I came across a video on Twitter yesterday (thanks to user @mypluginplay) and after watching it I learned a few things about LinkedIn (a property where I have a profile but I haven't researched yet) that were definitely worthy of sharing.
You can change and thus optimize the public URL for your profile. I changed mine from my name to http://www.linkedin.com/in/websitemarketer Personally I would rather have both URLs but I like this a little better. NOTE: if anyone knows how to secure the second URL for the same profile (w/o creating a second profile) please let me know.
Where you add your website URL you can actually make a small change that allows significant customization (select the "Other" option where the link drop-down is shown). See the video for a far better example or go to my Web site marketer profile where instead of seeing "My Website", "My Blog", etc. in the list of "Websites" you will see some great customized titles that I created.
Here is the video on YouTube if you can't see it shown below; just don't click on the strange link in the YouTube description of the video - it is lame advertising.
Today at the SMX West conference, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft just announced a new tag that will have a major impact on reducing the amount of duplicate content issues found online and it will help website owners reclaim valuable link popularity.
In this article Canonical URL Links by WordPress specialist Joost de Valk he explains the tag and reasoning behind it. I will give a quick synopsis myself below but his article has some more detail if you need it.
These two URLs lead to the exact same page but the search engines interpret them as different URLs:
You see the information from the question mark onwards in URL #2 is actually just tracking information that was added to show that a person who visited the site arrived after clicking on an advertisement from "campaign1". Unfortunately, since search engines see these as different URLs the link popularity coming from a specific advertisement is placed on the campaign URL instead of the actual URL (#1); this is not a good situation because the more link popularity a link has the better chance it has of ranking in searches.
Today, the big three search engines announced they still see the URLs separately unless you place a new tag called the Canonical Tag (say that 10 times fast!) in the heading of the affected page. In the case of the example I used above the canonical tag would look like this:
What that tag says is the search engines should consider http://www.xyzname.com/company/ as the main address of this page. As a result, the link popularity for all variations of this URL will be consolidated to the canonical URL specified in the heading of the page.
Who is Affected by This News? This is amazing news for anyone using Pay Per Click marketing will be all over this as well as anyone with an advertisement such as a banner or text link where tracking intelligence has been appended to the URLs.
From a slightly different standpoint this has a great affect on anyone with a content management system (CMS) where two URL versions of a single page may have been indexed; the rewritten search engine friendly URL and the exposed database-driven URL. With this new tag it is entirely possible to retrieve some significant link popularity and substantially increase your rankings.
At least a few times a month I get asked various questions about why a search engine ranking looks the way it does.
For example, someone might ask me how they can influence the description and/or title that Google gave their website in their search engine ranking. But easily the most prominent question is "what are those links that show up under some #1 rankings? How can I get those?"
Well, I think it is time to introduce you to a great little video featuring Google's own Matt Cutts in November 2007. The video is an excellent section by section walkthrough of what you know as a search engine ranking but Google calls a snippet. Enjoy!
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 12:15 PM
There is one important factor to remember whenever you are involved in improving the organic rankings of a website, and that factor is time. One of the most common questions I receive as an SEO is “How long till I start to see results?” This article is dedicated to anyone who has ever asked that question.
It doesn’t matter what industry you are involved in, or what techniques you follow, in all cases you will be a prisoner of time. In the vast majority of cases search engine rankings don’t come over night.
Regardless of the scope of the SEO campaign you are undertaking, you will have to wait for results. It doesn’t matter if you are undertaking a massive link building & social media campaign combined with extreme content development – you will still have to wait for those results. Just how long you need to wait however, will depend on a large number of factors.
In this article I will discuss some of these factors and give a few scenarios to help you gauge how long you may need to wait to start seeing results.
Factors to Consider How long it will take for rankings starts with a few key factors:
How optimized is your site before SEO? If your established site has no optimization in place at all, and has navigation that is blocking search engine spiders, sometimes opening the site up can result in a rather quick turn-around for results.
How many inbound links does your site have? If you have an old site with no links this will add to the time you need to wait. If you have a number of links already, Google will probably be in to check out things within a week or so of updating.
How new is your website? A brand new site with no links has to wait. Google may find you, but probably not. If you do nothing, your site may never be indexed – you must get a few links, and an XML sitemap if you want to stand a chance with a new site. Click here for info on how to install and set up an XML site map.
How flexible is your site? If your site utilizes a content management system, how flexible is this system for customization? If your current back end will not allow for SEO based changes, this will drastically slow down your ranking progress.
How competitive is your target phrase? This is huge. The more competitive a target phrase is, the longer you will likely have to wait, and the more links, pages, and fresh content you will probably need. Picking a target phrase that has searches, but modest competition is your best bet to get started. As long as your “dream phrase” is relevant, you can go after the bigger fish once your site has some links, content, and has started to find its place on the map.
Is your site positioned to be able to compete? Take a look at the top 10 sites for your target phrase. If on average the ranking sites have 10,000 inbound links and 1000 plus pages, and your site has 7 links and 12 pages, you’re likely doomed. You don’t need to match the numbers of the top 10, but you do need to be in the ball park. If the top 10 is littered with all the big guys like Amazon, eBay, and the dreaded Wikipedia, you might just want to consider reevaluating your goals. If your site is not in a comparable position with the rest of the top 10 then you need to either step up your efforts in order to compete, or plan on waiting a very long time.
Get Google to Visit Your Site How long it takes to start seeing results starts with Google. Once Google spiders your site you will still have to wait for the updated cache to appear in Google’s index, and in most cases, you will have to wait longer still to see any impact in the search rankings.
In most cases getting Google to your site is relatively easy, but it can sometimes take a month or longer. Even a site with some inbound links and an XML sitemap, may have to wait a while.
Typically an established active website will seldom have to wait more than a month to get Google’s eyes; however if your site has been sitting stagnant for several years, it may take longer.
How Long Will it Take For Rankings? You now know some of the determining factors, but how long will it take for your site to see an improvement in its organic rankings? I really wish there was a solid answer to this question, but with such a vast array of variables there is no way to know for sure. I can say however, that from experience, the timelines below are fairly accurate.
Niche Industry A niche industry is represented by phrases that are relatively specific, such as “widgets Bellingham”. While they don’t require a geographic modifier, phrases focused on a very specific area often are considered niche. Phrases used for a niche site will also often return less than 100,000 results in a Google search. The top 10 ranking sites will also often have less than 100 inbound links each.
Timeline: - Brand New Site: Possibly as little as a few months - Established Site: Potentially it could literally be over night, but most likely around 6 weeks.
Medium Industry Medium Industry terms are slightly more general, but still include some kind of modifier, such as a state or color; “Washington Widgets” or “Blue Widgets”. These phrases often represent no more than a few million results in a typical Google search with the top 10 ranking sites having between 100-1000 inbound links.
Timeline: - Brand New Site: 6 months to a year - Established Site: 2-4 months
Highly Competitive Industry These pages are those with phrases that are rather broad and seldom have any modifiers, such as simply “widgets”. You will often find tens or even hundreds of millions of competing pages in Google for your target phrase. Often the links required for the top 10 will be in the thousands, or tens or thousands (sometimes even in the millions).
Timeline: - Brand New Site: Anywhere from 1 to 5 years - Established Site: Could be as long as a year or more
For a brand new site, starting with nothing, in most cases you will be looking at around a year before you start to see significant ranking changes. You may get the odd ranking here and there, and start to see some traffic, but for any phrases that are remotely competitive, it can take quite a while. Unless you have a very tight niche, expect to wait at least 6 months before you see any movement at all. This is not to say that you can’t get quick results, but in the majority of cases it is quite rare.
For more established sites, rankings tend to come much more quickly. One significant factor in determining time is links. If your established site has lots, but the site itself is simply lacking fundamental SEO or proper navigation, then you can sometimes see results rather quickly. If you have no links and need to build them, it significantly increases the wait time. Even for an established site, achieving links in a competitive industry can still take some time.
Rankings Are Taking Forever There are a number of reasons why your site may never achieve results. If you find that your campaign has been going on for a long time and you have seen no movement what-so-ever, it is possible that one of the following is hindering your efforts.
Spamming & Penalties In some cases your site may take forever to achieve rankings, or the rankings may never come at all. If your site has been previously penalized for spamming, you absolutely must clean up all traces of the past dirtiness.
Once the site is entirely cleaned up, then you can apply for re-inclusion. This is certainly no guarantee that Google will ever pay your site any attention again, but it’s the first step to the land of maybe.
Duplicate Content If your site has utilized mass amounts of duplicate content, chances are you will not ever see rankings until you replace it all with something original and meaningful. There is no “duplicate content” penalty per-se, but you are essentially penalizing yourself if you copy content. Google tends to look at the first instance it finds online for a piece of content as the official source (not always the case).
If you copy content that is already out there and indexed by Google, they will discount your content as it is already indexed somewhere else, and your site or page will simply not get any rankings for it – and rightfully so.
Links (or lack thereof) If your site has no links, you probably will not get any rankings, even after you are fully indexed. This is not always the case, I have seen sites rank well for various phrases with zero inbound links – but it is rare, and should not be relied on. Build up your links – period.
On the flip side of this, let’s say your site has thousands of links, but they are from free for all sites, link farms, or “bad neighborhoods”, and so on – they won’t help you. These links won’t necessarily hurt you, but will be essentially ignored. You need quality, relevant links.
Competition You just may be out of your league. If you have a small operation, and are competing for a major ultra competitive term, chances are you will never see the light of day. Not to say it is not possible, but if you are competing in a well established industry where literally 10’s of thousands of links are required, and your target phrase is experiencing millions of searches a month, you need to weigh your targets. Chances are your keywords need to be re-evaluated as your chances of success are slim.
Not Listening If your SEO gives you actionable recommendations, follow them. Recommendations are given for a reason, to help you achieve rankings. If you are not willing to implement what is suggested, then your campaign may go nowhere. I have seen websites fail to rank simply because clients ignored recommendations. Your SEO will not be able to help you if you refuse to implement their advice.
A Little Success Story I have seen rankings come literally within hours. It is very rare but it happens. In one specific example a blog post was put up on a very specific niche topic that had almost no coverage online. Google coincidently spidered the blog within an hour or so of posting, and within an hour from that, the blog post was #1 in the organic results for the most relevant phrase. The site saw a giant spike in traffic for the next couple days while the phrase was a hot topic. (The search phrase was very specific and localized: “ election results”). This shows that for a site with an established link base, and a good reputation in Google, rankings can sometimes come extremely quickly.
Regardless of industry and target phrases, you will have to wait for your search results. Just how long you will wait varies on far too many factors to give a solid number, but expect to wait for results anywhere from a few days to several years. It’s the best time frame I can give without knowing specific details of your site and project.
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 11:42 AM
In a world where more and more households are connected to the internet, bandwidth is becoming an issue and brownouts have been predicted to occur in the next few years. With the strain on the infrastructure of the internet this makes having an efficient, fast loading website all that much more important.
The bottom line for most site owners though, is not the efficiency of the internet as a whole, but rather the financial sustainability of their websites. While there are many ways to make a site perform better in terms of converting visitors, one of the simplest, and probably most important aspects is simply to reduce the load time of your website.
If your site suffers from poor performance you could be missing out not only on sales and average visitor time on site, but also search rankings. Below I will discuss some of the negative impacts a slow loading site may experience, as well as a few ways you can correct the issue. In some cases, correcting the problem will cost you only some time, although it has the potential to really pay off in the long run.
Negative Impacts of Long Load Times If your site takes too long to load this can have a number of negative effects including loss of sales, loss or rankings, and increased pay per click cost. It can even increase your hosting costs depending on the cause.
Loss of Sales Let’s pretend for a moment that search engines just didn’t exist and rankings didn’t matter. People are impatient - if your site takes too long to load, many potential customers will simply give up and go elsewhere.
Broadband connections are growing incredibly fast in the US; however, according to a study posted at FoxNews this past July, approximately 10% of Americans still have dial-up internet access. If your site loads slowly, you may be alienating 10% of your potential customers.
The last thing you want to do is frustrate your visitors. If you do this, you may drive them away, never to return. If you can provide a fast loading efficient website, you will increase the likelihood that your visitors will make a purchase, and return again in the future.
Increased Pay per Click Costs Only a few short months ago a post by Heather Lane at the Inside AdWords blog announced that landing page load times will affect a keyword’s quality score. The reason for this is quite simple: a fast loading website improves the end user experience. As a result, ads directing to a slow loading page will be given a lower quality score. This in turn will cause your keyword bids to be higher, costing you significantly on a per click basis.
Loss of Organic Rankings We know two things for a fact. Google factors in load times with AdWords, and Google focuses on an improved end user experience. As a result, I for one am convinced that a site’s load time does impact overall organic search rankings. While this is likely only a small piece of the very large algorithmic puzzle, it does play a part, and if you can speed up your site, you just may be able to move your rankings up a notch or two.
Speeding up your site is unlikely to move your site from page 8 all the way to page 1, but it may be enough to move up a few positions.
Increased Hosting Costs Assuming your load times are due to file size issues and not other server constraints, your hosting costs may be more than they need to be. This factor will vary a great deal based on the hosting company and the package you have chosen.
Many hosts now offer packages where a significant amount of bandwidth usage is included, resulting in a single flat monthly or annual rate. (LunarPages for example, has a $4.95 monthly plan with unlimited bandwidth per month.) If your hosting provider does put a limit on usage and you are using beyond the allocated max, you could be paying a fair bit in overage charges. If you fall into this category, optimizing your files to reduce bandwidth usages could save you a considerable amount of cash.
Issues and Fixes There are a number of issues that can cause a site to load slowly. Below I have noted a few items that are fairly common and can be relatively easily corrected.
Issue: Un-Optimized Images This is probably one of the biggest culprits out there impacting load time today. I have seen countless websites where image optimization is simply not done, resulting in significantly increased page load times. One of the biggest problems is when images are scaled down to fit the application.
Quite often webmasters will take a large image, and scale it down using the height and width attributes rather than physically resizing the image. What this does is then require the browser to load the full high resolution image, when it really only needs a fraction.
Let’s take this real world example. A client recently had a photo on their home page; the photo was 600 x 403 pixels, weighed in at 124.68 KB, and visually they had scaled the image to fit 473 x 317 pixels.
By resizing the original image to the desired dimensions, and then reducing the quality of the jpg to 70%, the end result was an image that looked identical on his website but weighed in at only 23 KB - that’s 101.68 KB smaller than the original. Using a simple filesize download calculator I found online, 101.68 KB would take 14 seconds to download using a 56 Kb modem, or about 2 seconds on your run of the mill broadband connection.
For broadband users 2 seconds may not seem like much, but remember, this is only for a single image. When you add up all other images and on-site components, the time can significantly add up.
Issue: Un-Optimized files Another way you can speed up your sites load time is to have clean HTML, CSS, and other included files. Remove extraneous code from your files, and use CSS wherever possible. Every piece of old html code adds up in size, even if it doesn’t impact the visual site itself. I have seen many cases where links have been removed but the code remains accidentally, leaving something like:
This code, while as tiny as it is, does contribute to an increase in load time (and in this specific example, could also be seen as spam by search engines).
If your site makes use of CSS, consider compressing it to save on load times. You can do this by grouping identical styles to save space. For instance,
p { font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:12px }
li { font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size:12px }
can be compressed by grouping these two styles, reducing the coding by half:
Again this may not seem like much, but when you add this up with all of the other little things, it can ultimately result in a significantly increased load time for the page as a whole.
Audio and video can also be compressed. If your site uses a fair bit of multimedia, see if you can compress these files a bit more than you have already. You may be able to save some load time here as well without impacting user experience.
Issue: Hosting Server It is possible that your site is perfect in every way, but the culprit is simply your web host. It does not necessarily mean that your host is slow, but if you are paying for an account on an old archaic computer with limited system resources servicing 1000 websites, this could seriously impact your site’s load time. If you have worked to ensure that the site is well optimized for efficiency and the load times are still extreme, you may need to upgrade your hosting account to one more suited for your business needs.
If your site is a fairly basic, such as a static 8 page html site, then a slow server may have little to no impact, but if your site requires extensive database queries and the help of an intensive content management system, and serves up tens of thousands of visitors a day, then you may need to switch to a higher end dedicated server. If you have found that your server is the only problem in your slow load times, contact your host to see what they can do for you.
Issue: HTTP Requests According to a post at the Yahoo Developer Blog, "80% of the end-user response time is spent on the front-end. Most of this time is tied up in downloading all the components in the page: images, style sheets, scripts, Flash, etc. Reducing the number of components in turn reduces the number of HTTP requests required to render the page. This is the key to faster pages."
The article discusses combining files in order to reduce the number of HTTP requests, largely by the use of CSS Sprites. They also discuss using image maps to combine multiple images, however, from an SEO perspective, this is not something that I would recommend as my experience has shown image-mapped links are not always followed by search engine spiders.
They go on to explain a vast number of rather technical aspects to speeding up a page. If you are a technical person capable of implementing advanced techniques, the Yahoo Developer Network is definitely something you should check out.
Load Time Tools Before you undergo any changes to your site to resolve the slow load times, I suggest first finding a tool and benchmarking your progress. Record how long your site takes to load, and then try again after you have made an effort to correct the problem.
There are a number of tools out there that can help you calculate your load times. One such tool is WebSiteOptimization.com. This site specializes in optimizing the performance of your site in order to decrease bandwidth and load times. They have created a very simple tool which will give you the load times for the individual components of your site, which can give you a good idea where to start.
Summary If you take a bit of time to speed up the load time for your website by optimizing your existing content and cleaning up your code, you may just find yourself making more sales. As an added bonus you may also find improved search engine rankings, which will then in turn increase your sales further. Depending on your hosting provider, you may even have a reduced monthly hosting bill. Decreasing the load time of your site is really win-win for everyone.
As the internet becomes more and more bandwidth intensive with an ever increasing stream of users and higher use applications, doing whatever we can do reduce the strain on the system will make for a faster internet for everyone. If every webpage on the internet could be reduced be even just 100 kb, the web would be a much faster place.
(How do you keep your site loading quickly? Post your comments on this article with your tips and tricks for reducing load time!)
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 2:55 PM
A few weeks ago I wrote about building your website from the ground up. This article did not dive into great detail on any specific topics, but rather touched on the key points you will want to address. In this article I will place most of the focus on the promotion aspect of this previous article.
While at times new websites can experience organic search rankings in a matter of months, for the most part, it can take well over a year before you start to see any progress, and that is if you start promoting right away!
SEO If your new website has not been properly optimized for the search engines, then this is a necessary first step you must take. Ensure that your new site has integrated the appropriate keywords into all the fundamental areas of the site. Without this critical step of optimizing your site, in many cases no level of promotion will help you get those search rankings.
Note: Extreme numbers of inbound links can sometimes cause an un-optimized site to rank, but an optimized website will drastically reduce the number of links needed, and its associated cost. This varies from industry to industry, but is true as a general rule.
Ideally the optimization of your site occurred during the planning and building stages, but if it did not be sure to get this completed as soon as possible.
Press Releases The first thing you should do when your site goes live is issue a press release. Be sure to include a link back to your website, preferably with your target phrase hyperlinked as well. Submit this press release to an aggregator such as PRWeb. This will help get the word out that your site is live, draw some attention from the public, and also get you that first valuable link to your website.
Search Engine Submission These days search engines will find your site on their own, and submitting to them is not necessary. If you feel you must submit your site to the engines, submit it only once and shortly after the site goes live.
In order to help the search engines fully spider your new site, the best thing you can do in terms of submissions, is to create and submit an XML sitemap. Submit this sitemap to your Google Webmaster Tools account, and also be sure to include a call to it within your robots.txt file by adding the following line including a complete path to your sitemap:
Sitemap: http://www.domain.com/sitemap.xml
There are many tools out there to help you build your xml sitemap. Google has placed a list of some of these tools on their "Third Party Programs" page.
Directory Submission Back in August I wrote about using Directory Submission to help build links. The general gist of it is to be sure that there is a high level of relevance in the directories you submit your site to, especially if it is a paid directory. Currently DMOZ still has a high level of value as it is seen as a strong authority at Google. Make the attempt to have your site listed here in the most relevant category possible.
Link Building There are a number of ways you can work to increase your back links. In July I wrote about 13 ways to help build links. Links are one of those strategic tools that will never be a bad investment. Today they play a significant role in search rankings for most industries, especially in Google. While the future will almost undoubtedly still see search value in links, even if that value declines, or disappears entirely, quality links can still help drive traffic as well, and a strong base of inbound links can deliver you customers well into the future.
Explore the different ways to build links to your site. A steady progressive increase in inbound links will help Google look positively in your direction. Do not be afraid of reciprocal links either. If you are trading with highly relevant websites to your industry, then you should have nothing to be afraid of.
Social Media Promotion largely consists of building links and becoming recognized by the search engines, but in order to help you build those links, getting your name and brand out there can really do wonders. By increasing awareness of your site and product, the public will often help create the buzz you need, and often, this can result in fresh links to your website.
To help get your site in the eyes of as many people as possible, take a look into Social Media and consider creating profiles on some of the popular platforms. This can include creating a YouTube account and uploading instructional, informational, or interesting product videos. You can set up a Facebook page, and work to build a community around your product. Create a profile page on Squidoo, MySpace, and Flickr, amongst many others.
These pages often act as backlinks to your site, and also help spread awareness. Be sure to keep your social endeavors updated regularly or any viewership you have will dwindle as people lose interest. If you are able to build a strong following, this can result in many individuals linking to your site and spreading the word, resulting in long term benefits for you and your site.
Your use of social media does not have to be exactly about your company. For instance, let’s say you sell cars. Your use of the social platform, while it may note your business, can focus on other car info including trivia, news, photos, etc. The key is to keep it relevant, not identical - you are not looking to create a mirror of your site.
Article Writing Write articles about the subject of your website and submit them to various services such as EzineArticles. Consider also writing for your own blog to help grow your site content. By writing and distributing relevant articles you can create a nice cushion of relevant incoming links. By writing articles that closely match the topic of your site, and including a link back to relevant content within your site, you can help out not only with search engine rankings, but by creating an extra traffic stream for your site
Pay Per Click While Pay Per Click (PPC) will not give you many long standing benefits, it can help you to start making sales immediately which in turn can give you the funds needed to promote your site via other means. If you need that immediate traffic, this is one way to get it, but at a cost, and as soon as you stop paying, your traffic stops, so it is far from a reliable long term means. In some industries however, it can pay off, so it is definitely worth considering.
Summary In general, reference your website everywhere possible. Get links from every relevant source you can think of, issue a press release, and get your site listed the key directories for your industry. The more eyes you can put your URL in front of and the more relevant sites you can get to link back to yours, the sooner you will start to see progress in the search engines.
For many industries it can literally take years to get those coveted first page results - in some industries it may be near impossible, but if you want a chance, you need to start promoting that new site of yours immediately.
Yesterday Google Webmaster Central posted a video response to numerous questions the department had received from webmasters. The following video addresses duplicate content, search engine friendly web design, spider blocking, and more.
June 30th 2008 was a day that Flash developers had been waiting for a long time; Google and Adobe had finally announced that Flash .swf files could be crawled by Google! In fact, the extensive news release from the Adobe Developer Center also stated that Yahoo would be incorporating similar technology in short order. When I read this news and the consequential articles from the web marketing community it became very clear that this update was a great step but far from the fix that some Flash developers are likely to pitch to their clients. As a result, I wanted to add my voice to the buzz on this topic and share with you my thoughts on how to optimize a site using Flash while considering the current updates.
What is Flash? Okay, lets get down to basics. To introduce and establish what Flash is all about I am going to fall back on Wikipedia for a concise description:
"Adobe Flash (previously called Shockwave Flash and Macromedia Flash) is a set of multimedia technologies developed and distributed by Adobe Systems and earlier by Macromedia. Since its introduction in 1996, Flash technology has become a popular method for adding animation and interactivity to web pages; Flash is commonly used to create animation, advertisements, and various web page components, to integrate video into web pages, and, more recently, to develop rich Internet applications." Source, Wikipedia
BEFORE: Search Engines Could Not Crawl Flash Up until recently the textual content found in .swf Flash files was, for all intents and purposes, just as unreadable for search engine spiders as the text in images; only HTML text on a page could be read and indexed by search engine spiders because they could not yet (and still cannot) conduct on-the-fly optical character recognition.
To explain this differently I think of the HTML that spiders can read like the braille-like feeling of running your finger over a letter written in ball point pen; you can feel the contour of writing. Whereas something unreadable like Flash or an image on a page is like running your fingers along a 4x6 picture of a road sign... you won't feel anything, so by the same token the text on that road sign cannot be read by a search engine spider.
NOW: Search Engines Can Crawl Text in Flash For the first time, on June 30th, 2008 Google announced it could accurately spider the textual content hidden within Flash files found on the Internet. This major announcement was enabled by a partnership between Adobe, Google and Yahoo where Adobe provided their proprietary Flash Player technology to the search engines so they could integrate it into their systems and successfully 'read' the content within Flash files. This technology has vast implications for Google's and soon Yahoo's indexes because, at least in Google's case, this allows the search engine to index the content within over 70.4 million Flash (SWF) files. That is a vast amount of content that was previously inaccessible to the search engines and the ability to access it could add a lot of value for search engine users.
For example, an inspiring and eloquent Flash site like Forests Forever could be indexed which would expose more viewers to a website that provides a wonderful introduction to the world's forests. Of course that is just one Flash site of many that will add value to search engines when indexed; it just happens to be one of my personal favourites.
Search Engine Optimization Now Possible with Flash The implementation of Flash crawling technology means that the text within Flash can now be indexed and links can be followed. Here are some examples of the basic optimization that is now possible within Flash:
Optimizing page content for specific keyphrase(s) to ensure a visiting search engine bot will correctly perceive the page's topic.
Using keywords within internal links to pass link juice from page to page; only applicable for sites where the Flash pages are broken down onto separate URLs.
Providing emphasis (bolding) to particular words may help to emphasize keyphrase(s); but I am reaching here... it is unknown if this new technology provides text-importance recognition.
The Limitations of Flash Search Engine Optimization Now that you have some idea of what can now be optimized for search engines here are a few pitfalls that still limit the search engine friendliness of Flash:
Single URL Flash Websites: Many websites I encounter still incorporate all of the website in a single Flash file; in other words as a user navigates the site they are still using the same URL but different pages appear. In such an instance the search engines will index the content and potentially drive traffic to the site but as Google cannot link to content within a Flash file all users will be sent to the beginning of the file. That type of indirect search result is likely to infuriate many searchers who have come to expect immediate results.
Here is a quote from Google's comment area on this topic:
"We’ve heard requests for deep linking (linking to specific content inside file) not just for Flash results, but also for other large documents and presentations. In the case of Flash, the ability to deep link will require additional functionality in Flash with which we integrate."
That last line is interesting because it leaves room for interpretation. Do they mean Adobe will have to add the "additional functionality" to Flash or that Google needs to beef up their indexing technology to take advantage of the existing Flash functionality? Perhaps some Flash gurus out there could weigh in on this one. It is definitely an ambiguous way for Google to answer the question.
If you need a work-around to deep-link single SWF files Adobe notes a solution: "you can create multiple HTML files that provide different variables to the SWF and start your application at the correct subsection. By creating multiple entry points, you can get the benefits of a site that is indexed as a suite of pages but still only need to manage one copy of your application."
Text in Images is Not Indexed: Many Flash websites inexplicably incorporate a great deal of textual content within images and currently search engines cannot index text in images; I expect that will remain true for at least another year or two. As a result, a Flash website that includes a vast amount of text within graphics will not see a noticeable benefit to this enhanced crawling technology.
Resource-File Based Content Not Indexed: I noted this in Google's comment area from their support team: "At this time, content loaded dynamically from resource files is not indexed. We’ve noted this feature request from several webmasters -- look for this in a near future update."
In addition, Google's news release announced the following limitations to Flash that Google expects to surmount soon (quoted from Google blog):
"Googlebot does not execute some types of JavaScript. So if your web page loads a Flash file via JavaScript, Google may not be aware of that Flash file, in which case it will not be indexed."
"We currently do not attach content from external resources that are loaded by your Flash files. If your Flash file loads an HTML file, an XML file, another SWF file, etc., Google will separately index that resource, but it will not yet be considered to be part of the content in your Flash file."
"While we are able to index Flash in almost all of the languages found on the web, currently there are difficulties with Flash content written in bidirectional languages. Until this is fixed, we will be unable to index Hebrew language or Arabic language content from Flash files."
Verdict: SEO for Flash is Still in Diapers It is wonderful news that Flash is becoming more search engine friendly and there is no question that the addition of previously unattainable Flash content to search engine indexes will prove valuable. But the fact of the matter is that at this moment I wouldn't dream of telling a client that Flash can be a competitive medium for search engine optimization. There are simply too many roadblocks that still exist and need to be addressed before a Flash website has any hope of competing with an HTML website on the basis of just search engine optimization. I do, however, see a couple exceptions to the rule:
At a certain point a threshold can be met where significant incoming links can push even the most un-search engine friendly website to the top rankings. As a result, it is highly likely that some Flash websites with a decent incoming link support structure will see vast improvements in rankings when their content is finally considered thanks to this new crawling technology.
In less competitive arenas (obscure keyphrases or keyphrases with little competition) the basic search engine optimization capabilities opened to Flash may very well be all that is needed to attain top search engine rankings.
In conclusion I would like to pass on extreme kudos to Adobe, Google and Yahoo for working this new technology into their systems. With all of the new multimedia formats coming online it has always seemed quite silly to me that Flash, having been around for years, was still not fully indexable. Thankfully Flash can now be crawled and the day where it could potentially compete for competitive rankings is on the distant horizon.
"I have a number of websites used to market XYZ Travel. The main site features all products and a number of specialist / boutique websites feature duplicates of these products. Is this an acceptable practice or am I being penalized by Google? How can this be overcome?
"I accept that creative write-ups can be rewritten if essential but fact is fact - what can I do about factual data i.e. room numbers, types, facilities, amenities, address, rates, name etc?"
ANSWER: Since duplicate content became a hot issue a few years ago I have been asked this question many times. Fortunately it seems you are in a position that should not yield any problems but before I explain let me first state what I understand from your email so there is no miscommunication.
Your state of affairs: You have one larger site that has all of your products and a few other sites that serve as niche sites specializing in particular products from your main website. You are concerned that some essential data such as travel details may count as duplicate content because they have to be identical across both the main site and the niche site(s).
And Now My Answer: Provided each page with the duplicated product details also has substantial unique content I believe you will have no problem with duplicate content "penalties". And I am sure you have substantial unique content on these niche sites otherwise there would be no point in creating the sites short of spamming the search engines which is always a bad idea.
It is worthy of noting, however, that even if there were an issue of duplicate content Google representatives have clearly noted that pages with significant duplicate content are merely met with disinterest by the search engine algorithm and passed over; so your site is not directly penalized per se.
The only penalty of any significance takes place when there is evidence of serious duplicate content abuse; when there are nearly identical pages across an entire site. This is common when sites are copies of other sites at which point serious penalties (such as removing the site from the index) are without question the best action.
I hope that has helped you. If you or anyone else would like to pose a question to the StepForth team please visit our SEO Questions form and we will get back to you as soon as possible with an answer.
Over the course of a day we tend to run into situations where some basic and occasionally not so basic tips and tricks need to be applied to a website. Here are three that come to mind at the moment and might just help you improve your web marketing results.
How to Get an Uncompetitive Term to Rank Well
Situation: You have a keyphrase that is not incredibly competitive and you just can't seem to figure out why it is stuck on the second page of results.
Remedy: In the less competitive marketspaces where your phrase is either very niche (i.e. like part number searches or created with industry jargon) or detailed (i.e. 3+ words like "BMW Victoria BC") you can just increase the frequency those words are used within the page. By increasing "keyword frequency" you leave less doubt that a search engine algorithm will determine your Keyphrase is what the page should be ranked for. If competitiveness is truly low this technique will work decently on Google and often very well in Yahoo.
Frequency Tip: Don't go nuts and add 20 more incidences of the Keyphrase if only 4 will do. Also, do not sacrifice the quality of your writing just to get a ranking or you will drive off visitors when they arrive. Take baby steps! Add only 2 occurrences of the Keyphrase within your content and watch how that affects your rankings. Then you can add or remove from there depending on how your ranking responds on the various search engines.
Decreasing a Webpage's Exit Rate
Situation: The numbers are incontrovertible, your home page has an intolerably high exit rate (percentage of visitors that enter by that page and quickly exit the site). So how can you lower the exit rate?
Remedy: First do some research; what keywords are driving the traffic? Are they relevant? If not, ignore that portion of traffic because obviously you cannot make a visitor happy that is looking for something you cannot provide. By the same token look at the referrer of the traffic; it could be another website has misrepresented the purpose of your website thus sending highly irrelevant traffic; again strike this traffic from your view. Once you have considered these issues and separated the wheat from the chaff then you may just need to improve the stickiness of your home page.
In order to improve the home page it helps to understand a little about your visitors and their needs. In some testing I have been conducting for a service-oriented website it was clearly determined that a home page (effectively your chief landing page) should satisfy two types of visitors.
> Visitor A just wants to get to the heart of the matter and find out what price you are charging for the product/service they want. So they want an immediately actionable menu.
> Visitor B needs to trust you and is fully prepared to read the content on your home page to get a feel for the kind of business you represent.
So what now? The ideal step would be to create various versions of your home page and then use Google Optimizer to compare the reactions to each version and provide you with a clear winning design. That is what we do at StepForth and I can't say enough how well that has helped us. That said, that may be too much for you so just make some changes to your home page and monitor the result over the next month. If you already have a high exit rate (75% or higher) then this test really can't hurt and I imagine you will see some intriguing fluctuations in your page's exit rate and your visitor's time on site.
When you do create a new version of your home page I suggest writing a quick intro to your services and having that appear first thing on your home page. The intro should have very visible and easy to click links to the key sections/products/services of your website so that hasty visitors can navigate quickly and effectively. Then follow up that intro with the detail and whatever personal touches you want to add to the home page to appease Visitor B.
Essential Content Management System Optimization
Scenario: Your website is operated on a large content rich Content Management System (CMS) which uses a nearly identical Title and Meta Description tag throughout the whole site. Your website is not ranking well and you cannot understand why since each page has a wealth of content and your prices are competitive.
Remedy: Consult the documentation of your CMS or tap the resources of your programmer to determine how you can automate the creation of unique Titles and Meta Descriptions across every page within your site; much more feasible than manually optimizing these tags on huge sites. In most Content Management Systems there is a relatively simple fix that can be employed which will allow you to mass-optimize the titles and Meta Descriptions within your web site.
For example, a real estate website may want to dynamically include the town name and area that a particular home is located within the Title and Meta Description tags; to increase the relevancy of the pages.
Basic SEO Rule: Title and Description Meta tags must be unique to set the topic of the page for visitors and search engines alike. Also, I strongly recommend starting the Title tag with content unique to the page and then following it by any generic prose. For example Good = "Victoria BMW Sales - Sam Spade Inc." BAD = "Sam Spade Inc. - Victoria BMW Sales".
More to Come I really enjoyed sharing these tips with you and while writing I came up with even more so I will try to write a few more segments in the same format over the next few months.
Here is the introductory paragraph for a little taster:
"Mobile web browsing is gaining popularity and acceptance thanks to the extensive proliferation of iPhones and other mobile appliances with surf-friendly interfaces. As a result it is becoming more and more important to offer a mobile-friendly alternative to your current website. The reality is, however, that many website owners seem to have no inclination to spend money on a medium that (as far as they know) is unproven and could generate zero income. Fortunately there is a way for every website owner to create an alternative to their website and not only is it exceedingly simple but it is FREE. Now no one has an excuse to ignore this growing medium!"
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 2:53 PM
In Part 1 and Part 2 of How to Optimize for Google I discussed general website optimization, links, and Google webmaster tools. In Part 3 we will look at a number of other considerations which play a role in successful rankings in Google, and also touch on some tactics which are best avoided.
Completing Optimization: Other Considerations
Redirects If you need to use redirects on your site it is very important to use the correct one. If a page is moving to a new location, or being removed all together, it is very important to have this page redirected to either the new location or the next closest page using a Permanent 301 Redirect.
While rare, if a page is being moved to a new location for a short term, with the intent of it returning to the original location, then and only then, will you want to use a Temporary 302 redirect. For more information please see Redirects: Permanent 301 vs. Temporary 302
Non WWW Redirects To help eliminate page rank split, and provide your site with a little extra value, implement a non-www redirect. What this redirect will do is change the URL to include the "www" whenever a URL is accessed that does not include it. This can help to consolidate links to the correct page and give your site some additional strength. For more help on Non WWW redirects please see: How to 301 Redirect Non-WWW to WWW URL’s
HTTP Headers Check your page headers! If you have implemented any form of redirect on your site including mod rewrites, check your HTTP headers. You may be surprised at what you find. Some forms of redirects may use a 302 code where you really want a 301. By checking your headers you can ensure all is well, and troubleshoot problems. On our website we have added our own HTTP Header Checker for your convenience.
Home Page URL Never have more than one URL for your home page. If your home page is available and displays on more than one URL, then utilize 301 redirects on all but the main URL you want to focus on - in most cases "http://www.xyzname.com/". All your links pointing to the home page should direct to the exact same URL otherwise you will split the value of your home page into multiple duplicate URL’s.
Google sees "http://www.xyzname.com" and "http://www.xyzname.com/index.shtml" as different pages, but displaying the same content. This splits the overall value of your home page, and can decrease the chances of rankings. By keeping it consistent with a single URL, you remove this split and retain more of the strength.
In theory having your home page split like this could bring with it duplicate content penalties, however, I have yet to see this actually happen – that said, it is best to avoid the risk all together.
XML Sitemap XML Sitemaps are great for ensuring that Google and the other engines are able to spider your entire site. While an XML sitemap will not directly impact your search rankings it can help as Google is more likely to see any SEO based changes more quickly, which in turn can have an impact.
Robots.txt This is the first file all search engines look for every time they visit your site. While placing a blank robots.txt file in your root folder will not help with search rankings, it will help reduce 404 errors appearing in your log files.
It is also highly recommended that if your site utilizes an XML sitemap, to include a call to this sitemap within the Robots.txt file. Simply add the following line to ensure that the major engines (including Google) can find your sitemap:
Sitemap: http://www.xyzname.com/sitemap.xml
Potential Blockages If you are finding that your site is simply not being indexed it is possible that you are blocking the spiders in one way or another.
Start with checking your main site navigation, if you are using Flash or some other fancy form of navigation that could be your problem right there. Next check your HTTP headers to ensure that your home page is returning a 2xx code which indicates that the clients’ request was successfully received. Finally take a look at your Google Webmaster Tools for any noted errors. If you are blocking Google, chances are you will be able to uncover the issue with these steps.
Duplicate Content Duplicate content can be quite damaging to your rankings. Ensure that all content on your site is unique. Never steal or “borrow” content from another site, and never cut and paste large portions of text from one page of your site to the next. By keeping all pages of your site entirely original you stand the best chances of getting a thumps up from Google.
Fresh Content / Regular Updates Update your content. In highly competitive markets, sites with old static content can often slip away. Keep your content fresh and updated to keep bringing Google back to your site. If they find new pages and updated pages with every visit, they will come back more often.
Site Age The age of your site can also have an effect on search engine rankings. While there is little you can do (short of keeping the same domain) to help on this matter, remember that the longer your site is online, the better its chances for success. It pays to select the perfect domain right from the start and not to change domains mid-stream. Older sites that stand the test of time add a level of authority in Google’s eyes. New sites seldom see rankings for competitive terms in their first year.
Note: Site Age is determined not by the date the domain was originally registered by rather by the date Google first discovered content on your site.
Load Time Load time can have an impact in your Google AdWords Quality Score but it is unknown for sure if it can also impact your organic search rankings. It is best to keep you load time to as little as possible. If it is not already a part of the Google Algorithm, it likely will be soon. Besides, it is also best in order to give your site visitors the best experience possible.
Server Up Time This can be a rather significant issue. If you find that your web hosting company has a history of down time, change hosts. If Google comes to visit your site once and it is down, not to worry, they will come back, but if Google visits your site often only to find that it is unavailable, you can find yourself with drastically depleted rankings.
Google Local If you have a traditional brick and mortar store, consider submitting to Google Local. While this will not directly impact your regular organic rankings, you may find your site ranking above the organic results with a "local business results" map listing. This tends to be most common when your business is near the geographic center of a city, and when the search phrase uses a geographic modifier.
W3C Compliant Code There is much speculation as to if W3C compliant code can have a positive impact on search rankings, and the majority believe “maybe” with some saying “yes”. Regardless, it is definitely a good idea to have your site be W3C Compliant if at all possible. Not only may it help you in terms of search rankings, but having compliant code can decrease load times, and help to ensure cross-browser compatibility, all of which are good things. If at all possible, it is recommended that sites be made to be compliant.
Many experts who took part in the SEOMoz "Google Search Engine Ranking Factors" lean towards it not being a big contributor, however, it may be an issue if Google has difficulties indexing a page properly.
DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME I want to stress that this section is about things you should NOT do. These issues could be damaging to your rankings. If your site is implementing any of these, it may be best to remove it.
Hidden Text This includes any text that you can simply not see when viewing the page. It may be text hidden in invisible div layers, text located below the fold with vertical scrolling disabled or even text on the same colored back ground (white text on a white background for instance). Whatever the case, hidden text can get your site into hot water and it is not recommended.
Excessive Keywords Don’t go over board in placing target phrases within your body text. Stuffing keywords everywhere possible just because you can, is not only unlikely to help you achieve rankings, it could very well have the opposite effect.
Duplicate content Large amounts of duplicated content or pages, as well as stealing or scraping content from other sites is one good way to get your site banned.
Doorway pages Creating multiple websites or pages with nearly identical, yet slightly different content for the purposes of trying to grab some Google rankings is a good way to get your site into trouble.
If you have created pages of this nature for PPC campaigns, make sure that they are blocked from the search engines as to not get you into any hot water.
Cloaking Simple - Don’t Cloak. In a nutshell cloaking is when you display different information to the search engines than you do to your human visitors. Google frowns on this, and if they catch you, watch out!
All Flash Websites that are entirely flash based will not get you into trouble. The reason I have included it here however, is that they won’t do you many favors either. Sites that are all Flash, have little to no content for Google to digest and thus, drastically reduce your chance of rankings. If you must keep your "All Flash" site, it is recommended that you also create a secondary HTML version for the search engines and for those visitors who simply prefer it.
Frames (including iFrames) Frames are also one of those things that won’t get you into trouble, but do significantly reduce your chances of rankings. If you want any chance of ranking in Google using a Frames site, be sure to copy your relevant content from each page into your 'noframes' tag. While this is far from ideal it may help you salvage some listings.
When it comes to including content through the use of an iFrame, remember, Google can not see any of this content located within the frame. It will be of no use to your rankings. If you rely on this content to help your listings, find another method such as a server side include.
TOOLS In this article I mention a few items which can be made much easier with the help of available online tools. Here are some to help you on your way:
Google’s Cached Text Version Click on “cached” next to your listing in Google, then click "Cached Text Version" at the top of the page. This is Google’s Cached Text version of your page. Substituting www.domain.com with your website will also bring up the cached version:
To see a larger selection of tools visit our SEO Tools page at the StepForth website.
SUMMARY There are a lot of little pieces to getting a site to the top of the rankings in Google that I didn't have time to mention here. In most cases not all items noted in this 3 part Google optimization series need to be in place to achieve top rankings, however, the more you can implement the better. Links, optimization, and content all play a significant role in Google rankings and the more competitive the term, the bigger the role they play.
If you have a site in a competitive market it is best to ensure that the site is entirely Google friendly and well optimized, while working on increasing links, and expanding on relevant content.
Patience is important and Google rankings are possible, but they do take time and effort. In nearly all cases it can take several months before you start to see significant results, although in cases where a site is just missing one or two pieces of the puzzle and those are put into place, rankings can come much quicker. If you have any questions about optimizing for Google try sending them to us here at StepForth and we will get to them as soon as our workload permits.
by Scott Van Achte, Senior SEO, StepForth Web Marketing Inc. Celebrating Over 10 Years of Web Marketing Excellence
Today I was kindly offered the opportunity to participate in Webcology on WebmasterRadio.fm with Jim Hedger and Dave Davies. The discussion we had was all about what it takes to keep rankings high in search engine results after successfully attaining them. Here is a link to the episode on the Webcology page where our show will be archived and to Jim's article on Keeping it Up and here are a few tips from me on the essentials of maintaining rankings:
Keep adding content to your website in the form of a blog or informational pages and where appropriate provide relevant textual links to the pages you want to maintain rankings. Check out our comprehensive tutorial on how to create, market and manage your own blog.
If you write articles for your blog(s) try submitting them to article sites like ezinearticles.com. If your article includes links to your website these external sites will provide link juice to your content and help you maintain visibility.
PRWeb is a great tool for telling the world about your company's accomplishments; see this video interview on link building and publicity with PR Web. By submitting a carefully written press release to PRWeb you can (depending on the service you choose) attain a large number of incoming links. These links will not necessarily provide long term impact because they tend to devalue after a week or two but inevitably you will get additional long-term links out of the process. By the way, if you don't know of a topic to create a blog about consider creating one that just offers company news releases - there is nothing wrong with that.
Submit your blog's RSS feed to the multitude of RSS aggregation sites (news sites) online. These sites will help pump up the visibility of the content you write. This is particularly important if you rarely have time to write new content for your blog because it will give you the most bang for your effort.
Keep in tune with the changes at search engines by monitoring sites like Search Engine Guide, Search Engine Journal, Search Engine Land, and of course StepForth's SEO News Blog. If you hear of a pending or current algorithmic update on a key search engine find out all you can about it and prepare your website to bear the change - if necessary. If you find you aren't sure what to do in response to an algorithmic update just contact a reputable SEO and get their opinion. You can find reputable SEOs in many places but to be sure you know who you are asking do a little digging to find out just how long they have been practicing SEO.
These are just a few tips but they cover the main points that everyone should know about maintaining rankings. If you have any SEO questions just use our Free SEO Questions submission form.
At the exact same time (both at 10:50 am PST) Google announced it's spider (Googlebot) was now indexing a variety of forms Matt Cutts jumped in on his blog with his perspective where raised a great point that hadn't occured to me. Essentially this new spider function will allow the indexing of form-based drop-down menus which previously were road blocks to search engine spiders. This form of navigation is unfortunately used quite often as primary navigation by web site owners so this recent addition to Googlebot's super spider powers may mean huge rank increases for such websites.
That said, according to Google this doesn't always mean this content will be indexed... which begs the question whether form navigation is still a good idea to rely on. At this point I hardly think it is now an acceptable navigational tactic. After all the other search engines first have to jump on board and implement a similar capability or else form navigation will alienate them entirely.
In this article two important marketing strategies are reviewed: search engine optimization and social media.
Just as the spokes of a wheel are held together and strengthened by its hub so too is the planning for a successful marketing campaign. The greater the integrity and quality of the hub, the better are the chances that the spokes will stay true and provide far reaching performance.
In this series we have looked at several ‘spokes’ that contribute to a winning web marketing strategy. Part 1 looked at several of these building blocks: marketing budget and timelines, market research, and competitor analysis while Part 2 discussed the importance of keyword research, focus on achievable phrases, creating relevant textual content and search friendly website design. A future article will deal with the remaining spokes: link building, blogs, newsletters, and website analytics.
But central to all of this, the hub, is search engine optimization. A properly optimized site will make all its associated components strive for greater potential. SEO raises the bar. With the rapid maturation (sophistication?) of the internet it has become ever more challenging to keep up to date with recent advancements and techniques in one’s online quest in search and being found.
Here are some guidelines that have withstood the test of time and will likely continue to be valid for the foreseeable future. The list is not all inclusive and as search engine algorithms constantly change so do the weighting of these variables. The higher a search engine’s confidence in these elements, the higher will be organic placement in their index. Ensure your website has the following focus:
Keywords: develop a universe of achievable keyword targets and then create sufficient textual content to support these keywords on critical pages in the site so it is optimized for maximum search engine relevancy. Consider having keywords with descriptive or geographic modifiers, if applicable.
Title Tags: unique and keyword enriched descriptive Title tags must be written for each page in the site. The Title tag is often used as the title for whatever search engine listing you achieve. This makes the Title tag not only a crucial element for achieving listings but may also influence prospects to visit your web site. As a result, it is very important to consider the structure of the Title tag and what message you wish to convey.
Description Tag: unique keyword enriched Description Meta tags that are page-specific are a critical component in optimizing the site. If the Meta tags are relevant to the page they are on, this may add extra leverage for achieving placement under other keywords. It should be optimized to suit the specific content of the page.
Navigation: a text-based navigation map should be available at the bottom of each page in the site. This is especially true if your site utilizes a fully graphical navigation bar or image menu. Text links are extremely important within a web site because they are easily indexed by the search engines.
XML Sitemap: create an XML site map and feed it to Google. When changes are made to your site Google is notified and this may encourage increased spider frequency.
Keyword Ratio: keyword to non-keyword ratios should be tested on each page to approximate the average keyword density found on successful competitor’s pages.
Alt Tags: descriptive image Alt tags should be optimized.
Links: ensure there are no broken links in your site; repair or delete them.
Primary Keyword Phrase: the Home page in your site must provide for a specific focus on your primary keyword phrase. A reasonable description length would be 100 – 150 words.
Secondary Keyword Phrases: have internal pages focus on secondary keyword phrases that are unique to that page.
Text Links: place keywords in the text links. Take the opportunity to cleanly add keywords into these links and they may enhance the placement outcome. Refrain from using generic terms such as ‘Home Page’ or ‘About Us’.
Splash Page: It is irrelevant to have a splash page as your Home Page as there is no text present for spiders to read, record and index.
Pop-Ups: do not use pop-ups in place of internal pages as search spiders will not read information contained in them.
As always if you are in the development phase of a new website or revamping an existing one it is always a good idea to purchase a few hours of quality consulting time. Such a precautionary measure can save you from expensive launch delays or having to reprogram code.
When a website is optimized it is important to recognize that SEO is not a one time event. The online environment is a dynamic one and constantly changing. As such, websites require continual management and maintenance. Frequently revise content to keep it fresh to both the search engines and your potential customers.
There are 10 organic listings available on each of Google’s index pages and your goal is to be as high up on that first page of results as possible. Because if you are not there, you can bet it will be your competitor. Implementing a sound SEO campaign and actively maintaining the site will help you get there.
On Social Media and What Social Media Can Offer Your Company
Social media communities have the enormous power to change how people view and discuss your product online. You can optimize specific content you have for broadcast to a set of social media channels and their most relevant platforms. Some of the best ways for increasing your exposure on the web can include question and answer websites, blogging, and forums, to myriad social media sites and networks with ten of millions of users.
Is social media marketing a bubble or will this new flurry of interaction really change the face of online visibility? Although it is still early in the game to judge, here are some interesting possibilities that can further promote your online presence.
Community building: most social media sites are composed of communities, individuals, and groups who can drive large amounts of traffic to your site. Build relationships in these areas to benefit your company and its goals.
Brand Awareness: your identity on the web! People are probably chatting or looking for your products and services on the web right now and you want your brand to be found when this happens. Increased exposure and visibility on social media sites will lead to your site being found and possibly seen as a leader in your industry.
Reputation management: social media creates a better online presence for your products and services. It is important to know where your presence is found and what people are saying so you can control your message. Monitoring tools for keeping track of your online presence, social media achievements and pertinent industry news will keep you abreast.
Improved search engine ranking: social media creates fresh and relevant content that will be indexed on the search engines and social media sites. Some social media sites are indexed on certain search engines and thus can provide greater exposure of your services. This can lead to information on your site being ranked higher and more often on the search engines.
Increased visitor traffic: having your presence on social media sites can greatly affect your online traffic. Social media traffic will produce more qualified leads and highly targeted traffic to your website and can lead to viral online exposure.
One of the benefits of a social media program is to promote your site so it is seen as an authority in its field and the place to find information about your product or service. Where is your company or product online in relation to the top social media and niche social media sites related to your industry? Where does your target audience go for industry news, information and resources and which social media sites do they use?
What are your competitors up to in social media? Where are your competitors found on social media sites, where they are promoting their brand online, and what is giving them success online?
Develop marketing content (text, video, and/or audio) to produce a campaign that will showcase your products or services and increase traffic to your site. Determine which web communities (from large to niche social media sites) are best designed to promote your content. Then leverage and target the top social media communities to increase your website’s visibility.
Not only can social media help businesses find their clients online but it can build a positive brand experience where you are seen as a leader in your field having a product or service that many people recognize, trust and use.
Social media marketing works well within a strategic web marketing plan that may also include consultation, competitor analysis, keyword research, a multi-month, hands-on search engine optimization campaign or website analytics.
Recession, recession, recession… I don’t know about you but I have had my fill of this doomsday word! It seems to me the panic caused by this word simply increases the chances of a recession occurring. Recessions, however, have a silver lining because they provide business owners with the opportunity to look long and hard at their expenses and this can provide valuable insight in strengthening the business long after a recession recedes. Some cut backs may become obvious such as eliminating frivolous office expenses and are a wise move but should business owners cut back on their web marketing? Lets look at the circumstances within web marketing where cutbacks may or may not make sense. When You Should or Should Not Cut Back on Pay Per Click or Search Engine Optimization Campaigns So what is unnecessary marketing? Logic dictates that any marketing that is not profitable is not worth keeping. That said, how certain are you that a particular form of marketing is not profitable? Perhaps the following questions and notes will help you decide:
Have you been tracking key performance indicator(s) (KPI) since the inception of the campaign? Let me explain; say you launched an SEO campaign to drive more traffic to the “Norco Bikes For Sale” page on your website. In this case a very simple key performance indicator (KPI) would be how many visits the page has received from people that stayed longer than, say 6 or 7 seconds (this time qualifier would all-but-eliminate low quality clickthroughs). If you tracked this all the way from the inception of the campaign and you saw that this KPI had increased perhaps more research is in order before cancelling this campaign. If you saw no measureable improvement in your KPI then the campaign should be canned, or at the very least, paused.
If you haven’t adequately monitored the success of a campaign from the start is there a way to determine it now? Usually there is a method to determine the success of a campaign using historical data but the method depends on a multitude of circumstances. Here are a couple of the most common methods:
Dig into your web statistics: any hosting company worth its salt (like LunarPages or WeDoHosting) will have web statistics compiled for your website. These stats can provide revealing historical information on the ups and downs of traffic on your website.
Note: I recommend setting up Google Analytics on your website (free) for an alternative view of your stats. I find it best to have Google Analytics installed if even just for piece of mind that you have a backup of your stats (if you move hosting providers for example). If you do this, however, please read this handy article by Matt McGee on protecting your privacy while using Google Analytics.
If web site statistics are not an option then you may have to review your income history and see how much of your income you can tie into the specific marketing campaign. This process is not likely to be painless and may very well be impossible if you have a large number of campaigns going on at the same time; however, it could prove worthwhile if it keeps you from wrongly shutting down a profitable campaign.
What do your frontlines say? Are you getting more sales from the web? Every sales person in your office should be asking how prospects found you and they should be keeping meticulous notes on this information. If they are then ask them if they have seen a marked increase in web-related phone calls and whether they found you through a (specific) search engine. This kind of info is invaluable to determining the success of any marketing campaign.
Is the campaign nearly profitable but not quite? If you can see the campaign is close to being profitable then I strongly recommend sticking to your guns (if you can afford to) and conduct testing to increase the viability of the campaign before giving up on it.
Multivariate testing is often a great technique for improving a campaign. Multivariate testing is a term used to describe the tweaking of a landing page in manner that (hopefully) influences a desired reaction from the visitor. Tweaks could be as simple as removing an image of a Norco Bike at the top of the landing page which in-turn moves the marketing text higher up the page. A multivariate test would examine how this seemingly minor change positively or negatively affects the page. Usually a positive reaction would be an increase in clickthroughs to a goal page (such as a purchase page or an inquiry form).
Did you check to see if your pay-per-click campaign was profitable before turning it off? When you are looking at cost cutting your attention will most likely be focused on major expenditures like pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns and rightfully so; a poorly performing campaign can be a major drain. That said, you must do your homework before shutting down a PPC campaign because it could be delivering the profit you desperately need. In a perfect world this question would be a waste of space but I am sure a vast number of PPC campaigns are run without proper monitoring so I feel this reminder to verify profitability is warranted. If your campaign has not been properly monitored then I suggest thinking carefully about your next step. You can either turn it off for the time being and see what effect it has on your sales OR immediately install the appropriate mechanisms to track a pay-per-click campaign and monitor it long enough to determine if it is in fact successful; the time required depends on the breadth of the campaign but 2 weeks should do the trick.
Evaluating the Success of Social Media Marketing Campaigns It can be difficult to associate profit with Social Media Marketing (SMM) campaigns since they tend to have a more indirect affect on sales. As a result, determining the success of a SMM campaign could seem nearly impossible. Fortunately that isn’t the case because like any marketing campaign you likely (or should have) started the campaign with some goal in mind. Here are a few questions based on common SMM goals that should help you determine the success of your campaign:
Has there been a regular and distinct increase in subscribers to your blog RSS feed or newsletter subscriptions? If you are using Feedburner or another RSS management tool look at your average sign-ups on a weekly basis (take more than one sample) before you start your SMM campaign(s) and then compare that to a sampling of a few weeks over the past month or two. Do the same examination for your newsletter subscriptions (using whatever management tool you use to monitor signups). Do you see a substantial increase in signups on a weekly basis? If not then have an in-depth discussion with your SMM team or vendor and determine where the disconnect is. After all, these assets have to be doing something for their money – perhaps they see another metric increasing.
Are you seeing more traffic from social media websites? If so, are they of a high enough quality? Open your web site statistics, go to your referral stats and look for increased traffic from social media websites your SMM team is concentrating on. If you don’t find any additional traffic stop at this point and have a serious discussion with your SMM team.
If you do find an increase of traffic from social sites then further segment this data and determine the quality of this traffic. For example, using ClickTracks Professional it is easy to create a filter that shows only visitors from StumbleUpon (or another group of social sites) that stays on your website longer than 5 seconds; this will eliminate zero second (aka “useless”) traffic and leave you with the worthwhile data. Now take this traffic and compare it to the expense of acquiring it through your current SMM campaign. If the numbers appear favourable and you feel the benefit outweighs the costs then you have your answer – keep the program. If the numbers are unfavourable either sit down with your SMM team to adjust/tweak/modifiy your campaign (by finding more appropriate social sites to become active on) or shut the campaign down until the winds are again favourable to refocus and try again.
Are you or your company getting talked about more often? Is it positive or negative talk? No matter what type of campaign you have running it is important to keep tabs on your online reputation. While running a SMM campaign it is easy to step on toes and cause ill-will; especially if your marketers are not taking care to understand the unique etiquette of each social property they participate in. If you are not sure of your current reputation then try searching Google for specific iterations of your business name and your key employee names. Document anything that appears positive or negative. Also make certain to setup a Google News Alert for specific key phrases so that you can be alerted whenever relevant fresh content is made available in Google’s vast database. If you find negative press then handle it immediately by responding to it (decide how this best be done) and quickly inform your SMM team of the issue so they can learn from it and avoid a reoccurrence. If you find a lot of negative press then you need to decide if your SMM campaign is worthwhile continuing since you have to spend so much time pursuing damage control.
Conclusion In an ideal world where a marketing department is running a tight ship a recession would have little or no impact on a marketing budget because smart companies realize they need to maintain the flow of business. That said many small businesses and indeed large companies lose track of the effectiveness of their campaigns so a potential recession provides a great opportunity to increase marketing efficiency. If you fall into the latter category then I hope this article has/or will help you cut costs without cutting profits. Just keep in mind that these evaluations should be conducted on a regular basis (regardless of a recession) so keep this article within reach as a reminder and (hopefully) a helpful reference.
Over the past couple years it has been impossible to avoid the buzz about images and their increasing role in search; such as universal search which is becoming commonplace among the major search engines. But universal search is only the most prevalent news and only the baby-steps of a new format of search that is about to take over the Internet. Do I have your interest piqued? I will now lay the foundation of my statement to hopefully get you as excited as I am about this unstoppable search evolution.
Evidence 1) Photosynth If you have any technology mavens as friends it is likely you saw this incredible video presented by Microsoft at the TED conference last year discussing Photosynth. To quote Microsoft Lab's Photosynth home page this software
"takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and then displays the photos in a reconstructed three-dimensional space, showing you how each one relates to the next. In our collections, you can access gigabytes of photos in seconds, view a scene from nearly any angle, find similar photos with a single click, and zoom in to make the smallest detail as big as your monitor."
My jaw still hurts from hitting the ground after my first viewing of Photosynth many months ago. This software made a massive impression on me that has led me to many interesting ideas on the applications for this software; I will leave these thoughts to another time. For now, however, lets just say that the advent of a technology such as Photosynth provided a first glimpse into how images on the web can play a far greater role than ever imagined.
Evidence 2) PicLens by cooliris PicLens is a fantastic plugin that allows searchers to navigate a 3d gallery of images associated with the topic they are searching. The user can also surf related images by simply clicking on a small play icon that appears on images anywhere in their browser (the icon appears on the image when the user's mouse hovers over it for a moment). So where does PicLens get its content from? PicLens has complete access to the image caches of: Google, Yahoo, Flickr, SmugMug, Photobucket and DeviantArt.
This free, incredibly useful software is available now and it represents a new way for the masses to think about search; instead of showing information in a ranking format, PicLens makes browsing images as simple as a flick of your mouse (momentum will actually allow the images to move by). Right now PicLens is naturally designed for images but who says it needs to stay that way?
Evidence 3) SearchMe When my colleague showed me the preview of SearchMe I knew I had the linchpin for this very article. SearchMe is a new search engine in private Beta at the moment but this next generation search engine has finally married image search in a manner that will get many tongues wagging.
As the video below outlines in detail SearchMe allows searchers to type in a search and then define the intended topic of their search in order to provide the most relevant results. Once the user selects their topic they are provided with a slick but simple page showing pictures of each resulting web page that can be scanned through in a manner similar to PicLens.
Now these are not images in a classic sense, since they are actually just screenshots of the existing web pages, however, the technology is extremely similar and it seems natural that the final version of SearchMe's image search option would utilize the same technology.
Tying it all Together What is the one thing that all of these concepts have in common? The answer is marvelously simple; they all focus on the simple concept that a picture is worth a thousand words. Why show a snippet of content in a search engine result page when a complete image could say so much more about the destination?
Are You Excited Yet? So are we on the same page now? Are you as fascinated as I am with the next generation of search? If not, you had better get on board quickly; there is no doubt in my mind that image-based searching is the natural evolution of search. Don't get me wrong, on page content will still play a large role in algorithms but the days of top 10 results are numbered. What Will this Mean to SEO? Basically a few existing elements of search engine optimization will become more important:
Web pages will have to be designed with a tighter focus on usability and simplicity for screenshots to appear interesting/relevant enough to click on.
Images will always need to be appropriately tagged and described.
Web site images will have to be picked with more care from stock photography sites in order to capture the eyes of image-surfing prospects.
SEOs will find it useful to include sales-oriented information in images but not at the expense of the image.
Content around images and the overall page text must be extremely relevant to the image and the description and tags that are attributed to it.
In short, the evolution of search will continue to do what it has always done; make us all work harder to provide better quality content. One thing is for certain... the evolution of search just makes search engine optimization services more interesting and necessary in order to maintain search success in multiple search environments.
The following was the second interview I did with Dr. Ralph Wilson of Web Marketing Today while I was at PubCon Las Vegas. In this interview we discussed the horror stories I have seen over my 10 years of SEO. The focus was on how important it is to involve an SEO in the initial planning of a new website because you never know if you are going to use a technology that may hamper or completely block search engines. A SEO consultant doesn't need much time to tell you if you are on the right track and it will save you a lot of headache down the line.
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 2:16 PM
These days, as more and more companies come to the conclusion that their 1990's built websites with the animated gifs, static backgrounds, and auto-playing midi files have seen their prime, they begin to enter into a world of redesign. While creating these new websites with the sleeker look, and cleaner file structure is a smart move for the future, the risk and complications caused by changing URL’s and the impact this has on search engine rankings is very real.
This is where redirects come in. Using the correct redirect, in most cases a permanent 301, is key to helping maintain your existing rankings, whether your site is undergoing a complete face lift, or if you simply want to move a few pages around.
While Permanent 301 Redirects are the most common there are valid situations where either 301's or 302's may be the most appropriate. This article will discuss what these redirects do, common and less common uses, implementation, and how to check that you have set them up correctly
1.) What are these redirects, what do they do?
Permanent 301 To summarize in a few lines, permanent 301 redirects are just as they sound. They are permanent redirects from an old URL to a new one. These redirects tell the search engines that the old location is to be removed from their index and replaced with the new location. Using 301 redirects is the most search engine friendly way to redirect traffic and engines, and far out weighs that of various JavaScript and Meta refresh redirects.
Temporary 302 Temporary 302 redirects are also as they sound; temporary. Here you are telling the search engines to read and use the content on the new page, but to keep checking the original URL first as it will ultimately be reestablished.
2.) Common and Less Common Uses There are many special cases where you should stand back and consider which redirect to use. In nearly all situations a permanent 301 will be the answer, but sometimes a 302 just may fit the bill. Here are some examples of when to use each redirect.
A.) Permanent 301 Redirects As noted earlier, 301 redirects are by far the most common. When using them you are telling the search engines "do not come back to this location, the page has permanently moved."
All three search engines handle 301 redirects the same. If Site A is 301'd to Site B, then Site B will show up in the search results and Site A will ultimately be completely removed.
Page Deleted or Moved Probably the most common use is the moving or deletion of a single page. Let’s say that you are no longer selling a specific product and therefore have no need for its page. Using a 301 redirect to send the spiders to either the next closest product, or to a relevant product list would be of far more value then having your site return a 404 error and sending users to an error page.
The same goes with pages that are simply moved. While you are probably better off keeping the page where it is, there are many valid reasons why you may need it moved, and in this case a 301 redirect is essential to keep both the search engines, and your site users (who may have bookmarked this old page) happy.
New Top Level Domain If you are thinking about changing your main domain name, don’t do it. If you find that there is just no way around it, and that the change is essential, 301 redirects are your answer.
By using a 301 redirect to send traffic from your old site to your new site you can help ensure that ranking damage will be minimal. Without a 301 redirect your new site will be a completely from scratch endeavor with years of hard work down the drain and any historic profile that a search engine has created will not be carried over to the new site.
WWW vs Non-WWW This is now one of the most common uses of a 301 redirect when used in combination with Mod Rewrites. Essentially by using a permanent 301 redirect to send traffic destined to the non www version of your site (site.com) to the www version (www.site.com) you can focus the strength and prevent page rank split, giving your site's home page (and internal pages) a nice little boost.
Duplicate Pages More often than not you will find websites with valid multiple home page URL's all which serve up the same identical page. This is most common with two versions of the home page such as: www.site.com and www.site.com/index.html.
The first step is to update all your home page links to ensure that only non-index.html version is referenced. Should you happen to miss any home page links, and to direct these /index.html pages to the right place, adding the 301 redirect will ensure that you are not splitting the page value.
Old Domains If you find yourself with multiple websites and one or more of them are completely outdated, but still relevant and you have no chance of revitalizing it, you may want to consider using a 301 redirect to send traffic and engines to your current site.
By redirecting all internal pages of the old site to the most relevant internal pages of your new site, you will not only ensure that site visitors reach the proper updated content, but that any pre-existing rankings, link value, and other search engine goodness is transferred over to the new, active website.
Note: If you find yourself in the unusual situation of having dozens, or even hundreds of old websites, do not 301 all of them at the same time, you could likely be flagged as a spammer and endure penalties or a possible banning. If this is the case, just redirect a few of your sites that happen to have the most to offer in terms of rankings and traffic.
Rewriting confusing URL strings via Mod Rewrite Lets say that you have a site with long confusing URL strings for all internal pages. These days the major search engines do a much better job of indexing these obscure file locations, but it is still in your best interest to redirect them to a friendlier, cleaner URL. To do this you can use Mod Rewrites which utilize 301 redirects to turn this:
This URL is not only far more friendly to human visitors, it adds a higher level of relevance for the search engines and is easy to index.
(For the record, no, I do not own a white BMW 650, but who wouldn’t want one?)
B.) Temporary 302 Redirects The practical use of a 302 redirect is really quite limited. In most cases a 301 redirect is the correct choice; however, there are always exceptions. If you find yourself in the position where a 301 redirect just won't do, here are a few situations where the 302 may be a better choice.
Temporarily Moving a Page This is the main reason this 302 redirect exists, but you have to also ask yourself, have you ever temporarily moved a page? If the time comes where you need to relocate a page on a temporary basis, with the ultimate final destination of the page being at the original location, then you would want to use the 302 redirect.
Home Page Redirect Have you ever visited a websites home page only to find that you have been redirected to some obscure URL string like www.site.com/home/redir/pageinfo?id=23498874&g=34, but in actuality it is still their home page?
There are many cases where various dynamic sites or content management systems choose to rewrite the home page using some lengthy string of variables. The best fix for this is to use a mod-rewrite to change the messy URL into a simple www.site.com. Sometimes however, mod-rewrites may not work due to various server constraints, in which case, using a 302 redirect may be the answer.
By redirecting the home page of your site using a 302 redirect to this longer, more obscure URL, you essentially are telling the engines to continue using the shorter, original URL, but index and rank based on the content of the longer version.
In doing so you will not only clean up the display URL in any search engine rankings, but you will also help retain value from any links pointing into your home page from outside sources, ultimately helping to improve your overall search engine rankings.
Special Promotions Let’s say you have decided to create a special promotion for a product page on your site. You have toyed with the idea of changing the original product page but have decided against it, and instead created a new promotional page.
While the promotional page is live, use a 302 redirect to temporarily send traffic intended for the product, over to the promotional page, you can then easily remove the 302 redirect once the promotion is over and the original page will come back into play.
302 Hijack Important Note:We do NOT recommend attempting this, although if you do, you are likely to only harm yourself as this black-hat trick no longer works.
Not too long ago the spammers did what they are good at and found a way to abuse the system, in this case, the 302 redirect.
It was possible to use these 302 redirects to hijack rankings and traffic from another unsuspecting site. How did they do it?
Hackers used the 302 redirects to send the search engines from their domain (Site A) to a page on the target domain, (Site B). Google would see this and the rankings for Site B would be ultimately transferred over to the redirecting page on Site A.
Spiders were essentially cloaked to see the 302 redirect to the page on Site B, while human visitors, arriving from the newly hijacked rankings, would either see the original page, or be directed to another page residing on Site A.
Because of this vulnerability any 302's that direct to a different top level domain are now treated as 301 redirects by the search engines. By treating these as 301 redirects it eliminates the usefulness of this technique and solves the hijacking problem – sorry spammers.
Special Circumstances There are always exceptions to every rule and situations which result in the need for a creative solution. In the past we have had a client who found themselves in one of these situations.
When undergoing a huge redesign, a client of ours was forced to have part of their site hosted on one server, and part on another. The part of the site to be moved also had to be placed at the sub domain www1. This presented the potential problem of a huge ranking loss in the search engines which just was not acceptable.
The answer was using 302 redirects on all pages which were moved over to the www1 location. Because the sub domain is still a part of the original top level domain, this solution did not risk any possible penalties from the search engines (in regards to the 302 hijack issue), and also did not cause any problems with the effects of the alternative; a 301 redirect. In the end not only were rankings not compromised, the result of the new website actually caused an overall improvement in listings and site traffic.
This was a circumstance with a number of complicated technical issues I won't go into, but the end result was success, with much thanks to a few 302 redirects.
4.) How to Check: Not sure if you have implemented your redirects correctly? There is a fast and easy check you can do to find out.
Let’s say you are redirecting page A to page B. The obvious way to check is to try loading page A and see what comes up in your browser, but, if you have set up the wrong redirect, to the naked eye it may appear that all is correct.
To ensure that the correct status code is being utilized, use a "header checker" tool, enter the URL for the page to be redirected, and see what comes up. Finding a tool to do this is as simple as searching in Google, but to make things even easier see our HTTP Header Checker tool at StepForth.
5.) 301 / 302 Redirect Warning Be sure to avoid redirecting large numbers of pages all to one location. This practice is commonly used by spammers and could wind up getting your site into some hot water with Google.
Spammers have been known to create thousands of pages. By generating 1or 2 links to each of these pages, and ensuring that they are spidered and indexed in Google they can then harness the power of redirects to boost site rankings. By taking thousands of pages and redirecting them all to one main page, you would essentially increase the value of the target page and transfer much of the link popularity and boost search engine rankings.
Google is onto this. If you try this, you will likely end up banned, or at least penalized. That said, there may be legitimate reasons why you would drive multiple pages via 301s to another page on your site. If this is the case, be careful so you do not wind up being flagged as spam.
6.) Summary If your site is in need of a redirect, be sure to use the appropriate one for your situation. Correct use of these redirects can be your best friend when it comes to retaining search engine rankings, and your worst enemy if used incorrectly. There are many situations which may not be covered in this article, but hopefully you now have the information to make an informed decision on which of these two redirects is right for you.
Back in December I attended the PubCon conference in Las Vegas and I was fortunate enough to meet my friend and Internet celebrity Ralph Wilson for an interview. Ralph has me regularly contributing tutorials and articles to the SEO section of his popular Web Marketing Today website and decided to interview me for a feature video on the website. The competitor analysis interview turned out pretty well I think - thank you Ralph!
I submitted a Sitemap, but my URLs haven't been [crawled/indexed] yet. Isn't that what a Sitemap is for?
If it doesn't get me automatically crawled and indexed, what does a Sitemap do?
Will a Sitemap help me rank better?
If I set all of my pages to have priority 1.0, will that make them rank higher (or get crawled faster) than someone else's pages that have priority 0.8?
Is there any point in submitting a Sitemap if all the metadata (, , etc.) is the same for each URL, or if I'm not sure it's accurate?
I've heard about people who submitted a Sitemap and got penalized shortly afterward. Can a Sitemap hurt you?
Where can I put my Sitemap? Does it have to be at the root of my site?
Can I just submit the site map that my webmaster made of my site? I don't get this whole XML thing.
Which Sitemap format is the best?
If I have multiple URLs that point to the same content, can I use my Sitemap to indicate my preferred URL for that content?
Does the placement of a URL within a Sitemap file matter? Will the URLs at the beginning of the file get better treatment than the URLs near the end?
If my site has multiple sections (e.g. a blog, a forum, and a photo gallery), should I submit one Sitemap for the site, or multiple Sitemaps (one for each section)?
Are you baffled about a recent drop in your search engine rankings? Do you know where to start and get a handle on what the problem might be and how to remedy it? One option to consider is using search engine forums as a resource. They are full of questions from people who have experienced similar situations and are great resources for an answer or two. But let’s say you really want to get to the bottom of the problem and you want to do it yourself. The following are some of the beginning steps StepForth takes when evaluating dropped rankings.
Retrace Your Steps
Write a list of everything that anyone has done to your site within the past 3 weeks. Now look for anything that could have negatively impacted your content, site structure, or the reliability of your URLs. Once you write down the course of events the answer might pop right out at you. Here are some common situational culprits:
You just moved your website to a different hosting provider: did your site experience much, if any, downtime during the switch over? Quality hosting companies will allow you to setup your site on their servers before the switch takes place so that downtime is minimized if not removed entirely. If a search engine happened to visit your site while it was down there is a small chance your rankings would be negatively affected but it will only happen for a short period. Once the search engine re-indexes your website everything should be back in order.
The structure of your site has permanently changed: did you redirect the traffic from the old URLs to the new URLs using a 301 redirect? If not then you should. A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect which tells any visiting search engine to permanently change its index to reflect the new site structure.
Contact your hosting company to check if your server has had any downtime recently. In most cases search engines will not drop your rankings if they visit your site and it is offline once; however, if this happens consistently then your rankings can fail. If your hosting company states that downtime has occurred then you have at least one possible answer for your ranking woes. As long as your site is now reliably online and has not been offline for an extended period (days or weeks) the rankings should reappear as your site is re-indexed. There may be a notable drop in rankings but in most cases they will return to pre-incident status.
Check Your Content
Is all of your textual content up to date? It is amazing just how quickly a website’s rankings can drop when someone accidentally overwrites optimized pages with older, non-optimized pages. Check the content and if you find old content just overwrite it with the newer content and wait for the search engines to come back and re-index your website; Google and Yahoo are likely to come back within a week or even a day.
Check Your Server Headers
When a search engine visits your website it must first respond to any commands provided by your server. These commands are often identifiable in the server header. As a result, we like to verify that no incorrect, unusual or unnecessary commands are stashed in the header of your site. We use our free Server Header Checker Tool to review any headers and take action if required but there are others freely available as well.
Search Engine Webmaster Tool Resources
If you have not already done so I strongly recommend claiming your website on Yahoo Site Explorer, Google Webmaster Central and Live Search Webmaster Center. Each of these fine resources provides extremely useful feedback (from each respective search engine’s perspective) for site owners such as:
Whether your site is currently banned. If you are, in some cases they will tell you why.
Notes on any impediments the search engine has experienced when trying to index your website.
Who is linking to your website.
Which pages are the most popular on your website.
Which keywords lead the most traffic to your website.
In addition these free webmaster resources allow you to submit an XML sitemap of your website so that you can ensure no pages are missed when the search engines index your website.
Search Your Site for SPAM
It is possible that your site has been “lucky” enough not to have been penalized until now for certain content transgressions. You see, search engines don’t always catch SPAM right away. In fact, I occasionally find myself shaking my head in disbelief when I see blatantly spammy sites appearing in the top 10 search results. Your site may not be entirely spammy but all it takes is for one transgression to come to light for a search engine to penalize your search engine rankings. What SPAM is and how to identify it is an article unto itself so here are some helpful resources for you to review:
If you haven’t found a reasonable answer after following the instructions above I would recommend either contacting a reputable SEO company for advice or posting your ranking problems publicly on a popular search marketing forum within a resource like Webmaster World. There are a lot of people on forums that can be incredibly helpful and may have an answer for you. But a word to the wise, make sure the person providing advice has a solid reputation. I strongly recommend reviewing a number of their previous posts and Googling them to ensure they have suitable experience to provide advice – unless of course you have a ‘no duh’ moment where their advice makes perfect sense.
If you have a question about your current rankings or other SEO related questions please submit your question here and we will do our best to respond ASAP.
Mike McDonald of WebProNews conducted a great, very informative interview with Live Webmaster Tool's Product Manager, Jeremiah Andrick.
Jeremiah discusses paid links, cloaking, the backlink function at Live Search and my special favorite - the incident where Adwords ads got indexed. Check it out, I think you will appreciate the frankness of Jeremiah's answers. You can certainly tell that Microsoft has finally figured out that Webmasters need to feel the love.
Special thanks to Barry Schwartz and the SE Round Table for recommending this video. I am glad I fit it into my busy day.
The following interview was conducted at PubCon Las Vegas and it focused on StepForth competitor analysis/competitor intelligence services. In hindsight I didn't give much away in the terms of competitive analysis and frankly the interview could have gone better (what with the sun glare and a lil'memory loss). So feel free to view this and then follow it up with my notes below where I will provide a couple examples of the strategies/resources used in our basic and advanced competitor intelligence reports.
Additional Competitor Analysis Tips We provide a listing of our recommended competitor research tools which Mike McDonald kindly previewed the link to but let me give you a few more tips... it is the least I can do if you watched my interview ;-)
Use Technorati to determine the networks that publish your competitors content. Often I identify some great sites that are more than happy to publish the material my client has... which in turn can build valuable links.
Use Compete.com (the one I forgot in the interview) to get a hint of the keywords your competitors may be focusing on and to gauge their success in each one. Please note, however, that I definitely do not recommend accepting everything from Compete.com as writ; accept it with a grain of salt because their intelligence network is far from flawless.
Use OptiLink to create a maximum list of backlinks for each competitor using Yahoo and have the system fetch PageRank and Alexa ratings. Then copy the results into Excel and then sort the results from highest Alexa rating to lowest first and then highest PR to lowest as the secondary sort rule . Now you will have the beginnings of a very useful list of likely respectable sites. Review each to determine which ones may accept your content/links as well.
Note: I sort by Alexa first because Google's paid-link PR penalty has caused many high quality resources to falsely look like low quality ones.
Here is more information on StepForth's SEO research services that focus on competitor analysis.
On the 6th of December at Pubcon Las Vegas I was fortunate enough to speak with Karla and Lacy of PRWeb.com; two wonderful ladies who were running PRWeb's exhibit booth. After a short discussion I decided it was time to put Karla and Lacy in the spotlight. You see I have used PRWeb many times in the past and I have always been impressed by its excellent press release promotion network. PRWeb is the perfect vehicle to get the word out on your new products/services and the circulation of your press release can provide valuable incoming links to your website.
The canvas I have outlined for successful web marketing is taking shape. The first article looked at the necessary stages we need to develop. We started with market research and analysis of our competitors and now armed with this information we can proceed to perhaps the most critical component of all, developing our keyword targets and creating supporting text for them.
What’s In a Word?
It has been often said that content is king. The choice and expression of these words is what makes the connection to the visitors and helps determine user behaviour. If the message is clear the visitor will know if they are at the website they want (or need) to be at and start the exploring process. Visitor attraction is influenced by a myriad of aspects such as site design, choice of colour, and ease of navigation. Visitor confidence is bolstered in large part through your use of words. Similarly much the same can be said for the search engine spiders; the higher their confidence rating of your website the higher your visibility in their index. And this rating of confidence all begins with how you choose your keyword targets.
According to Keyword Discovery over 80% of all online transactions begin with a keyword search. In a spreadsheet write down all choices of words you think your prospects will type into the search bar. It is important to consider not what you would type in but rather what your prospect will. Next you need to determine which search terms will be the most effective for your site and which you need to be found under. Two variables must be considered: the search frequency of a keyword phrase and its competitiveness on the net. This is to say, how many times is a particular keyword phrase being typed into a search bar and how many web pages are competing for that particular phrase.
The number of searches will indicate the amount of traffic you will get from top placement. Generally speaking, any phrase with more than 100 – 150 searches per day is considered relatively highly searched. That said, one must also consider how targeted a phrase is. An untargeted or general phrase with 200 searches per day may be less valuable than a targeted phrase with only 30 searches per day. Armed with this information we must then look at the competition. If a phrase with 150 searches per day has a very high competition level but a phrase with only 10 searches per day has a low competition it will be less costly to target the less competitive phrase and MAY produce a better return on investment.
To determine keyword search frequency select one of the following Keyword Research Tools listed on the StepForth site and put in your keywords. Enter the resultant search values on the spreadsheet. Take this opportunity to look for other keyword targets that the software will present in addition to your search term. Can these other keyword targets be of benefit to you? Next enter each term in the Google search bar and enter the number of pages competing for that term. The number of competing pages shows in the upper right corner of the screen.
From this data one can determine a universe of potential keyword phrases. Discard phrases that have a low search frequency; why bother spending time and effort for terms that people are not typing in or searching for.
Determine your list of words that offer a reasonable number of searches and have lower number of web pages competing for that term. Establish your primary and secondary phrases and it is this list from which you can create or modify your web pages and write textual support for these keywords. The primary phrase is the one that gets threaded throughout the whole site and the secondary ones are those that are category or page specific. Keeping a focus on the primary and secondary targets is critical. Tile tag and unique page descriptions, as well as keyword enriched internal links can be developed from this list. Consider using keywords with descriptive or geographic modifiers.
The importance of relevant text cannot be overestimated. Oftentimes additional body text content is necessary for the search engine spiders to obtain a qualitative snapshot of the topical content of the individual documents within your site and in order to make an overall assessment of what the site is about.
One simple way to keep spiders happy is to provide them with great ‘food’. Relevant, keyword enriched content will substantially increase the prospect of the site achieving better placements. For example, text used in the Home or Index page should be very descriptive of the business and its products or services. A paragraph or two (100 – 250 words) using keyword enhanced wording would be sufficient. On each page the message must be relevant to the overall theme of the site. Refine what message each and every page is to project, and write your content in the same manner you would speak it. Remember to keep the language simple. As Einstein wisely stated,
“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
As search engine spiders can only read text with 100% efficiency and tend to miss important information phrased in images, java scripts and Flash, the body text of the website is by far the most important element examined by a search engine. Further, keep in mind that search engine spiders cannot read the text within images or frames. This would include text in graphic menus, company logos, Flash animations, as well as what is in most header and footer sections.
Web Design and SEO
Now that you have looked at your competition, chosen your keyword targets and written your content it is time to give thought to the best way to present it visually. Key considerations for a search friendly web design include: an easy to read menu structure that remains consistent throughout the site and a nicely weighted balance of text to images. The navigation format should be textual and no more than a few levels deep. Spiders value the content more highly if it is placed in the higher directory levels. If you have an image based menu ensure you make a footer section on each page that is textual so search engines can read it. Avoid full pages composed of graphics or flash. Your web design should offer the ability to create unique title and description tags. Check for possible broken links and repair or delete them, and add a sitemap as well as an XML sitemap. For information on creating an XML sitemap see our XML Sitemap Creation Tools article.
Avoid having a Splash page at the beginning of the site as search engine spiders can not read the information. The Home (or Index page) is the most important page in the site for spiders to read, record, and index. As well the use of pop-ups in place of internal pages should be avoided as search spiders will not read information contained in pop-ups.
Some worthwhile reading suggestions follow. To decide if you are in need of a website redesign read our SEO Friendly Redesign article. If you are still unsure if your web design is SEO friendly consider investing in a few hours of consulting time. Also, I highly recommend looking over Correcting Common Usability Mistakes . These observations and suggestions can save you time and money.
The stage is now set. Market research and competitor analysis have given way to keyword identification, textual creation and a search friendly web design. The next phase to be discussed in our online marketing campaign is search engine optimization techniques.
I am often reminded how important it is to develop a well thought out business plan. I speak with numerous clients each day, each having a passion to promote their service, information or product and yet although they may be experts in their field, they do not have the expertise or foresight on how to market the site. Often times the website is destined to stay in the closet and never get the online exposure they need and are hoping for. And often times the client lacks an objective perspective, sort of being amongst trees in a forest and not being able to see to whole picture.
The internet audience has matured and become more sophisticated in its expectations and delivery of information. No longer can one just throw up a site and expect to immediately generate business. Website readiness for online marketing can take many forms. In this and the articles that follow in the next few weeks, we will examine the building blocks to successful web marketing. We will look at:
How to work your marketing budget and timelines
How to work a realistic marketing business
Pitfalls of optimization
Most common mistakes
Optimization complete, now what?
Tiers for small -med -large business, how we customize them
Making informed decisions now will set the stage for easier transitions on future initiatives and this can help minimize your costly investments of time, labour and money. Your website should be viewed as a dynamic entity and it requires your consistent attention and nurturing. This is a cardinal rule.
The Building Blocks….
The following checklist is an excellent strategy for achieving superb organic visibility and stable placement in the search engines. It will also help increase visitor retention and conversion. This information is portable; it does not matter whether you are in the planning phases of starting an online business, already have an existing website or are in need to redesign your presence. Although many of these stages (phases) can run concurrently the list below is presented as what should be implemented first, prior to moving into the next phase.
Marketing budget and timeline development
Market research
Website design
Competitor analysis
Keyword research
Content creation
Content management system and or shopping cart creation
Search engine optimization (SEO)
Link building
Blogs, newsletters, articles
Social media
Website analytics
Pay-per-click marketing (PPC)
Of course, your marketing strategy will be determined on whether you will be intimately involved or delegating stuff in-house or out of house. Do you have the time, energy, expertise for any, some or all of these important tasks? Will you go the consulting route and implement their recommendations? Is your service or product time sensitive? Does it need to be sold by a certain date? Your strategy, timetable and budget will vacillate accordingly.
Perhaps the best actionable word I can offer is to “Focus”. Focus on what it is you are all about and what sets you apart from your competitors. This may sound simple enough, however, try writing down in one sentence what one message you want visitors to receive when they come to your website. Surprisingly, many site owners I speak with have not or cannot do this. Determining such clarity before starting anything else can pay dividends. For example, organic visibility and placement in the search engines largely has been considered a game of inches; will you take advantage of this opportunity and create a keyword enriched domain name?
Market research offers data rich and timely information on what your competitors are doing. This can be approached from two angles and really, it is about how you define your “competition”. Perhaps you are aware of competitor sites from within your industry and want to learn more about how they got to where they are in the search engine result pages. Odd as this may seem, this method for selecting which competitor sites to analyze may not be the most effective route to analyze your competition. These competitors may not be well placed in the search engines and may not be targeting the same keyword phrases that you are. Should this be true, why bother analyzing them. On the other hand, if you have already determined one of your site’s primary keyword phrases you can type it into a search engine and review the resulting index page and choose from the list. The difference here is an important one to consider. Here you select your keyword phrase target and see who is competing for that term. It is not necessarily important who that company is or even what industry they are in. The important consideration is who is on top of the list for the keyword phrase you are shooting for and you are looking for any ammunition you can get to leap frog over their position in the search engine results page.
Market research will produce a blueprint for your web marketing direction.
Competitor analysis reveals information about their keyword targets and how they are positioned in Google, Yahoo and MSN. In looking at several competitor sites one can construct a universe of keyword phrases that have proven successful in the search engines. Understanding this helps determine your keyword phrases and aid in the creation of textual content for your site.
Links can be analyzed for their reputation and their popularity. Where are they coming from and are they paid links or from a link farm? Knowing who is linking to your competitor can make your task an easier one when developing your own link building campaign.
An index saturation analysis will show how many pages a website has indexed in a search engine in comparison to the number of pages actually existing within the website. The purpose of the saturation analysis is to evaluate the various design elements that may be affecting indexing efficiency and to ultimately determine whether saturation is playing a noteworthy role in the website’s (your competitor’s) ranking.
Optimization analysis will determine what (if any) particular optimization techniques are overwhelmingly influencing rankings for internal review pages of each site.
Not everyone has the budget or expertise for this in depth type of data mining. A more economical approach may be to conduct keyword analysis. Quite possibly developing a realistic set of achievable primary and secondary keyword targets is the most overlooked aspect to any successful web marketing presence. This component will be looked at in the next article.
A large part of my time at StepForth as a search engine optimization consultant is spent conducting competitor research on behalf of our clientele. This service is focused on deconstructing the marketing campaigns of each competitor while identifying the tactics that appear to have fundamentally contributed to their search engine success. As you might imagine I come across many intriguing techniques that work and many that don’t. In this article I will account for a couple of techniques that appear to be overlooked by many but have proven time and time again to work; the creation of an on-site glossary and frequently asked questions (FAQ) section.
Create a Glossary I imagine we have both shared one frustration with the Internet at one time or another and that is jargon… and too much of it. Acronyms, and bafflegab seem to be unintentionally utilized on websites all over the web (I am guilty too, I admit it) and I often wish there was a simple way to find a definition within a website rather than visiting an online dictionary. In some cases I find a website where the owners have smartly linked a potentially confusing term to an off-site definition which is kind to the user but a waste of a great optimization opportunity. Whenever an occasion arises where a link to a definition would be worthwhile it makes far more sense to link to that content within your own website so that you can gain credibility in the eyes of a major search engine like Google.
You see, Google’s algorithm is essentially a credibility calculator; it considers a whole host of elements on your website and pointing to your website to determine where it should be ranked. The algorithm considers countless elements including the uniqueness and relevance of each page’s content to the number of links pointing to your site from other credible and relevant websites. In this case, a small boost in credibility can be gained by first having the added relevant content inherent to a glossary and second by linking a word/phrase from a page to its definition within your glossary.
For example, if your website (i.e. www.xyzname.com) sold a wide variety of wood working tools and furniture building plans online it would be to your benefit to provide a fairly comprehensive glossary of woodworking terms on your website. Once the glossary is complete you can then occasionally link to the associated terms from within the written content on your website.
Okay, I see that the content within a glossary is relevant but I am not clear on why these links help? A search engine algorithm tries to ascertain credibility in much the same manner humans do; we just take our innate calculations for granted. So consider how you would feel if you were on the woodworking site reading a tutorial on building a rocking chair and whenever a confusing term appeared you were provided with a link to a glossary on the site kindly defining the term. This small convenience would probably inflate your opinion of the usefulness of the website and in-turn the credibility of the website would be less in doubt. Search engine algorithms assimilate these helpful links in much the same manner so by helping your visitors you are also helping your website.
Wait! There is another bonus to having a glossary: As an added benefit glossary pages also have a great chance at obtaining rankings for their associated definitions precisely because they have links from relevant text pointing to them. As a result, a woodworking glossary might become an entry page for curious surfers or even a page where other woodworking sites link to for a definition.
In short, glossaries are simply a win-win tactic for nearly any website. In fact, as I write this I can’t think of a single website that would not benefit from a glossary.
Create a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) Page Now that you have read why an on-site glossary is important perhaps the concept of adding a Frequently Asked Questions section to your website is a no-brainer or perhaps not. Either way if you don’t have a FAQ page then get your hide in gear and create one ASAP.
Like a glossary a Frequently Asked Questions page is a perfect place to build the credibility of your website and put to rest the fearful/concerning questions that often arise in relation to your products/services. If you need some ideas of what questions a prospective customer might ask try calling a few clients and ask them what they looked for before ultimately choosing your company. In addition, try placing a submission form on your contact page where prospects can ask you a question directly – just be sure to respond with haste. Then place the question and your response on the appropriate FAQ page.
Yet another bonus from having an FAQ It is very common for the average surfer to search the web using questions. If your FAQ uses the wording that you think your prospects will use when searching you will have a good chance at acquiring some extra high quality traffic. Do some research using a keyword analysis tool and try to find the best wording for each FAQ.
Tips for Building an Optimized Glossary or FAQ Now I imagine that every expert in the SEO field has a different preference for designing the ‘ultimate’ glossary or FAQ but there are definitely some important tips to keep in mind for both:
Keep the pages relatively short. For example, I do not recommend having the entire glossary or FAQ on a single page unless they are relatively small. Ideally I would limit the number of questions or definitions to 10 or 15 on each page.
When building a FAQ try to devote each FAQ page to a singular topic. For example, on a woodworking site the FAQ for one page might be on the installation of a wood floor and another page would be devoted to questions on laminate floor installation.
When formatting the content for both the glossary and the FAQ try to link to related content within your website. This way if any visitors or search engines enter the site via one of these pages they can find great related reading material in a single click.
Make sure that a “back” button or a button that takes the user to the glossary or FAQ main navigation is available after each definition/answer. This will make it easier for visitors to navigate each resource or find their way back to their original reading material.
Add content to both resources whenever possible. It is often very simple to add a new definition or question and over time each resource will become more and more valuable to your users and ultimately contribute more to your website’s success.
Ensure that the FAQ and Glossary pages are included in your XML sitemap so that search engines can regularly index them for fresh content (see Google XML Sitemaps – The Basics). That said, I advise setting the suggested re-index rate monthly unless the resources will be updated more often than that. After all, these pages are supposed to help but not take away from the core content of your website.
Your Competitors Are Doing It or They Will If your website lacks a glossary or a FAQ I can only hope that this article convinced you to make it a priority. These tools are noted as contributing factors to the success of competitors throughout many of my analysis contracts and simply put they are too simple to add for anyone to be without them. Even if you have to hire your search engine friendly web designer to add these resources the ends will justify the means.
Have you got a burning question about your current search engine optimization campaign?
Do you want to ask about the particular nuances of different leading search engines?
Are you wondering why after all of your work your website is not getting better rankings?
If so, send your SEO questions to StepForth and if they are not already answered in our "SEO Answers Resource" we will do our best to answer them and possibly feature them in future SEO blog postings or articles.
The Weekly StepForth SEO Newsletter Also if you are looking for great free SEO tips and advice we highly recommend signing up for our free weekly SEO newsletter - the StepForth Weekly. The StepForth SEO newsletter provides valuable SEO tips and important search engine news on a regular basis to ensure that you are always kept up to date.
The Fantomaster blogged about a rather interesting new service called SubmitLinks.com that has launched despite the war Google formally started on paid links.
The service uniquely provides users with the ability to buy one way text links for a one time fee (guaranteed for 6 months). Here is a quote from the home page:
SubmitLinks.com offers permanent one way text links for a one time fee. The text links we provide have a Google PageRank between 1 and 5 and are placed on a wide variety of different web sites. In addition, links are placed on web pages relevant to your web site subject.
There is a minimum purchase of $300. Text Link pricing: (one time fee)
Page Rank 1 Links: $8.50
Page Rank 2 Links: $13.50
Page Rank 3 Links: $20.00
Page Rank 4 Links: $25.00
Page Rank 5 Links: $36.00
It should be interesting to see how this pans out. In my opinion this company has a good chance of doing well but this is certainly not a market segment I would be interested in jumping into right now.
All-in-all it merits mentioning that buying text links is playing with fire these days. That said, if you do it carefully your rankings are very likely to improve.
As of today Google will allow you to see and optionally disallow which links on your site have been identified as candidates for appearing as "sitelinks" directly in Google search results. (see Google's press release)
What are Sitelinks? Sitelinks are shown when a website is considered a leader in a particular search term. The sitelinks are a list of key navigational links on the site and they appear below the standard website listing (see snapshot).
To view and manage your sitelinks, go to the Webmaster Tools Dashboard and click the site you want. In the left menu click Links, then click Sitelinks.
How is this Helpful? First of all, only a lucky few will ever have a top ranking where sitelinks are shown so this is really just a feature for a small percentage of sites. That said, if your site is fortunate enough to have a sitelink list you may want to disallow links to areas within your site that may be out of date or that are under construction. It is also possible that allowing a particular sitelink may mess up your ideal sales funnel.
All-in-all, I think sitelinks is a great addition to the webmaster toolset and it is yet another example of Google listening closely to the webmaster community - kudos to them!
Ask’s portion of the search market is a mere 4.3% (src. Hitwise) so it is understandable that optimizing for Ask is a low priority in the eyes of many webmasters. That said, despite the company’s rather infamous advertising campaigns Ask has some incredible and unique features that I believe will slowly but surely steal search share from its more popular brethren. Consequently, it seems appropriate to provide some tips on how to optimize for Ask without sacrificing rankings on the other search engines. To that end the following instructions are supplementary to the recommendations provided in my “How to Optimize for Yahoo” article.
ASK OVERVIEW
Ask differs from the other search engines because it has fully rolled-out universal search. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this term universal search is the integration of results from a variety of sources (i.e. images, video, local information, news, blogs, etc.) into a single results page. Although Google has implemented universal search to some extent Ask is the first search engine to leap head-first into these complex waters and they have done a great job of it. Since universal search is slowly going to be rolled-out across Google, MSN and Yahoo, Ask is a great place to prepare for the competitive world of universal search. The areas I will cover are images, blogs and feeds, local search and mobile.
ASK IMAGE OPTIMIZATION
Just how do you get an image to show up within Ask.com’s universal search results? The key is to remove any doubt of the image’s relevance to the keyword you are trying to achieve rankings for.
Alt tags need to be created and must clearly represent the topic of the picture while utilizing the target keyword.
The content nearby the image should be relevant to the picture and for best results should include the keyword used to describe the picture in the Alt tag.
The filename of the picture should utilize the keyword.
ASK’S LOCAL SEARCH: ASKCITY
AskCity is Ask’s local portal where various maps and locally themed content (such as event news, theatre tickets, etc.) can be readily found. AskCity was launched in December 2006 as a far superior upgrade over Ask Local and it remains a solid leader in the growing and highly competitive local search marketplace. Fortunately having a presence at AskCity only requires that your business is added to their database if it is not already there.
How to Submit Your Business to AskCity
Submit your business information to askcitybusiness@help.ask.com with the subject line “Ask City Feedback – Business”. Ensure the following information is added to the email:
Business name and complete address
Phone number
The category your business best fits
The website URL
A contact person’s email address
According to Ask the turnaround time is no more than 28 days.
Tip! You might notice that your business profile (once it is online) has a rating system attached to it; shown as a five star system. If you wish to influence your rating then I suggest sending your happy customers to CitySearch, Yelp.com, and Insiderpages where these results are drawn from. Once they are there have them find your listing and provide a positive review of your business.
MAXIMIZING VISIBILITY IN ASK BLOGS & FEEDS
Ask is the proud owner of Bloglines which is one of the foremost news aggregation tools on the web and happens to be the database behind Ask Blogs and Feeds. To ensure that your blogs and feeds are included in this system I suggest creating an account at Bloglines and be sure to include your feed within the profile.
In order to have any chance of influencing your position within Ask Blogs and Feeds you need to be aware of a couple things. First, the order of results within Ask’s Blogs and Feeds is determined by a combination of Ask’s ExpertRank algorithm (their intensive search engine algorithm) and Blogline’s vast 12 million plus blog database. Ask uses this combination to create the first order of results which is dictated by relevance; not by date which is the most common first viewing at Ask’s competitors. Consequently, it is important that you pay close attention to the relevance of the keyword density in your title, body and links within each post you write on your blog. By keeping your ideal keyword ranking in mind while writing your posts you will have a better chance of obtaining a ranking based on relevance.
Secondly, aside from ordering results by relevance and date (noted as “most recent”), Ask also offers a sorting by popularity. I can only postulate how this works but it makes good sense that a popularity ranking is derived from a mingling of Ask’s monitoring of the stickiness of certain articles (how long users stayed at an article before returning) and how many times a feed and/or a post is accessed within the multitude of user accounts at Bloglines. Considering these factors it stands to reason that creating a sticky blog post is the clearest and most obvious first requirement. The second requirement would be to get active in the Bloglines community and try to spread the word about your quality blog(s) throughout your community. The more people that add your blog feed to their Bloglines profile and interact with it, the better chance you have of achieving a top spot when results are ordered by popularity.
ABOUT ASK MOBILE
Ask Mobile utilizes ExpertRank and appears to be based on Ask’s standard website database. This may seem odd at first. After all, how can Ask provide mobile users with full size websites? The trick lies in their use of Skweezer technology that squeezes normally unwieldy websites into more digestible one column sites for mobile users. It may seem that there is nothing that can be done then to influence mobile rankings at Ask. Not true, the answer lies within the fact that Ask Mobile is focused on providing local results to cell users while they are on the go. With that in mind it makes sense that you improve your website’s odds of being found by ensuring it has a comprehensive listing in AskCity.
Tip!If locally based results are extremely attractive to you then I also suggest adding your physical address information within the footer of every page so that Ask and other locally focused search engines have a better chance of associating your website with a region.
SITEMAPS ARE CRITICAL
Ask’s spider is the least active of the big 4 search by far. When reviewing client spider reports I see Ask visiting websites 50% less or more than MSN, Yahoo and Google. In fact on many websites that have not yet added a sitemap or have less than ideal site structures Ask often does not even index pages deep within their website(s). As a result, submitting a sitemap to Ask is critical if you want your deep content to be properly indexed.
First create a sitemap. On StepForth’s recommended SEO tools page we noted our favourite tool currently: Vigos Google Sitemap Generator. Download this free utility and have it spider your website. Once it is complete set whatever custom data you want (info is provided within the program) and then generate the sitemap.xml file. Place this file within the root of your website and move to step 2.
To submit your sitemap to Ask you have two options: add a link to the sitemap into your Robots.txt file or simply inject your sitemap.xml address into the following URL and then visit it:
http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http%3A//www.the URL of your sitemap here.xml
Of the two options I strongly recommend going the route of adding the sitemap auto discovery link to your robots.txt file because this is now an agreed method of submitting a sitemap amongst the major search engines. Just place the following code on its own line within your robots.txt file:
SITEMAP: http://www.the URL of your sitemap here.xml
USING ASK AS A RESEARCH TOOL
Ask has a helpful resource included in its universal search layout called “narrow your search”. Try typing in your keyphrase in Ask and then take a look at the narrow your search section of the page. There you will see popular searches that are relevant to your keyphrase. Record this information when conducting keyword research because it is a valuable glimpse into what Ask’s ExpertRank algorithm considers closely relevant and it may also show what users are actually searching for.
OTHER INFORMATION
There are a few personality traits that you should be aware of when working with Ask that are quite unique:
Ask does not currently support the “nofollow” tag which could mean that any link leaving your website is considered a vote of confidence for the destination site.
Ask utilizes a site/content preview window for each listing it presents; represented by a binocular icon. Since users may use this tool to get a glimpse of your site before visiting it is more important than ever to ensure the content above the fold (that appears first without scrolling) is enticing to users and relevant to their search.
CONCLUSION
I am solidly impressed by the technology at Ask and its successful foray into the realms of universal search. In fact, my research for this article has moved Ask from a bystander in my set of daily search tools to the forefront. I highly recommend utilizing Ask for your search needs and to keep an eye out for future technology additions to this solid search engine. In my opinion Ask is cutting edge enough that we can expect many search engines will be copying their successful implementations in the future.
Now… if only Ask could get the positive attention it deserves. If I were them I would start by creating a stronger connection with webmasters to interact with them and build awareness. That would be far more effective than the ad campaigns they are currently flooding the airwaves with.
Are you an Ask fan? If so, what do you think they need to do to improve their visibility? Post your thoughts by commenting on this article and perhaps Jim Lanzone and his crew will get a helpful tip or two.
Last week I discussed the best tactics for achieving rankings in Yahoo, the web’s number 2 most popular search engine. Now it is time to pick on the third most used search property – MSN, which has 6.6% of the search market (src: Hitwise) and is currently found at www.live.com. MSN’s ranking algorithm has its own nuances which will be noted in this article but in many cases the rules of optimization may be the same as Yahoo’s in which case I will occasionally duplicate information from my “How to Optimize for Yahoo” article or source it for more information.
WEB SITE OPTIMIZATION Except for the following elements, optimizing for MSN is identical to optimizing for Yahoo.
Fresh Content is King: I suppose technically this is not an element of ‘optimization’, however, this article would not be worth its salt if I didn’t express how highly MSN regards fresh content. If your site is in a competitive marketplace and you are finding it difficult to get a leg up on your competitors in MSN then write original content in order to build up your site and reputation. MSN appears to elevate websites that regularly update their content and a blog is a great way to post this content for others to read and favour you with links. If you would like some information on how to get a blog up and running from start to finish then I suggest reading Blogs 101.
Themed structure: this topic is identical to that of my Yahoo article, however, it is vital enough to mention it again. Construct your website using a themed structure where core site topics (themes) have their own unique section of the website to themselves. When the search engine spiders index the content within this section they will be given absolute clarity as to what the section is about. For more information see the example within the Yahoo Optimization article.
Basic optimization principles hold true: take out your SEO basics handbook and follow the rules when optimizing for MSN and you have done the best you can. Specifically focus on inline links (links to pages within sentences) and the use of heading tags to fortify rankings at MSN.
Navigation: pages with text navigation which lends itself to simpler and more relevant indexing are performing well.
WEB SITE SUBMISSION Unlike Google and Yahoo, MSN does not yet have a fully operational Webmaster Central for webmasters to submit sitemaps and to acquire insight into their website profile on MSN; it is currently in private beta so it is not available yet. That said I feel that submitting a website sitemap is extremely important. Fortunately there are two known ways to get your sitemap submitted to MSN:
Option 1) The best method for submitting your sitemap is by adding a sitemap reference in your Robots.txt file using the following format:
Option 2) A back-door strategy can be used to submit your sitemap to MSN through the news aggregation service called Moreover. To submit your sitemap substitute the bolded text with your own information in the following URL: http://api.moreover.com/ping?u=http://www.xyzname.com/sitemap.xml
LINK BUILDING MSN places a great deal of weight on incoming links and does not appear to apply as many filters to the links that Google or Yahoo do. As a result, ethical or not, many link building strategies such as reciprocal link building and paid links appear to pay dividends.
It is also noteworthy that MSN’s spider is very active so any incoming links that you receive will often be spidered within a week. Furthermore, MSN’s link filtering systems are not as bogged down as the other search engines (less traffic perhaps?) so incoming links appear to affect rankings faster which tends to help when tweaking a campaign and measuring the value of links.
CONCLUSION As you can see there is little to report on the intricacies of optimizing for MSN because, quite frankly, MSN is fairly predictable and by the book; write good original content, optimize it well using the techniques outlined in the Yahoo optimization tutorial and ensure to submit your sitemap to MSN. If you combine those elements with a solid link building campaign then you are sure to move into a ranking where you can continue to tweak your optimization until you reach the top.
With a reported 22.1% of search traffic Yahoo is second only to Google’s 64.4% (src: Hitwise) for search user volume so it is extremely important not to forget that attaining a top ranking in Yahoo can be a big boon to the bottom line. As a result, I decided to write this update on how to attain superior rankings in Yahoo using today’s useful tools and tactics.
OVERVIEW: Optimizing for Yahoo! Algorithmically Yahoo is Google’s much younger sibling. I say this because many of the requirements for a successful ranking mirror Google’s requirement about 4 years ago and they sum up to one distinct fact; optimize your content boldly on Yahoo and you will be rewarded. When I say “boldly” I do not mean use SPAM; by nature SPAM and optimization do not mix… they are two entirely separate concepts (black and white in fact).
The following are the current generalized specifications for achieving solid rankings in Yahoo.
WEB SITE OPTIMIZATION SEO tactics have not changed a great deal over the past 10 years I have been an SEO. In general terms the only effect time has had on SEO is to vary the intensity of the optimization for particular page elements. That is the rub of course; some search engines appreciate the optimization of particular page elements over others. In the case of Yahoo, this old property with a relatively young algorithm tends to favour the following elements:
Title Tag: Keep your title tag as short as 5 small-medium sized words and include one complete incidence of your keyphrase. Yahoo! blatantly favours sites that include the keyphrase in the title tag. For an example check out “car sales” or for that matter any phrase. Within the top 10 results you will notice that the majority of sites listed will include at least one incidence of the keyphrase or a crucial portion of it (i.e. “cars”). The ones that do not include the keyphrase tend to be sites that have are extremely popular so even basic title tag optimization is not required to attain a top ranking.
Meta Description Tag: Start this tag with an incidence of your keyphrase and then produce a short 15 – 18 small-medium sized word sentence clearly describing your site. Include one more incidence of your keyphrase in the sentence. Keep in mind that the description tag is often utilized as the description for any rankings you achieve so it is best to make it alluring.
Meta Keyword Tag: Keyword tags have long been considered ineffective and no longer have any importance on Google; however Yahoo does still consider the keyword tag so it cannot hurt to include it. The keyword tag should start with the keyphrase and then all following words or phrases should be ordered according to their relevance to your website; place the most important ones up front. The max size of a keyword tag should be 250 characters – comma-delimited. Do not over repeat words; no more than 3 repetitions of a single word within the tag.
Keywords in URL: Create keyword-based filenames that closely represent the content within the file. Yahoo rewards keyword-based filenames a small amount – perhaps enough to push past your competition.
Headings: Heading 1 and 2 tags should be applied on every page where appropriate to embolden the relevance of the page. In other words, use the page’s keyphrase within a Heading 1 tag to further enhance the visibility of the keyphrase on the page.
Alt text for images: Don’t forget to provide appropriate ALT text for each image on your website. The ALT text must not provide information that is already written on the website. ALT text is supposed to provide a clear and concise description of what the image is. Fortunately this means that adding an incidence of the keyphrase or a portion of the keyphrase is totally appropriate which can add slightly more credibility to your page score when Yahoo’s crawler (Slurp) indexes the page.
Inline Links: In the midst of your page it is beneficial to include links to related pages from related content. These links will apply relevance to the linked page; which is optimized for the same keyphrase you linked from.
Site Structure: Site structure is a vital component to ranking success on Yahoo; especially in competitive marketplaces where every advantage is required to reach the top. One method that would be successful at Yahoo (and happens to work as well on the other major search engines) is a tried and true technique that revolves around the linear progression of related content throughout the website; it is commonly known as Themeing. The following example should shed some light on this subject:
Your site is a car sales site focused on Audi. In order to create a linear site structure you would focus each section of the site on an individual relevancy. Say you pick “Audi A5” as the relevant topic (see Figure 1.0). As you move deeper into the Audi A5 section you only see A5 relevant content. The search engine spider and your users will not be distracted by links to other vehicles – only information on the A5. This progresses as you proceed deeper into this arm of the website and because this section of the site is utterly focused on the subject “Audi A5” the odds of achieving a ranking for that term increase considerably.
LINKS When building links for Yahoo concentrate on quality not quantity. Quality links would be one way links from sites that specialize in content directly relevant to the content on your own website. Building these links can be done by creating content and syndicating it to your own industry for link love and to build credibility. In addition, if your website is a worthwhile resource it is entirely reasonable to tell the world about your site in order to build links; hopefully they will link to you because they like your site so much.
Finally, there is another tactic that has mixed results; send out press releases once a month using PRWeb or an associated press release agency. A good press release can easily build the links you need in no time at all. Unfortunately the mixed results I noted occur when press releases inevitably become archived, at which point the link relevance will fade. As a result, link building with press releases is only useful as an ongoing practice and should be considered a small facet of a robust link building campaign.
SITE EXPLORER SETTINGS Yahoo’s Site Explorer is a fantastic tool for monitoring your website(s) and running basic link reports. If you have not already done so you should create an account at Site Explorer and then validate your website (prove you own it) so that you can manage the information Yahoo has for your website. Once you have validated your website I have noted some Site Explorer functionality that may help your website perform on Yahoo:
Make certain to create a sitemap and submit it to Yahoo: If you haven’t already done so use a XML sitemap generator to create a sitemap for your website and then submit it to Yahoo using the “Add Feed” form within your website’s Site Explorer profile.
Removing unnecessary dynamic content from your URLs with new add-on within Site Explorer: Does your URLs content session ID’s or other dynamic content that is unnecessary within the URL? If so, this information can be indexed by the search engines and ultimately can cause havoc with your rankings. Thankfully Yahoo has implemented a new tool within the Site Explorer domain management section called “Dynamic URLs Beta”. Here are the instructions to use the Dynamic URLs tool.
OTHER CONSIDERATIONS After reviewing our notes from current and previous Yahoo promotions and taking a look at a variety of top 10 results the following points appeared noteworthy:
Ensure open indexing by using Robots.txt wisely
A lot of our client’s older content appears to be sticking to top rankings with little or no monthly tweaking. As a result, I think it is fair to assume that fresh content is not currently gaining much weight in the Yahoo algorithm.
In many cases top ranking sites have pushed the envelope and their sites border on SPAM. Considering the top ranking these sites have it appears Yahoo’s SPAM filters are far less sensitive than Google’s. I expect Yahoo will change this in the near future but then again I have been surprised how long this has been the status quo.
One common claim throughout forums is that achieving a placement in the Yahoo Directory provides an instant boost to Yahoo rankings. Unfortunately we have not seen conclusive evidence that the annual $299 fee will increase rankings dramatically in the short term. That said, I strongly believe that a Yahoo Directory placement is a very reputable incoming link that does pay dividends in the long run at any search engine that weighs incoming links (the ones that count).
Yahoo Search Submit was re-introduced back in February 2007 to significant criticism due to the potential favouritism to those who pay to get into the Yahoo index. Despite the negative feedback there appears to be some potential benefits to paying for submission. For one, in July I noted an interesting story where a website was banned from Yahoo and the webmaster got the site back into Yahoo’s index by paying for inclusion (“Banned from Yahoo?”). A second reason Search Submit may be worthwhile is the guarantee that your site will be indexed. Furthermore, the Yahoo’s Search Submit Pro service allows you to recommend your own title and description tags for each page submitted and to submit pages that may not normally be indexed by Slurp.
I caught an interesting seminar today called "SEO Through Blogs and Feeds" with Stephen Spencer, Rick Klau, Doug Hay and Greg Jarboe on the panel. The following are my point by point notes that stood out as noteworthy. Some of these tips are mirrored in my 3 part tutorial on blogging called Blogs 101 but as always some great new tips popped up.
Key Tips For those in a rush or who have already read my blogs 101 article the following tips are very worthwhile reading - if just for their importance as reminders:
It is extremely important that RSS auto-discovery tags be placed in the header of every page within a website that has feeds available. By doing so you will provide users and search engines alike with a simple method of being notified that you have RSS feed(s) and it will allow immediate subscription without fuss. In contrast simply having a RSS logo hyperlinked with a feed provides little or no benefit and does not provide auto-notification that a feed is available.
Furthermore it is recommended to create a unique auto-discovery tag for each available RSS feed and place them all in the header. If you think you have too many then I would recommend choosing the feeds that are most relevant to the page content.
A WordPress plugin was noted called the "SEO Title Tag Plugin". This plugin really impressed me because it allows WordPress users to see and individually customize the title tags of every post within the associated blog; without a doubt a powerful capability since title tags play a significant role in rankings.
If you use paid Press Release services to disseminate your latest company news then it also works to your advantage to create a separate blog specifically used for your press releases. In this regard you can use the associated RSS feed to get some free publicity by submitting it to blog directories and other blog-syndicating properties.
If you are finding it difficult to get the word out about a particular piece of news then Greg Jarboe has a great idea for you: track down the key bloggers that appear to be driving the news in your industry and contact them with your story.
If your story interests even one of the bloggers and gets published then you could get a massive amount of publicity for zero dollars.
During the presentation of this concept Greg Jarboe utilized a powerful online tool called BuzzLogic to identify which people drove the latest news in key topics. Unfortunately BuzzLogic appears to be priced well out of the capabilities of many small businesses (at $12,000/yr minimum) so I will provide a very basic free alternative to determining the leaders of a particular topic.
Step 1) Search in your favorite search engine for the particular topic. Within the results separate the blogs from the other content. If you do not find at least 10 bloggers then try search again with different wording for the same topic.
Step 2) Look at each blog individually and look for indications of readership or popularity. For example perhaps one of the website has a Feedburner subscription counter with the blog's current readership OR take the URL of the blog and conduct a backlink check on Yahoo using "linkdomain:www..com" (without the quotes) to see which blogs have the most inbound links. Sort these blogs according to their popularity.
Step 3) Find contact information on each site and then contact the writer(s) starting with the most trafficked blogs and pitch your news/idea/story.
Note: I am not saying the steps above have anywhere near the quality of results that a full-fledge program like BuzzLogic has but it is certainly a great place to start.
Promote your latest blog posting by taking advantage of a popular blogger's vanity. Compliment them within your key article (somehow) using their full name and perhaps provide a link back to their website. Chances are that the blogger often keeps an eye on blog postings or sites that utilize their name. When they visit your posting there is a good chance they will read it.
General Blog and Feed Optimization Tips:
Providing full text feeds was noted regularly throughout the presentation as a far superior method for creating backlinks and getting found online.
Your blog feed should have 20 or more items never the minimum 10.
Provide a feed for every category your site/blog offers.
Ensure that you create keyword rich blog posts and ensure that your brand is well represented within the text.
Ensure the most important keyword/phrase is listed in the blog title.
Optimize Your Blog's Linking Structure For Best Results
Provide a listing of the top 10 posts within your site so the stories do not get buried in archives or category pages. If the articles are performing well it is just logical to keep them in plain view to get more mileage from them.
Use Tag Clouds and Tag Pages to increase the possible routes to your valuable past content.
If you are using WordPress as your blogging tool it is a great idea to install the "Sticky Posts" plugin which allows you to 'stick' an introduction or key post at the top of each category page.
Addressing Blog Duplication Concerns By opening up categories (a.k.a. 'labels' on Blogger) to the search engines you increase the likelihood of having a great deal of duplicated content. Fortunately the search engines have, so far, been quite clear that duplicate content in blogs is not a concern because it is a natural consequence of labeling. That said, there was a WordPress plugin noted that would allow you to create controlled article excerpts (or teasers) within the category pages. It is called "Optional Excerpts" and by using it you can maintain the authority of the core posting since the label pages will only provide a teaser versus the full text of the article.
doMobi: Growth in the .mobi mobile web is undisputed in this post. Skip to the bottom if you just want that facts ma'am.
Huge kudos to James Pearce and the gang; I am a big fan of the .mobi concept and frankly the great support and awareness the .mobi squad brings to the mobile revolution.
Matt Cutts published a blog posting with Whitehat SEO Tips for Bloggers. I haven't read it all yet but by nature these posts are often interesting.
"Listen Up (Why your customer's native tongue matters)": Marketer Drew McLellan explains that for sales content to be effective you need to make sure your content is written in a fashion similar to how your customers speak.
All the best and I hope you all have a great weekend wherever you are. - Ross Dunn
Yesterday Danny Sullivan posted an interesting walkthrough on a new technology that Yahoo is currently testing called Yahoo Search Assist. Throughout the following I will give a quick rundown and explain why Search Assist may help sites found in the bottom 5 of the top 10 search results.
What Do I Mean by Search Assist? First Some Background You may have noticed over the past couple years that whenever you search for an item in Google or Yahoo you were provided with word completion suggestions. For example, if you typed in 'boat' then the suggestions that appeared in a drop-down (which you can select from to complete your search) might be 'boating', 'boat sales', 'boat magazine', 'boating tips'... or something like that. These suggestions came from the search engine's analysis of the most common searches related to what you are typing in. This functionality is useful but Yahoo Search Assist promises a more intelligent search experience.
Yahoo Search Assist takes suggestions to a whole new level by providing related topics. For example, if a searcher were looking for a cement cleaner to get rid of oil stains on his driveway he might start by typing in "cement" at which point he pauses to consider the next word. Yahoo Search Assist will 'notice' his pause and begin suggesting related searches. It will first provide the standard word & phrase stems such as 'cement mixer', 'cement manufacturer' or even 'cement cleanser'. But with Search Assist, Yahoo may also provide related terms or even brand names such as 'Pur-Pwr' or 'Powder 230' which are all products that are related to 'cement'. In this case both of those brands happen to be cement cleansers which a person could immediately click on and see search results (such as links to vendors).
So how does this affect the user experience? According to Danny's article Yahoo usability testing has shown that this enhanced search experience dramatically changed how searchers interacted with results; they spent more time and tended to search the whole page of results rather than simply the top few listings.
Search Assist Might Help Level the Playing Field Once this technology is formally released I expect Yahoo will suddenly become a hotter commodity for marketers if the bottom 5 of the top 10 rankings suddenly see more traffic than other search properties; since sites like Wikipedia or monster corporations tend to take the top positions in competitive categories. I will believe it when I see it but if we take Yahoo's usability studies as fact, this technology may vastly increase the visibility for sites rankings 'below the fold' (where you have to scroll down to see them).
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 4:13 PM
So you have decided to venture out into the world of SEO. The first thing you will need to do is determine the direction of your campaign in relation to the key phrases you are choosing to target. This article will focus on how to find keywords for your organic campaign, as the process is slightly different for PPC.
Many site owners know immediately what phrases they want. If you feel like you know what you want, before you start take a brief step back and assess if this really is the best phrase for your site. Yes, it just may very well be the perfect phrase, but if it isn’t, you could wind up spending a lot of time and money pursuing a ranking that either will never happen, or will provide very little value to your site.
There are a few key areas to look at when choosing a target phrase:
Relevance – Is this phrase even relevant to your site and its content?
Search Frequency – Are people even searching for this phrase?
Competition – How competitive is this field? Is it even a feasible target?
Where to start – Create a List of Phrases So where do you even start with all this keyword research. Before looking up search frequencies and competition you need to create a list of relevant phrases. Open up an excel sheet and type out all relevant phrases that come to mind, do a little brainstorming as there are no wrong answers at this state.
After you have exhausted your thoughts, move over to your website. Open it up and navigate throughout recording any keyword phrase ideas that spring up checking your title tags and body content. Once this is done, do the same thing with your competition. Visit some sites that you know are in direct competition with you and go through them recording any relevant phrases you see.
By now you should have a long list of potential targets, a list that will grow further as you look into their search frequencies.
Find a Keyword Tool The next step is to open up your favorite keyword research tool. There are many to choose from, two of the more popular being WordTracker and Keyword Discovery, although many still use the free, Overture tool. It is important to note that no keyword tools give you 100% accurate search figures. In most cases you will get numbers representing a sampling from various search engines. These numbers are best used in comparing one phrase to another to find out which is more popular, rather than determining specifically how much traffic to expect.
Check the Search Frequency Once you’ve opened up a keyword tool, begin entering your keyword phrases and record their noted search frequency. Be sure to scroll through the results recording any additional phrases that are both relevant and have acceptable search frequencies. The exact number of searches required to make a phrase acceptable depends widely on industry, and even the search tool being used. A phrase with only 100 searches per month may be perfect for a secondary target, but in most cases may not be the best bet for a primary phrase.
Sorting Your List You now should have a very exhaustive list of potential target phrases and their corresponding search frequencies. Sort this list in descending order based on the number of searches, so that the most popular phrase is at the very top. In many industries, the top few phrases may be completely impractical to target due to the competition, but we’ll determine that a bit later.
Check the Competition The next step is to get a feel for how competitive these phrases are. In the next column in your spreadsheet, place the number of results returned by Google for each individual phrase. The lower the number of competing pages, in most cases, the easier it may be to achieve rankings. (Note: this is not always the case, but it is an indicator).
At this point, you will have a long list sorted by search frequency, along with the number of competing pages. If you are fortunate, you will see one phrase immediately that jumps out – solid searches with low competition. This just may be the most ideal target phrase.
Does this phrase fit well with the theme of your site? If so, go to Google and take a closer look at the ranking websites. Does your site fit in with the general feel of these results? In some cases it may not, as your phrase could have different meanings (especially true if using acronyms). This phrase may represent a completely different part of the world if geographically targeted, or simply may be littered with mega competitors such as eBay, Amazon, WikiPedia, and others. If you can see your site fitting in with these results, it’s time to assess the general feasibility of this phrase.
Take a look at the number of back links, and indexed pages each site has. Do your numbers compare? If you find that the top 10 ranking sites all have back links well into the tens of thousands, and your site has a dozen or so, you may want to consider a different phrase. If the ranking sites are in the high tens, or low hundreds, and your site has a dozen links, then you have something to work with, if you are willing to work on increasing your link counts. The number of pages indexed is less important than links, but if you have a 6 page site and you are planning on competing with thousand page sites, your chances of success will be much lower.
The real key is to try to find a phrase that offers relevance, decent searches, and competition that is not way out of your league.
Pick a Phrase to Drive Qualified Traffic For organic SEO it is usually best to focus on one primary phrase that best suits your site, while targeting more specific secondary phrases for relevant sections of your site. With organic SEO, how many phrases you should target is somewhat limited by the size of your site, the larger the site, the more phrases you will have the ability to work towards.
The phrase with the most searches is not always the best fit. This is largely true with the real estate market.
Because everyone has free access, I will use the Overture Keyword Selector Tool for an example. The phrase “real estate” saw 3,057,037 searches in January of 07. On the surface this phrase seems like a dream come true, but you have to consider the geographic issues.
If your office serves the Seattle area, is someone searching in Orlando likely to be a qualified visitor to your site? In most cases no. Targeting the phrase “Seattle real estate” with 12,441 searches, seems like a much better choice as it would deliver more qualified traffic. While this phrase is still quite competitive, it is not nearly as difficult as simply “real estate”. Take a look at the big picture and determine not only how likely it is that you may achieve rankings, but whether the traffic generated from such a ranking would actually have a positive impact on sales.
Conclusion Doing some research to find the best target phrase is the groundwork for your SEO campaign. Without it you’ll be flying blind with no clear direction on goals. Take the time up front to do a little research and determine whether the dream phrase you have in mind is a worthwhile target or not. If it turns out that it’s not, its better to find out before you invest your time and money on an SEO campaign. Knowing the level of competition and search frequencies for a target phrase beforehand will help you make informed decisions and give you the best chances for success.
This morning I came across a great article by Sujan Patel at Search Engine Journal called "5 Quick Ways to Optimize for Local Search". I highly recommend reading this article!
The following is a summary of the main points with an added Canadian perspective for those who want to add/edit their business listing in Canada:
1) Make sure to list your business in the following local sections of these sites:
YellowPages - SuperPages and YellowPages have the same listings in Canada so just use the SuperPages Canada link above.
Switchboard - this directory does not appear to have a Canadian version. Even if it did it would be populated by YellowPages information which you can edit using SuperPages Canada.
CitySearch - it appears that Toronto is the only Canadian region covered.
2) Make sure your address information is present within your website; a great place is the footer of every page.
3) Ensure your domain is registered with your business address. Use a WHOIS tool to verify the address is correct in your domain.
4) If you want to take your local Internet presence to a more competitive level try getting backlinks to your website with geographical references. For example, StepForth might look for "web marketing, Victoria, BC" or "SEO services, Victoria, BC"
5) Cell phone and PDA users are turning to fast local searches using their mobile devices. In order to tap this marketplace create a mobile version of your website with geographical references including nearby popular spots/businesses. You would also benefit from trading links or acquiring links from businesses in your area. Read "Stake Your Claim on the Mobile Web" to get an introduction into Mobile device marketing or read our other articles and posts on mobile.
According to a thread at the Search Engine Watch forums it is possible to get back into Yahoo Search after being banned by paying for reinclusion using Yahoo Search Submit. This news was released by a forum participant who noted that after being banned by Yahoo Search they made some changes to their website (to address the issues) and were denied reinclusion. In response they chose to try using Yahoo Search Submit after which they were pleasantly surprised to see they were miraculously reincluded into Yahoo's organic results. Is it really this easy to buy a spot in Yahoo?
First Things First - What is Search Submit? Yahoo Search Submit is Yahoo's controversial paid inclusion program which guarantees a website will be reviewed and if approved, rapidly included into Yahoo Search's database. Additionally, sites within Search Submit are guaranteed a high frequency of indexing by Yahoo and have the ability to submit custom meta data.
Exploring the Issue Considering that the site is 'reviewed' does that mean the Yahoo Search Submit reviewer has no idea of the submitters prior record of being banned? This example could all point to a rare miscommunication between Yahoo departments or a fundamental loophole that adds credence to Jim Lanzone's (CEO of Ask) opinion that Yahoo's paid inclusion is hypocritical.
Unfortunately, the fact is we don't know exactly what happened behind the scenes that allowed this previously banned website to get reincluded into Yahoo's index. For all we know the reviewer may have known the submitters prior history but took a closer look at noted the SPAM (or whatever got the person dropped) was rectified and allowed reinclusion. At this time there is no formal comment from Yahoo.
I just finished adding a new tutorial to StepForth's web marketing knowledgebase based on redirecting domains in two different ways that are both search engine friendly and completely ethical:
THE NEW ONE: Redirecting http://www.yourolddomain.com to http://www.yournewdomain.com is not very difficult you just need to know how. I explain this in the free tutorial I just put online today: how to properly redirect an old domain to a new domain.
Redirecting http://yourdomain.com to http://www.yourdomain.com is a great way to capture link popularity that you have already earned but never properly benefited from. This might be confusing but consider that many people mistakenly link to your website forgetting the "www" in the URL. This mistake seems somewhat anticlimactic to them since they get you to your site either way. Unfortunately for you, however, Google and the other search engines consider these two versions of your domain as entirely different websites. As a result, that valuable link popularity you received is being sent nowhere very useful. By redirecting non-www traffic to the www version of your domain you can actually turn this all around and benefit from that link popularity!
These tutorials are only the beginning of many the StepForth crew plan to provide over the next few months. If you want to see more of our tutorials please visit our FAQ which is now more formally called our Web Marketing Knowledgebase.
PS. For all of those subscribed to our SEO newsletter please note we will not be sending out a newsletter this week. We are a bit shorthanded due to staff vacations and since many of our readers are off celebrating their July 4th this seemed like a smart move. We will be back next week with more SEO tips and search engine news. I hope the weather is as beautiful where you are as it is here! Now I am off to enjoy what is left of the sun.
The SMX Advanced conference was jam-packed with info that I know many site owners and webmasters who could not make the show are dying to see. There have been a large number of summaries published from other attendees including those who blogged in real time; great resources for truly detailed reports. In my case, I want to provide StepForth readers with a concise list of the news and tips that really stood out from the rest. In part one of the SMX Advanced summary I discussed duplicate content issues and some other tips that I felt deserved immediate attention. In part two, I will tackle tips for efficient marketing and search engine optimization and a list of the top SEO tools including my own favorites.
Tips for Efficient Marketing and Search Engine Optimization I loved this seminar! There was a whole host of SEOs on the panel that I really respect and it is always great to hear about new tips for speeding up the process of SEO – or at least to make the work more accurate. Here are some of the tips supplemented slightly with my own feedback.
Cost Effective Promotions: Socially promote your website and build links using interns. It is a great way to affordably promote a company and train potential long-term employees. After all, the interns will get to know your brand very well and become extremely familiar with the social marketing avenues.
Accurate Keyword Analysis: Where accuracy is absolutely vital (most cases), when conducting keyword analysis you should check to make certain that your keyword data is consistent across multiple research tools such as Keyword Discovery, WordTracker, Yahoo Keyword Suggestion Tool, MSN Adlabs, Google Adwords Keyword Tool, etc. This is especially important when you are suspicious of the keyword order from a specific provider. Note that MSN Adlabs was a tip within itself at the conference; it offers a wonderful toolset! (Google please copy this!).
Write Headlines that Work: One of the presenters (I think it was Danny Sullivan) recommended reading an excellent article by the New York Times called “This Boring Headline is Written for Google” which gives valuable insight into how headlines that work in print and on web differ so greatly. Here is an excerpt that sets the tone of the article: "Part of the craft of journalism for more than a century has been to think up clever titles and headlines, and Google comes along and says, 'The heck with that,' “observed Ed Canale, vice president for strategy and new media at The Sacramento Bee.
Go Google Local or You’re Loco: Getting a free local listing with Google should be a no-brainer for everyone because it can provide your company with a free listing above all other organic listings. For example, just type in “Victoria BC tours” on Google and you will see the first 3 rankings are local. These rankings were free and I am sure have paid off immensely by usurping the official organic rankings by 3 crucial positions. For more info learn how to add your company for free in Google Local.
Excellent SEO & SMM Research Tools The SEO panel provided a few examples of the great widgets and applications they use to make their life easier. Here are a few, including my own favorites:
SERPH: track the ‘buzz’ of yourself and your competitors using this handy social search tool
XENU Link Sleuth: a popular tool for many SEOs, XENU can quickly analyze your own or a competitor’s site.
Groowe Search Toolbar: install this toolbar and you will have access to at least 10 search engine bars within one application.
Note: Here is where the SMX tips stop and my personal recommendations begin.
Compete: this great free tool can provide a statistical comparison of up to 5 different websites. Excellent for competitor analysis.
Alexa: Alexa is the granddaddy of sources for competitor analysis data. Check out your own website’s profile and see where it stands in comparison to your competitors.
WWW or Not?: Is link popularity split between two versions of a domain name (i.e. http://domain.com vs http://www.domain.com)? If so, this tool will tell you. This is valuable if you want to see if your own website has extra link popularity sitting on the sidelines from other sites that have linked to the ‘wrong’ address. Learn how to fix this situation for your website.
PR Prowler: although PageRank is not nearly as transparent as it once was PR Prowler is serves as a helpful method for finding the best sites to get links from or to advertise on.
Check Server Headers Tool: although slightly technical this tool, provided free by SEOConsultants.com provides valuable insight into the setup of yours or your competitor’s servers. For example, StepForth uses this tool to verify that our clients have properly set up their server redirects (301’s) so that duplicate content issues are avoided. It is also used extensively within our competitor analysis reports; it is useful to see how your competitors might have an edge over you.
DomainTools.com: Domain Tools is one of my favorite sites for competitor analysis. The most useful component, the Reverse IP Tool, allows me to plunk in a single competitor’s domain and then see every other website that is hosted on its server. In rare instances where the co-hosted domains are owned by the competitor I can get a hint at any future marketing plans my clients should be made aware of.
Robots.txt Syntax Checker: There is nothing worse than making an error in a Robots.txt file and accidentally dropping a site out of the search engines. The free Robots.txt checker will review your Robots.txt file; ensuring it is properly created and it will provide you with the rules within the file in plain language to ensure everything meets your approval. This is a valuable tool for avoiding serious indexing issues.
All of these tools are listed on my Recommended SEO Tools page for future reference.
More to Come! I can’t believe how much info I have to write about from SMX and the latest related news! As I write down more information about SMX I come up with my own ideas and comments so this series is going to span at least one more article. I hope you are enjoying it. Next we will discuss Social Media Marketing.
Blink
Del.icio.us
Digg
Furl
Google
Simpy
Spurl
Y! MyWeb
There is one important factor to remember whenever you are involved in improving the organic rankings of a website, and that factor is time. One of the most common questions I receive as an SEO is “How long till I start to see results?” This article is dedicated to anyone who has ever asked that question.
In a world where more and more households are connected to the internet, bandwidth is becoming an issue and brownouts have been predicted to occur in the next few years. With the strain on the infrastructure of the internet this makes having an efficient, fast loading website all that much more important.
A few weeks ago I wrote about 
In this article two important marketing strategies are reviewed: search engine optimization and social media.
Recession, recession, recession… I don’t know about you but I have had my fill of this doomsday word! It seems to me the panic caused by this word simply increases the chances of a recession occurring. Recessions, however, have a silver lining because they provide business owners with the opportunity to look long and hard at their expenses and this can provide valuable insight in strengthening the business long after a recession recedes. Some cut backs may become obvious such as eliminating frivolous office expenses and are a wise move but should business owners cut back on their web marketing? Lets look at the circumstances within web marketing where cutbacks may or may not make sense.
These days, as more and more companies come to the conclusion that their 1990's built websites with the animated gifs, static backgrounds, and auto-playing midi files have seen their prime, they begin to enter into a world of redesign. While creating these new websites with the sleeker look, and cleaner file structure is a smart move for the future, the risk and complications caused by changing URL’s and the impact this has on search engine rankings is very real.
Susan Moskwa and Trever Voucher from Google's Webmaster Tools Team 
Are you baffled about a recent drop in your search engine rankings? Do you know where to start and get a handle on what the problem might be and how to remedy it? One option to consider is using search engine forums as a resource. They are full of questions from people who have experienced similar situations and are great resources for an answer or two. But let’s say you really want to get to the bottom of the problem and you want to do it yourself. The following are some of the beginning steps StepForth takes when evaluating dropped rankings.
A large part of my time at StepForth as a search engine optimization consultant is spent conducting competitor research on behalf of our clientele. This service is focused on deconstructing the marketing campaigns of each competitor while identifying the tactics that appear to have fundamentally contributed to their search engine success. As you might imagine I come across many intriguing techniques that work and many that don’t. In this article I will account for a couple of techniques that appear to be overlooked by many but have proven time and time again to work; the creation of an on-site glossary and frequently asked questions (FAQ) section.
As of today Google will allow you to see and optionally disallow which links on your site have been identified as candidates for appearing as "sitelinks" directly in Google search results. (see 
