Welcome to the Wix SEO Clinic. An examination of selected users’ Wix websites.

If you are new to the Wix SEO Clinic, you might want to first check out Chapters 1 (Patient History & Diagnosis) and 2 (SEO Treatment) before reading this post. Otherwise, read on for some heartwarming recovery stories straight from the bedsides of our first crop of SEO patients.

Case Study # 1: Blaine Photographers

• Main keyword = “California wedding photographers”
• Google rank before SEO: 650
• Google rank after 5 weeks of SEO: 49
• Google rank after 7 weeks of SEO: 7 (!!!)
  

Score! Consider this a perfect example of successful, organic SEO. A couple of months ago, Blaine Photography was buried deep within the black hole of Google (try, the bottom of page 64!). Now, this husband-wife team enjoys a spot on the very 1st page of Google search results for their main keyword, California wedding photographers.  Talk about high visibility!

Case Study # 2: Jaime Miller Photography

• Main keyword = “New Jersey wedding photographer”
• Google rank before SEO: 350
• Google rank after 5 weeks of SEO: 70
• Google rank after 7 weeks of SEO: 11

Top of 2nd page Google results!? Not too shabby. If this wedding photographer continues her SEO efforts (see “No Check-Out” below), moving up a measly 1 rank to achieve a spot on the 1st page of results is definitely feasible.

Case Study # 3: Studio 48

• Main keyword = “Minnesota wedding photographer”
• Google rank before SEO: 150
• Google rank after 5 weeks of SEO: 25
• Google rank after 7 weeks of SEO: 5 (!!!)
  

If you’re getting married in Minnesota, the chances of you getting exposed to Studio 48 is pretty darn high. With a ranking like this, it’s pretty safe to say that Studio 48 has experienced a very successful SEO treatment.

No Check-Out

There is no such thing as “checking-out” of an SEO effort. There are new sites popping up all the time, so in order to secure your place at the top, you need to maintain your site’s SEO. Refresh your content, add new pages and continue your link-building campaign. Wix’ free website builder makes it easy to keep your site’s content fresh without going through programming hoops.

Takeaway Messages

Using these inspirational success stories to encourage you on your own path to SEO success. Remember:

1. Keywords are called that for a reason. Make a list of yours in the beginning, and stick to it.
2. Get good backlinks. It’s all about “who you know” when it comes to getting your foot in the door. Having a link to your site from a popular, reputable source is great. Having that link use anchor text with your keywords is like gold.
3. There’s no check-out of SEO. Just because you’ve achieved 1st page ranking doesn’t mean you can sit back and relax
4. Be patient. You saw that it took our case studies weeks to get the results they have today. It can take months for a new website to get noticed by Google at all. But as long as you make all the necessary efforts, you will observe real results.

Good Luck!

Staff at the Wix SEO Clinic

Does your website tell visitors (and Google) where you are physically located, in the real world?

We’ve seen tons of Wix sites with absolutely no geographical information – not even “vague” regional search terms. Many of you are small business owners: photographers, designers, restaurant owners, marketing agencies, medical facilities and so on. Drive more relevant traffic to your website, and attract people who will actually take action and give you business!

There are a few reasons why you should add info about your location to your website:

1. Users search for local products and services.

Your target market is probably more likely to search for “your-location your-product “than “your-product”. In other words “Chicago wedding photographers” makes more sense as a search term than just “wedding photographers”.

2. You’ll build customer trust.

Letting customers know where you’re actually located adds credibility to your website or business. Otherwise, you’re just a vague concept floating around on the internet. Include your physical location so that visitors can place you in their minds.

3. You may improve your rating in search engines.

It has been argued that including a physical address can boost Google’s trust in your website. This has not been proven to be an indisputable fact, but there is some evidence indicating that having a real world, verifiable address on your website boost your site’s credibility according to Google, which DOES impact your ranking. Read more in this article at SearchEngineLand.

How to Make a Website Geo-Friendly

1. Add your postal address to your site’s pages

Depending on what you’re offering, it may be useful to include your postal address to as many pages of your site as possible. If you’re using mini-pages, add it to your main page’s content so that it’s seen throughout your site.

2. Add location keywords to your title, description and headers

Your website’s title and description should contain “vague” regional terms – as well as some well-placed headers. For more info on how to change your website’s title and description, and how to add header tags, visit these SEOMyWix posts.

Blaine Photography, a team of California wedding photographers, added regional keywords to their page headers. Notice the meta title of their site as well, as it shows up at the top of your browser – another source of valuable SEO juice!

3. Add a Google Map Widget

In the website builder, go to Widgets > Google Maps. Now users on your site can easily pinpoint your precise location.

4. Add your site to Google Places

Google Places, formerly known as Google’s Local Business Center, is a free service offered by Google that allows you to control how your site appears within Google maps. This is a great opportunity to have further control of how your site appears to users who search for you based on location keywords. Yahoo! local is also worth taking a look at. Also, Insider Pages will post your listing on Ask.com. You need to sign up for free accounts with all of these sites to get listed. It’s worth it.

Take control of your business’ success by making it easier for your target audience to locate you!

How Google Reads Text

When someone enters your website, they naturally will notice the Titles of paragraphs, before reading the content within them.  Search engine crawlers actually function the same way.  When a search engine crawls a page, one of the first things it does is attempt to know what that page is about. It does this by first reading the heading tags, from the HTML code. Google recognizes <h1> through <h6> tags.  Wix uses only <h1> through <h3>, to make things neater and easier for users. Search engine crawlers prioritize the importance of your headers based on their numbers.  Their importance is arranged by their relative size and position.

Heading Tags in Wix

Use the Title tool in your editor, found inside the Text section, to create headers. Many Wix users might not realize that using large text in a paragraph will never cause that text to gain recognition as a header. You can make text in a Paragraph as large as you want, but it will not gain “heading” status in the eyes of Google. Titles are golden when it comes to attaining text recognition.

Tips on Title Use

Here are a few guidelines for you to make the most of your Titles (header tags).

• The relative font size and position of your Title texts determines their header tag.

Titles with larger fonts and higher positions on your web page are more important.

• For an <h1> header tag, place the Title with the largest text size at the top of your page.

• Use keywords in your <h1> tag.  Keywords used as the first word(s) are best.

• To see the code of your website, and check your heading tag sizes, go to your website (not in the editor), right click your mouse and choose “View Page Source”. Your heading tags will appear along the left margin.

Resizing Titles

You can resize your Titles so that they appear smaller, while maintaining the size of their fonts (and their heading tag assignment). This is easy to do, just by clicking on your Title and dragging the corners of its outline.  The text will change in its appearance, while the size of its font will remain the same.

To see an example of this, see the Green Properties real estate template in Wix’s gallery.  A clip is shown below.  The “Real Estate” text appears to be smaller than the “Hello” text.  However, if you place this template inside the editor, you will see that “Real Estate” actually has a larger font size than “Hello”. This is a great way to get your keywords <h1> status, without having them pop out at visitors.

5 Ways to Get Your Keywords Noticed:

Many users want to know how to get search engines to recognize specific keywords that they’d like associated with their website.  The goal is to attract potential customers who don’t know you, through organic Google searches.  Follow these steps to have your targeted keywords correctly inserted into your pages.

1.  Make a List of Keywords

Stay organized and focused. Study your competition. Make a list of keywords that are relevant to your business. Start with the obvious ones. For example, if you were creating a website for Lisa’s pancake house you may write the generic word “pancakes” down first, then perhaps “best pancakes”  and then you might get even more specific and choose a local keyword, such as “San Francisco pancakes” or “strawberry pancakes in San Francisco”. You may be able to get indexed for each of these keywords, but the greater question is how well you can get ranked. Even if you get indexed in the 100^th page for pancakes, it probably benefit your business much. Each keyword has different levels of competition which you can see by the number of results and by undertaking some research to find out how many people search for that keyword. Software is available to help such as WordTracker or Google AdWord.

Consider the size and amount of traffic you are likely to generate to your website. If you’re creating a 10-20 or even 50 page website, I don’t recommend trying to compete with the Apple website, for example.

2. Remember Content is King

This cliché survives because it holds a world of truth.  Your website must contain quality, relevant content in order for its keywords to be caught.  Writing the same key phrases over and over again will be recognized as spam by the search engines. If you’ve chosen good and relevant keywords you should have no problem inserting them into your text naturally and organically.   Insert your keywords throughout your text.  Spread them out evenly and discretely without making it obvious.

Aim for your homepage to contain 400 words.  A footer is a good place to add text if you prefer an image-based homepage.  Aim for 250 words on all other pages. For the best results, you should aim for you keyword to appear about 3 times for every 250 words. This includes your titles, headers and regular text.

Google loves headers. More emphasis is placed on any text that appears in your headers, so make sure you word and phrase your headers wisely. In the Wix website editor, select the Text button from your menu, and choose Title. The text you write here is what will be interpreted as a header tag – it’s that simple. The larger your header text, the higher it will rank.

The more text you have, the more opportunity to insert a keyword. Having trouble finding room for more content? For Lisa’s Pancake House, an “About” page or a ‘Reviews’ page may be good places to add some content.

3. Use Your Meta-Tags

Search engines rely on 2 types of Meta tags to discern the subject of a web page or website.

.  These are both found in the Settings section of your Editor, in the SEO Settings box.

Title Tag: The most important part of your page, in terms of SEO.  The title appears on the very top left-hand corner of your browser when you are viewing your Flash website. Make sure your title contains relevant keywords.  Also note that keywords found at the beginning of a title are much stronger than those placed toward the end.  Titles should not be longer than 70 characters, including spaces.

Description Tag: The description tag is another great opportunity to use your keywords. The description cannot be viewed from within the site, but it is the text that will appear alongside the link to your website in search results. This is an important text. Try to keep this text between 150-160 words.  Use at least two of your keywords in the description.  Keep it to the point, be direct and catchy.

You may also add up to 7 keyword tags in this same section of the Editor. Make sure you’re adding keywords or phrases that actually appear in your content.

Alt Texts: You can add “Alt Text” to your images that will be read by search engine crawlers, and cannot be seen by users.  Take this opportunity to use the keyword you are promoting one more time. In the Wix editor, you can add Alt Texts to your gallery pictures through the Manage Photos option.

4. Internal Linking

Internal linking refers to the navigation within your website and the infrastructure of links pointing from one page to another within your Flash website. Since your homepage (or landing page) is usually the page that gets the most traffic and the most links pointing at it, it is usually the most important page in your website.  Use text links to point at the different pages of your website to make sure that the search engine knows what that page is about.

For example, all links within Jack’s New York Pizzeria website pointing at the website’s homepage can use the ‘anchor text’ “Jack’s New York pizzeria” instead of the generic ‘Homepage’. An inner page in Jack’s website might deal exclusively with pepperoni pizzas, so the link to that page can use the anchor text “Jack’s pepperoni pizza”.

Pages with more links pointing at them will be considered as having more importance and relevancy from the point of view of the search engine crawler. The more often a link is used, the more relevancy and importance it is allocated.

5. External Linking

The same principles of internal linking are applied to links from the outside. Get as many backlinks to your site as possible and make sure your links are properly anchored in relevant text – keywords.

You can optimize specific pages for specific keywords by dedicating specific keywords to specific pages. For example, all links using the anchor text: “Jack’s anchovy pizza” to point at a page that has lots of text on the subject of anchovy pizza. Use all the links with the anchor text “Jack’s New York Pizzeria” to point at the home page that has that specific keyword inserted into it repeatedly.

Links will have greater potency when they come from a powerful website. Powerful websites are websites with a high page rank and a lot of traffic. A web page that simply has a long list of links from it (also known as a link farm) won’t have the same effect on your website as a link in a popular pizza review magazine, pointing at your website from an article raving about your great pizza.

Bottom line: the more anchor links pointing at your website – the better. Make sure these links are active.

1. Content

Google and the other search engines crawl your website using the text. They crawl text. That is why you need to have as much of it as possible on your website. A website with no text will simply look empty to the search engine. Make sure you have content in your website and that this content is informative, in the sense that it will tell the search engine who you are and what your website is about.

To be more specific for Wix, I recommend at least 400 words in the homepage. Don’t sweat it though, if you’re using mini-pages you can spread the words throughout the mini-pages, as they’re all counted as one.

2. Keywords  & Meta Tags

Keywords are important in search engine optimization. Keywords are the search terms used by your target audience to reach you. For small to medium sized websites, think of 3-5 main keywords which you would like to optimize. These should be terms (they can be one, two, three or more words) that are relevant to your website and are likely to be searched in order to reach you. The first thing you can do is integrate these keywords into your content as naturally as possible. They should be part of the natural flow of information, and they should make several appearances.  The second thing is using headers to emphasize your keywords. Use your keywords in your headers. This is done through the title text box in the Wix website builder.

Third but certainly as important, use the keywords in your Meta tags. Meta tags are added through the website builder settings that appear at the top of the editor.  Add a title (up to 70 characters long) and a description (around 155 characters including spacing). Use the keywords you want to promote and make sure your description isn’t too short.

3. Links

Links are an important part of search engine optimization. A link pointing at you lets the search engine know you’re there. The more links pointing at you’re the higher your chances of getting indexed faster. Links from high ranking websites, or more important websites (aka – websites with a high page rank) are better and more meaningful than links from link farms or websites of low importance (meaning – websites with a low or no page rank). To take full advantage of the linking system use anchor links. Anchor links are links that are embedded organically into the text. For example, I could say that if you want to learn more about using links to promote your website, you should follow the link. So now the search engine knows that the target page has something to do with information on links and website promotion, and if lots of you start clicking on that link, it will also learn that the content on that page must be valuable. This will increase the ranking and rating of the target page.

4. Structure

The structure of your website is the way each page is connected to another and the manner in which information flows through your site. These days it is understood that the best type of website architecture is a flat architecture. By creating a flat architecture you are endeavoring that each page on your website can be reached with a minimum amount of clicks. This is good both for your website’s users and for search engines. If your homepage has the maximum page rank and importance, than that importance is trickled down throughout the pages. That’s why keeping as many pages as possible as close as possible to the home page (close in terms of the number of links apart), increases their importance.

5. Sitemaps, Directories and Submitting to the Search Engines

There are a number of methods to help your website get indexed along with all the pages in it. The first method of getting all your pages indexed is by using sitemaps. Sitemaps map out all the pages of your website through links. As the search engine crawls your website, having a sitemap increases the chances that all the pages will be crawled and indexed.

Get listed in as many directories as possible. The more traffic a directory has the better. Getting listed under the most relevant category lets search engines know more about your website and also leads relevant traffic your way. It’s an all round beneficial method of promoting your website online.

Last but not least, you can also submit your website directly to the search engines. Both Yahoo and Google have manual submission pages. This does not ensure that the crawler will index your website but it certainly increases the chances.

Good Luck.

Submit your website to Google’s Local Business Center listings. According to Google’s statistics 82% of searches for local business information go through Google. By submitting your website to this service you can control the way your business is listed in Google and its appearance in Google maps. This definitely gives you an advantage as you can also get information on the actual searches. The best news? It’s a free service so this is really a win-win situation.  Take a look at the short video they prepared explaining how to list your website. If you search ‘plumbers in New York for example, the first results will show the best results from Google’s local directory with a link to their website and a phone number alongside the Google map pin pointing their location. Putting it bluntly – this is good for business.

So What are the Advantages?

Getting your page listed is just the first advantage. With this listing, your traffic will increase, leading to an improved ranking for your website in general and the other keywords as well.

Also, you can get all sorts of information on your business you would not have had access to before, such as what type of keywords are being used to find you, what area of town your customers are coming from,  of  the type of traffic arriving at your site. Understanding trends amongst your clientele will allow you to cater to these specific needs.

If you have a restaurant for example, you may discover that 40% of the people reaching your website are searching for seafood or are coming from a specific area of town where you may want to open a second branch.

Knowing which keywords are working for you can give you a better idea of how to optimize your website textually, which words to emphasize and which words are just not working for you.

In short this is a win-win situation allowing you to get more from the search engine and putting your business on the map.

Good Luck!

How you use your keywords is important, particularly now as the new caffeine version of Google is coming out. If you use the keyword out of context, or repetitively in an exaggerated manner, it will not benefit your website in the same way as correct implementation.

Here are a few tips and ideas on how to use your keywords organically to get the best results:

1. Keywords in Your Titles

Even if you have a really catchy poetic title to give your website, you may want to reconsider and use your most important keyword here, or even two if you can. The search engine spiders read article titles and so do users for that matter. The title’s weight in determining indexing is quite large, so take advantage of it.

2. Photos

Adding texts to a picture is called adding ‘alt texts’ and that is how you’ll find it in the source of your website. Search engine crawlers can’t see images, but they can read the texts behind the picture, such as the description and the title so take advantage of these fields to use your keywords once again. In the Wix website builder you can add texts to your pictures as you add them to the galleries or by publishing the picture.

3. Writing a Smokin’ Description

The description is accessed through the settings menu at the top of the builder. The description is very important both for search engines and users. When your website appears in search results your description will accompany the result.  Make sure to include at least two of your most important keywords in your description. If you’ve chosen your keywords wisely, it shouldn’t be too difficult as the subject of your website should be related to the keywords. Take some time to write a super description. It’s worth the effort.

4. Meta Tags

Aside from the description Meta tag which you’re already familiar with there are other ways to get your keywords read in the source. For one thing, consider the names of your website pages. Suppose you’re building a website about flowers and you have galleries filled with pictures of flowers. Now, imagine you’ve divided the galleries by color (ex: red flowers, blue flowers, yellow flowers etc). Naming the page on which the gallery is located ‘Red Flowers’ if the gallery includes red flowers can help the search engine crawler figure out what that page is about. If you’ve added tags to each of the pictures and they include (at least some of them) the keyword ‘red flowers’, you’ve moved a few steps closer to optimizing your website. Headers are another element you should consider. Headers receive greater weight in determining indexing than regular texts and can be easily created in the Wix website builder. To create a header use the ‘title text box’ instead of the regular ‘paragraph’ text boxes. The bigger the title, the higher that header will rank. The largest header will appear as H1 in your website’s source (right click over the website > view source), the second largest will be H2 and so on and so forth.

5. Textual Integration

How should you use your keyword? How many times is enough? The purpose of the search engine crawler is to divine what subject your web page deals with. If you keep that in mind it will be easier to figure out how to use your keywords. If you find yourself writing a text and the same keyword keeps coming up naturally, you shouldn’t feel the need to erase it. If it comes up that often though, you may want to consider using different variations of that keyword as well instead, but that is for your consideration. Depending on how many texts you have on your website, using your keyword 3-5 times is more than enough.

To get some more information on how optimized your website is, you can download seaquake. This freeware will definitely give you more insight on how optimized your texts are and what the Google bot will see as he visits your website. It includes different statistics and details that are very helpful in the optimization process.

Using Redirects to Manipulate Google Page Rank

An illegitimate redirect is a one that occurs automatically when you approach a certain URL. As you click on the link to that site, the page URL (address) will appear for a short while and then automatically redirect you to the main site. This technique is used to increase the number of times the website will appear in search results, as it will appear through different domains.

Google’s crawlers will see a different page than the users, fooling the robot into giving a false page rank.

Not all redirects are considered spam, there are several redirect types that Google accepts and acknowledges, which you can read about in other blog posts here, or through Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

100% Frames

We’ve already discussed iframes here in this blog. Just like the redirect, and the golden principle of SEO, if what your users see is different than what the Google bot sees, it’s a problem. A 100% frame page is a page covered completely by a frame that consists of different content from the rest of the website. End result – Google sees one thing on which it bases its page ranking and the user sees something entirely different.

Just like the redirect, this enables spammers to index the same site over and over again under different domains. While the different domains may have different content and get ranked as a result of that content, the end user will find himself viewing the same main site.

Hiding Texts and Links

If a text is visible to search engines only it is considered spam. So what does Google consider hidden text?

• Any text written in the same color (or close to) as the web page background.
• Any text situated in an area of the page that has been defined as hidden or invisible using CSS.
• Extremely small fonts that are not legible to internet user.
• Any text that is being hidden behind an image.

While you might find this useful, particularly if you don’t want to overload your web design with texts, it may very well backfire at you. It may get you kicked out of the ranking game altogether, not to mention that clicking ctrl-a in the browser may reveal your texts anyway.

Other Illegitimate Practices to Avoid

Spamming the keywords – using the same keyword over and over without any real content involved.

Cloaking – this is a technological ruse. As you enter the website, the website issues a query inspecting your status. If you are discovered as a crawler you will end up seeing a different page than you would have reached as a regular user.

Doorway Pages – these are pages created solely to optimize for a specific word. The chosen keyword is repeated over and over again on this page, suggesting high relevance to search engines. This doorway page will either include a link to the main homepage or it will include an automatic redirect to the homepage. Either way, this doorway is considered unethical SEO practice.

Excessive Linking between Websites – an exaggerated amount of links between two sites. What’s considered exaggerated? Good question. There isn’t a specific number of links and it depends greatly on the balance of the rest of the content. There is higher risk of getting caught when the two sites use the same IP. In general, triangle linking is much better for SEO purposes. This means that if your website is site A, and you sent a link to site B, site B will link to site C and site C will send the link right back to you – site A. Another unethical practice involves a bombardment of links on a single page or website. Link farms are a particularly deplorable practice.

Selling Links for PR

Lately, websites that have integrated a practice where they sell links to other websites (meaning, website x pays website y to include a link to it) have been losing ground fast. This is done in order to increase the page rank and is also considered deceptive.

So, How Will You Be Discovered?

Search engines use three different methods to discover culprit websites. The first is technological. Search engine bots are programmed to uncover some of the more obvious deception techniques. When the crawler runs in to such cases it will raise a ‘red flag’. This will lead to a temporary PRO penalty (in Google). Usually these penalties are only temporary but in certain cases they may become permanent.

Google and the other search engines also encourage users to report unethical website promotion techniques. You can report other websites through a special web page dedicated to this subject. This is Google’s Spam Report page. You need to sign in to use it though.

Forums are another method of discovering SEO scams. Apparently Google employees read webmaster forums and if they run into something suspicious… they do something about it.

In this blog we’ve been discussing search engine optimization from many different angles and one of the primary subjects has always been keywords, and how to use them. But how do you choose the right keywords for your website? Good question.  Here are a few tips.

Choosing your keyword involves several stages:

1. Brainstorm. Visualize your potential customers. What kind of words would your customers use when attempting to find information or services which your site offers. Think of alternative spellings, different word combinations, synonyms, slang…
   A good way to find out what keywords to optimize is by researching the keywords being used by your current customers. If you already have a website this is a good way to go.
2. Take Advantage of Keyword Research Tools. There are several online tools that can help you sift through the thousands of keyword options. These include Google Adwords, Google Trends, Wordtracker and Overture. I will go into further detail on each of the tools, but suffice to say using these tools can give you data on trends and statistics related to keyword selection.
3. Check Out the Competition. Certain keywords are very popular but very competitive. Take a look at the websites currently ranked in the first places to understand the scale necessary to overtake these spots. Your website may be a spiritual haven for example, but using just the word God as a keyword, may not be the wisest decision. God is the second most popular search term on the internet (after sex of course), and when you search for it in Google, there are 397,000,000 results as of today, November 2009.
4. Create a Chart. Analyze the keyword data you’ve collected in a chart and compare traffic, relevance to your website, each keyword’s conversion rate etc. This method is the best way to reach an informed decision. After you’ve selected and implemented the targeted keywords, you can use analytics programs (such as Google Analytics) to review and refine your choice of keywords.

Keyword Research Tools

Adwords – Adwords is dedicated to advertising in Google, but it also has the keyword external tool that is very useful for finding new keyword ideas.  You enter a word or phrase, and it will generate related keywords along with some basic information on them. This is a good place to start your brainstorm session.

Google Trends – Google trends is great because it lets you see which keywords are more popular than others in a simple graph. In both cases you have the option of changing different parameters to suit your specific search needs.

WordTracker – another popular tool for keyword data collection. WordTracker acquires most of its statistics through the meta search engine Dogpile that has approximately 1% of all searches online.  WordTracker provides a lot of detail, and even though this information comes from a relatively smaller piece of the pie, it is relatively reliable.

Overture – Overture was re-branded Yahoo! Search Marketing and provides data collected from searches performed in Yahoo! Yahoo has 22%-28% of searches online. It provides good data and methods for measuring comparative numbers.

Keyword Analysis Parameters

Even after choosing your keywords and implementing them in your website tactfully you should always stay alert to changes in trends and the general data. Here are a few parameters by which you can test the keywords you like best:

• Conversion Rate – this parameter covers the percent of surfers searching for that term who converts. To convert in this case, means to click on an ad, to purchase a product etc)
• Predicted Traffic – a prediction of the amount of surfers who will be searching for this specific keyword each month. This data may change as trends do, so stay updated
• Per Customer Value – this parameter covers the average revenues per customer using the keyword and leads to a comparison of lucrative keywords vs. less profitable ones.

Once you’ve analyzed this data you should be well on your way to optimizing your website for the best keywords possible. Remember, it takes more than a couple of days and the key to SEO is also a lot of patience and persistence.

Don’t try to grab the entire pie at once. Rather, work slowly and carefully through the keywords and build your site gradually. This is also a better method of working with Google, which usually credits older sites before new ones anyway. Target one or two main keywords or phrases per page tops and work your way up in the page ranks. As your website matures, gains more and more links, grows in terms of content and pages and acquires greater legitimacy with the search engines, you’ll find targeting multiple keywords more feasible.

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… Rank: wait… Traffic: wait… Price: wait… C: wait…

Can Google Index My Flash Website?

There’s been a lot of discussion on whether the search engines can actually crawl and read Flash websites. As of today, at least Google and Yahoo are able to index texts compiled into SWF and any HTML automatically generated by Flash. Even though SWF itself isn’t particularly searchable, any content (texts) inside a SWF can still be visible and indexed easily using the right techniques. In short, don’t despair – your Wix can and will definitely be indexed. Wix was designed especially to suit Google and the other search engines. Also, we are always developing Wix to remain on the cutting edge with SEO updates from Google and different online sources.

Just look at the picture below. Wix’s website is created using the Wix editor, and there it is ranked right at the top of the first page. Try a few other relevant keywords and see what happens.

Now let’s approach other tactics.

1. Make Sure You’ve Checked the Settings Boxes

First of all, make sure you’ve checked the ‘List in Search Engines’ box in the Wix editor’s settings menu. If you haven’t done so thus far, visit the editor and do so now.

2. Titles, Descriptions and Keywords

Make sure to update titles, descriptions and keywords in the Wix editor’s settings menu.

The title and description appear in search engine results so even though you can’t see the description on your site, it is one of the most important marketing elements, both in terms of the search engines and towards generating traffic.

A good title: This should include your website’s name, and be up to about 10 words long (70 characters).

A description: Should include relevant keywords and be about 30-35 words long (or up to 190 characters).

Keywords: Add about 5-7 keywords to the Wix editor settings menu. Make sure to use keywords that are relevant and actually appear in your general content. Use as many of your keywords as possible in your description, title and headers to strengthen their relevancy. For more information on the Settings check out the Wixpedia.

3. Words, Words, Words

Make sure you have enough good and relevant content. Textual content is Google’s bread and butter. You need to have at least 400 words on your Home Page and 250 words on each of your website’s other pages. If you don’t already have that, start thinking creatively on what kind of written content you can add and where to place it. Also keep in mind that Google (and the other search engines) like relevant sites. It’s not a great mystery that if your site is a business website, it may be slightly confusing if you give it an Arts and Crafts title. Your keywords and texts should be organic, relevant and natural.

If you really don’t want text on your page you can add it as a small footer at the bottom of the page for example.

4. The Chain of Links

Get as many incoming links as you can onto your web page! Google finds new sites through incoming links. As it crawls a familiar site, it follows links from that site to other websites. If you don’t have any incoming links to your website, it just won’t be discovered. Wix automatically creates two links for you when you a build a website using one of Wix’s templates. One is from the directory and one from an XML site map. This helps Google crawl your site but there are many other things which you can do. If you’re having trouble finding someone to send links your way (and you don’t have another website that’s already indexed for example), try link exchanges. People are always grateful when you send traffic their way, and let’s face it; nobody is going to stay in your website forever. So you might as well make friends. Add the links organically into the text. For example, if I want you to read more about Flash templates, I’ll anchor the link into the text.

5. Get Quality Links

Get good, quality links. Google crawls an average site once a month. On the other hand, it crawls the big sites, such as Dig, Facebook, Twitter and Wikipedia every day, so if you add an incoming link to your website from your facebook account, you raise the chances that your website will be indexed fast.

6. Submit Your URL to Major Search Engines

Submit your website directly to the major search engines. Once you’ve done that and read our previous blog about texts and how Google loves them, try submitting your URL to Google . This may make the process a little faster. Submit your website to the other major directories: Google, Yahoo , MSN , Ask etc.

7. Connecting Your Domain

Index your new domain to Google. If you plan on upgrading your Wix account to use your own domain, we highly recommend you do so before submitting the original freebie account. The reason being, that when you index the Wix URL, it takes Google about a month to index it. Once you connect and submit your new domain, the entire process begins from scratch, thus taking double the time it would to submit the final URL from the start.

To dig deeper into the world of SEO, visit Google’s webmaster’s site.