You might recognize the title (above) from the chorus of one of Phish's most popular songs, Reba. If so, good on ya! That's where it comes from... but what's it doing in the JLB blog?
Actually bag it, tag it and sell it have a lot to do with Search Engine Optimization (SEO); or at least a lot more to do with it than you might think.
Consider...
BAG IT: When you're putting together the content for your website, you want to give the text your full attention. For now, Google, Yahoo and MSN Live give the most weight to your site's textual content. The actual words on your pages mean more to the search engines than ever before.
Bottom line: Content is king. You better have a good handle on your company's messaging when you get ready to fill your website pages with words. Even more -- you need to have a solid understanding about how folks will be searching for the services that your business offers. You do want them to find you, right?
Bag it up.
TAG IT: Once you've got the right words on the page, you need some solid SEO coding. That's where tagging comes along.
I'm not just talking about meta tags. A lot of you already know, the two most reknown meta tags are your keyword tag and your description tag. Those two still serve a purpose, although judging from today's search engine spiders, the meta keywords and the meta description receive far less weight than ever before.
But the tags I'm talking about are the all-important headline tags... your <h1> tag and your multiple <h2> and <h3> tags. These tags are part of the invisible code that makes up the infrastructure of your website's pages. It's behind the scenes, guiding the search engine spiders, telling them what pieces of content you think are more valuable and important, and ultimately, helping your customers find you.
SELL IT: Maybe not to the butcher in the store, but you do want somebody to buy, right?
Once you've crafted clever copy and you (or your favorite web firm) have given that copy some tenacious tagging, you're ready to take your message live to the Web and to your (potential) customers. It's time to sell your products or services to a captive audience. And what better way to get and hold their attention than by serving up pages of content that meets exactly what they were looking for?
Is there more to Search Engine Optimization? Yes. A lot more.
But remember, you've got to start with a solid content and coding base. The more accessible your site's pages, then eventually the more germane traffic you receive, and hopefully the more product and/or service you can sell. That type of success might just have you bouncing round the room!