SEO for VO Sites

[Julie Williams]

How can we get better showing for our individual VO sites in search engines?

[KaraEdwards]

Good question...to add to it...

Does website optimization make a difference...and can you explain what that entails?

[Grant Holmes]

Otay!!! I think this goes under the heading, "Be careful what you ask for"...

Thank you Julie for your trust and confidence!

Two great questions. I'll attack them as I see 'em.

1st a little history: Know that SEO (Search Engine Optimization) evolved when Google/et al decided to tighten the rules years ago after everyone started doing really dumb (but effective then) stuff to get good search engine rankings. (like burying 20-200 in the KEYWORDS META TAG, then stuffing the DESCRIPTION META TAG, then stuffing those same keywords in white text on white background, just to get good rankings)(BTW, most all SE's now either ignore or penalize you for that kind of stuff.

Then they got smart and change the rules often enough that getting REALLY GOOD at SEO marketing requires an almost full-time effort on the part of a really specialized web-master. So now we have SEO specialists. The problem is that to really get high rankings on more generic terms like, "Voice Over Artist" is incredibly hard. Sages like Julie or others with a deep history of VO work, being quoted in other websites, writing articles that are posted on line all do a great deal to raise those scores.

Those of us that are newer to the game have a steeper hill to climb. However, I think we need to be honest in what we're trying to achieve. Unless you have a history like mentioned above AND can spend up to $1000/month on a specialized SEO firm, you will likely NOT EVER show up if I enter "Voice Talent" in a search engine. But do you really need that to be successfull and attract business? Probably not.

Again, what is your goal? My goal is to be found by somebody that enters, "Grant Holmes" or "grant voice over" or "grant holmes voice talent". They heard at a chamber luncheon that I did something connected with voice work, or they got my card three months ago and lost it and that's all they remember, etc. I want THOSE people to find me!!

So how do I do that?

Start with everything simple. Make sure your PAGE has a relevant title. In fact, most SEO stuff is about relevance. If you look at your home page and the title (at the top left of the browser) says: Home Page" or "Index" or "Page one" fire your web master NOW, they are likely using a page generation program like Front Page and no nothing about web design (Ask Colin Campbell about that one). The page title should say something like: Colin Campbell, Voice over Talent

You've already told the search engine what this page is about (or should be). Now we get into the META TAGs. Those are text elements in your page code that the normal browser window will not show, it's "behind the scenes". Many people don't know they exist. The two most important are the KEYWORD and DESCRIPTION meta tags.

On my Voice Over page, , over in the blank black area under my picture on the right, RIGHT-Click your mouse. Depending on your broswer, you'll see something like, "View source" or similar. Click on that and you will see ALL the HTML code that it takes to produce that page. Scroll down a bit and look for the META TAGS. You'll see many, but look for the two above and see how they are built.

Make sure your site has at least these two META TAG elements in every page. If you tool around my site, you'll notice they change slightly here and there, depending on the page topic.

And that's the next point. Many SE's use page text to help in the ranking.

The text in your page must support the arguments you've made above. Say I did everything right above, but all you see on my page is text about Bass Fishing, the SE will have a relevance issue, make sense? Common SE rules have been 300-500 (as high as 800) words with about a 7-10% weight on keywords. You cannot build a page effectively for 20 different keywords. The page will be stupid to read. Build for 2-3. Again, read the text on my Voice Over Talent page. You'll see specific Voice Over related words and phrases. I even got things like "Accents" in there.

Now we get to linking. In the SE world, linking is very important. You may see sites that have links pages. These are pretty much ineffective as are "Link Farms" that do nothing but link OUT.

You are looking for Links IN to your website. You'll notice above that anywhere I've referenced "Voice over", "Voice over artist" or other specific words, I've made them links to my web page. Is this a pain in the keister? Yup. But everywhere I've used MY keywords, I've linked them to my site. This tells a search engine that THIS (forum) page says my site page is about the exact keywords that I've used in my TITLE, my META DESCRIPTION, my META KEYWORDS and the text in my page. This page (on my website) MUST be about Voice Over Talent named Grant Holmes!!!

The more of these kinds of links I can get to my PAGE the better. Notice that the actual LINK words are the words that link to my site. If I just linked the words, "Go to my site", that's nice, but doesn't help. It says NOTHING about what my site is about.

Notice also that in my signature on this forum (and that other one) My sig file contains my keyword and they are a link. Every forum posting I make here and there is more fuel on the fire that tells search engines that's who I am. Or more exactly that's what that web page is about.

So Kara, Does SEO work? It's better than NOT doing it!! But, realize the difference between somebody finding me in a general "Voice Talent" search and a specific "Grant Holmes, Voice talent" search is HUGE!

One last caveat. I had a full-time graphics/branding/web design company for over five years. I set it aside to pursue different projects and am now coming back towards doing more sites. The point is that I will readily admit to knowing about 80% of current SEO technology. SOMEBODY out there will know more. But I also guarantee you that the 80% you learned a bit about above will help you greatly. The last 20% may not be financially worth pursuing. One place to get great SEO help is by getting this newsletter. I've discontinued getting it lately. It's really for those that pursue SEO work, but does have great tid-bits here and there.

Hope this helps!![/url]

[Julie Williams]

1) Does this mean that if we have links to our site in signatures, on all sorts of sites, etc. that every time we post, we're increasing our SEO?

2) How much value does having www.voice-overs.com help me? People do find me on the net all the time.

3) Perhaps this forum should have been put on another "site" rather than my existing URL www.voice-overs.com?

4) How did you link words to your site on your reply? I see the URL button above, but it doesn't pull up any dialog box to add a URL in it.

No, I won't move it now...just a thought for future!

[Grant Holmes]

To Julie's questions:
1) ANY "quality" link from a relevant source is helpful. Let's say Joe Smith's buddy in Nashville lists Joe as an entertainer on their "Entertainer" website and the actual link says, "Joe Smith- Real Good Singer", but links to Joe's VO page- and Joe IS a VO talent. While I suppose getting a link is better than not having a link, this really doesn't help. ESPECIALLY when compared to a correctly built link.

Therefore, whenever you get quoted, write an article, etc. ALWAYS ask them to use "this Link", then give them a correctly built link. I can't show it here in the forum as the software strips the code out. Sorry! But it's the point that you get the URL Anchor tag to the page, then the TEXT that you click on should reflect your keywords.
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2) Not really. You're asking if your web site helps your web site. Links within a domain do not score highly if at all. This does get into the area of SEO that I'm not as familiar with.
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3) Yup. Using a totally different Domain/URL would've helped YOU/your web site. For the rest of us, there is no difference.
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4) Do you mean in my SIG file, or in the post answer?
SIG file... just use the forum nomenclature [ URL=xxxx ] spaces added here to not get it stripped. At that "other" forum, you can use a normal anchor tag. I have no clue what the difference is.

In the post, is really the same. In the posts though, you MUST put the equals sign in the opening URL bracket. the button does NOT do that.

[Lee Gordon]

I just changed my sig line from one of my favorite 3 Stooges quotes to a link to my website. No sense letting all this posting go to waste, although sig lines don't always get crawled by the search engines.

A couple of thoughts on SEO. In my Keyword metatags I generally just list keywords one after the other (all in lower case and separated by commas, of course). But in my Description metatags I may list those same keywords but I first include descriptive sentences using proper capitalization and punctuation.

It is also important to include the words you hope the search engines will use to find you as ordinary text that appears on your page. But it can't be displayed as a graphic or part of a Flash animation. It needs to be in the form of actual text. This is virtually the only thing that Google indexes.
Google ignores Keyword and Description metatags, although Yahoo and Microsoft do take them into consideration.

It's also a good idea to not be too cryptic in naming the pictures you include on your web pages because Google treats those file names almost like text.

[Grant Holmes]

Lee,

Thanks for the great points you make.

Keywords are listed as you say, something like this...
"your name,microphone,microphone talker,motivated talker" no spaces between the commas, but you do separate the words inside the commas, and no CAPS needed.

The Description however is what will show up when you do a search and the engine shows a line of text. Generally, that's the line that shows. So, normally, it's a good idea to use contact information like your phone number if you want it seen.

And the "Picture Naming" thing Lee describes is called an ALT tag. It's part of the <IMG> or image tag. We often name images something like, "BigPicofmetalkingingstudio003b.jpg". Try to give the image itself a better name, "Lee_at_Mic.jpg" and then make sure your ALT tag says something intelligent also. Many HTML coding programs will just automatically pick up the image name for the ALT tag. All you have to do is replace that text.

[bobbin beam]

This is an excellent thread. Thanks for the information, Grant.

[JayT]

I think to help all you guys would be to add vBSEO to these forums. This software is phenomenal in increasing traffic to the forums. All content is indexed extremely better and faster.

Julie if you are interested in increasing traffic, then you will need this.