Q: What is your opinion on hyphenated domains that contain the main keyword you are optimizing for, i.e. www.online-education-school.com (just as a sample)?
A: It looks kinda spammy to me. Personally I wouldn’t do register such domains.
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Q: Can I submit an XML feed of all my web pages to Google?
A: (UPDATE) Yes, Google now has a service called Google Sitemaps, where you can submit an XML feed free of charge. Further info about it is available at: http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/050602-195224 and https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/docs/en/faq.html. If you have an online store, Google also accepts an XML feed of your product catalog for their Froogle shopping engine. That’s also free of charge. Further info about that is available at:
http://froogle.google.com/froogle/merchants.html#feed
and
http://www.insideoutmarketing.com/index.php?p=pages&pid=17
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Q: How do you obtain your site’s Google rankings for a list of keywords?
A: You can use the Google API (http://www.google.com/apis/) for that. Or you could use this free tool to monitor rankings:
http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/keywords/
which uses the Google API.
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Q: You covered a lot of material on optimizing for Google, but what about optimizing for Google Images?
A: Optimizing for Google Images, the image search engine at http://images.google.com, involves two things. First, make the image names have good keywords in them, separated by hyphens. Not too long though. Do keyword research to identify the best keywords to use. Second, make the content around the image and the alt tag for the image have good keywords in them. Before you begin optimizing, an important question to ask yourself is: Am I sure I’ll actually attract high-value customers through Google Images? It could be that you’ll end up getting plenty of traffic, but the conversion rate could be quite poor because they aren’t shopping for your product but instead just for an image of it.
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Q: Is it true that you should put JavaScript files in a separate directory and inhibit GoogleBot from searching it?
A: No, there is no harm in letting Googlebot access your JavaScripts.
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Q: What is a good KEI score?
A: A good Keyword Effectiveness Indicator score is one where the ratio of keyword popularity (number of searches) to competitiveness (number of matching pages) is in the triple digits or greater. Bear in mind though that a KEI score is only a rough indicator of a good search term to target. Even if the number of matches returned by Google or Yahoo is small, a large percentage of the matching pages could have been professionally optimized, and in such situations, breaking into the top 10 could be quite difficult.
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Q: Would a site with subdomains share that site’s PageRank, or does each subdomain URL count as a separate URL?
A: Each URL has its own PageRank score, regardless of whether it is within the same domain or not.
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Q: If the name of my website is XYZ, What is the best title to put for my About Us page? “XYZ-About Us” or “About us”?
A: Neither, actually, unless XYZ is something a popular search term with your target audience. After all, no one is going to type in “about us” into a search engine. So a more descriptive, keyword-rich title would be called for here. For example, if XYZ is a widget manufacturer, then a title of “About the Widget Manufacturers at XYZ” would be appropriate.
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Q: Is once a month too often to resubmit your site to Open Directory)?
A: Yes. Resubmitting will probably only hurt your chances of getting your listing approved. If it’s been a while and you’re getting worried, first check for discussion of your submission at the DMOZ Resource Zone (http://www.resource-zone.com). If several months have passed, then consider politely emailing the editor of the category you submitted to (check the bottom of the relevant category page in the Google Directory for a link to the editor’s profile).
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Q: Are there any rules about the number of characters/words that should be used in meta keywords and the meta description?
A: No, the search engines have not published any rules about length of meta tags. Personally, I’d suggest restricting the meta keywords to no more than a dozen key phrases, and the meta description to no more than 30 words. Also, don’t repeat the same meta tags across every page of your site. Make them unique and specifically relevant to the web page they are on.
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