502 – Easy way to get higher search rankings: Tom talks Title Tags

Episode 502 – Title Tags
[00:00:09] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode five hundred and two of Screw the Commute podcast. We're going to talk about title tags today, and if you were going to do one easy and fast thing to help being found in the search engines, this would be it. Now I've talked about another valuable and super important thing in a previous episode about getting inbound links to your site. And yes, that's important, but it's way more time consuming and a lot of work. I want you to do it, of course, but this is even easier. This is I mean, pretty much a fast and easy, but still extremely valuable thing for you. Now if you want to read or if you missed the episode about backlinks and go to episode 466 and of course, when you want to get to a back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com slash and then the episode number 466. And you might want to also listen to 463 on surveys and 469 on basic SEO. But anyway, we're going to concentrate on one simple and easy thing you can do for free to be found better on the search engines.

[00:01:34] All right. Hope you didn't miss episode 501. That was ask me a question. I talked about membership sites. Audience temperature. Cold, warm and hot. It depends on how you advertise to them. Paid ad budget strategy. Quora is a place you can advertise. I just made a brief thing of what you can do with title tags, but this is all about title tags today, and I talked about private label rights that was episode five zero one. Now, how would you like me to send you big checks? Well, email me at Tom@screwthecommute.com, and I'll give you details on how you can get big commissions for referring my products and services even up to $5000 or more for one referral and everything down to eight dollars and fifty cents. So anyway, you can make a lot of money with that 850 and everything in between up to in excess of 5000 bucks. So that can be a big payday for you for a referral. Now, grab a copy of our automation e-book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree, this saved me millions of keystrokes and makes me work lightning fast and steal ethically, steal customers from competitors who are too slow to get back. So grab your copy at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. We sell this for twenty seven bucks, but it's yours. Free for listening to the show while you're at it.

[00:03:03] Pick up a copy of our podcast app. It's screwthecommute.com/app, and you can put us on your cell phone and tablet and take us with you on the road. All right, we're in the middle of this wonderful program I'm so proud of to help persons with disabilities get full scholarships to my school, where we're teaching them internet and digital marketing techniques so that they can get good jobs or start their own business or both. And then I call it a pilot program because I'm going to get this proven concept that I can do this for these people. And then I took a grant writing course, and I'm going to roll it out really big and try to get some big money to help loads of people. So love to have your help. We've got to go fund me account, helping to finance the whole program, and we're going to use some of the money to hire persons with disabilities to help run the program. So it's just wonderful, something you can be very proud to be part of. So check it out at my school website at IMTCVA.org/disabilities. But of course, since its distance learning, you don't have to be in Virginia to attend. And if you're interested in attending yourself, or if you have kids that are wondering what to do and they don't want to be in debt for the rest of their life, going to a worthless four year college, you know, internet marketing is considered vocational. So they'll have an actual skill in six months to a year with no books to be purchased. No travel. No nothing. So very, very powerful program we have here. So check it out.

[00:04:52] All right, let's get to the main event. Title tags. Now before I tell you the best practices about being found in the search engines using good title tags, let me mention the mechanics of how you do it very easily. First, you should be on WordPress and get the plugin Yoast or all in one SEO pack. I don't have any preference. Yoast or all in one SEO pack. Now you should be on WordPress. It's the gold standard and don't let any dumb geek talk you out of it. All right. And by the way, if you see a website builders advertised in national media, you can be absolutely positively sure they're going after people that don't know any better. All right, so WordPress is the gold standard, and Yoast are all in one SEO pack is a plug in. They're both free and what they do now. You only want one. You don't need both of them. I don't have a preference.

[00:05:56] What these do is make it really easy for a mere mortal, non web geek, you know? You know, in other words, you don't need a web geek to be able to put in your own title tags without going into the code, which you'd probably screw up and ruin your entire website. So. So get one of the plug ins, either Yoast or all in one SEO pack and get it installed. All right, now, let's talk about why this is so super important. It's also one of the first things I check when evaluating someone's website and I've critiqued over, I think, you know, we try to figure it out over 10000 websites in the past 23, four years. And when someone goes to Google or any search engine. The search engine sends out these things called spiders, which basically means it's going looking for web pages that the search engine thinks would be perfect for the person that's searching and make them happy. See, the search engine hates you. The website are right. You are a necessary evil to bring in searchers so they can sell ads to them. That's the entire business model of the Google and the rest of the search engines. Now, before Google, you had search engines like AltaVista, where the searcher would have to sift through. I don't know, 15 pages of garbage to find what they were looking for. I was through. I lived through that and I was I don't want to say I was one of those 15 pages of garbage, but I was taught by the best of the best and it was so good at it.

[00:07:39] I could get five or four to six of my pages on the first page of the results for good keywords. So that was a whole different world back then. So anyway, Google came along and said, You know, that's not acceptable. We're going to give the searcher exactly what they're looking for on the first page of the results, so they'll be happy and they'll come back over and over so we can sell more ads. And they did it. And I don't know, 15, 17 years later, they're the biggest in the world. So how do the search engines pick which sites to display on the first page? Well, that's an entire discussion of SEO search engine optimization that's far too deep for this episode. But one of the most, I think for 69 gives you the basics of a bunch of things you can do for free yourself. But anyway, one of the most important places on your website is the title tag. That's what this episode is about. The importance of this is estimated between 70 and 85 percent of your success is right there in this title tag. And without doing what I cover in this episode, your chances of getting a high ranking in any search engine is near zero.

[00:08:56] So you should pay attention and do something about your title tags right now. Now, where do you find these things? Well? They're at the top of your web page, but they don't look like it. They look like they're clear at the top of your screen. So if you open a web browser and have a tab at the top of the screen, if you hold your mouse over it, a little box will pop up and that's your title tag. It doesn't even look like it's part of your site, but it is. It's in the code and it's near the top. All right, but here's what happens if you don't fix this. Let's say someone does a search it in Google for, let's say, camping stoves. And Joe from Joe's outdoor shop has a beautiful website full of all kinds of camping supplies. But Joe let some idiot web designer build his beautiful site and every title tag on his entire site just says Joe's outdoor something like that. Well, two things here will kill your chance of getting high ranking in search engines. Number one is. That the searcher is searching for camping stoves. So the search engine spiders run out at lightning speed through the internet, looking for pages with camping stoves on them, and as they look at each page, they start from the top of the page and work down.

[00:10:26] Guess where the title tag resides, I mentioned it near the top. So it's pretty much, you know, almost at the top of the code in most web pages. So the spider sees Joe's outdoor at the top of the page, and it says to itself. Well, hmm. Joe's outdoor is not camping stoves, so the the spider doesn't even bother to look at the rest of the page because it's in a big hurry. I mean, you see that nowadays in responses of the results are appearing before you're even done typing in your search terms. All right, so that's the first thing the the title tagged wasn't what the person was searching for. It was Joe's outdoor that doesn't help at all. In fact, in my websites, might you never see my name in the title tag? It's always what the person was looking for. Now, if I was Tony Robbins or a worldwide celebrity, then I'd put my name up there. But I don't because I want. There's always going to be more people that never heard of you than heard of you. You want them to find what they were looking for. And if they give you money and never know your name, you still win. Ok, so get your ego out of it. All right, now, the second thing is, since every page has the same title tag, Joe's outdoor in this case.

[00:11:56] The search engine thinks why would we bother giving Joe a high ranking when every page of his site is identical? That's what it looks like to the search engine. Having the same title tag on every page of your site is pretty much the kiss of death when it comes to getting high search engine rankings. So don't let your web designer tell you the site is finished when it's not until you take care, at least take care of the title tags. Also, don't depend on your average Web person to do this for you. They have no idea what your best keywords are to put in the title tag. That's up to you to figure out. I mean, do you really expect them to know your business and what your customers are looking for better than you? That's ridiculous. That's when people want to farm everything out and don't want to get their fingers dirty. They just get charged one hundred times literally what things should cost and a substandard job, because any other outsider can, you know, would have to spend hours or weeks to learn to really get the inside scoop on your business, which would cost thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. You're ridiculous if you own your company and think this, you're just naive. Or I don't. I don't want to say stupid, but I'll just go ahead and say stupid. All right.

[00:13:20] When it comes to this, you know, the people that don't want to get their fingers dirty, they just pay through the nose. They want to play the big shot. All I want to delegate everything. And then and then they don't have two nickels to rub together. So you've got to be involved in this if you want success. So to do that, you need to do your keyword research before you do any of this stuff, and that's episode one and episode one hundred and 30 of this podcast goes into regular keywords and then voice search keywords that are different because people search differently on cell phones and tablets via voice than they do when they type. Ok. And then you got to put them in there. All right, let's get into some of the best practices of putting in title tags and and by the way, your title tag if you want to see what your title tags are even without. Or just do a search on Google and any of the results that come up. The clickable part of the results is the title tag for that website. They put that in. At least that's the way it's always been for years and years and years. All right. Until recently, when Google saw some half assed or nonexistent title tags and decided to change it on on themselves, and they're changing the title tag on your website because you didn't either do it right or do it at all.

[00:14:56] And I got to tell you, people aren't happy about this because they're yelling at Google about this and but the latest estimates say that only it only happens about 13 percent of the time when Google puts in the title tag for you. But if you do, when I say in this episode, the chances are Google or any other search engine will not change your title tags because you have done it correctly. All right, but let me make this very clear. All right, before we go a little deeper, make sure every page on your site has its own title tag. Specifically related to the content on that page, see the search engines look at your site as a whole, but they also look at the individual pages when it comes to making search results. So you've got to to take control of this so that Google doesn't. And I'll tell you what happens to your site if you don't. A little later. All right. So your title tag should describe what's on the page, but it must be very concise, and you don't want to use stupid, vague words like home or, in Joe's case, camping supplies, which is too general. I mean, sometimes you might have to do that. But if Joe wants those people to find his camping stoves, he better darn well have a page or pages that have camping stoves in the title tag for those pages.

[00:16:27] And you can add other words to it, too, as long as you keep a clean site. Best camping stoves. Highest rated camping stoves or something you know you don't want. Like I said, be identical all the time. All right now, don't overdo the key words for any one page, the more specific you are, the better. So if you put camping stoves over and over and over in a title tag, this is called keyword stuffing and it makes your page look spammy, which is not going to sit well with either the search engines or searchers because they see it in the search results. I mean, you're lucky if they do see you in the search results, because that means you've got a high ranking, but you probably won't if you use the same keyword over and over over and make the search engines mad. Now, another thing you can do is tell what type of content is on the page as part of your title tag. So Camping Stove video would tell the search engine and the user that there is a video on the page showing them the features of your camping stoves, let's say. Now, the title tag of your home page is something to really think about because it does get extra emphasis from the search engines. They're expecting that your site is all about camping, you know, and like I said, if you're camping and boating and fishing.

[00:17:55] I personally would have different sites because the more specific you are on a site, the more you look like the expert and the more the better chance you have of Google raising you up high in the search results. Now, unless you're Bass Pro Shop or or something like that that sells guns and fishing and boat fishing and boats and camping and everything. But that's a whole. Most of us that listen to this are not Bass Pro Shop or Cabello's. All right, so we have to do it better. You can't just say, Oh, well, let's do it like Cabello's and put everything under the sun there. Well, they've got probably tens of thousands of pages. They've got a team of geeks working three shifts to work on their website and and search engine optimization and everything. So you've got to play a different game than them. All right. But let me tell you what happens if you ignore what I'm talking about today. And the title tag is blank, let's say, or something stupid, it doesn't relate to what's on the page, and here's what Google or the search engines are going to do. They're just going to grab stuff usually from the top of the page. Maybe your headline or other text that's large and and they'll throw that in as your title tag, and it may not make any sense to what somebody was looking for.

[00:19:18] And then people will bounce really fast and make you look bad. Maybe they grab text and links or text that has an H1 or H2 tag on it. These are called heading tags. You do not want this to happen, you don't want to just throw it to the wind and cross your fingers, that's what you're doing. You take control of your title tag, so some automated spider doesn't make you look stupid. All right, now, before I recap the things you should do right right away, I want to remind you of the program we have going for the persons with disabilities. I mean, I'm so proud to be involved in this. They're already making progress. The three people that are in and two of them are blind. Can you believe that my websites are improving like crazy because we're learning better accessibility, which is a big topic that's coming to the web and a lot of attorneys are suing people over it. So. So it's something you need to pay attention to. But I'm just really proud that I'm changing these people's lives. I've been involved in a lot of charity and saving animals and feeding homeless kids and stuff. But but this is really, really something. If I can change these people's lives forever, I'll have done my duty and I really need your help to do it because it's very expensive to do this and all the extra things we have to do to accommodate the folks.

[00:20:41] But it's working beautifully so far. I mean, we're, you know, climbing through and overcoming any obstacles we run into and we're going overboard to help these people. And, you know, the blind people, how are you supposed to do it when you're blind? I have no idea, but they are doing it. They're so inspiring. So I'm helping people and we're finding things that aren't accessible and replacing them with things that are to help them. And yeah, it's a great thing all the way around. So visit IMTCVA.org/disabilities, click on the Go Fund Me campaign and throw in anything you can afford. And hey, if you're really flush with cash, you could sponsor a person yourself. So it's just a wonderful, wonderful thing. And please share it like crazy, because like I said, we're we're changing these people's lives. Some the one lady is totally blind. Her husband has a construction company, and she's already in one month helping him improve his website, and she's blind. All right, so don't give me any excuses like you can't do this stuff. I mean, come on. So there you go. So help me out. IMTCVA.org/disabilities.

[00:21:50] All right. So let me recap what you should do. Very simple stuff. First thing, listen to episode one and episode one hundred and thirty. Take good notes and then go do your keyword research. It doesn't do any good to put the wrong keywords up there that nobody's searching for or that you think now. Yeah, the web person shouldn't know your business as well as you. But here's another thing you can't trust yourself because you're too close to it. You're a professional in whatever field you're doing, and you don't have a clue probably how other people that are just trying to get your service as one little sliver of their entire life or business and. You don't know what the heck they're typing. Well, these keyword tools that are mostly free will tell you all the different ways. They're typing things, and those are the ones that you use in your website and like. If you listen to episode four sixty nine, you see a whole bunch of other ways to use the keyword. So keyword research is a massive return on investment because you use them everywhere in videos and blog postings everywhere. All right, so that's the first thing. Do the keyword research then either install Yoast or all in one SEO pack. I don't have any preferences. We've used both of them for years, and I don't think my tech guys have care one way or the other. So either one is OK.

[00:23:12] You can. I mean, you could use YouTube or you could do a search and Google Yoast versus all in one SEO pack and see what geeks are saying about it. But probably if you haven't used either, one of them is, you know, the super geek explanation. Probably you're not going to make much difference to you, just get one of the darn things installed. And then what's going to happen is each page that you make in your website or each blog post or whatever. Is going to have at the bottom the places where you can do the description and the title tags and a bunch of stuff to help your SEO for free without getting into the code, I mean, it's just beautiful. So install that learn how to use them. So go to each page of your site and carefully review the content and then make a unique title tag for that page and hit save. And you have just saved yourself a fortune from paying SEO people to do it and giving yourself a much greater opportunity for your website to be found. So congratulations, do it. And then now you can join my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com and learn the other thousand things you should be doing to be successful online. I'd be glad to help you. All right, get those title tags fixed up. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. We'll catch you on the next episode. See you later.

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