Stop words are very common words or adjectives that can hinder your SEO efforts. Words such as, ‘of ‘ , ‘or’,  ’the’ etc.  interfere with your SEO efforts because they use up precious character space, especially when creating web page titles. Page titles should should be short and concise because search engines will not read any more than 65 – 70 characters including spaces. Search engines analyze the ratio of keywords to total words in a page title to determine keyword density. Stronger keyword density will increase search rankings. 

Here is an example of how a page title can be adjusted to eliminate stop words and increase keyword density.

Original title:
Official Home Page of the Office of  (office name here) at the Illinois Institute of Technology

Change to
(office name here)  | Illinios Institute Technology

<– List of Stop Words  -  avoid these words in page titles

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It’s true that Google no longer uses the Meta tag “keyword” to influence search rankings, however it is still important to define and develop a keyword strategy for you web content.

One method for developing this strategy is to:

• Determine the most important pages to optimize. If the site is small  its easy to work on every page. If the site is large,  focus on the most important pages.  Often content managers spend too much time optimizing a home page when actually the content someone is searching for lies within other pages on the site.

• Create a goal for each page based on what information you want your visitor to know.  Even better, tailor your goal on what your visitor wants or is looking for.

• Select a few main keywords that apply to this content;  3-4 are optimal but up to 7 are still acceptable. It gets difficult to optimize a page for more than 7 keywords.

• If you have time, use Google AdWords or Keyword-Finder can generate alternative keywords.

• Use long tail keywords. Long tail keywords are actually 3+ words or a phrase. Long tail keywords often return better search results. For example, it’s natural for someone to search “business school in Chicago”.  Business school Chicago would be a long tail keyword.

• Write your content to fit your keywords and goals.

• Include keywords in the page titles, meta descriptions and page headings.

• If you are working with a page that already has content, follow this same method and then adjust your existing content to be sure it aligns with your keywords.

Now that you have a basic strategy you can use these keywords across all your communication channels including social media. Be sure to keep an eye on your analytics and refine both your keyword strategy and content to optimize your efforts.

< — This worksheet can help organize your keywords on your site

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In Google’s early stage of search technology keywords used to be the most important tag to add to your Web page code. The concept was to include any word(s) that someone might search for to get to your content.

As time elapsed Google recognized that webmasters were flooding tags and pages with keywords to improve search rankings. Google began to improve their algorithms to detect keyword abuse.

Today keywords are still important in your SEO strategy but the use of keyword tags in code is no longer read or weighed by Google. In fact adding keywords to your tags may even give competitors an inside look into your strategy.

Watch this video by Google software engineer Matt Cutts as he explains in detail about keywords:

Now that we no longer use keywords in code tags, is there a use for them in our overall SEO strategy?

Stay tuned for the next post on:

Using Keywords for Strategy

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Is it Better to Use a Pipe or Dash in Page Titles?

The pipe ( | ), is a search engine operator that tells the search algorithms that the phrases on either side are it are of equal importance.

When a string of words in a tag are evaluated, the first word inherits the highest weight, the last word the lowest and the steps are determined by how many words are in the string. The pipe makes the first word after it the same weight as the first word.

A hyphen ( – ) connects the words in a title
An underscore ( _ ) separates words in a title, Some experts claim underscores stop engines from reading the entire title. Avoid using the underscore
A Comma ( , ) separates phrases but does not restart the weighting process so words following a comma are  not considered important
Use “&” vs “and” , the later will only have weight if the user search all  the all the words before and after “and”

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The following chart can help you plan the graphics of your social media sites. If you size the graphics correctly they should have a crisp and professional appearance.

Facebook Sizing Chart (click for larger view)	Google+ Sizing Chart (click for larger view)
Pinterest Sizing Chart (click for larger view)	Twitter Sizing Chart (click for larger view)

Graphics created by infinpixels.com

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Do you manage more than one social media account?

Many people on campus maintain more than one social media accounts.  We thought it might be helpful to give you a few tips for posting the same information to different audiences.

When you are posting the same content across different platforms:

• Re-word each listing.
  If your audience is following you on both twitter and facebook do not post the exact same content worded the exact same way. Mix it up in an effort to catch their eye and different sounding content will be reason to follow both places. It will also add variety to your messaging and be more interesting.
• Don’t share the same information cross platform at the same time.
  Stagger your posts on each platform at different times; you have a better chance of getting the message seen.

  Do you tweet? 
  Tweeting a good Tweet – include these elements:

• URL
• Catchy Title
• Author if applicable
• Explanation of what it is
• If its video or image let the user know
• If you are sharing from someone else, give them credit

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