We just wanted to update anyone who subscribes to our blog by email or RSS that the start date of the women’s internet marketing Twitter Chat we mentioned last week has been postponed by a week, to Monday September 19th, due to Wordcamp in Jerusalem which is happening on this Monday.

If you missed the announcement, you can find all the details about the Twitter chat here.

Looking forward to seeing you!

Change in Start Date for Internet Marketing Twitter Chat! is a post from: Debi'Z Organic SEO, experts in Organic SEO Services and SEO Coaching.

It’s also the headline for the page in the Google search results.

If the keyword is in the title, and especially if it is at the beginning of the title, that gives a big boost to your page for that keyword.

The title tag, like most meta-tags, is contained in the header of the page.  If you can go into the HTML of the each page, you can insert the title tag with the title you want.  The tag looks like this:

<title>Your Title Goes Here</title>

But what if you work on WordPress, which doesn’t let you edit the header for an individual page?  Are you doomed to the same title for every page on your site? (Bad news in the eyes of Google.)

Fortunately there are a good number of WordPress plugins that will let you give a title tag to each page individually.  One of the best is All in One SEO Pack.

But while this will let you put in the title for each page, when you put your desired title in the home page All in One SEO Pack field… nothing happens.  On your main list of pages and their title, description and keyword tags, it looks like it has changed for the home page, but if you check the browser tab when the page is open, or check what the headline is for the home page in a Google search – it is not the new title you gave it.

So how do you change the title of the home page on a WordPress site?

The answer’s pretty simple, but hard to find.  So we’ll point you in the right direction.  Go to your WordPress dashboard.  Click on Settings on the side menu.

You’ll be taken to the “General” settings page.

This is where the default home page title comes from.  You could change it here, and it would change the home page title.  But this “Site Title” is also often appended to the end of page or post title tags.  It’s good for branding, but what if you want your home page title to be a specific keyword phrase – something beyond just your brand? And you don’t want that long phrase showing up at the end of the title tag of every post?

Continue down that Settings sub-menu to All in One SEO.

Scroll down past a few ads until you find:

Put in your desired title for the home page.  Scroll down to the bottom and click “Update Options.”

There you go!  Refresh your home page in the browser and check the browser tab.  Is the title you’ve been waiting for there?  You did it!

How Do I Change the Title of My Home Page in WordPress? is a post from: Debi'Z Organic SEO, experts in Organic SEO Services and SEO Coaching.

There were 5 of us speakers, and it was arranged in a similar manner to a “speed-dating” evening – each speaker had 10 minutes to present to a group of attendees, before the bell was rung and the group went off to hear someone else, and a new group convened.

It was a lot of fun, and with 5 rounds, everyone had the opportunity to hear all the speakers (except us speakers, of course!). I did feel rather like I’d run a marathon afterwards, though

The other speakers were:

• Charlie Kalech, Director of J-Town Productions Ltd., who presented “Defining a Keyword Search Strategy for Your Site”.
• Rabbi Issamar Ginzberg, of Monetized Intellect Consulting, The Entrepreneurs Best Friend and Business Mentor, who presented “Using testimonials to make your website visitors buy”
• Mike Mintz, Lawyer, blogger, and head strategist for My Media Labs, who presented “Facebook Advertising That Gets Attention for Your Business”
  
• Hillel Porath, CTO and dedicated Online Marketing Director for http://israelexporter.com, who presented “Generating Business Leads Using LinkedIn”
  

My talk was about “Bringing Traffic to your Website with Link Building” (see the relevant anchor text?), and it was based on a few examples from Aviva’s amazing Link Building Guide that we blogged about a couple of weeks ago .

Well done to all the speakers, and especially to the organizers, Avigail Frij, Joe Van Zwaren and Michael Horesh, and to Nefesh B’Nefesh for hosting the event.

If you attended the workshop and sat at my table, I would like to thank you for listening, and would love to hear any comments or questions you may have on my talk, and on link building in general.

So, happy link building, and see you at our next blog post

Debi’Z speaks at JBNF Internet Marketing Workshop is a post from: Debi'Z Organic SEO, experts in Organic SEO Services and SEO Coaching.

Some of the problems with this lack of accurate subdomain tracking:

1. It inflates the number of visits/visitors – when a visitor passes between subdomains, she is now counted as a new visit and visitor
2. You can’t see what the referral site really was.  For example, if you have an e-commerce site and your store is on its own subdomain (store.example.com), any traffic that comes from www.referrer.com to www.example.com and then on to your store, the referral source in Google Analytics will be: www.example.com.  Not good if you’re trying to track goals and conversions by referring source.

The solution is pretty simple: Google has tracking code that you put on all the pages to specify that they should all be considered as coming from one domain.

The asynchronous tracking code addition is:

//Tracking code customizations only
  var _gaq = _gaq || [];
  _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-12345-1']);
  _gaq.push(['_setDomainName', '.example.com']);
  _gaq.push(['_setAllowHash', false]);
  _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);

The traditional code addition is:

 var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-12345-1");
  pageTracker._setDomainName(".example.com");
  pageTracker._setAllowHash(false);
  pageTracker._trackPageview();

(Make sure to fill in your own GA account number and domain name.)

For more detailed info, check out Google’s page on Subdomain Tracking.  Happy Tracking!

Tracking Subdomains in Google Analytics Correctly is a post from: Debi'Z Organic SEO, experts in Organic SEO Services and SEO Coaching.

I don’t know if anyone remembers that particular chant from their days at day camp (you know, when the counselor was trying to keep all the campers’ minds off the fact that you had been waiting a really long time for something to happen), but we as SEOs or SEO clients could certainly chant a similar version: “We’re going on a rankings hunt, we’re going on a rankings hunt. We come to a… really competitive niche.” What do you do then?

Unlike your bear hunt, where you need the brute force and sheer willpower of going THROUGH the obstacle (which in a really competitive niche requires lots and lots of money to pour into SEO) in a rankings hunt you have other options – under, over and around. Over the next few weeks we’ll mention a few different ideas for getting your rankings in competitive niches in roundabout ways.

Today’s idea: Ranking With Videos, Products and other Universal Search Opportunities

In May 2007, Google launched Universal Search. Instead of having to go to different niche Google search engines to get webpages, videos, images, news, etc. on whatever topic you were looking for, Google would pull them all into one search results page if it seemed relevant. This gives us several opportunities to compete, instead of just one. No longer do you have to be the top-ranking webpage, but if you can get Google to consider you as one of the top products, videos or images, you have a chance of showing up in the search results amidst the top 10 webpages.

Example number one: stainless steel water bottles. There are some really big names in the top 10 – both brands and stores. But look at the product listings, which appear as the third listing.

Most of them are the standard big names, but check out the fourth listing: Water U bottle from Bed, Bath and Beyond. Granted, Bed Bath and Beyond is not an unknown store, but it doesn’t appear anywhere else in the first three results pages for stainless steel water bottles. Because of the product listings, it’s in and one of the first things that meets your eyes.

Example number two: puppy dogs. I imagine that if you breed and/or sell puppies, you probably have a lot of competition out there on the web. But look at these results:

Iyashi’s puppy breeding business would probably do amazingly if he had one and if its URL appeared for a good few seconds at the end of his video (assuming the video is good – I didn’t watch it).

So get yourself thinking – where can your product or service fit into other niches in the Universal search results? Do you have images? Videos? Can you produce images or videos? Are your products listed in Google Shopping results?

Try to come up with at least one way to take advantage of Universal Search by our next blog post, which will discuss some of the points you should consider when trying to get your videos into Universal Search.

Update: here’s the promised blog post on Video Sitemaps for SEO.

Ranking With Videos, Products and other Universal Search Opportunities is a post from: Debi'Z Organic SEO, experts in Organic SEO Services and SEO Coaching.

One of the most helpful ways to conduct research for these “lower search volume” keywords is to use Google Adwords. Not just the Adwords Keyword Tool – which may or may not be helpful in your case – but an actual Google Adwords campaign. By seeing how often your ads appear for the keywords you indicate, you can get a more accurate idea of how many people are searching for those keywords.

In general, when you set up an Adwords campaign, you want your ad to appear as high as possible in the search results, as long as you don’t have to pay too much. When you run a research campaign, however, you want to set your bid high enough that the ad appears, but low enough that the ad appears towards the low end of the search results (i.e. positions 7-10). This way you reduce the chances that people will click on your ad, reducing the amount of money you need to spend. You can get an idea of how high to set your maximum bid by using Adwords Traffic Estimator.

Start out by putting your keywords into the entry field, as seen above, using quotation marks if you want exact match (which you will probably choose if your keyword research is to determine which of several similar phrases people search for more). Do not choose a Max CPC, but do indicate your currency, language and country of interest.

Results:

Note that the bid amounts that are returned are enough to place the ad in positions 1-3 – not what we want for our research. Continue entering lower and lower amounts into the “Maximum CPC” field and clicking “Get New Estimates” until the Estimated Ad Positions show 7-10. See what the minimum amount is that you can enter and have it stay 7-10 (any lower will take you off the first page and severely minimize your chances of the ad showing at all, even if people do enter your keywords).

With prices like these, even if a few people do click on your ad, it won’t cost you so much – a bargain for effective keyword research. (Why Google estimates your daily expenses as $1 if they estimate 0 clicks at 6 cents apiece is a bit of a mystery… so you won’t be upset at them if you actually have to pay something?) Make sure to have a real landing page for your ad – if someone does click, you might gain a customer in addition to the information.

You now have the information you need to set up your research campaign, but these numbers are only an approximation. After your campaign is up and running, check frequently to make sure that your ads are showing, and showing in the position you want. You may need to adjust your bid up or down. Make sure – as mentioned above – that you indicate exact match for your keywords in order to get accurate information if you want to compare frequency of similar keywords (which would have a chance of appearing for each other if broad match was chosen), unless you are using Analytics filters that enable you to see exact keywords which sent visitors to your landing page.

After you have let the ads run for a significant period of time (still monitoring frequently to ensure that your campaign is running effectively), gather and analyze your data to see which keywords received the most impressions.

Happy campaigning!

Research is Key(words) is a post from: Debi'Z Organic SEO, experts in Organic SEO Services and SEO Coaching.

I’m off to Thailand with my hubby (leaving the kids behind – yeah !!) for a fortnight, assuming that there isn’t another strike at Ben Gurion airport as there was last night ….

So, if anyone is interested in reading my Thailand vacation blog, you can find it at http://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Thailand/blog-345368.html

Debi’Z Blog may be hosting a couple of guest posts while I’m away (I can’t really disconnect entirely, can I?), so don’t be surprised if something turns up. And please be polite to my guests

All the best,

If you enjoyed this post, please consider subscribing to my RSS Feed, to keep up with all future updates

And Off to Thailand it is … is a post from: Debi'Z Organic SEO, experts in Organic SEO Services and SEO Coaching.