LotusJump Blog

LotusJump user Greg Witt recently asked a great question about optimizing his Swiss Alps tours website:

“As I’ve been doing my Lotusjump SEO, I’ve noticed Google’s SearchWiki that allows me to customize search results and make my SearchWiki notes available to other users.

Is there a way to use this feature as an SEO tool? Could I conceivably boost my site’s ranking by my responses?”

For those that aren’t familiar with Google’s SearchWiki, here’s a summary of the feature from the NY Times,

[Google] is introducing a new feature called SearchWiki that will allow people to modify and save their results for specific Google searches. They can move the sites that appear in rankings up or down, take them out altogether, leave notes next to specific sites and suggest new sites that are not already in the results (or are buried too far down in the results to see). Users must be logged in to Google to use SearchWiki and can revisit their annotations when they perform the same search later.

So back to Greg’s question…can you leverage SearchWiki to boost rankings? Marissa Mayer, Google’s vice president of search product and user experience said, “At this time we aren’t using SearchWiki to influence ranking but it is easy to see how that could happen in the future.”

The fact that she even hinted at the possibility of SearchWiki influencing ranking leaves me with no doubt that it someday will. If you think about it, Google is aggregating some really valuable data with SearchWiki–actual human opinion. If their goal is to return the most relevant results for a given search term, why wouldn’t they take the average Google user’s opinion into consideration? This is the “human touch” that the mathmatic algorithm has always lacked. So I have no doubt this data will make it into the algorithm at some point–how soon, and to what degree, only Google knows.

So what now? I wouldn’t go overboard, but I’d give my honest opinion of search results in my niche, and encourage friends and clients to do so also. Be responsible and consider Karma.

But if this data someday becomes a factor, it will be nice to know that you have contributed your 2 cents.

When creating a website, adding new pages, or redesigning a current site, LotusJump recommends the following on-page optimization practices.

Step 1: Choosing targeted keywords

Picking the right set of keywords helps create a solid foundation for your SEO efforts. You should consider building pages around related groups of keyword phrases (i.e. a page for product terms, another for benefits-related terms, etc.)

Step 2: Optimizing the URL structure

As new pages are created, important keywords should be used within the URL structure. The closer the keywords are to the “.com/” the better. Since Google reads URL’s from left to right it places the highest value on words that appear closest to the beginning of the URL string.

Step 3: Optimizing title tags

Creating unique, optimized title tags is essential, as search engines weigh them heavily. The keywords in your title tags should reflect the content of the page. If it’s a page about discount laptops, make sure that discount laptop keywords come first. We recommend keeping the title tag between 6-12 words.

Step 4: Optimizing meta descriptions

Create unique meta descriptions that feature keywords found within the title tag and copy on the page. Meta descriptions should read comfortably, and not be a keyword list. Keep meta descriptions between 12-20 words.

Step 5: Optimizing meta keywords

Meta keywords are weighed less heavily by the search engines these days, but probably still worthwhile to include. Instead of adding every single keyword you can think of, add keywords that are relevant to the theme and copy of the specific page you’re addressing. Include anywhere between 1-10 keywords.

Step 6: Optimizing header tags

Header tags are used in HTML code to define paragraph headers. Search engines weigh the words found in headers more heavily than average copy, so it’s valuable (where possible) to include targeted keywords in the <h1> and <h2>, etc. tags.

Step 7: Optimizing website copy

If you want your website to rank well on certain keywords, they need to be found within the copy of your site. Instead of trying to get one page to rank on multiple keywords, try creating an optimized page for each major keyword or group of related keywords.

Step 8: Optimizing alt tags

An alt tag is used to describe an image should it ever become “broken” to a website viewer for any reason. You can utilize the alt tag for SEO purposes by including your keywords within the tag. For example, if the picture is of a dell laptop on your discount laptop website, you could give the image the following alt tag: “discount Dell XPS 1530 laptop” It’s both descriptive and keyword rich.

Step 9: Optimizing with emphasis tags

In some instances it might be appropriate to bold and italicize within the copy of your website. Search engines place more weight on words that are given emphasis with the HTML <b> and <i> tags. Use this tactic judiciously however; too much use of emphasis makes for an unpleasant user experience.

Step 10: Optimizing a site with a blog

Adding a blog to a site is a convenient way to add new, keyword rich content to the domain on a regular basis (which search engines value). Blogs allow you to reach out to your consumers and build brand recognition and trust. Blog posts can also be easily disseminated to various social media outlets to reach a broader audience and solicit more traffic.<-->