December 30, 2012
Our List of Top SEO Tips of 2012 – Learning Search Engine Optimization One Question at a Time
It’s the end of the 2012! Time for the proverbial roll-out of everything ‘top ten.’ The SEO community is not immune to the navel-gazing tradition of what was hot (or not) in 2012. Culled from our own Google Analytics data, here is our list of the Top Ten SEO Tips for 2012. What’s different about our list? It’s that rather than telling our readers what the top ten search engine optimization tips should be… we listened. This list reflects the heaviest inbound search query activity to our own SEO Tips section. It reflects what people want to know about SEO, however basic.
Top Ten SEO Tips of 2012, as Measured by Search Queries
- What does ‘not set’ mean in Google Analytics? – Google has, unfortunately, stopped sharing search query data if a user is signed into their Googel account.
- What is your review of PRWeb vs. Pitchengine? – Are press releases helpful (or not) for SEO? Which is better PRWeb, Pitchengine, PRLOG?
- Is there a limit to the meta keywords character count for SEO? – The META KEYWORD field causes as lot of SEO confusion, as does the META DESCRIPTION.
- Do domain extensions like .com vs. .org vs. .biz matter for SEO? – If you are registering a new website, which domain extension is better for Google SEO performance?
- What does ‘not provided’ mean in Google Analytics? – Still more confusion over Google not sharing search query data with Google Analytics users.
- Is Vistaprint a good SEO platform? – Review of Vistaprint for search engine optimization – is it any good?
- What does competition mean in Google AdWords? – In choosing keyword targets, how do you figure out the ‘sweet spot’ amongst value, volume, and competition in AdWords?
- Does the header tag family (h1, h2) matter for SEO or not? – The proverbial SEO question – does an H1 help SEO or not matter?
- Do capital letters (capitalization) matter on a Google Search for SEO? – If users type capital letters, do the search results change or not?
- How long does it take Google to reindex your website? – If a business has made changes to Google… how long does it take to get Google to notice?
What do the Top Ten SEO Tips of 2012 Tell us?
What do these top tips tell us about the small business marketing community and SEO? First and foremost, it tell us that a lot of people are confused and concerned about how and why Google stopped sharing inbound keyword query data. Google pitched this as a ‘privacy’ update, explaining that if a user is signed in to his or her Google account, thereby using Google as an https (secure) website AND the user clicks from Google to a non-secure (regular http) website, then Google will no longer share the search query data. Most of the SEO community thinks that this is a pretty pathetic excuse on Google’s part, and an abuse of Google’s monopoly power on the Internet. But it is what it is. This issue is undeniably the No. 1 burning puzzle amongst small business SEO marketers.
Secondly, this list tells us how much confusion the basics still exert on SEO. Even today, many people still do not know or understand META TAGS, namely that the META KEYWORDS tag is ignored, while the META DESCRIPTION tag remains important for your summary on Google, and that the TITLE tag is technically a META tag as well, and incredibly important to SEO. Basics matter.
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