Writing Better Title Tags
Title tags are frequently overlooked by web designers and other people who are unfamiliar with search engine optimization. A title tag is the text that appears at the top left of the blue bar on your browser and it is easy to ignore. If you do a search on Google using the query “site:yoursite.com”, you will quickly see how important title tags are. The blue link at the top of each search result is pulled directly from your title tag. You can see how it appears for my site below:
The links at the top of each search listing are my title tags, so for the top result I used a title tag of “Biggest Funny DeMotivational Posters Collection”. You will notice that each and every one of my title tags is unique- this is important because a title tag is a strong indicator to Google of what keywords the site is relevant for.
Your title tag functions as an “advertisement” in the Google search results for you to try to get people to click on your link and visit your website. As such, it is extremely important to think like your visitor. If you had just put in your keyword query on Google, what title tag would you be most likely to click on? In my case, for the first result I am targeting the keywords “demotivational poster”, “funny demotivational poster”, and “funny poster”. I wanted people who searched for those keywords to know that my site offered them what they wanted (and a lot of it), so I wrote that I had the Biggest Collection of demotivational posters. After ranking in the 2nd spot right after the originators of demotivational posters, Despair.com, for a long time I lost interest and stopped optimizing for “demotivational posters”. However, I am still in the 6th spot on Google and receive fairly heavy traffic to that page.
The most important factors to remember when you write your title tags are:
- Keep your title tag under 70 characters
- Each page should have a unique title tag
- The first couple of words in your title tag gets more weighting at this point with Google
- Use your keywords in your title tag, but also make it interesting for people to click on. You can test different title tags using Google Website Optimizer.
If you have any further questions on how to optimize your title tags, please feel free to ask in the comments!
The Joy of Marketing BS
Unfortunately, the marketing industry is full of BS. One example is this “study” undertaken by the Arnell Group for Pepsi. Pepsi purportedly spent an enormous amount of money on this project that is eminently cheesy. Quote: “Breathtaking is a strategy based on the evolution of 5000+ years of shared ideas in design philosophy”. Arnell goes on to compare his new design for Pepsi to Leonardo Da Vinci, the Parthenon and other historical works of art. As I plodded through his 27 pages of absolute nonsense, I began to lose hope in the traditional marketing industry. Performance-based marketers like myself shudder when we see old-school marketers resorting to sophistry to cheat their clients out of money and brand equity. There is absolutely no empirical research in this study. Nowhere does he actually test people’s reactions to his re-branding in the marketplace.
However, marketing as a field is very young and eventually the hacks and cheats like Arnell will be washed out. Clients will go to marketers who can show proven success, metrics and data for their ideas.
Fred Wilson’s Internet Investments
I did a little bit of research today on Fred Wilson (Twitter investor) and discovered that he has invested in quite a few other businesses that I have used and really liked. Meetup is a web application that easily enables people with a common interest to meetup. I have been to two types of meetups so far (flag football & entrepreneurs) and plan on using Meetup.com to find other people to do things in my areas of interest. Fred Wilson also invested in Disqus (popular third party blog commenting platform), Zynga (of Mafia Wars fame), and Boxee (browser on your television). Zynga is enormously profitable already using microtransactions and Twitter is the hottest site on the internet among early adopters right now. I’m amazed at his success rate and will be avidly reading his blog (AVC) and trying to find out more about his techniques and strategies. He did mention in an interview that his “grand view” when it comes to investing is to try to find business models that the internet will disrupt. Fred Wilson says the internet is the type of phenomenon that only happens once every several hundred years and will impact almost every type of business in major ways.
New York Times Scams Advertisers
After having ads inexplicably open many times while reading the New York Times on the iphone, I finally figured out what was going on. When u double click on the text of an article to zoom in and read it, the edge of the ads is included. So even though you can’t see any of the ad you can still click on it. This is a clever ploy by the New York Times web designers and marketers to artificially inflate their click numbers and thus their revenue. I strongly recommend anyone who buys advertising on the New York Times to question the clickthrough rates claimed. Guess their integrity in writing doesn’t extend to the rest of their business.
How to Improve Your URL Structure
URL structures are a subject that most web designers ignore. You visit many websites that have a couple hundred characters in their web address (sorting mechanisms, session IDs and the like). URL structures are important because humans are much more likely to click on a URL they see in the search engine that reads example.com/information than example.com/2387/592837/babcarseat2352/information?ie=UTF8&node=165796011&pf_rd_p=328655101&pf_rd_s=left-nav-1&pf_rd. Not only that, but it is important for search engines to include your keyword in your URL.
I recommend that people use the simplest possible URL structure that they can make work with their website. Ideally, you would only have a one-level deep URL like example.com/tree-article. If you view my URL structures, they have a number at the end- I had to include the post number so that Wordpress wouldn’t end up having two articles with the same URL. The number at the end of the URL structure is the post number, which is guaranteed to be unique. Other than that small concession to smooth site operation, my URLs are as simple as can be and are human readable. For example, when someone sees my site on Google or Bing or Yahoo, they can tell what my site is about by just reading the URL: blog.joelx.com/how-to-improve-your-url-structure/3377.
URL’s that are shorter also get a higher clickthrough rate so for articles that I expect to gain a lot of search engine traffic I try to make them one or two words added to the end, such as blog.joelx.com/demotivational-posters.
Human Spam
I went to the Bellevue Entrepreneur’s meetup tonight and met some interesting people. Some of them had legitimate businesses and some were what I dub “human spam”. One woman was selling diet pills that allow you “to lose weight with no exercise or changes in what you eat!”. Another man was involved in a multi-level marketing scheme selling holiday cards. I get a sinking feeling in my gut when I talk to such people, so I left soon after. Human spam is somehow much worse than internet spam; I can giggle at internet spam, but seeing wasted human life is tragic.
Reverend Joel Randall Gross
I signed up for an online “church” that ordains ministers to perform weddings. If you are interested in getting married, let me know and I will perform the ceremony!
Proclamation of Ordination
Thank you Reverend Joel Randall Gross
Effective 6/26/2009
I, Douglas E. Hickman, Ordaining officer of the Universal Ministries, do Ordain, Anoint, Appoint, and Select you for placement into our Registry of Ministry as a minister, and member in good standing. Even as you read these words now, I have already said them, and with your request accepted them in the Milford, Il., church in a physical, defacto service on your behalf. You, as with every member and minister of this church, were ordained in a ceremony this date with full rights of minister in the UM. Through your request to be ordained we have granted the legal authorities of the church in the world that faith grants you in spirit. Our contract of sharing can only be broken by people, as God ordains unto the foundations of the world. As in God, we have made our documents of legal establishment simple so they become difficult to violate as our goal is sharing forward in faith, not regulating members with complicated words. This means that from this day forward within the Doctrines and Articles of the UM you are granted ordination for life unless you request to be removed, or violate the Articles and Doctrines of the UM, you are a minister and member with the Universal Ministries. This being said, we welcome you into our Ministries of Universal Acceptance
Can One Merchant Account Run Multiple Websites?
Merchant services is one of the most confusing parts of running an online business. Right now, I find myself asking “Can one merchant services account run multiple websites?” I have done some research and found a few options.
If you have a generic business name, such as “Internet Orders” you may be able to set up multiple websites in different niches using one merchant account. Unfortunately most merchant services providers that I talked to, including Wells Fargo merchant services, requires exactly one merchant services account per website.
Irritating…. Though I wonder if you can have multiple merchant services accounts without having to pay the monthly fee again?
Boss Quotes
“The Phantom Menace was the greatest movie of all time after the Wizard of Oz.”
“All you critics are thumb-suckers.”
Breaking News: Michael Jackson Dead of Heart Attack
News has just broke that Michael Jackson, the legendary pop star and friend of children everywhere, has died of a heart attack. Thanks to my younger brother for giving me the news on Michael Jackson. I am looking around the interwebs to see what other news on Michael Jackson’s death there is.
TMZ has reported that Michael Jackson died of cardiac arrest at his home and staff at hospital nearby were unable to revive him.
Like my cheesy pic? :) 
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