The search engines love original content and the more the better. Having a blog, or a number of blogs, enables you to easily produce lots of content.

I use my blog to target the long tail key phrases that prospective customers search that need the products I sell. That brings us to the subject of this post, how to set up your titles and meta description.

Titles are the most important items when it comes to on-page optimization. Your title tag of each page should be the key phrase you are targeting with that page and that key phrase by itself. Don’t dilute it by adding your blog name or company name on the end of your title.

One of the next important items in on-page optimization is the Meta Description tag. Your Meta Description text needs to be different on each page. If the Meta Description of each page is not differnet Google can tag your pages as similar pages and in some cases put them in the supplemental index.

I have been working this month applying my list of 50 blog optimization tips I have completed over the last 6 months to my 4 blogs. I have had my coders develop a simple Title Optimization plugin that I am now using. In the process I also optimized the titles and Meta description for each type of page on my blog. The following is my results.

With the Title Optimization plugin installed this is the code I used to optimize my title and Meta description tags.

Code to Produce the Title Tag:

< ?php $sPageTitle = the_generated_title($company);
if($sPageTitle){
$sTitle = $sPageTitle;}
elseif(is_tag()){
$sTitle = showCurrentTag();}
else
$sTitle = get_bloginfo('name');?>
<title>< ?php print $sTitle;?></title>

Code to Produce the Meta Description:

< ?php $sSubTitle = theSubtitle();
if (is_archive() AND !is_category()){
$sDesc = $sTitle.' -- '.'The blog post(s) on this page are from '.$sTitle;
}elseif(is_single() AND $sSubTitle){
$sDesc = $sSubTitle.' -- '.head_meta_desc();
}else{
$sDesc = $sTitle.' -- '.head_meta_desc();}?>
<meta name="description" content="<?php print $sDesc;?>" />

The functions the_generated_title() and head_meta_desc() are located in the functions.php file that comes with WordPress 2.1. The functions have been modified so if you are having problems getting the Page Optimization plugin to work post in the comments and I will post the function code. The function theSubtitle() is in the Title Optimization plugin file (title-optimization.php).

The above code produces the following results in each of the differnet type of pages on this blog.

Blog Post Page:
http://seo.seocompany.ca/blog-titles/
<title>Blog Titles</title>
<meta name="description" content="Code to Setup Titles & Meta Descriptions -- How I Use the WordPress Page Optimization plugin to optimize my blog." />

Home Page:
http://seo.seocompany.ca/
<title>SEO Blog</title>
<meta name="description" content="SEO Blog -- Provides search engine marketing news, research, and tips that will increasing website traffic, conversions, and income." />

Category Page:
http://seo.seocompany.ca/category/blogging/
<title>Blogging</title>
<meta name="description" content="Blogging -- News, WordPress plugins, and how to optmiztion your blog for higher rankings. " />

Archive Page:
http://seo.seocompany.ca/2007/07/
<title>2007 July</title>
<meta name="description" content="2007 July -- The blog post(s) on this page are from 2007 July" />

Tag Cloud Page:
http://seo.seocompany.ca/tag-cloud/
<title>Tag Cloud</title>
<meta name="description" content="Tag Cloud -- The tag cloud page allows you to view pages of posts grouped by tag subjects." />

Tag Page:
http://seo.seocompany.ca/tag-cloud/matt-cutts-video/
<title>Matt Cutts Video</title>
<meta name="description" content="Matt Cutts Video -- Matt Cutts the head of Google spam department has made a number of informitive videos and posted them on YouTube." />

Blog Titles

There are several free public proxy servers and some paid ones which allows you to use their proxy server to connect to the internet. So once you send a request to your ISP for www.yahoo.com, it goes to your proxy provider (say, abc) from your ISP and thus Yahoo will think that abc is requesting the page (which is actually you). Sometimes in offices and universities certain websites are blocked using proxy rule, so this can be bypassed if you use a public/paid proxy server instead of the one provided by system administrator. You might need to use a proxy if you would like to check your pages for badware.

The proxy setup is slightly different on different version and make of browsers. I will cover the two most popular browsers of today- Firefox & Internet Explorer.

How to set up proxy in Internet Explorer 6/7

Step 1 — On the Tools menu in Internet Explorer, click Internet Options, click the Connections tab, and then click LAN Settings.
Step 2 — Under Proxy server, click to select the Use a proxy server for your LAN check box.
Step 3 — In the Address box, type the IP address of the proxy server. (e.g. proxy.abc.com or 202.188.17.24)
Step 4 — In the Port box, type the port number that is used by the proxy server for client connections (by default, 8080).
Step 5 — You can click to select the Bypass proxy server for local addresses check box if you do not want the proxy server computer to be used when you connect to a computer on the local network.
Step 6 — Click OK to close the LAN Settings dialog box.
Step 7 — Click OK again to close the Internet Options dialog box.

How to set up proxy in Firefox

Step 1 — On the Tools menu in Firefox, click Options, click on connection settings.
Step 2 — On Connection Settings window check the “Manual Proxy Configuration”. On the HTTP Proxy box type the IP address of the proxy server. (e.g. proxy.abc.com or 202.188.17.24)
Step 3 — In the Port box, type the port number that is used by the proxy server for client connections (by default, 8080).
Step 4 — To use the proxy for all protocols, check the option - “Use the proxy server for all protocols“

Gmail users have already been provided with Excel and Word files preview, both as a Google friendly document and HTML. This new inclusion of PowerPoint preview will enable Gmail to take an all out attack over the Office suits, right into their mail box.

Philipp Lensenn, although I thought a bit over ambitiously said in his speech that this new feature will allow the pc users to choose between Microsoft Office and similar suits and Gmail and give the users fewer reasons to ultimately buy Microsoft Office. Not really sure whether this comment will get Microsoft to worry to much about a Google counter, but enabling the users to use PowerPoint slides in their mailbox will certainly give Gmail a good pre-eminence over its competitors.

Gmail has now set this trait as its default application for using PowerPoint and other attuned files, after testing this suit for quite a while in Gmail. But Gmail can really come in action with this project if Google works with Sun’s OpenOffice.org to make this whole pack a web based costume of Office tools. Might be such a pack can then make them be somewhat eligible to defend themselves for their challenge thrown to Microsoft.

When a user zoom into an area, he will hear a sound which is tagged with that area. A user can hear the sounds of the savannah in Kenya, a sudden rain in the forest, an inexplicable spring chorus of peepers and loons or the bells of Notre dame de Paris. A very favorite picture of mine is a sound clip from Hawaii - an auditory journey, starting at a beach along the Maui coast, and descended below the surface into the depths of the sea before materializing to the shore. The sea throbs are with natural sounds as well.

The level can be depicted in the huge map section of Google Maps, where the sounds are played using an implanted audio player. A lot of people are benefited by this recently developed technology and they are really amazed with the performance boost and effectiveness of Google Earth with sound.

There is a restriction here which is quite interesting. Unlike lots of other libraries, Google will only scan those books which have approved in the copyright free zone of the unrestricted sphere of influence. A domain is that, which is by and large, offered as a full view form of Google Book search. Google Book Search is now released but only the beta version is currently accessible. It has almost the same options as the interface of Google, with the options being – Web, Images, Video, News, Maps etc. The options by which we can diverge between the two interfaces are: About Google Book Search, Book Search Blog and Information for Publishers.

Despite the fact of the press release of the library, Google declares that these books will be obtainable by the entire world as soon as possible. They are putting it out of their mind that Google China’s book search is censored in a manner that it shows only the books which are published in China.

DoubleClick, a site for digital advertising enables marketers, agencies and publishers to work together effectively and profit from their digital marketing investments. It provides high-quality graphical banners to its customers. It was expected that Google will be earning millions of dollars through this agreement. But the reality was a bit different. DoubleClick’s advertisements are often found flashy and most importantly irrelevant to the requirements. DoubleClick portrays everything that was considered incorrect with the internet by Page and Brin. This duo is the creator of the search page of Google which enables users to see the page which they visited yesterday but can’t remember it’s address now. According to them, DoubleClick’s works are turning the web site into an online version of ‘Forty- Second Street’.

But it’s a strange world we live in. Time is changing and people are changing too, and Brin would not have believed any of these following incidents in the 1990s for sure but these are happening.

“A framework will be provided to users allowing them to put horoscopes on Google’s own homepage”
“Human rights can be censored by restricting people in some countries from seeing search results.”
“Someone may purchase a video site where he/she had already produced his/her own video site.”
“Users will get the opportunity to download Real Player with the Google software”

If all these can happen, I will not be surprised if DoubleClick’s features will be considered effective and relevant in future. But till then, let’s hope for the best.

A translation of rebang was referred in the Googlified blog in a post made by Haochi. It suggests that the word “rebang” can be translated from Chinese to English as a phrase “Hot ranking”. The post also added that this translation should not be considered as a perfect one or not even a very good one, but it surely can give you an idea what this project can lead to.
The address www.google.com/rebang is at present redirecting people to this following address www.google.com/rebang/home. But the result of this redirection is nothing more than just “Not Found” and 404 error.

Although this is a disappointing redirection we can assume that Google is on their way to construct the domain. If all these assumptions, rumors and predictions turn into reality then we can say it is good news for the Google users staying in China.

The Blog Bar is available in both styles: horizontal and vertical. The same goes with the Video Bar and News Bar.

The feedbacks were carefully read and discussed, as the impact of the feedback is seen in the Google Blog Bar. The ability of selecting only the specified blogs is added to the service. This helps people to limit the postings to a specific subject and particular group of blogs. The SEW blog will be a good example for this.

UPDATE:
The post made here has inspired Matt Cutts to make his little bit of “Google Flair”, and he prefers calling these widgets as “spruce up a page”

Karl Ribas and Jim Boykin took the screenshots of the new Search format of Yahoo! Both of them gave the same opinion about that. They described that Yahoo is combining user experience and the search options within this new ‘Blue Bar’.

The first example shows vertical search options such as Images or Shopping posted as linked text over the left hand search box. The second example is quite different from the previous one. Here the text spots different Yahoo offerings such as MyYahoo or My Mail. The user not necessarily has to log in to his/her account in this example. In this case, search options can be attained through a drag down menu which is combined with the search button provided in the Blue Bar. One noticeable factor is, options are given in a drag down menu placed on the right side of the Blue Bar in both the examples.

This new design is lustrous and a pleasant change for Yahoo. The browser augmentation toolbar market will lose some of its search dependency due to the introduction of this new Blue Bar as this bar places some additional options within the browser window itself.
Preferably, it can be said that more and more Yahoo shortcuts would be available and additional vertical search would be obtained if the Blue Bar option is provided. It will provide users some additional free critical space in Yahoo’s results section enabling them to use more of sponsored search via Yahoo Search Marketing.