Advertisers take some liberties with the language all the time.  For example, I frequently break the rules by beginning a sentence with the word “but.” We all know the rule about not starting a sentence with a conjunction, so I don’t know if this makes me look ignorant. But I get tired of starting with the word “however.”

The Dreaded Dangling Participle Mistake

This one causes a lot of confusion.  It can also be funny. Here is an example of a dangling participle:

Driving down the road, the flowers were beautiful.

What?  Are the flowers driving down the road?   This is a classic example of a dangling participle.  A dangling participle is a modifer that attaches itself to a word for which it was not intended.  The modifier “beautiful” was a modifier that was intended to modify the subject “flowers,” but the word “driving” seems to be modifying the subject.  The culprit here is faulty word order. The modifier “beautiful” is left dangling because it appears to be attached to nothing.

Here’s another classic example:

I saw the mailman peeking through the window.

Is the mailman peeking through the window?  Probably not.  My intention was to say that I was peeking through the window when I saw the mailman. To avoid this error, be certain that your opening phrase modifies whatever comes immediately afterword in the sentence.  Check your work to see if the modifiers you use will modify the subject.

Stay tuned for more dumb grammar mistakes.

Incoming search terms:

• grammatical errors on websites
• websites with grammar mistakes
• websites with grammar errors
• grammar errors on websites
• dumb grammar mistakes
• websites with grammatical errors
• website with grammar errors
• rachelle anselmi
• grammer mistakes on websites
• grammar mistakes on websites

Possibly related

1. rulEs FOR ProPer caPitaliZation.
2. Getting your posts indexed.
3. Does size matter?

Ernest Hemingway (when he still had a head) bet a guy he met in a bar that he could write a compelling story with just six words. The bar patron took him up on it. Ernest won the bet. Here is the story:

“Baby shoes for sale. Never worn.”

Most people would see a big story in those few words. Unfortunately, search engines wouldn’t be able to figure out what the story is about. Or, perhaps they think that there is not enough content in the story to make it worthwhile. Some folks say that 250 words is adequate. Maybe this is true. I think 500 words is probably better. It’s hard to fit much content into 250 words, but if your post is correctly designed, it will probably be enough. Before you start groaning, do a quick word count of one of your posts. You will see that 250 words is not very much writing. (The post you are now reading has over 1400 words.) Now, if you are using the post to promote an expensive product, or an unusual product, you will have to write much more copy than that. It might take more to explain the product, add testimonials, and/or establish value.

Google is getting better at looking for good, fresh, authoritative content. If you are just writing a couple of sentences per post, Google will think your site is junk. If that is all you are doing, your site will eventually become junk.

Content is king. If you knew nothing about Google or search engines, and you offered more and better content than your competitors, eventually you would probably outrank them in Google.

Proper use of photos

Photos do add value to visitors, and help with conversion rates. They also have some value with Google. However, spammers have stuffed so many tag words on to them, that photos have become deprecated by Google. This means that they do not carry as much weight with search engines as they used to.  However, they are still very important.

When using photos, pay special attention to alt tags. Search engines can read these. These tags can also be read by visitors when they hold the mouse over the photo. Here are some rules for using photos:

• Make certain that your photo tags reflect the content of the picture.
• Don’t write paragraphs for photo tags or try to stuff too many keywords in them.
• Try to incorporate at least some of your keywords into your tags. If your post about an Eden Prairie town home, for example, and all of your tags just say things like “dining room,” “kitchen,” or “living room.” your photos won’t add any value as far as search engines go. You might want to include “Eden Prairie” or “townhome” in the photo descriptions here and there. Also, Google can recognize synonyms. For the word “real estate” you could also substitute words, like “house” or “property.”
• Don’t be repetitive with your photo tags. Try to make each one at least slightly unique. If you say “Eden Prairie real estate” in every photo tag for several photos, Google will consider that to be “spam.”
• Keep in mind that those horrid fish-eyed video tours have limited search engine value. If you are including a property in a post, you would be better served by several good photos with a variety of good tags.

When using photos, pay special attention to “ALT” tags (alternative text.)

Title (meta) tags

The post’s title tag is the most important piece of your post as far as Google is concerned. This is not the title that the visitors read at the top of your post, by the way. This is the tag that is seen as the headline for your search results in Google. Google will parse out words from the title. It is also seen on the very top bar of the browser when viewing the page. On your WordPress, this field says “Title tag- optional.” Do not regard this as “optional.” If you do not fill this out, WordPress will just use the h1 headline that the visitor sees at the heading of your post. Include your keyword phrase in the title tag, when possible.

Meta-tag descriptions

These have absolutely no search engine value. Most people believe in them, but I do not. If you do not specify a meta tag, Google will pick what it wants for a description of the results from text in the post that most closely matches the search terms that the visitor has googled. I know many people still think they are important.

Keyword meta tags

These have absolutely no value, either. Google is pretty smart at figuring out what your page is about, and it doesn’t pay any attention to any keyword meta tags.

URLS or slugs/permalink

The words in your permalink (url for your post) have some SEO value. If you are promoting an Eden Prairie townhome on your post, you may want to include related words in the url. WordPress 2.5 will automatically put hyphens between the words in your permalinks. Do not replace them with any other special characters. Hyphens are the only special characters that you should use. Keep your urls relatively short. If your WordPress website is not displaying permalinks correctly, format the permalink structure with this custom format:

/%postname%/

If you have an AgentBlogBuzz.com site, this is already taken care of for you.

Stay focused

Try to concentrate on just one subject or idea for your post. Target a key phrase, but also use plenty of synonyms in the post. Google likes synonyms. If you use them, you may still find yourself ranking for additional, unexpected search terms.

Don’t over-optimize

You might want to include “Eden Prairie townhome” in the url and Title tag, and an occasional photo tag, but if you include those words in every heading, underline them, bold them, or italicize them every time they are used, Google may get irritated with you.

Good keyword density is about 2-3%, but don’t worry too much about that. If you mention your keyword phrase about once per every large paragraph, it should be about right.

All real estate is local

If you are trying to optimize your post for “real estate inspections” you will be competing with every home inspection company in the world, and you will never be found. If you say “Minneapolis real estate inspections,” you might have better luck. Most Google visitors will include some sort of geographic descriptor when doing a real estate search.

Generally, your posts should target a community, something about real estate, or both. However, you do not have to make every post relevant to your business. It’s OK to drift off topic on your blog about 10% of the time without doing any overall harm to your site. If you think you need to write a cute story about your kitten using the litter box, you certainly can. However, those particular posts will probably not show up in any search results that would be of any value for your business.

Link to other related pages on your site

This will also help Google to index the related pages.

Post frequently.

If you ignore your site, Google may start ignoring it too. It may not crawl it as frequently as before.

Big rule!

Make certain the title meta tags and urls are unique for each post!

Bigger rule!!

NO duplicate content! I don’t care if it is your own content, or someone authorized you to use theirs. If you duplicate material from your own site, your other site, or anyone else’s site, you may get banned by Google, and your site will be thrown into outer darkness, where there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth!

Don’t be afraid to post your listings in your blog

Some blog snobs think this is tacky. Who cares? Listings make excellent fodder for Google. However, make sure that you are not duplicating verbiage about your listing that was used elsewhere.  Any sort of real estate website should have some featured properties of some sort.

If you are in another type of business, write a blog post about every new product that comes through your shop door.

Final thoughts

Will every one of your posts rank in the first two pages? Hard to say, but if you follow these rules, many of your posts should rank for at least some key terms most of the time. The more you post, the better the results will be. The more overall content and authority your site has, the higher the individual posts will rank.

Sometimes you will write a great post, and you won’t be able to find it anywhere in Google. Sometimes you will write a crummy post, and you will show up in the number one slot in the search results. However, follow the rules and keep plugging away, and you will see most of your posts get some good ranking.

Possibly related

1. Does size matter?
2. Photo tag shortcuts.
3. SEO, SE Tags, and Selective Page Indexing

Next to run-on sentences, improper capitalization is the most common error that I encounter in the blogosphere.

If you travel back through the misty memories of your childhood, you might stumble upon a few things you remember learning in fifth or sixth grade. Here are some basic rules that you may have been given about caps:

• Always capitalize the first word word of a complete sentence. (Granted, marketers will take a lot of “poetic license” by creating taglines that are not complete sentences. Many are short sentence fragments. In those cases, the rules get very fuzzy. If sentence fragments are quoted within a complete sentence, rules still apply.)
• Capitalize the first word of a quoted sentence within a sentence. “My what a big post you have!” she exclaimed. “We think it needs some serious editing.”
• Do not cap the first letter within quotation marks if it does not begin the first sentence. “What we need right now,” she continued, “is a big red pen.”
• Cap the letter I when it is used as a personal pronoun. Duh!
• Cap the first letter of a question found within a sentence. The current fuel crisis presents us with a serious question, Are we ever going to think of alternatives to fossil fuel?
• Cap the first letter of a title when it is used in conjunction with a name or group of people. Even Senator White has some serious misgivings about the Republican Party platform. Always capitalize a title if it is used in direct statement to the person holding the Title. “The budget proposal, Governor, must be revamped.”
  
• Do not capitalize the first letter of a title if it is not make specific reference to a person or groups. The president was a veteran; the senator was not.
  
• Do not capitalize the names of the seasons.
• Capitalize the days of the week, months of the year, and all holidays.
• Capitalize compass points (north, south, east, west) only when they apply to a geographic place. She was born in the South. Do not capitalize them if they apply to a direction. They drove north for the event.
• What about the titles of plays, books, magazines, movies, etc? Cap the first and last words, plus every other word except for articles (the, an, a) or prepositions (by, to, with) and conjunctions (but, and, or.) “I‘m Singin’ in the Rain!“
• Cap a noun that is not usually capitalized if it is used as part of a proper name. Let’s go see Aunt Sally.

• Capitalize all proper names. Capitalize the names of people, places, events, organizations, eras, buildings, deities, ethnic groups, military titles, religious titles, awards, specific names of boats or ships, (i.e. HMS Pinafore), names of religious texts (i.e. Bible, Talmud), noble/royal titles, and religious denominations.
• Cap all scientific classifications all the way down to, but not including genus.

Had enough?

personally, i think that caps are not necessary to convey information or share ideas. do you think text-messaging, instant messaging, and hasty emails will eventually cause caps to become dropped? i certainly hope so. maybe all of the capping errors you see on the internet will degrade the language to the point where caps are just dropped because nobody remembers how to use them properly. perhaps we would need a larger period mark so we would not accidentally run sentences together when reading them.

Caps and Title Tags

What about your page title tags? This is where the “rubber meets the road.” A title tag is NOT the headline or title that the visitor sees. A title tag is the heading that shows up in the Google search results. My personal opinion is that this is a good place to take some liberties with the rules. Sometimes I use all lower-case letters in the title tag to make it stand out on the search results page. The title “arkansas real estate for sale” will stand out when placed on the same page with other nine other results with the title tag “Arkansas Real Estate for Sale.” However, it might give the impression that you are semi-literate or just plain careless. I have arguments with myself about this issue. (The purpose of the title tag is to attract attention to Google users without making a bad impression.) They never get resolved, so will do it both ways, depending upon my mood. However, if you are going to use caps at all in the title tag, keep reading.

CAPPING EVERY LETTER IN EVERY WORD IS OBNOXIOUS.

There are three conventional ways to use caps in a title or title tag on the internet:

Capitalize the first letter of EVERY word in the title. Search For Missouri Homes. I will not say that this is proper English, but it is common and accepted. Most article submission sites will accept this method for use in the title.

The traditional method of capping every word in the sentence except articles, conjunctions, and prepositions. This is the format that was taught to you in fifth grade. Find Homes and Real Estate for Sale.

Simply writing the title as a sentence, applying the same rules for caps that you would use for a regular sentence in any other part of the body of the post. Find homes and real estate for sale. If you used this method on the title of a college term paper, your grade might suffer. It certainly is not correct. However, you can certainly do it on the internet. After all, it is your site. If you look at search results that use this method, they don’t look especially out of place. If you choose to use this in header titles or sub-titles, be consistent throughout the site. If you don’t your site will look slap-happy, and the reader will think you don’t know what you are doing.

Which method do you prefer? Whichever you choose, use it consistently through the whole title tag. Do not do something like this: Find Real estate and homes For Sale on the internet.

Incoming search terms:

• are taglines capitalized
• tagline capitalization
• should tag lines be capitalized?
• title tag capitalization
• should you capitalize all the words in a tag line
• rules on tagline all caps?
• is a tag line capitalized
• improper to capitalize every word
• first grade story with improper capitalization
• do you have to capitalize a tagline

Possibly related

1. Really dumb grammar mistakes. (Part 1)
2. Getting your posts indexed.
3. SEO, SE Tags, and Selective Page Indexing