how neccessary are h1 tags in seo

techfeen

The reason I ask is that anytime I use them the big font looks out of place on my site, also my site doesn't really use headers

Groinshot

techfeen wrote: »

The reason I ask is that anytime I use them the big font looks out of place on my site, also my site doesn't really use headers

You can use CSS to resize the font.

h1{
font-size:18px;
}

techfeen

thanks groinshot, for the prompt reply

Are they still necessary though? Its just none of my competitors seem to use them on there sites

Groinshot

techfeen wrote: »

thanks groinshot, for the prompt reply

Are they still necessary though? Its just none of my competitors seem to use them on there sites

Pretty sure they are. I think google uses them for keywords.
If none of your competitors use them I'd nearly put them in tonight!

The Apprentice

ye its an important part of having onsite seo correct..
Having them correct is a plus plus ..

techfeen

would i be cheeky for asking you where i should put the h1 text

http://www.muskerrypcs.com/index.htm

The Apprentice

I wont lie to you bro, webdesign editing isnt my fortay ...
Unless its stuck to a wordpress blog lol

I would suggest rewording welcome.. its doing 0 for seo purposes..
Perhaps changing it to something more fitting for the site and having it as a H1 tag
And the lower down one then would be the h2 tag "reasons to choose us"

H1 = " Cork Webdesign Services"

H2 = " 5 Top ideas for choosing Muskerry Web design"

If obvioiusly cork webdesign Services is a keyword and also Muskerry web design is a keyword.. = go gadget go

techfeen

Thanks buddy, your a gent

The Apprentice

PC Repair cork and Pc repairs Cork

I was piss bored.. i ran some software and out of 771 keywords i have found you 2 hum dingers that could easily be ranked for with a little effort bro

The above 2 keywords should in total bring u approx 150 visits a month which is **** all really but with the normal 2% conversion rate thats an extra 4 or maybe 5 sales possibly a month if u ranked well for em..
Search engine competion is under 10,000 so with you should havent 2 much problems getting into the top 100 yourself.


Cheers have fun !!

techfeen

cheers dude, i owe ya one

The Apprentice

Np any time..
Also on another note this shows a point .. remember your comment on the other post about a return on investment.. Pumping money into a keyword is it worth it..

This would i think be worth it, over a year with the revenue potentially, if you could get 1 client a month @ 500 clams over the year x 12 ?

Spending a few quid on these 2 keywords could be worth a gamble :P ??

techfeen

ok cool, how would i go about spending money on these keywords, where do i start?

The Apprentice

Tommorrow do a bit of market research
Find the first 5 companies on google and give them a quick call.. prefereably in the morning they have to do research to price it.

The questions you need to ask:

Timeframe, how quickly top 10, top 5 and possibly no1
How much ??
Guarantee ??


The third is a trick question but you,ll learn a whole pile from the dodgy ones !!

Take notes if u can and come back to me, if your gonna get robbed i have a solution for you, before you go burning your credit card up.

Im very inquisitive as to what these companies would say to the above questions as im in the same game myself and its nice to know whats happening.

Groinshot

The Apprentice wrote: »

PC Repair cork and Pc repairs Cork

I was piss bored.. i ran some software and out of 771 keywords i have found you 2 hum dingers that could easily be ranked for with a little effort bro

The above 2 keywords should in total bring u approx 150 visits a month which is **** all really but with the normal 2% conversion rate thats an extra 4 or maybe 5 sales possibly a month if u ranked well for em..
Search engine competion is under 10,000 so with you should havent 2 much problems getting into the top 100 yourself.


Cheers have fun !!

Don't mean to derail, but what software can check for keywords?

blue4ever

I'd ditch the graphics on the top of the pages - the likes of "PC repair" and "Website design" and replace them with the same phrases - but as text and as a H1. Only one H1 per page.

techfeen

The pics are gone, no to concentrate on some back linked, this time next year rodney we'll..........:)

cormee

In all fairness, how in God's name can you offer, with a clear conscience, web design services if you don't know the basics of SEO and CSS.

Some poor gullible bastard is going to pour a pot of money into getting a site off you and it's going to be crap.

Focus on what you can do - web design is clearly not one of those things.

The Apprentice

Thats not very nice cormee

techfeen

+1 some of us have human feelings

cormee

The Apprentice wrote: »

Thats not very nice cormee

It may not be, but if you think there's any technical or aesthetic merit to his work, or anything that would indicate an ability to produce a commercial site that follows best practices, please point it out to me.

There isn't, there's archaic, bloated code, and an ugly interface that igonores the most basic accessibility and usability guidelines.

-Chris-

Fair comment imho. Unless you're planning to subcontract the SEO/Webdesign out, you're just taking people for a ride (aka fleecing them).

-Chris-

Jesus, I just browsed from muskerrypcs.com to allstainlessexhausts.com and didn't even realise I had changed website for a second.

tricky D

The Apprentice wrote: »

Thats not very nice cormee

The web design is quite sub-standard at the most basic level, so it is a fair comment.

techfeen

Jaysus lads I only came on to ask a bit of advice,

-Chris-

Surely, along with the advice regarding h1 tags, you're open to some constructive criticism of your webdesign skills? If you're going to make a business of it (and charge people hundreds of Euro), it would behove you to seek feedback from every corner.

techfeen

im delighted with the feedback and help but i just found it a bit unfair to told im fleecing people considering i charged 300 euro for those sites. Im just out of college and trying to better my trade just like most of ye here at one stage

-Chris-

Start off by reading the free Google SEO Guide.


I'm not a web designer and know little of SEO, instead I will contract in others who know what they're doing in place of having to learn to do it myself. I just read a bit so that I'll know if someone is trying to pull the wool over my eyes.


If you claim to be a web designer, willing to charge me €500, and yet haven't mastered the basics of a free document published by the biggest traffic source in the world, I think you're doing me a disservice.


I admire you trying to start your own business, and I wish you all success, but if I hire you and then find out that you're missing fundamentals of web design, I'm going to refuse to pay you and you'll have wasted your time.

Worse, if I do pay you and a "tech-savvy" mate takes a look at my new €500 website and points out these basic errors to me, I'm going to be very frustrated and will probably ensure to steer anyone I know away from your services.


It's far easier to lose your reputation than it is to build it, you need to get a better handle on your craft before you start invoicing people for it.

My €0.02

-Chris-

Also, your Facebook page is a "friend" page rather than a proper Page (for businesses, bands etc.).

This is another major, but very basic error imho.

You need to do some research on this also.

The Apprentice

http://www.conormurraydesign.com/

In my opinion probably the best design work ive seen in ireland.

techfeen

-Chris- wrote: »

Start off by reading the free Google SEO Guide.


I'm not a web designer and know little of SEO, instead I will contract in others who know what they're doing in place of having to learn to do it myself. I just read a bit so that I'll know if someone is trying to pull the wool over my eyes.


If you claim to be a web designer, willing to charge me €500, and yet haven't mastered the basics of a free document published by the biggest traffic source in the world, I think you're doing me a disservice.


I admire you trying to start your own business, and I wish you all success, but if I hire you and then find out that you're missing fundamentals of web design, I'm going to refuse to pay you and you'll have wasted your time.

Worse, if I do pay you and a "tech-savvy" mate takes a look at my new €500 website and points out these basic errors to me, I'm going to be very frustrated and will probably ensure to steer anyone I know away from your services.


It's far easier to lose your reputation than it is to build it, you need to get a better handle on your craft before you start invoicing people for it.

My €0.02

I suppose i dont think about it that deeply, i am by no means the best designer in the world but if someone rings me and asks for a website, im damn glad of the work and i'm yet to have a dissatisfied customer, in fact most of my work comes from referrals

techfeen

The Apprentice wrote: »

http://www.conormurraydesign.com/

In my opinion probably the best design work ive seen in ireland.

Outstanding, i always say, that kind of eye for design cant be thought

cormee

techfeen wrote: »

im delighted with the feedback and help but i just found it a bit unfair to told im fleecing people considering i charged 300 euro for those sites. Im just out of college and trying to better my trade just like most of ye here at one stage

If that's the case I was probably a bit harsh on you, sorry.

However everything I said about your sites is true - they fail on every imaginable level. You are not capable, at present, of producing viable commercial sites, yet that is a service you seem to be offering - and that's misleading.

techfeen

thank you for your feedback

MrPicante

Yes, they are necessary and point search engines to the post important text. Make the chnges as per above and impliment. Great onsite tool is woorank - google it and include your domain name - it's free - but i really don't know why

techfeen

Thanks dude, its nice to get some positive advice

karablack037

H1 tags are one of the most important part of SEO which is the header tag situated in body of a website. It can be termed as the most simple form of header found on a web page. Through h1 tags search engines come to know about the site content details. If its used in proper co-ordination with anchor text and title tag then you can even expect increased density of website traffic from major search engines like Yahoo, MSN and Google.

Although the feature of h1 tags is not new and is present since years, but from last few years its significance has grown due to increased demand by Google. It carries much more importance than keyword meta tag and description meta tag. The best position to place these H1 tags is at the header situated above the content. Experts recommend to exclude the HREF links from the tag. When you keep a link in h1 tag, it gives the impression to the search engines that the linked web page is more important rather than the present page.

market myself online

Groinshot wrote: »

Don't mean to derail, but what software can check for keywords?

Market Samurai

market myself online

cormee wrote: »

In all fairness, how in God's name can you offer, with a clear conscience, web design services if you don't know the basics of SEO and CSS.

Some poor gullible bastard is going to pour a pot of money into getting a site off you and it's going to be crap.

Focus on what you can do - web design is clearly not one of those things.

Interesting ethical dilemma: should one offer a service/product at a high price if it knowingly does not provide optimal functionality. Technically the market will ultimately decide the outcome, if people become dissatisfied they will ditch the product and seal its fate. Are you fleecing people, well thats a subjective question. It all depends on how people feel at any given time.

e.g customer starts off wanting a website because his friend has one, customer gets a website just as he wanted from company, he is happy. Website brought value to his world at an agreed cost. Customer then begins to realise that what he originally wanted is not what he actually needs, begins to feel peeved, suddenly the asset loses value in his mind and he believes he has been fleeced.

An analogy is: you go out and buy food from a supermarket, this food goes off before you even get it home. The next day you go to another supermarket and find the prices are dramatically lower, and the food is better quality. You just dont go back to the first supermarket and write off the money lost.

Now the intelligent business predicts this devaluation and tries to set certain standards of quality, educates itself on the industry best practices and also informs the customer of potential limitations to expectations.

In this particular case I have experience with similar situations. But there are upsides to paying over the odds for a sub standard seo website.

1. the customer learns to do his due diligence in future.
2. The percentage effect of onpage optimisation is limited, I know I have been flamed on here before for making these sorts of comments, but it is pretty simple to see for any experienced SEO that at least 40% of ranking comes directly from off page links, and it is even possible to rank with just a title tag

Read this for more information (although I still think that some of their thinking is flawed regarding Google penalties).

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/perfecting-keyword-targeting-on-page-optimization

murphaph

techfeen you should read up on CSS. You are really producing web sites from the 1990s mate. The HTML tags should almost never be used for presentation, leaving all that to CSS. Your sites will be more maintainable and clients will appreciate you being able to quickly change something for them etc.

w3schools or Tizag are great for learning.

Best of luck