“My site doesn’t show up in Google when people type (specific words). Why not?”

Matt Cutts is Google’s ‘main man’ when it comes to SEO.  Cutts is a senior Google employee who specializes in the quality of search results at Google.   In this video, Cutts answers the question, “How can I rank higher in Google’s results?”:

A system like WordPress makes it very easy to edit your site’s content, and therefore follow Cutts’ advice.

Here is an example for a client of ours, who is a Personal Trainer focusing on the Abbotsford and Vancouver markets.    The client’s goal was to rank high for such phrases as “Abbotsford Personal Trainer”, “Abbotsford Boot camp”, and others.

• We recommended the client add their key phrases to the titles and text on the homepage of their website.   It is important that the keywords appear in the natural context of the content.
• We recommended the client have a reasonable amount of content on the homepage itself – for search engine purposes. The content should be written with the SEO/search engine goals in mind.

Further recommendations included adding additional content to the site, for example:

• Creating a Blog component to the site, where the client can post fitness tips, etc. That type of regularly updated content is excellent for SEO, and WordPress allows you to add such content very easily.
• Adding media, such as video, to the site will help as well. Uploading video YouTube and adding descriptive text containing your keywords will also help with SEO.
• Newsletter – by starting a newsletter containing articles and content relevant to your niche, you will drive traffic to the site as well.

But, there are things you can do to discourage or minimize theft of images on your site.  Here are a few of the most common:

Disable Right Click: Using JavaScript to disable right click on your site is a fairly simple thing you can do to thwart off novice users and prevent them from using the “Save Image As” feature of their browser to take your images.   Here is a simple tutorial showing you how to disable right click.  Keep in mind, with this solution, you are also disabling right click features such as Print, Bookmark, etc.  So there is a bit of a price.

Use Watermarks: Adding watermarks to your images is an effective approach for protecting images.  Of course, you will be distorting your original images when you do this, but if this acceptable for you, then this is often a good solution.  And because the source file itself is watermarked, there is absolutely no way the user can obtain the original image.  You can use Photoshop or your other preferred graphics editing software to add watermarks to your images.  There are also online watermarking services you can try.

Slice your Images: Slicing your images is another very effective image protection method for your website.   Using image editing software like Adobe Fireworks, you can slice your images into multiple “pieces”, then re-assemble them in your pages.  This requires a bit of work on your part, and your particular site might not be suitable for this approach.  For example, a photo gallery script might not allow or properly support this method.

Do you have another idea or suggestion?  Please leave a comment and let us know.