factor in Search Engine Optimization. There seems to be a meta tag for everything. But what do they really all mean?

The three primary Meta Tags for SEO and the others have little or no bearing for search engines due to past abuse or overuse.

  1. Title - <title>The name of your page should go here</title>
  2. Description - <meta name=“description” content=“The description of the content should be contained withing these quotation marks” />
  3. Keywords (less relevant in recent but may or may not be read by search engines so should be used with less focus) - <meta name=“keyword” content=“keyword1, keyphrase2, keyword 3″ />

By putting these between the head tags in the html source code give significant help to Search Engines. Using these tags should describe the page. A page about cooking oil should look like these:

  1. <title>Cooking Oil proper disposal</title>
  2. <meta name=“description” content=“Cooking oil disposial done correctly is environmentally safe and has the least damage to our environment” />
  3. <meta name=“keyword” content=“vegetable oil corn oil olive oil disposal” />

In the past there has been debate about whether to use commas or not in the keyword meta tag since they aren’t really all that important don’t get caught up in the debate. Do what ever flows or isn’t included in the other tags. Spend more time SEO copywriting the page than on the Keyword Meta Tag.

Meta tags are not required for display in a browser. Meta tags are invisible to the eye or at least relatively. You can see meta tags by right clicking a page and viewing it’s source. They are typically near the top of the page. So what makes Meta Tags important to Search Engine Optimization? The content in meta tags are displayed in Search Engine Results.

SEO by Chris Homepage Meta Tags

Displays:

SERP Meta Tag Results

In the case when meta tags aren’t used, search engines typically generate the description used in search results from text on page. For the obvious reason pages that don’t have the description meta tags don’t typically perform well.

Using the meta tags properly will come in another post later that you will be able to find over at Birmingham SEO.

Catholics use online marketing

Even the sacred life leads to online marketing. Does that mean I can do holy work and be a Madison Ave. marketer? I was reading the New York TImes this morning on my commute, as I do everyday, and found an article that caught my eye. In a discussion with a friend a couple weeks ago, we were discussing the priesthood and how their membership was dropping off.  So I read, to have some interesting point to bring into the discussion. Instead I found something I wasn’t looking for, the Catholic Church using the internet to recruit priest.  www.nypriest.com

The story isn’t about internet marketing as much as it is about recruiting to the Priesthood. If you want to read the article, go here.

After reading the article I had to see their website. I somewhat expected a Microsoft Word Style website from 1995 (not much better than mine). At first click I found a very powerful Flash Page. Somebody really did a great job on creating their website. It is neat, clean, and well laid out. One thing that surprised me - it didn’t look very “Churchy.”  A good bit of thought went into it and it paid off.

As to the NYPriest.com SEO… There are very few Search Engine friendly elements and though they have a solid page rank could do considerably better. It looks like they have a $1million marketing plan without a complete online marketing campaign.