The Stoops Design Blog - SEO Guru. SEM Hero. Wordpress Nerd.

As any SEO specialist will tell you, your website’s page title is far and away the most important factor in optimizing your site for search engines. A good page title matched with the right amount of keyword density within your site (among other things) will pull a lot of traffic to your site.

They say you can’t always read a book by its cover. This is sad but very true. Many web designers or site administrators just don’t realize the value of a good page title. There is such an abundance of bad page title structure out there on the web that it is overwhelming, but it keeps guys like me in business so I guess I can’t complain.

The fact of the matter is that when you create the title of your site, you have two seconds to capture people’s attention. You should literally be able to read the book by the cover. Your site’s title should be a verification of the info on your site.

Here are the 5 elements that every web designer should put in place when constructing a good SEO Page Title:

1. Good Keywords & Locality Parameters - It is important the you do you’re research in terms of keyword use. You need to make sure that the “what” or “where” you wish to be found for online is specified in your title. To take it a bit further, you also must make sure that the search terms you chose are terms people are actually searching for. Sometimes people miss a lot of traffic due to page titles that include keywords nobody is looking for. Here is a good keyword search tool.

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This post is more for people who either have a business that only services specific localities, or for those designers and SEO gurus out there who need to get a client ranked in specific localities.

On the web, local search is when search engines allow for geographically constrained searching. The queries may include not only information about “what” the site visitor is searching for (such as keywords, a business category, or the name of a consumer product) but also the “where” information, such as a street address, city name, postal code, or geographic coordinates like latitude and longitude.

A good example of a locality-based search would be “Pizza in Columbus, OH”. This will pull all of the most relevant results for pizza shops in Columbus, Ohio. By optimizing your site in this manner (especially if you are a small pizza business), you will have a reasonable chance of competing with larger pizza companies. Local search evens the playing field, thus letting the little guys play on the same playground as the big boys.

1. Submit Your Site to Local Directories - This is important and if done correctly can pull a good amount of traffic to your site. Local Search Engines are probably the best way for small to medium sized businesses to compete with larger national brands. Here are my top local search engines to submit you site to:
   • Yahoo Local
   • Superpages - Also feeds into MSN Yellowpages.
   • Yellowpages.com - Also feeds into Switchboard.
   • Google Maps
   • True Local
   • Yellowbot
   • Info USA

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I was messing around online the other day and I found a really great plugin for Wordpress based off the video-sharing site Revver. This plugin will allow you to host, embed and monetize videos right from the comforts of your Wordpress admin panel. Whether you’re new to videoblogging or a seasoned content producer, the Revver WordPress Video Plugin gives you all the tools you need to create your own personalized video sharing solution.

Here is a quick background on Revver. Yeah, you can earn money by making and hosting an awesome video on Revver. You can also earn just by sharing other people’s videos? Just find a few of your favorite videos and you can send them to friends, embed them in your blog or website, or even make your very own podcast with them — and earn for sharing!

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