Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 3:48 PM
Over the past few weeks I have received a few questions regarding my 3 part series on How to Optimize for Google. This post will answer a few of the questions I have received.
Do hyperlinked images count as back links? Which scores higher, text or image links?
Yes, Google does count hyperlinked images, however, to get the most out of imaged based links it is best to have relevant, preferably keyword-rich, alt text tagged onto the image.
As far as which scores higher, for the most part they are equal, assuming that the image has the appropriate alt text. In some cases a text based link may actually pass on a little more value if it is located within a highly relevant paragraph as an in-line link.
What about Business Link Directories?
Some link directories can offer significant value to your site. While many may be virtually useless, a well targeted business directory of related websites can help boost your link density and ultimately your organic rankings.
When submitting your site to a link directory, make sure it is somewhat reputable. Check out how well they are indexed in Google, what the Google PR is on internal pages, and generally how many links does the directory contain. If you find that the most relevant category for your site listing has literally hundreds of links, this could raise a flag to pass on this one.
Avoid the FFA (Free for all) directories. These tend to be loaded with SPAM websites that could drag you down. Hand edited and even some paid directories are often the best bet. Make sure that the page that will house your link is indexed in Google, preferably has some Google PR showing up, and that it does not use the rel=nofollow attribute, or another form of blocking the spiders from seeing your site. Also make sure that the link doesn’t direct through some tracking script as these will often pass no value.
When it comes to deciding on if a directory is worth submitting to if you use your common sense, you should be okay. Remember the key here is relevance.
What are your thoughts on Siloing?
While siloing may not be perfect for all websites, it can help focus certain areas of your site on a specific theme, which in turn can help your rankings for phrases related to that theme. By driving spiders and passing PR only among a specific silo, it helps to keep the relevance up, and ultimately can help with your search rankings.
If you do have your site setup using a silo structure, also try to get inbound links directed to each of the specific silos as this will further help boost the PR value of the pages within each section.
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If you have any questions regarding my recent "How to Optimize for Google" series or anything SEO related for that matter, please feel free to send them to us here at StepForth!
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.domain.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.domain.com" and "http://www.domain.com/index.html" 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.domain.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
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 2:30 PM
Optimizing for top Google rankings includes a number of factors. In Part 1 of 3 we discussed onsite optimization. In Part 2 we will touch on incoming links as well as using Google Webmaster Tools.
LINKS Links are very important in today’s Google rankings, but just how many links you need will depend on both the competitiveness of your target phrases, and the quality of the incoming links themselves.
Essentially the number one rule of links is to keep it relevant! Topical relevance is very important in order for inbound links to give your site the most value. If the page that links to you is relevant that is good, if the entire site linking to you is relevant, that is better.
First to get an idea of how many links you may need, take a look at the top 10 ranking sites in Google and record how many links Yahoo is noting for each site. (This is because Google does not display anywhere near all the links they have noted). The average of this count is often a good indication of how many links your site may need.
There are many different ways to get links to your site including the age old reciprocal link trade, directory links, article based links, and links from press releases.
Reciprocal Links Reciprocal linking has seen its value drop considerably over the past few years, however, if the site you are trading with is relevant you can still receive value from these links.
Paid Links Google frowns on paid links, however that is not to say that they don’t work. Often you can find highly reputable and relevant websites which are offering paid advertising spots. If these links are coded to link directly to your website without passing through any tracking redirects, you will in many cases see value in the form of both direct traffic and increased link densities and rankings.
Articles Writing and distributing industry specific articles is a great way to help increase both your link counts and site traffic; for examples of such content see StepForth's SEO Blog News articles. Consider writing articles on a regular basis and submitting them to some of the more popular services such as EzineArticles. Be sure to include a link to your site from somewhere within the article, or at the very lest within your bio. Try to use a target phrase as part of the anchor text for additional value.
Press Releases If something of importance has happened to your company such as a new product launch, or other notable achievement - essentially anything news worthy, put out a press release. Submit this press release through services such as PRWeb or PRNewsWire. Again, be sure to include a target phrase as part of the anchor text.
There are also a number of places you can get links that have basically turned south, and are not generally recommended. These include signatures in form posts, guest books, and other typically free links.
Forum Posts Forum posts can help to marginally increase your link counts; however, with this one you must be careful. Only add a link to your site in your signature if both the forum allows it, and you are a respected member of the forum. If you are a solid contributor and your posts have depth and meaning, and the forum is highly relevant to your site, then having a link in your signature may give your site some juice. Posting wildly to random forms will in most cases get yourself banned, and will be both a waste of time and potentially make you and your site look bad.
Guest Books In nearly all cases, do not post your link to guest books. If you happen to stumble upon a guestbook that is highly relevant to your site, the other comments are relevant to your site, and you have something useful (and again relevant) to say, then perhaps consider it, but typically focusing on links from guest books is considered SPAM and is best avoided all together.
Blog Comments Having a link from your blog comments is not necessarily a bad thing. If you find a relevant blog post of use, and have something relevant and constructive to say, don’t be afraid to enter your link into the "URL" field of the form, but don’t try stuffing links into the comment itself. Link Farms & Bad Neighborhoods These are sites that allow you to simply post your link no strings attached. They are mostly long scrolling pages with countless links. Stay away from them. If you see one, run in the other direction. These links are bad, will not help with your rankings, and in some cases can actually damage your rankings.
Stay away from sites that cross link with obvious spammers. These networks of SPAM sites are not ones you would want your site associated with, and if you achieve links from enough of these sites it can adversely impact your rankings. Even more important, NEVER link to any of these sites - as that will certainly tie in your connection to them and give Google reason to discount your rankings. DMOZ, Yahoo and Other Directories Directory based links can be of significant help, especially if they are from highly reputable directories, the two biggest being DMOZ.org and the Yahoo Directory.
Getting a site into DMOZ is like Gold. Google loves links from DMOZ and your site will reap the benefits. The big catch however is actually getting your site into the directory in the first place. Find the perfect category for your site and check to see if it has an editor. If you see a link "Volunteer to edit this category" try and find another relevant location. Pages without active editors take much longer to get listed into. Once you find the perfect directory submit your site every 4-6 months until listed. If you are lucky you will get in eventually.
Yahoo Directory is seen as an authority in the eyes of Google, and getting your site in will help your link reputation. This link does come at a price of $299 per year, but will play a role in helping your website achieve top rankings.
There are a number of other valuable directories out there that can help you with your search rankings. Before submitting to any directory the key is a combination of relevance and authority. If the directory is relevant and active it may be worth considering.
GOOGLE WEBMASTER TOOLS Google Webmaster Tools can be very useful for your optimization efforts. It may not directly help you obtain higher rankings, but can help you trouble shoot if you are experiencing problems. It will also allow you to remove URL’s that you don’t want indexed and set various preferences such as your domain, crawl rate, and geographic target.
XML Sitemaps This is the most common reason people use Google Webmaster Tools - the submission of their XML sitemap. While you can use your robots.txt to have Google find your XML sitemap, by submitting it directly to Google you can check up on the spidering status.
Error checking Webmaster Tools is also quite useful for checking on various error URL’s that Google may know about. Under the Diagnostics > Web Crawl you can view any errors that Google has to report on your site. By cleaning up any errors you can help increase your chances of rankings.
Links From inside Google Webmaster Tools you can get a much clearer look at what sites Google is noting as having links to you, and give you a better indication of the need, if any, to increase your link counts.
WWW Preference Be sure to select your domain preference under Tools > Set Preferred Domain. In nearly all cases you will want to select the version including the "www"
SUMMARY
Inbound links play a significant role in successful Google rankings. By focusing on relevant links, as well as by diversifying where you get those links from, you can build a solid foundation for your search rankings today and into the future.
Stay tuned for How to Optimize for Google Part 3 (of 3) where I will discuss other considerations including redirects, HTTP headers, and a number of other factors which play a role in successfully conquering Google.
by Scott Van Achte, Senior SEO, StepForth Web Marketing Inc. Celebrating Over 10 Years of Web Marketing Excellence
Written by Scott Van Achte and published at 2:54 PM
In today's online world search engine rankings can make your business succeed, and while rankings in Yahoo and MSN are very valuable, their combined market value is still less than that of Google. This makes achieving top rankings in Google that much more important.
In this three-part series on How to Optimize for Google we will touch on a number of important aspects for top Google rankings including website optimization, links, Google Webmaster tools, and a number of other considerations.
THE RIGHT KEYWORDS This article is not about keyword research so I will not spend too much time on this topic, however, I felt it was important to at least brush on this slightly. If you are interested in reading more please see Keyword Research for Organic SEO.
Make sure that your targets are achievable. If you select the wrong keywords it can make your entire optimization experience essentially a waste. Choose keywords that are attainable but yet still offer a reasonable search frequency for your industry. Your phrase selection should also be targeted to bring qualified traffic to your site.
Using the hotel industry as an example, targeting the word "hotel" would make very little sense but by narrowing it down to "Victoria BC hotel" you now have less competition, and a more qualified audience. Keep your targets in perspective and go after the obtainable rankings.
WEBSITE OPTIMIZATION There are many on-site factors that play a role in your search engine rankings. Here are a number of those factors and what you can do to increase your chances of success.
Title Tag The title tag plays one of the most important roles in search results at Google, and is almost always the heading Google chooses for each of its listings. Placement of your target phrase is best used near the start of the tag and repeated again in the middle or near the end. Three uses of your target phrase may be helpful in some instances, as long as it is not too overwhelming. For best results each page on your site should have a totally unique title tag.
It is also important to remember that because Google will use this title as the main heading for your listing, you will want to keep it attractive to potential searchers. Try to also add a call to action, or other wording to help make your listing appear attractive to searchers.
To help illustrate the fact Google takes this tag into consideration, simply do a search for your target phrase and take a look at the titles of the top 10. I tried a search for a rather broad term "hotel" and saw that all 10/10 listings had it in the title tag, and 6/10 had it as the very first word. A quick scan showed that the entire top 30 either had the word hotel, or hotels in their title tags.
If you do only one thing to your website, make sure that all your title tags are relevant, unique, and contain your target phrase for each page.
Meta Description Tag The Meta Description tag is still occasionally used by Google as the description which appears in the search results themselves. While this used to be a more common practice Google tends to use it most often on sites with very limited content, or those which are flash based. I have seen it still used for content rich sites, however this is less common.
The Meta Description tag still has an impact on search rankings. Your best bet when using this tag is to keep it short and sweet with your target phrase close to the start and never repeated more than 3 times. Like the title tag, each page on you site should have its own unique description tag.
Meta Keyword Tag When it comes to Google this tag is useless, and won't influence your rankings. There is some speculation as to whether a spammy keyword tag can however, have a negative effect on Google rankings. As a result, if you do utilize a keyword Meta tag for the smaller engines, it is best to keep it clean and play it safe.
Density Keyword density plays a role in overall rankings; however, it is not as cut and dry as it once was. Once upon a time there was a magic number that when used could almost guarantee top rankings.
This is no longer the case. Today the ideal density varies from industry to industry, phrase to phrase. To find out what density you should aim for, take the top 10 or 20 search results and see what percentage those sites are using. In most cases you will find that the majority of these sites have a very similar density to one another, and this average density is a good estimation of what you should aim for.
Body Text and Keyword Placement The location of relevant text on your site will help establish the overall importance of your target phrase. While you do not want to overwhelm the engines and site visitors with a bombardment of target phrases at the top of the page, try to sprinkle in some instances as close to the top of the page as possible.
Synonyms Be sure to include various synonyms for your target phrases within your body text on your site. Google will use these synonyms to tie in the overall relevance of the page for your main target phrases, which in turn can improve your odds.
To find possible synonyms you can use a thesaurus, but the best way is to search Google itself and see exactly what they consider to be similar. Simply search in Google for your target phrase preceded with a tilde, such as "~hotels". Next scan through the search results for any text Google has bolded. These are all words that Google considers to be related. Using the "~hotels" example Google brings up phrases such as 'travel', 'tourism', 'accommodation', as well as various hotel chain names such as 'Hilton Hotels'.
Keywords in Domain There is still some speculation if having a target phrase as part of your top level domain (TLD) is of use to search rankings. From my experience, yes, there is value here, although, nothing like it was several years ago.
If you are starting off in the online world and are contemplating which domain to go for, consider one that uses your target phrase, assuming that it is both relevant to your business name, and uses no more than a single hyphen. While multiple hyphens in a domain can be successful, they are very common with highly spammy websites, so it is best to not take that route if possible.
While having a keyword located within your domain can offer some ranking juice, I would not suggest heading out and doing a domain swap. In most cases you would be better off working on your existing site than starting from scratch with a new domain.
Keywords in page specific URL Using keywords for specific page URL's can also help add a little bit of value to your site, providing you use them responsibly. Consider using a keyword as a directory name and as part of a file name where it naturally makes sense to do so. If you have a website that focuses on tourism and includes local hotel listings, you may want to consider the following structure for your page on the Hilton:
Heading Tags Placement of target phrases within heading tags helps to establish the importance of those given phrases. That said do not over do it, or abuse it. Only place target phrases within a heading tag if it makes sense to do so, and don't flood a page with numerous tags. Heading tags are not as critical as they once were, but still a good contribution to a well optimized page.
Link Anchor text This is the actual text you click on as part of a link. When full or partial target phrases are used within your text links they help pass on some value to the linked page for those phrases. This is also true when considering surrounding text. When the content around the link is also relevant, the link holds slightly more value.
While a link that simply states "click here" or "www.domainname.com" does have its place, they provide considerably less value than a link that would use "discount hotels" as its anchor.
Image Alt Text While image alt text still plays a minor role, its biggest part is within the use of image based navigation. If you have an image linked to another page, the alt text will be attributed much the same way as standard link anchor text is.
Image Alt text should always be short and to the point and should accurately describe either the image itself, or the page the image is linking to. Do not use alt tags as a place to stuff keywords.
Inline Links These are links that are found mid sentence or mid paragraph as opposed to a simple listing of links as found in a menu or possibly on a sitemap. Links found mid paragraph tend to pass on a little more value from the surrounding text and can offer more relevance to the linked page.
Site Navigation It is absolutely imperative that your website be fully spiderable by the search engines. This may seem obvious, but often webmasters overlook Google's ability to crawl a website. Google has become very advanced in what links it can follow and how it can spider a website, but there are still some things that can cause significant roadblocks.
- Flash: One of the most commonly made mistakes is the use of flash. If flash is used as a sole means of site navigation then you can count on Google not viewing your internal pages, and having a significant disadvantage in terms of site rankings.
- Java Script / DHTML: These days most Java Script and even DHTML menus can be spidered by Google, however, this is not always the case. If your site utilizes any kind of fancy navigation and you are wondering why Google has not indexed your internal pages, check out Google's Cached Text version of your page. If you do not see any text links, then your navigation may be invisible to Google.
- Images:Image based navigation has been safe for many years now, but if your site uses this form of navigation it is essential to have brief, relevant alt text on all your buttons. This alt text will act much like standard anchor text for text based links. This is not only for the purpose of search ranking value, but take a look at Google's cached text version of your page. If you have image based links that do not have alt text, those links do not appear. This doesn't mean Google won't follow them, but for anyone viewing your site on a text based browser, your links will be invisible to them.
URL Structure Avoid long elaborate URL's with extraneous characters. While Google has reached a point where they can index massive URL strings, it is best to avoid them if at all possible. For dynamic sites consider utilizing mod rewrites to significantly clean up the URL to not only make it more search engine friendly, but more user friendly as well.
SUMMARY Basic website optimization is a critical component for successful placement in Google but is only part of the overall picture. Stay tuned for "How to Optimize for Google - Part 2 of 3" where we will discuss Links and Google Webmaster Tools.
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.
Yesterday I had the good fortune to be invited to speak on the Webcology Webmasterradio.FM radio show with Jim Hedger and Dave Davies about my experience with competitor analysis. The show was a part of a 10 part SEO series where experts in their select field of SEO are invited to discuss their artform. In my case I discussed some of the most interesting tactics involved in competitor analysis and some of the other tactics I didn't have space to cover in the companion article on competitor analysis in the WebProNews Expert's column.
Near the end of the interview, as a final touch, I asked a website analytics analyst by the name of Andres Galdames to come onto the show to discuss the other side of improving website visibility; using website analytics to improve performance of your site instead of focusing on a competitor. In addition, Andres and I touched on how analytics plays a major role in tracking the success of web promotion strategies implemented on a website as a result of a competitor analysis. We had more to discuss at this point but unfortunately Andres lost his connection to the radio show and Jim and Dave wrapped up the show.
All-in-all it was an exciting experience and I look forward to being invited again onto Webcology. A big thanks goes out to Jim Hedger and Dave Davies for the opportunity to discuss competitor analysis - a field I am so passionate about.
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.
Blink
Del.icio.us
Digg
Furl
Google
Simpy
Spurl
Y! MyWeb
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.