This article will explain the best ways to utilise the Title tag of your web page effectively in terms of Search Engine Optimisation.

Right, assuming you know your targeted keyword, it is vital for it to be in the title element of your website. But where?

The biggest mistake of all is to think that only the homepage needs the main keyword.  WRONG!

You want your keyword(s) to be on every single page, along with the page’s header.  For these pages, you have a choice to make in terms of what you value more.  Having the keyword present in your title is one thing, but its position does matter.

If you want the main focus to be your main keyword, across every page, you must place it before the title of the current sub-page.   So for example, I would have  ”Webmaster Blog” at the beginning of the title on every page of this blog.

However, personally, I want the main target for my articles to be the content of each article rather than the general content of the site… So I put Webmaster Blog at the end of my Title tag.

This means that the main focus is on the keywords in my headers (as “SEO Tips” or “SEO titles” is what people will  be searching for, if they are to land on this page; so that is instantly given priority over “Webmaster Blog” in my opinion).

How to separate the page title vs. the site-wide title / keyword.

Now you’ll be wondering if there’s any distinct way of separating the two – well, not really.. But what I do know is Google prefers characters like “-” and “|” to separate page title segments.. Characters like “»” can be incorrectly displayed in title bars so it’s best to avoid them and stick to simple characters.

You can however, in the event that you’re using the page keyword then the main keyword (in that order!), you can also use the structure *Page Title* on *Site Title/Keyword*.

This has proven effective for me on a number of sites, but you really do need to just go with what you prefer, and experiment a little!

Good luck with your SEO!  Stay tuned for the next SEO article!

One of the biggest requests here is for SEO articles, so finally I’m going to start on the band wagon and give some useful tips to get your website high up in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

The first thing to realise with SEO is that you want to take full advantage of every possible place you can in terms of relevant keywords.  This includes your URLs

Search Engine Optimising URLs

The first thing to understand with URLs / links is that if you can’t read them and get a small insight as to what the page is about, how will the Search Engines?  Sure the crawlers will pick up the content on the page but they do take the URL keywords into account!

So, you want relevant keywords in your URL, not /page.php?id=1

Let’s say you have a website about vehicles.  Each vehicle  is listed under the categories for ‘type’ and ‘manufacturer’.

You have a page for a Ferrari F430 Spider under the category “Ferrari”.  A search engine optimised URL for this would be something like:

chuckunvehicles.com/sports-cars/ferrari/ferrari-f430-spider.htm – See the hyphens (-) in between the words? It’s always a good idea to use hyphens in URLs.  Why?  Well simply to define your actual keywords… If you didn’t use hyphens, a search engine crawler may read this as “sportscars” and “ferrarif430spider” – See the problem?  We want to define our keywords without mistake or misinterpretation!

Also, notice the order of the categories? It’s only sensible to make sure your categorised URLs are in a logical hierarchy!  This shows search engines that the page is under ferrari, which is under sports-cars.  You want to build understandable relevance with your URLs.

To create good SEO URLs without making each page individually you’ll need to know how to use Apache’s .htaccess file to retrieve the content.. I will write a post on .htaccess soon!

All the best with your SEO! Come back for more soon!

Hooray! Today is a good day!

Want to increase visitor duration on your AV Arcade powered games site?

I have the answer! And it is proven (totally legit, I’ll explain!)

The mod is called the Random Game Mod.. It basically creates a link to a mystery ‘random game’.  If you encourage users to click this link when feeling indecisive about a game, they will keep on clicking it over and over and over. Meaning they will spend far more time playing games on your site than they would’ve if they didn’t know what game to play, and just left..

Visitor durations have been increased by up to 70% avg!!!

The best part is still to come: IT’S FREE!!!

Everybody has seen the Facebook Connect feature on Jelsoft’s vBulletin software, but what about an Open Source version?  I asked myself the same and to much disappointment never found anything, but not anymore!

FINALLY somebody has made a Facebook Connect MOD for phpBB3!

Currently undergoing heavy (and fast) construction, the MOD is flying through ALPHA stage and will soon be released for BETA!