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Friday, 7 November 2014
Tips for On-Page and Off-Page SEO
The competitive world of the Internet creates a need for leverage for smaller businesses that wish to compete with larger ones. The smaller businesses will never catch up to the large companies marketing budgets, so how can they really compete? One way, SEO, on-page and off-page optimization that offers authority, brand building, traffic, and of course, profits. In 2014, the world of SEO shifted dramatically with all of the Google updates and algorithm changes, so what you may have once knew, today means very little.
Start with Keyword Analysis
Keywords are still part of the SEO world, that has not changed, but how they are used has changed. So, before getting too involved in what to do with the keywords on your page, you need to first find out what ones are best to use.
Google Planner
Google Planner is a free tool that offers help to locate keywords that match your needs. It displays the keywords search volume, and offers keyword ideas based on your initial search. The tool provides basic information that is required to make an educated decision on keyword usage.
High Search Volume with Low Competition – This is your ideal keyword scenario. Finding this combination is not easy, but when you do, the pay offs can be huge. Larger businesses in your industry have most likely cornered the market on the main keyword you have been using, and as said before, you are never going to catch up to their marketing budget, so stop competing for that word. Find one that is less competitive, but that still offers a high search volume. You can still use the main keyword that is in high-demand; just do not focus your campaign around it.
Long Tail Keywords – Google is all about answering questions these days, so use long tail keywords that ask, or answer a question.
On-Page Optimization Tips
Once you have your keywords sorted out, it is time to start building and optimizing your website. Google does not allow you to simply stuff your page with keywords for rankings anymore; you are expected to be an authority, so prove you are one!
Write to Read, Not to Rank!
Whenever you write an article, create text for a landing page, or even post a social blurb, make sure it is something that is worth reading. Google requires that ALL content be informative, unique, and useful. Having your website stuffed with useless keyword-stuffed content is about as effective as a chicken trying to fly South! It is more important that your content be interesting and descriptive, than it is for it to contain a keyword or keyword phrase. That may sound counter-productive to old school SEO buffs, but with the changes Google has made, that is exactly what is required!
All content that is created for your website MUST be 100% original. Duplicate content will destroy your reputation, not only with your followers, but with Google as well. The title of the article or blog you post should be catchy, but still relate to the information within the article. If the reader clicks on a title “Lose Weight Eating Chocolate”, and they start reading about how to lose weight by eating salads and fruit, they are not only going to leave the page, they are going to leave with distrust about your site, who you are, and what you have to say. So, if you promise weight loss with chocolate in your title, your article better deliver just that!
Content Title Quick Tips:
Start with Keyword Analysis
Keywords are still part of the SEO world, that has not changed, but how they are used has changed. So, before getting too involved in what to do with the keywords on your page, you need to first find out what ones are best to use.
Google Planner
Google Planner is a free tool that offers help to locate keywords that match your needs. It displays the keywords search volume, and offers keyword ideas based on your initial search. The tool provides basic information that is required to make an educated decision on keyword usage.
High Search Volume with Low Competition – This is your ideal keyword scenario. Finding this combination is not easy, but when you do, the pay offs can be huge. Larger businesses in your industry have most likely cornered the market on the main keyword you have been using, and as said before, you are never going to catch up to their marketing budget, so stop competing for that word. Find one that is less competitive, but that still offers a high search volume. You can still use the main keyword that is in high-demand; just do not focus your campaign around it.
Long Tail Keywords – Google is all about answering questions these days, so use long tail keywords that ask, or answer a question.
On-Page Optimization Tips
Once you have your keywords sorted out, it is time to start building and optimizing your website. Google does not allow you to simply stuff your page with keywords for rankings anymore; you are expected to be an authority, so prove you are one!
Write to Read, Not to Rank!
Whenever you write an article, create text for a landing page, or even post a social blurb, make sure it is something that is worth reading. Google requires that ALL content be informative, unique, and useful. Having your website stuffed with useless keyword-stuffed content is about as effective as a chicken trying to fly South! It is more important that your content be interesting and descriptive, than it is for it to contain a keyword or keyword phrase. That may sound counter-productive to old school SEO buffs, but with the changes Google has made, that is exactly what is required!
All content that is created for your website MUST be 100% original. Duplicate content will destroy your reputation, not only with your followers, but with Google as well. The title of the article or blog you post should be catchy, but still relate to the information within the article. If the reader clicks on a title “Lose Weight Eating Chocolate”, and they start reading about how to lose weight by eating salads and fruit, they are not only going to leave the page, they are going to leave with distrust about your site, who you are, and what you have to say. So, if you promise weight loss with chocolate in your title, your article better deliver just that!
Content Title Quick Tips:
- Keep titles between 40 to 65 characters
- Use keyword or keyword phrase in title if possible
- Be creative, but keep the title relevant to content
Tags, Headings, Descriptions and URLS
The small things on your page add up to huge SEO benefits. Many website owners forget, or neglect to add the proper tags, headings and descriptions for their on-page SEO. Below are a few quick tips that need to be addressed on your page if they have not been already.
Meta Descriptions – Write a short description of your content. Keep it around 156 characters for the best results.
Optimized URL – The content URL should optimized to match the meaning of the content on the page.
Headings and Tags – Make sure proper headings are in place, h1, h2, h3, etc. This helps the reader stay focused on your content, gives the ability to quickly scan to important parts and looks nicer on the page.
Focus Keywords – Use tags to highlight specific keywords or keyword phrases to add focus for the search engines.
Image Tags – Use proper Alt tags on all images, and always use images in your content!
Off-Page Optimization Tips
Optimizing your website with off-page SEO techniques is just as important as optimizing for on-site SEO. There are several areas outside of Google that people go to locate information, so make sure your marketing to those areas as well as to the search engines.
Social Media – Social media platforms are used to build brand awareness, establish authority on a topic, and of course, to drive traffic to your website. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pintrest, Google+, and many other platforms are out there just waiting to hear from you! If you do not have an account set up on each already, get one. If you have accounts on the social media sites, take the time to learn how to use them for the most effectiveness. The social network platforms have their own unique algorithm strategy that works to bring results to their users, so you need to make sure you know how to implement your content onto each for the best results. Not all social media platforms use the same strategies or sorting methods for what content is displayed on their sites. Take the time to learn the guidelines for each platform before diving right in. Once you feel comfortable with the guidelines, start out slow and wwatch the results to see what methods you are using work the best.
The small things on your page add up to huge SEO benefits. Many website owners forget, or neglect to add the proper tags, headings and descriptions for their on-page SEO. Below are a few quick tips that need to be addressed on your page if they have not been already.
Meta Descriptions – Write a short description of your content. Keep it around 156 characters for the best results.
Optimized URL – The content URL should optimized to match the meaning of the content on the page.
Headings and Tags – Make sure proper headings are in place, h1, h2, h3, etc. This helps the reader stay focused on your content, gives the ability to quickly scan to important parts and looks nicer on the page.
Focus Keywords – Use tags to highlight specific keywords or keyword phrases to add focus for the search engines.
Image Tags – Use proper Alt tags on all images, and always use images in your content!
Off-Page Optimization Tips
Optimizing your website with off-page SEO techniques is just as important as optimizing for on-site SEO. There are several areas outside of Google that people go to locate information, so make sure your marketing to those areas as well as to the search engines.
Social Media – Social media platforms are used to build brand awareness, establish authority on a topic, and of course, to drive traffic to your website. YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pintrest, Google+, and many other platforms are out there just waiting to hear from you! If you do not have an account set up on each already, get one. If you have accounts on the social media sites, take the time to learn how to use them for the most effectiveness. The social network platforms have their own unique algorithm strategy that works to bring results to their users, so you need to make sure you know how to implement your content onto each for the best results. Not all social media platforms use the same strategies or sorting methods for what content is displayed on their sites. Take the time to learn the guidelines for each platform before diving right in. Once you feel comfortable with the guidelines, start out slow and wwatch the results to see what methods you are using work the best.
Link Building – There has been a lot of debate over whether link building is still effective or not. The truth, yes, link building is still a very effective marketing tool for your SEO campaign, but you have to be careful. It is extremely important that only QUALITY links flow to your site. Building links too quickly leads to poor quality sites linking back to yours, and in Google’s eyes, that is just as bad as you having a poor quality site.
Helpful Quick Tips for Good SEO
Write Quality Content – ONLY write quality content that is meant for the reader, not the rankings.
Establish Good Keywords – Use keywords that relate closely to your topic, but that also offer a high search volume with a low competition rate.
Find LSI Keywords – Find latent Semantic Indexing keywords that relate to your keywords. Mix these keywords in with your primary keywords to create more attention on the major search engines.
Create Catchy Content Titles – Make titles eye-catching, but stay relevant to the content.
Build Quality Links – ONLY use quality links to your site for the best SEO results.
Reference: http://seositecheckup.com/articles/328
37 Awesome Tools To Get The Most From Your SEO Campaigns
37 Awesome Tools To Get The Most From Your SEO Campaigns
Columnist Matthew Barby shares his favorite tools for a wide variety of online marketing tasks.
I use a ton of different tools every day to carry out various parts of my digital campaigns – so many, in fact, that I’m going to share with you a list of 37 of my favourites. These range from link and content analysis platforms to social analytics and scheduling tools.
It’s also worth noting that I don’t have any affiliation with any of the tools mentioned within this post. These are simply tools I have used and value highly.
Analysis Tools
• Majestic. This is my link analysis tool of choice. I’ve used Majestic for years now, and you just can’t beat it when it comes to the accuracy of its stats (although I’m sure some loyal Ahrefs users will argue with that). Don’t just take my word for it, though: here is a case study that Matthew Woodward wrote a little while back that reviews a number of link analysis tools.
• Ahrefs. Similar to Majestic, Ahrefs is a fantastic tool for link analysis, especially when it comes to finding fresh links. As far as I’m concerned, no link analysis tool identifies new links more quickly than Ahrefs.
• Open Site Explorer. Here’s the last of the big three link analysis tools. Open Site Explorer (a Moz product) definitely has a much smaller index than Majestic and Ahrefs; however, its UI is definitely the easiest to work with, and it’s great for link prospecting work.
• SEMrush. This tool is second to none for discovering the organic positions of a site that you don’t have analytics access for. It’s also a powerful keyword research tool. SEMrush is one of the tools I use most on a daily basis, especially when it comes to competitive research.
• Searchmetrics. Seriously powerful and packed full of amazing data, the Searchmetrics SEO suite enables you to track, manage and measure your entire SEO campaign (enterprise level).
• BuzzSumo. One of my favourite tools out there at the moment, I just can’t stop raving about BuzzSumo! In a nutshell, with BuzzSumo, you can filter through content relevant to your niche and sort it by the number of social shares across each social network. Similarly, you can compare different domains against each other to see which site is producing the most popular content.
• NerdyData. This one is a source code search engine (great for data analysis to go into your content). Using NerdyData, you can go through and look for specific code that appears within a website. For example, if you wanted to see all of the websites that have Facebook ad tracking code within them or that use a specific WordPress plugin, then this is the tool for you.
• URL Profiler. Much like BuzzSumo, I seem to be mentioning URL Profiler more and more of late. (I put together a full review of the software which you can check out here.) In short, URL Profiler enables you to extract big data from web pages in bulk so that you can perform content audits, link analysis and much more. This is so powerful as an analysis tool.
• Screaming Frog SEO Spider. Screaming Frog is powerful desktop-based website analysis tool. I use this tool as part of any SEO audit that I carry out, and it is also key in my broken link building strategies. (I recorded a full tutorial on using the tool here.)
• Long Tail Pro. This keyword research tool can be used to gather huge numbers of keywords for use within large campaigns. You can also pull in data from Moz surrounding keyword competition, as well.
• Quantcast. Get stats on website traffic to any website online without access to their analytics.
• Similar Web. This tool is similar to Quantcast, but it offers much deeper insights around traffic sources. Great for benchmarking your campaigns (I use Similar Web in tandem with SEMrush). It can also analyse mobile app traffic.
• Consumer Barometer. A project created by Google, the Consumer Barometer gives free consumer insights across a whole range of sectors. This is good for gathering stats to go into your content or to plug directly into your keyword research.
• Social Crawlytics. Gather social stats across any URL online, as well as further information around influential authors. You can even schedule reports to go out surrounding the activity of a specific domain, including new content, authors and social stats.
• Followerwonk. An advanced Twitter analytics platform owned by Moz, Followerwonk lets you analyze the followers of your competitors, search for influencers and track the success of your Twitter campaigns.
• Keyword Eye. This entry level keyword research tool is awesome for individuals, bloggers and businesses. It’s low cost and very visual, making it perfect for beginners and advanced users alike.
• Keyword Snatcher. Here is another one of my favourite keyword research tools. It pulls back huge quantities of results, using YouTube, Amazon, eBay, Google, Yahoo and Bing as data sources. It’s a one-time payment tool, as well, which is ideal for those that are budget conscious.
• Keyword Tool. This newcomer has been creating quite a stir within the SEO community. It looks like a really powerful keyword research tool, and I’m excited to see how it develops.
• Search Man. If you’re interested in app store optimization, this is a great keyword research suite for mobile apps. Essentially, you can use this like you would any other keyword research tool, but it gives you app-specific information.
Link Prospecting/Acquisition
• BuzzStream. This is the only email outreach and link prospecting tool that you’ll ever need. If you’re serious about SEO, then this has to be in your toolset. You can search for new link prospects, extract contact information, and send emails directly (from your own email accounts) through BuzzStream’s interface.
• Scrapebox. Often branded as a black-hat tool, Scrapebox is an SEO’s secret weapon. I wrote a really detailed tutorial on how to use Scrapebox for link prospecting, and Jacob King wrote an even better post that goes into more detail about how to use the tool for all kinds of things. You can use ScrapeBox for keyword research, large scale link prospecting, broken link building and all kinds of scraping tasks.
• HARO. Help A Reporter Out (HARO) is a popular press request service that’s ideal forgaining coverage within top tier publications.
• ResponseSource. This is similar to HARO but for more of a UK audience. ResponseSource, like many press request services, can be a link building gold mine.
• Muck Rack. Here’s a fantastic database of journalists that you can pitch through directly to gain coverage for your business. I’ve gained some amazing coverage using Muck Rack.
• BuzzBundle. This social listening tool can be used to capture links, social engagement or as part of a proactive social media strategy. You can monitor unlimited phrases across social media, blogs, news sites and forums — all in real time.
• Mention. This alert tool works in a similar way to Google Alerts, but it’s much more powerful. I use this on every SEO campaign that I run and often find opportunities that I’d never have discovered otherwise. It’s really cheap and will send you email alerts to let you know when your brand/keyword has been mentioned online.
• Image Raider. Reclaim attribution links from websites using your copyrighted images – a simple but effective link reclamation strategy. Search for your images using Image Raider’s advanced search engine and get a list of the websites that have used them without linking back to you. You can often gain a number of quick links this way.
• Whitespark Citation Builder. Perfect for local SEO campaigns, Whitespark is a great service for building local citations in bulk. This tool manually creates good quality citations based around the data that you give it on your business.
• WikiGrabber. Want links from Wikipedia? Here’s your starting point. Find pages within Wikipedia that need citations so you can create content that can be used as a reference to the article in question.
• Writtent. This is a content creation service that is both cost effective and of good quality. I’ve used the service tons of times across my digital campaigns, and the writers are great.
• Hostt. This free web hosting platform is ideal for hosting a number of domains on unique IP addresses. You don’t have to pay anything and you get your domains hosted on servers – perfect!
Performance Measurement
• Google Analytics. Plain and simple, this is the industry’s leading web analytics platform. I’m sure most of you have heard of it by now!
• Cyfe. I love this tool. I’ve only been using it for a little while, but Cyfe allows you to integrate a ton of different tools into one dashboard to report on projects that you’re running. If you haven’t checked this out yet, do it now – there’s even a free option. (I recently recorded a full tutorial on using Cyfe to create marketing dashboards which you may wish to check out.)
• Sprout Social. My good friend and colleague, Troy Linehan, is the biggest Sprout fan I know. We use it for all of our social media campaigns, and it has some great features when it comes to social listening and scheduling. You can link up the various social accounts of your business, schedule in shares, analyze your followers, find brand mentions, and link up to other services like ZenDesk to add an extra layer of customer service. The reporting features are great, too.
• Oktopost. This tool is similar in functionality to the likes of Sprout Social, with powerful social management and detailed reporting features. It’s great if you’re reporting to clients. There are features to track brand mentions, get content recommendations, track messages, create a content schedule and run advanced reports.
• SerpBook. Here is a cheap and really effective keyword-ranking tracker. Although keyword rankings are becoming less important nowadays, I still monitor and track keywords within most of my campaigns, and I’d recommend still doing this yourself.
• Authority Labs. Similar to SerpBook, Authority Labs is a keyword-ranking tracker tool. There are some nicer reporting options here and some extra ways of grouping keywords (I actually use both SerpBook and Authority Labs).
Anything I missed? What tools can’t you live without?
Reference: http://searchengineland.com/37-awesome-tools-get-seo-campaigns-206980
Saturday, 20 September 2014
The Big List of SEO Tips and Tricks for Using HTTPS on Your Website
It's rare that Google reveals any of its actual ranking factors, so it came as a big surprise when representatives
announced they would reward sites using HTTPS encryption with a boost in search results.
HTTPS isn't like other ranking factors. Implementing it requires complexity, risks, and costs. Webmasters balance this out with benefits that include increased security, better referral data, and a possible boost in rankings.
Google's push for HTTPS adoption appears to be working. A recent Moz Poll found 24% of webmasters planning to make the switch.
In addition to the security offered by HTTPS (which we'll discuss below) there are additional SEO benefits for marketers to take advantage of.
If you use HTTP, traffic from sites like Hacker News shows up as 'direct', because Hacker News uses HTTPS.
Fortunately, there's a simple solution: when traffic passes to an HTTPS site, the secure referral information is preserved. This holds true whether the original site uses HTTP or HTTPS.
As more and more sites make the switch, this becomes increasingly important.
In fact, a recent study by Search Metrics showed no detectable advantage to sites using HTTPS.
Like most ranking signals, it is very hard to isolate on its own.
In fact, don't expect HTTPS to act as a silver bullet. If rankings are your only concern, there are likely dozens of things you can do that will have a bigger impact. Here are several:
HTTPS adds security in several ways:
In most cases it's a simple fix, but beware the risk.
Add to this the fact that speed is itself a ranking factor, especially on mobile.
The good news is, if you follow best practices your site should be more than fast enough to handle HTTPS. New HTTPS friendly technologies like SPDY offer you the opportunity to speed up your website more than ever before.
On the other hand, it's completely possible to switch to HTTPS for free.
If you run AdSense, you may see your earnings fall significantly, as Google will restrict your ads to those that are SSL-compliant.
Even Google's own Webmaster Tools doesn't yet support HTTPS migration. The world may be moving toward 100% SSL encryption, but in the meantime be prepared for growing pains.
Very, very few sites use HTTPS sitewide.
According to the latest statistics from BuiltWith, only 4.2% of the top 10,000 websites redirect users to SSL/HTTPS by default. While that number appears small, the percentage drops to 1.9% for the top million sites.
This number is likely to increase in the very near future as more websites pursue adoption.
John Mueller of Google has stated that Google doesn't care what kind of SSL certificate your website uses, but that may change in the future.
From both a security and user experience point of view, the type of certificate you choose can have an impact. Consider how different certificates alter how your website appears in the web browser address bar.
The green bar associated with extended certificates communicates trust,
while the warning symbols associated with errors can cause worry with
visitors.
If you use FeedBurner, you'll need to migrate your RSS to an HTTPS-compatible service. If you're technically competent you can do this yourself, or FeedPress has a very inexpensive RSS migration solution.
These counts don't impact your rankings (as far as we know) but they act as strong social proof, and it's frustrating to migrate a page with thousands of tweets and likes only to see them reset to zeros.
In fact, some social networks will transfer the social counts through their APIs, but it may take weeks or months for them to show up correctly. Here's a list of what does and doesn't eventually transfer over:
If you expect your content to continue to earn social activity, you may simply want to let the numbers update naturally over time.
Making the leap
Much of the web is now moving towards SSL encryption, and within a few
years it may even become the default. SEOs, consultants and agencies
that become experts know may be rewarded as the popularity of the
protocol grows.
Will you make the switch to HTTPS?
Resource: http://moz.com/blog/seo-tips-https-ssl
HTTPS isn't like other ranking factors. Implementing it requires complexity, risks, and costs. Webmasters balance this out with benefits that include increased security, better referral data, and a possible boost in rankings.
Google's push for HTTPS adoption appears to be working. A recent Moz Poll found 24% of webmasters planning to make the switch.
SEO advantages of switching to HTTPS
In addition to the security offered by HTTPS (which we'll discuss below) there are additional SEO benefits for marketers to take advantage of.
1. More referrer data
Whenever traffic passes from a secure HTTPS site to a non-secure HTTP site, the referral data gets stripped away. This traffic shows up in your analytics report as 'Direct.' This is a problem because you don't know where the traffic actually comes from.If you use HTTP, traffic from sites like Hacker News shows up as 'direct', because Hacker News uses HTTPS.
Fortunately, there's a simple solution: when traffic passes to an HTTPS site, the secure referral information is preserved. This holds true whether the original site uses HTTP or HTTPS.
As more and more sites make the switch, this becomes increasingly important.
2. HTTPS as a rankings boost
On one hand, Google has confirmed the ranking boost of HTTPS. On the other hand, with over 200 ranking, it's likely you'll find the effect of any ranking influence to remain quiet small.In fact, a recent study by Search Metrics showed no detectable advantage to sites using HTTPS.
Like most ranking signals, it is very hard to isolate on its own.
In fact, don't expect HTTPS to act as a silver bullet. If rankings are your only concern, there are likely dozens of things you can do that will have a bigger impact. Here are several:
14 SEO activities more impactful than HTTPS:
1. Attract links
2. Competitive analysis
3. Improve social meta tags
4. Reduce crawl errors
5. Fix duplicate content
6. Perform a site audit
7. Optimize for speed
8. Local optimization
9. International targeting
10. Create quality content
11. Target relevant search phrases
12. Freshen your content
13. Improve internal linking
14. On page optimization
2. Competitive analysis
3. Improve social meta tags
4. Reduce crawl errors
5. Fix duplicate content
6. Perform a site audit
7. Optimize for speed
8. Local optimization
9. International targeting
10. Create quality content
11. Target relevant search phrases
12. Freshen your content
13. Improve internal linking
14. On page optimization
3. Security and privacy
Many people argue that HTTPS only provides an advantage if your site uses sensitive passwords. That's not exactly true. Even regular boring content websites can benefit from HTTPS / SSL encryption.HTTPS adds security in several ways:
- HTTPS verifies that the website is the one the server it is supposed to be talking to,
- Because HTTPS prevents tampering by 3rd parties, it stops Man-in-the-middle attacks, making your site more secure for visitors.
- HTTPS encrypts all communication, including URLs, which protects things like browsing history and credit card numbers.
Challenges to overcome with HTTPS
1. Mistakes happen
Moving your entire site to HTTPS requires many moving parts. It's easy to overlook important details.- Did you block important URLs in robots.txt?
- Did you point your canonical tags at the wrong (HTTP) URL?
- Is your website causing browser bars to display warnings that frighten people away from your site? (Side note: That's the very first article I wrote for SEOmoz!)
In most cases it's a simple fix, but beware the risk.
2. Speed issues
Because HTTPS requires extra communication "handshakes" between servers, it has the potential to slow down your website – especially on slower sites.Add to this the fact that speed is itself a ranking factor, especially on mobile.
The good news is, if you follow best practices your site should be more than fast enough to handle HTTPS. New HTTPS friendly technologies like SPDY offer you the opportunity to speed up your website more than ever before.
3. Costs
Many webmasters pay between $100-200 a year for SSL certificates. That's a significant amount for small websites. It's also a barrier that most spammers won't bother with.On the other hand, it's completely possible to switch to HTTPS for free.
4. Not everything is ready for HTTPS
Sometimes, things don't play well with HTTPS. Older web applications can have trouble with HTTPS URLs. (Fortunately, Moz updated Open Site Explorer just this year.)If you run AdSense, you may see your earnings fall significantly, as Google will restrict your ads to those that are SSL-compliant.
Even Google's own Webmaster Tools doesn't yet support HTTPS migration. The world may be moving toward 100% SSL encryption, but in the meantime be prepared for growing pains.
Growing number of sites using HTTPS
Lots and lots of sites use HTTPS today, but most restrict usage to checkout and registration pages.Very, very few sites use HTTPS sitewide.
According to the latest statistics from BuiltWith, only 4.2% of the top 10,000 websites redirect users to SSL/HTTPS by default. While that number appears small, the percentage drops to 1.9% for the top million sites.
This number is likely to increase in the very near future as more websites pursue adoption.
SEO and HTTPS best practices
This post talks about the SEO implications of switching to HTTPS. If you are looking for a technical guide, there are several we'd recommend:- Moving Your Website to HTTPS / SSL
- Switch to HTTPS Now, For Free
- HTTPS for WordPress
- How to Deploy HTTPS Correctly
What type of SSL certificate works best?
Companies offer a myriad and confusing array of SSL certificates. The two primary ones to pay attention to are:- Standard Validation SSL – Standard level of validation. Typically cost between $0-$100.
- Extended Validation SSL – Offers the highest level of validation and often costs between $100-500.
John Mueller of Google has stated that Google doesn't care what kind of SSL certificate your website uses, but that may change in the future.
From both a security and user experience point of view, the type of certificate you choose can have an impact. Consider how different certificates alter how your website appears in the web browser address bar.
SEO checklist to preserve your rankings
- Make sure every element of your website uses HTTPS, including widgets, java script, CSS files, images and your content delivery network.
- Use 301 redirects to point all HTTP URLs to HTTPS. This is a no-brainer to most SEOs, but you'd be surprised how often a 302 (temporary) redirect finds its way to the homepage by accident
- Make sure all canonical tags point to the HTTPS version of the URL.
- Use relative URLs whenever possible.
- Rewrite hard-coded internal links (as many as is possible) to point to HTTPS. This is superior to pointing to the HTTP version and relying on 301 redirects.
- Register the HTTPS version in both Google and Bing Webmaster Tools.
- Use the Fetch and Render function in Webmaster Tools to ensure Google can properly crawl and render your site.
- Update your sitemaps to reflect the new URLs. Submit the new sitemaps to Webmaster Tools. Leave your old (HTTP) sitemaps in place for 30 days so search engines can crawl and "process" your 301 redirects.
- Update your robots.txt file. Add your new sitemaps to the file. Make sure your robots.txt doesn't block any important pages.
- If necessary, update your analytics tracking code. Most modern Google Analytics tracking snippets already handle HTTPS, but older code may need a second look.
- Implement HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS). This response header tells user agents to only access HTTPS pages even when directed to an HTTP page. This eliminates redirects, speeds up response time, and provides extra security.
- If you have a disavow file, be sure to transfer over any disavowed URLs into a duplicate file in your new Webmaster Tools profile.
Tips for FeedBurner and RSS
Many sites still use FeedBurner for RSS feeds. Unfortunately, Google stopped supporting it long ago and FeedBurner isn't compatible with HTTPS.If you use FeedBurner, you'll need to migrate your RSS to an HTTPS-compatible service. If you're technically competent you can do this yourself, or FeedPress has a very inexpensive RSS migration solution.
Migrating social share counts
When migrating to HTTPS, you often want to preserve you social share counts. These are the numbers that display in social share buttons.These counts don't impact your rankings (as far as we know) but they act as strong social proof, and it's frustrating to migrate a page with thousands of tweets and likes only to see them reset to zeros.
In fact, some social networks will transfer the social counts through their APIs, but it may take weeks or months for them to show up correctly. Here's a list of what does and doesn't eventually transfer over:
- Facebook: Yes
- Twitter: No
- Google +1s: Yes
- Google shares: No
- LinkedIn: Yes
- Pinterest: No
Example button codes to preserve social shares (edit for your site):
<div class="fb-like" data-href="http://moz.com/blog/10-tools-for-creating-infographics-visualizations" data-send="false" data-layout="box_count" </div>
<a href="https://twitter.com/share" class="twitter-share-button" data-counturl="http://moz.com/blog/10-tools-for-creating-infographics-visualizations" data-url="https://moz.com/blog/10-tools-for-creating-infographics-visualizations" data-count="vertical" data-via="moz">Tweet</a>
<div class="g-plusone" data-size="tall" data-href="http://moz.com/blog/10-tools-for-creating-infographics-visualizations"></div>Keep in mind: This only displays social shares from the URL you dictate. Because of this, it doesn't update your counts with any new social shares. This works best with content like older blog posts that are likely not to get many new shares.
If you expect your content to continue to earn social activity, you may simply want to let the numbers update naturally over time.
Making the leap
Much of the web is now moving towards SSL encryption, and within a few
years it may even become the default. SEOs, consultants and agencies
that become experts know may be rewarded as the popularity of the
protocol grows.Will you make the switch to HTTPS?
Resource: http://moz.com/blog/seo-tips-https-ssl
Google Updates and On-Page SEO
I received a little SPAM email from an SEO company based in Sydney this week(or was it last week?) and I always find it interesting when SEO Companies and Consultants have to resort to email spamming to increase their client base..
Remeber! The first rule about email spam remains..
Rule Number 1. Don’t do business with email spammers – It only confirms their “marketing” method.
So if this SEO company can do what they say… (Their pages are covered with “Google Page 1 Guarantee” banners) and can get your site to page one..
Why do they feel the need to email spam?
Why can’t they get their own site to Page #1?
Why was my site and email added to their email list?
Is this just accepted “marketing” in the current environment?
Well.. It is not accepted practice here at My SEO Guy. It’s SPAM, and we hate SPAM as much as the next guy.
Now having got that off my chest.. I want to address the content of the SPAM email which was a link to their latest blog post.
Two things stood out to me:
1. They mention Google Algorithm changes by name – “Google Pigeon”
2. They mention “the increasing importance of Onpage SEO”
Re: Number 1. – “Google Pigeon“
Sometimes I think SEO people toss these names around like they know something you don’t know and it somehow gives them more credence and expertise. Pigeon, Hummingbird, Penguin.. Whale, Aardvark.. What’s in a name..? Nothing.
The name means nothing and people guessing as to what the algorithm update entails and contains will give you no help.
Google keeps information about it’s updates to itself, and information from people like Matt Cutts is sparse and general in scope.
The overriding principle in regards to any Google algorithm change is… be doing the right thing in the first place, and nothing will change.
I can not think of one algorithm change in recent times(10 years +) that has affected, any of the sites we control or any of the clients we work for. Your SEO consultant should not be worried about algorithm changes..
If they are.. ask them why they are? What are they doing that is going to be influenced by a Google algorithm change? and if so why are they doing it?
I would love to hear the answers. Meanwhile keep an ear out for the “Earwig” update!
Re: Number 2. – “the increasing importance of Onpage SEO“
This one really struck me as odd, or misguided.. or just plain crazy.
The growing importance on Onpage SEO!
On Page SEO is and has been a fundamental of SEO before the term SEO was even invented. How can the fundamental of a process be growing in importance. That is sort of like saying there is a growing importance in the construction of walls when building a house.
On Page SEO – the use of keywords, ALT tags, image descriptions and names etc – is one facet of the optimisation process for any website and business, and without it optimisation would be non-existent. I guess it has become one of the new buzzwords to keep clients engaged and scared about things they may not know about.
My view is that it has not “grown in importance”, it is fundamental and continues to be fundamental and will always be fundamental. To say that it is more important than any other aspect is probably a little disingenuous.
Try building a house without walls and see.:)
Dave
Resource :
http://www.myseoguy.com.au/google-updates-and-on-page-seo/
Remeber! The first rule about email spam remains..
Rule Number 1. Don’t do business with email spammers – It only confirms their “marketing” method.
So if this SEO company can do what they say… (Their pages are covered with “Google Page 1 Guarantee” banners) and can get your site to page one..
Why do they feel the need to email spam?
Why can’t they get their own site to Page #1?
Why was my site and email added to their email list?
Is this just accepted “marketing” in the current environment?
Well.. It is not accepted practice here at My SEO Guy. It’s SPAM, and we hate SPAM as much as the next guy.
Now having got that off my chest.. I want to address the content of the SPAM email which was a link to their latest blog post.
Two things stood out to me:
1. They mention Google Algorithm changes by name – “Google Pigeon”
2. They mention “the increasing importance of Onpage SEO”
Re: Number 1. – “Google Pigeon“
Sometimes I think SEO people toss these names around like they know something you don’t know and it somehow gives them more credence and expertise. Pigeon, Hummingbird, Penguin.. Whale, Aardvark.. What’s in a name..? Nothing.
The name means nothing and people guessing as to what the algorithm update entails and contains will give you no help.
Google keeps information about it’s updates to itself, and information from people like Matt Cutts is sparse and general in scope.
The overriding principle in regards to any Google algorithm change is… be doing the right thing in the first place, and nothing will change.
I can not think of one algorithm change in recent times(10 years +) that has affected, any of the sites we control or any of the clients we work for. Your SEO consultant should not be worried about algorithm changes..
If they are.. ask them why they are? What are they doing that is going to be influenced by a Google algorithm change? and if so why are they doing it?
I would love to hear the answers. Meanwhile keep an ear out for the “Earwig” update!
Re: Number 2. – “the increasing importance of Onpage SEO“
This one really struck me as odd, or misguided.. or just plain crazy.
The growing importance on Onpage SEO!
On Page SEO is and has been a fundamental of SEO before the term SEO was even invented. How can the fundamental of a process be growing in importance. That is sort of like saying there is a growing importance in the construction of walls when building a house.
On Page SEO – the use of keywords, ALT tags, image descriptions and names etc – is one facet of the optimisation process for any website and business, and without it optimisation would be non-existent. I guess it has become one of the new buzzwords to keep clients engaged and scared about things they may not know about.
My view is that it has not “grown in importance”, it is fundamental and continues to be fundamental and will always be fundamental. To say that it is more important than any other aspect is probably a little disingenuous.
Try building a house without walls and see.:)
Dave
Resource :
http://www.myseoguy.com.au/google-updates-and-on-page-seo/
Friday, 12 September 2014
5 Universal Principles For Successful eCommerce-Sites
When was the last time you called customer support because you were
having problems checking out online? Probably never! Cart abandonment
rate is at around 60%, and most of it happens before the user even
begins the checkout process. Sometimes, convincing your customers to
trust you is your biggest challenge.
There is no “Consumer Trust for Dummies,” but as eCommerce designers, we need to focus on some fundamentals. The following topics may seem as obvious as walking into a seven-foot Wookie, but rest assured you will find plenty of websites with a mouth full of fur.
If your core demographic is women between the ages 35 and 65 who have an annual income of $60,000+, you would treat them different than the 18- to 25-year-old male demographic. First and foremost in e-tail: forcing your visitor to think is a bad idea. When creativity stops being subjective and can be measured by a dollar amount, making sure you’re designing for the customer is a no-brainer.
Years ago, I had an SVP of DotCom tell my team, “You can go home if you want to paint pictures.” And for the rest of the day, I couldn’t wait to get there so that I could make sure the next morning his inbox was full of expletive material illegal in most counties. After calming down, I realized he was right. All along, what he was telling us was simply to design for the customer and not ourselves. This was a challenge for designers working in an eCommerce corporate atmosphere but a very important lesson to learn.
Build brand loyalty to gain patient, forgiving customers for a lifetime. For instance, Apple’s customer loyalty exceeds all other brands with an unusual cult following. Apple lovers forgive the company when it makes mistakes and zealously defend the company’s products and reputation.
How do you make your customers trust you this much? The answer is to give the user an “Experience.” It is not enough simply to make a website usable. The experience you create for the customer has to make them not realize that they are “using” it. It’s a tough concept to grasp, and the recipe changes from website to website, but the right combination of usability, creative design, writing, psychology and metrics and a strong brand will create an experience through which your customers learn to trust you.
Like the perfect score to a film, a good user experience is unobtrusive and transparent to the consumer because “it just works.” The Apple model will not work for everyone, but I often find myself challenged with a W.W.J.D. moment. Ask, “What would Jobs do?” and then look at other websites for inspiration.
Just because a website is usable, does not mean customers will use it. Usability and user experience are in the same family, but more often than not user experience is the forgotten child. There are key areas in which the two must co-exist. Below are suggestions for some areas where websites should spend as much, if not more time, on the user experience.
A few recent trends on eCommerce websites
are “no-click” alternate images and swatches. A user simply has to roll
over an image, without clicking, to get immediate feedback. The same
approach can be used to zoom in to the image. Other UX options for the
PD page are smart fields that let users know they still have to perform a
required action before proceeding, without getting a typical error message.
But too quick and they feel like they have lost control. For instance, asking for credit card information too soon will seem out of order and no doubt scare even the most seasoned online shopper into abandoning their cart. Hidden taxes and shipping costs will make them feel like you are trying to take advantage of them.
Some fascinating things are on the horizon for developers related to user experience and page weight. One notable development as of late was the release of Safari 4 Beta, which has support for HTML 5 media tags, CSS animation and CSS effects. As more and more of these features become standard in browsers across the board, we can look forward to offering users a better experience by using features directly in the browser.
We cannot talk about user experience without touching on content and social media (SoMe). In order to be profitable, eCommerce retailers need to engage customers with their content and use social media outlets within and outside their own websites.
93% of social media users believe a company should have a presence in social media, according to Cone, while an overwhelming 85% believe a company should not only have a presence in but also interact with its consumers via social media.
When a website such as Facebook, which just turned 5 years old in
February, has an active user base of over 175 million people, it is easy
to see the unlimited potential to increase your wallet share simply by
giving your customers what they want. Some options are:
They say, “Content is king,” but if you cannot account for your
king’s whereabouts, he needs to be beheaded. Your website’s content is
only as relevant as its success. So, test as much as you can. Some tests
you can perform to get hard data include:
Using color and typography is nothing new to designers. Using them in eCommerce is not much different. When designing for a retail website, your client is the customer. You are trying to convince thousands, tens of thousands, even millions of potential customers to click on your promotion and buy whatever you are selling. Consider the following.
Consider using fun copy as an alternative. For example, if you sell banjos, instead of saying, “Shop New Banjo Supplies,” you could say, “Add More Twang to Your Thang.” As stated earlier with regard to designing for the customer, this depends a lot on what your target demographic is.
There is nothing wrong with this. As you find certain styles that perform better than others, find a way to add them to the guide. This document, depending on the complexity of your brand and the size of your website, could potentially be split into two separate documents: a creative style guide and a copy style guide. Each guide serves a different purpose but live together harmoniously.
There is no “Consumer Trust for Dummies,” but as eCommerce designers, we need to focus on some fundamentals. The following topics may seem as obvious as walking into a seven-foot Wookie, but rest assured you will find plenty of websites with a mouth full of fur.
1. Paint Your Pictures At Home
If your core demographic is women between the ages 35 and 65 who have an annual income of $60,000+, you would treat them different than the 18- to 25-year-old male demographic. First and foremost in e-tail: forcing your visitor to think is a bad idea. When creativity stops being subjective and can be measured by a dollar amount, making sure you’re designing for the customer is a no-brainer.
Years ago, I had an SVP of DotCom tell my team, “You can go home if you want to paint pictures.” And for the rest of the day, I couldn’t wait to get there so that I could make sure the next morning his inbox was full of expletive material illegal in most counties. After calming down, I realized he was right. All along, what he was telling us was simply to design for the customer and not ourselves. This was a challenge for designers working in an eCommerce corporate atmosphere but a very important lesson to learn.
2. Good UX Is Like A Perfect Movie Score
Build brand loyalty to gain patient, forgiving customers for a lifetime. For instance, Apple’s customer loyalty exceeds all other brands with an unusual cult following. Apple lovers forgive the company when it makes mistakes and zealously defend the company’s products and reputation.
How do you make your customers trust you this much? The answer is to give the user an “Experience.” It is not enough simply to make a website usable. The experience you create for the customer has to make them not realize that they are “using” it. It’s a tough concept to grasp, and the recipe changes from website to website, but the right combination of usability, creative design, writing, psychology and metrics and a strong brand will create an experience through which your customers learn to trust you.
Like the perfect score to a film, a good user experience is unobtrusive and transparent to the consumer because “it just works.” The Apple model will not work for everyone, but I often find myself challenged with a W.W.J.D. moment. Ask, “What would Jobs do?” and then look at other websites for inspiration.
3. eCommerce UX Pitfalls To Avoid
Just because a website is usable, does not mean customers will use it. Usability and user experience are in the same family, but more often than not user experience is the forgotten child. There are key areas in which the two must co-exist. Below are suggestions for some areas where websites should spend as much, if not more time, on the user experience.
Product Detail page
The product detail (PD) page is where some retail websites drop the ball. Too much focus is put on the design and usability of the home page, and that effort does not continue through to the rest of the website. More of the user’s time is spent on the product detail page than any other. Here, you need to offer customers all of the information they are looking for but present it in an intelligent way as well.The Checkout Process
Much like the PD page, the checkout process is a critical piece that engages the customer on a somewhat intimate level. However, unlike the PD page, where customers want to spend time to make sure they want what they are looking at, the checkout process should have as few steps as possible. Too many steps and the customer feels trapped.But too quick and they feel like they have lost control. For instance, asking for credit card information too soon will seem out of order and no doubt scare even the most seasoned online shopper into abandoning their cart. Hidden taxes and shipping costs will make them feel like you are trying to take advantage of them.
Security
Always making sure your customer knows that your website is secure and that their privacy will never be compromised goes back to the issue of trust. It does not take much effort to display a message telling your customers that they are safe in your hands; a footer link to your privacy policy is not always enough.Page Weight
A page’s weight is determined by its file size, by adding up every image, every line of code and anything that gets loaded when the user first hits the page. Libraries such as Scriptaculous, jQuery, MooTools and even Flash Shared Objects are often forgotten, but they all add to a page’s “weight.”Some fascinating things are on the horizon for developers related to user experience and page weight. One notable development as of late was the release of Safari 4 Beta, which has support for HTML 5 media tags, CSS animation and CSS effects. As more and more of these features become standard in browsers across the board, we can look forward to offering users a better experience by using features directly in the browser.
4. The Value Of Content And Then SoMe
We cannot talk about user experience without touching on content and social media (SoMe). In order to be profitable, eCommerce retailers need to engage customers with their content and use social media outlets within and outside their own websites.
93% of social media users believe a company should have a presence in social media, according to Cone, while an overwhelming 85% believe a company should not only have a presence in but also interact with its consumers via social media.
- 60% of all online adults use social media.
- 85% believe a company should not only have a presence in but also interact with its consumers via social media.
- 56% of users feel a stronger connection with, and feel better served by, companies when they can interact with them in a social media environment.
- Give your customer the ability to add your website or product detail pages to websites such as Delicious, StumpleUpon, Digg, Twitter and Facebook.
- Give them the ability to customize their experience on your website. These experiences can range from customizing the home page as they see fit to uploading their image to go beside their product reviews.
- Create an RSS feed for your website. If your website has a blog or some other content area that changes regularly, give your customers the option to add it to their favorite RSS reader.
- Website and email A/B testing
Split your promotion views between your customers. 50% see version A, and 50% see version B. You can perform these tests for just about any purpose, but make sure your goals are clear before beginning. Figure out what you are trying to solve, and then move forward with the testing. From changing your website’s navigation to simply testing the style of your promotion’s copy, doing an A/B test will give you the relevant data you need to decide whether to update or remain the same. - Polls
Polls are quick and simple but, depending on your pool of users, can give you mountains of data. To get more people to take your poll, consider giving some kind of incentive to participate. Some polls are fun to take, but if you’re asking, “Which brand of television is better?” and not, “Who’s hotter, Jessica Simpson or Britney Spears?” then you may want to think more carefully about how much the feedback is worth.
5. Using Type And Color To Influence
Using color and typography is nothing new to designers. Using them in eCommerce is not much different. When designing for a retail website, your client is the customer. You are trying to convince thousands, tens of thousands, even millions of potential customers to click on your promotion and buy whatever you are selling. Consider the following.
Can It Be Read?
Most designers love to play with typography: twisting, shaping and contorting letters and word to obey your every whim, forming a beautiful masterpiece of skill and beauty. However, if your customer is not an artist, chances are they won’t get what you’re doing, and you’ve just lost a sale. Up front and to the point messaging is not always the answer either.Consider using fun copy as an alternative. For example, if you sell banjos, instead of saying, “Shop New Banjo Supplies,” you could say, “Add More Twang to Your Thang.” As stated earlier with regard to designing for the customer, this depends a lot on what your target demographic is.
Can It Be Red?
No big surprise, red is the color of choice for error messages. But consider this when thinking about the user experience. What color does Target.com use for its error messages? Makes you think, right? Good! By the way, it uses red, too. The point is to consider alternatives. If your company has red in its brand, and the website has a lot of red as well, consider another color. You’re trying to get the user’s attention, so blue text with an alert icon could work just as well.Consistency in Type: Stylistically and Creatively.
Making sure your headers, sub-headings and body copy are consistent across your website is easy. Making sure your website has a well-defined style guide is not. A style guide requires a lot of patience and care and is never complete. A website’s style guide should be a living, breathing document that continues to grow as your company and brand grows.There is nothing wrong with this. As you find certain styles that perform better than others, find a way to add them to the guide. This document, depending on the complexity of your brand and the size of your website, could potentially be split into two separate documents: a creative style guide and a copy style guide. Each guide serves a different purpose but live together harmoniously.
Inspiration and Sources
Designing for the user experience in eCommerce is a multi-faceted puzzle. Some solutions work across the board, and some are specific to your website alone. The good news is that finding the solutions that best fit your particular needs is the most challenging and rewarding work a designer can do. It takes a rare breed to fully appreciate the value of the user experience, and if you are part of it, I hope this article and these resources give you as much pleasure as they have given me.55 Quick SEO Tips
Everyone loves a good tip, right? Here are 55 quick tips for search engine
optimization that even your mother could use to get cooking. Well, not
my mother, but you get my point. Most folks with some web design and
beginner SEO knowledge should be able to take these to the bank without
any problem.
1. If you absolutely MUST use Java script drop down menus, image maps or image links, be sure to put text links somewhere on the page for the spiders to follow.
2. Content is king, so be sure to have good, well-written, and unique content that will focus on your primary keyword or keyword phrase.
3. If content is king, then links are queen. Build a network of quality backlinks. Remember, if there is no good, logical reason for a site to link to you, you don’t want the link.
4. Don’t be obsessed with PageRank. It is just one isty bitsy part of the ranking algorithm. A site with lower PR can actually outrank one with a higher PR.
5. Be sure you have a unique, keyword focused Title tag on every page of your site. And, if you MUST have the name of your company in it, put it at the end. Unless you are a household name, your business name will probably get few searches.
6. Fresh content can help improve your rankings. Add new, useful content to your pages on a regular basis. Content freshness adds relevancy to your site in the eyes of the search engines.
7. Be sure links to your site and within your site use your keyword phrase. In other words, if your target is “blue widgets” then link to “blue widgets” instead of a “Click here” link.
8. Focus on search phrases, not single keywords, and put your location in your text (“our Palm Springs store” not “our store”) to help you get found in local searches.
9. Don’t design your web site without considering SEO. Make sure your web designer understands your expectations for organic SEO. Doing a retrofit on your shiny new Flash-based site after it is built won’t cut it. Spiders can crawl text, not Flash or images.
10. Use keywords and keyword phrases appropriately in text links, image ALT attributes and even your domain name.
11. Check for canonicalization issues – www and non-www domains. Decide which you want to use and 301 redirect the other to it. In other words, if http://www.domain.com is your preference, then http://domain.com should redirect to it.
12. Check the link to your home page throughout your site. Is index.html appended to your domain name? If so, you’re splitting your links. Outside links go to http://www.domain.com and internal links go to http://www.domain.com/index.html.
Ditch the index.html or default.php or whatever the page is and always link back to your domain.
13. Frames, Flash and AJAX all share a common problem – you can’t link to a single page. It’s either all or nothing. Don’t use Frames at all and use Flash and AJAX sparingly for best SEO results.
14. Your URL file extension doesn’t matter. You can use .html, .htm, .asp, .php, etc. and it won’t make a difference as far as your SEO is concerned.
15. Got a new web site you want spidered? Submitting through Google’s regular submission form can take weeks. The quickest way to get your site spidered is by getting a link to it through another quality site.
16. If your site content doesn’t change often, your site needs a blog because search spiders like fresh text. Blog at least three time a week with good, fresh content to feed those little crawlers.
17. When link building, think quality, not quantity. One single, good, authoritative link can do a lot more for you than a dozen poor quality links, which can actually hurt you.
18. Search engines want natural language content. Don’t try to stuff your text with keywords. It won’t work. Search engines look at how many times a term is in your content and if it is abnormally high, will count this against you rather than for you.
19. Text around your links should also be related to your keywords. In other words, surround the link with descriptive text.
20. If you are on a shared server, do a blacklist check to be sure you’re not on a proxy with a spammer or banned site. Their negative notoriety could affect your own rankings.
21. Be aware that by using services that block domain ownership information when you register a domain, Google might see you as a potential spammer.
22. When optimizing your blog posts, optimize your post title tag independently from your blog title.
23. The bottom line in SEO is Text, Links, Popularity and Reputation.
24. Make sure your site is easy to use. This can influence your link building ability and popularity and, thus, your ranking.
25. Give link love, Get link love. Don’t be stingy with linking out. That will encourage others to link to you.
26. Search engines like unique content that is also quality content. There can be a difference between unique content and quality content. Make sure your content is both.
27. If you absolutely MUST have your main page as a splash page that is all Flash or one big image, place text and navigation links below the fold.
28. Some of your most valuable links might not appear in web sites at all but be in the form of e-mail communications such as newletters and zines.
29. You get NOTHING from paid links except a few clicks unless the links are embedded in body text and NOT obvious sponsored links.
30. Links from .edu domains are given nice weight by the search engines. Run a search for possible non-profit .edu sites that are looking for sponsors.
31. Give them something to talk about. Linkbaiting is simply good content.
32. Give each page a focus on a single keyword phrase. Don’t try to optimize the page for several keywords at once.
33. SEO is useless if you have a weak or non-existent call to action. Make sure your call to action is clear and present.
34. SEO is not a one-shot process. The search landscape changes daily, so expect to work on your optimization daily.
35. Cater to influential bloggers and authority sites who might link to you, your images, videos, podcasts, etc. or ask to reprint your content.
36. Get the owner or CEO blogging. It’s priceless! CEO influence on a blog is incredible as this is the VOICE of the company. Response from the owner to reader comments will cause your credibility to skyrocket!
37. Optimize the text in your RSS feed just like you should with your posts and web pages. Use descriptive, keyword rich text in your title and description.
38. Use keyword rich captions with your images.
39. Pay attention to the context surrounding your images. Images can rank based on text that surrounds them on the page. Pay attention to keyword text, headings, etc.
40. You’re better off letting your site pages be found naturally by the crawler. Good global navigation and linking will serve you much better than relying only on an XML Sitemap.
41. There are two ways to NOT see Google’s Personalized Search results:
(1) Log out of Google
(2) Append &pws=0 to the end of your search URL in the search bar
42. Links (especially deep links) from a high PageRank site are golden. High PR indicates high trust, so the back links will carry more weight.
43. Use absolute links. Not only will it make your on-site link navigation less prone to problems (like links to and from https pages), but if someone scrapes your content, you’ll get backlink juice out of it.
44. See if your hosting company offers “Sticky” forwarding when moving to a new domain. This allows temporary forwarding to the new domain from the old, retaining the new URL in the address bar so that users can gradually get used to the new URL.
45. Understand social marketing. It IS part of SEO. The more you understand about sites like Digg, Yelp, del.icio.us, Facebook, etc., the better you will be able to compete in search.
46. To get the best chance for your videos to be found by the crawlers, create a video sitemap and list it in your Google Webmaster Central account.
47. Videos that show up in Google blended search results don’t just come from YouTube. Be sure to submit your videos to other quality video sites like Metacafe, AOL, MSN and Yahoo to name a few.
48. Surround video content on your pages with keyword rich text. The search engines look at surrounding content to define the usefulness of the video for the query.
49. Use the words “image” or “picture” in your photo ALT descriptions and captions. A lot of searches are for a keyword plus one of those words.
50. Enable “Enhanced image search” in your Google Webmaster Central account. Images are a big part of the new blended search results, so allowing Google to find your photos will help your SEO efforts.
51. Add viral components to your web site or blog – reviews, sharing functions, ratings, visitor comments, etc.
52. Broaden your range of services to include video, podcasts, news, social content and so forth. SEO is not about 10 blue links anymore.
53. When considering a link purchase or exchange, check the cache date of the page where your link will be located in Google. Search for “cache:URL” where you substitute “URL” for the actual page. The newer the cache date the better. If the page isn’t there or the cache date is more than an month old, the page isn’t worth much.
54. If you have pages on your site that are very similar (you are concerned about duplicate content issues) and you want to be sure the correct one is included in the search engines, place the URL of your preferred page in your sitemaps.
55. Check your server headers. Search for “check server header” to find free online tools for this. You want to be sure your URLs report a “200 OK” status or “301 Moved Permanently ” for redirects. If the status shows anything else, check to be sure your URLs are set up properly and used consistently throughout your site.
Resource : http://www.searchenginejournal.com/55-quick-seo-tips-even-your-mother-would-love/
1. If you absolutely MUST use Java script drop down menus, image maps or image links, be sure to put text links somewhere on the page for the spiders to follow.
2. Content is king, so be sure to have good, well-written, and unique content that will focus on your primary keyword or keyword phrase.
3. If content is king, then links are queen. Build a network of quality backlinks. Remember, if there is no good, logical reason for a site to link to you, you don’t want the link.
4. Don’t be obsessed with PageRank. It is just one isty bitsy part of the ranking algorithm. A site with lower PR can actually outrank one with a higher PR.
5. Be sure you have a unique, keyword focused Title tag on every page of your site. And, if you MUST have the name of your company in it, put it at the end. Unless you are a household name, your business name will probably get few searches.
6. Fresh content can help improve your rankings. Add new, useful content to your pages on a regular basis. Content freshness adds relevancy to your site in the eyes of the search engines.
7. Be sure links to your site and within your site use your keyword phrase. In other words, if your target is “blue widgets” then link to “blue widgets” instead of a “Click here” link.
8. Focus on search phrases, not single keywords, and put your location in your text (“our Palm Springs store” not “our store”) to help you get found in local searches.
9. Don’t design your web site without considering SEO. Make sure your web designer understands your expectations for organic SEO. Doing a retrofit on your shiny new Flash-based site after it is built won’t cut it. Spiders can crawl text, not Flash or images.
10. Use keywords and keyword phrases appropriately in text links, image ALT attributes and even your domain name.
11. Check for canonicalization issues – www and non-www domains. Decide which you want to use and 301 redirect the other to it. In other words, if http://www.domain.com is your preference, then http://domain.com should redirect to it.
12. Check the link to your home page throughout your site. Is index.html appended to your domain name? If so, you’re splitting your links. Outside links go to http://www.domain.com and internal links go to http://www.domain.com/index.html.
Ditch the index.html or default.php or whatever the page is and always link back to your domain.
13. Frames, Flash and AJAX all share a common problem – you can’t link to a single page. It’s either all or nothing. Don’t use Frames at all and use Flash and AJAX sparingly for best SEO results.
14. Your URL file extension doesn’t matter. You can use .html, .htm, .asp, .php, etc. and it won’t make a difference as far as your SEO is concerned.
15. Got a new web site you want spidered? Submitting through Google’s regular submission form can take weeks. The quickest way to get your site spidered is by getting a link to it through another quality site.
16. If your site content doesn’t change often, your site needs a blog because search spiders like fresh text. Blog at least three time a week with good, fresh content to feed those little crawlers.
17. When link building, think quality, not quantity. One single, good, authoritative link can do a lot more for you than a dozen poor quality links, which can actually hurt you.
18. Search engines want natural language content. Don’t try to stuff your text with keywords. It won’t work. Search engines look at how many times a term is in your content and if it is abnormally high, will count this against you rather than for you.
19. Text around your links should also be related to your keywords. In other words, surround the link with descriptive text.
20. If you are on a shared server, do a blacklist check to be sure you’re not on a proxy with a spammer or banned site. Their negative notoriety could affect your own rankings.
21. Be aware that by using services that block domain ownership information when you register a domain, Google might see you as a potential spammer.
22. When optimizing your blog posts, optimize your post title tag independently from your blog title.
23. The bottom line in SEO is Text, Links, Popularity and Reputation.
24. Make sure your site is easy to use. This can influence your link building ability and popularity and, thus, your ranking.
25. Give link love, Get link love. Don’t be stingy with linking out. That will encourage others to link to you.
26. Search engines like unique content that is also quality content. There can be a difference between unique content and quality content. Make sure your content is both.
27. If you absolutely MUST have your main page as a splash page that is all Flash or one big image, place text and navigation links below the fold.
28. Some of your most valuable links might not appear in web sites at all but be in the form of e-mail communications such as newletters and zines.
29. You get NOTHING from paid links except a few clicks unless the links are embedded in body text and NOT obvious sponsored links.
30. Links from .edu domains are given nice weight by the search engines. Run a search for possible non-profit .edu sites that are looking for sponsors.
31. Give them something to talk about. Linkbaiting is simply good content.
32. Give each page a focus on a single keyword phrase. Don’t try to optimize the page for several keywords at once.
33. SEO is useless if you have a weak or non-existent call to action. Make sure your call to action is clear and present.
34. SEO is not a one-shot process. The search landscape changes daily, so expect to work on your optimization daily.
35. Cater to influential bloggers and authority sites who might link to you, your images, videos, podcasts, etc. or ask to reprint your content.
36. Get the owner or CEO blogging. It’s priceless! CEO influence on a blog is incredible as this is the VOICE of the company. Response from the owner to reader comments will cause your credibility to skyrocket!
37. Optimize the text in your RSS feed just like you should with your posts and web pages. Use descriptive, keyword rich text in your title and description.
38. Use keyword rich captions with your images.
39. Pay attention to the context surrounding your images. Images can rank based on text that surrounds them on the page. Pay attention to keyword text, headings, etc.
40. You’re better off letting your site pages be found naturally by the crawler. Good global navigation and linking will serve you much better than relying only on an XML Sitemap.
41. There are two ways to NOT see Google’s Personalized Search results:
(1) Log out of Google
(2) Append &pws=0 to the end of your search URL in the search bar
42. Links (especially deep links) from a high PageRank site are golden. High PR indicates high trust, so the back links will carry more weight.
43. Use absolute links. Not only will it make your on-site link navigation less prone to problems (like links to and from https pages), but if someone scrapes your content, you’ll get backlink juice out of it.
44. See if your hosting company offers “Sticky” forwarding when moving to a new domain. This allows temporary forwarding to the new domain from the old, retaining the new URL in the address bar so that users can gradually get used to the new URL.
45. Understand social marketing. It IS part of SEO. The more you understand about sites like Digg, Yelp, del.icio.us, Facebook, etc., the better you will be able to compete in search.
46. To get the best chance for your videos to be found by the crawlers, create a video sitemap and list it in your Google Webmaster Central account.
47. Videos that show up in Google blended search results don’t just come from YouTube. Be sure to submit your videos to other quality video sites like Metacafe, AOL, MSN and Yahoo to name a few.
48. Surround video content on your pages with keyword rich text. The search engines look at surrounding content to define the usefulness of the video for the query.
49. Use the words “image” or “picture” in your photo ALT descriptions and captions. A lot of searches are for a keyword plus one of those words.
50. Enable “Enhanced image search” in your Google Webmaster Central account. Images are a big part of the new blended search results, so allowing Google to find your photos will help your SEO efforts.
51. Add viral components to your web site or blog – reviews, sharing functions, ratings, visitor comments, etc.
52. Broaden your range of services to include video, podcasts, news, social content and so forth. SEO is not about 10 blue links anymore.
53. When considering a link purchase or exchange, check the cache date of the page where your link will be located in Google. Search for “cache:URL” where you substitute “URL” for the actual page. The newer the cache date the better. If the page isn’t there or the cache date is more than an month old, the page isn’t worth much.
54. If you have pages on your site that are very similar (you are concerned about duplicate content issues) and you want to be sure the correct one is included in the search engines, place the URL of your preferred page in your sitemaps.
55. Check your server headers. Search for “check server header” to find free online tools for this. You want to be sure your URLs report a “200 OK” status or “301 Moved Permanently ” for redirects. If the status shows anything else, check to be sure your URLs are set up properly and used consistently throughout your site.
Resource : http://www.searchenginejournal.com/55-quick-seo-tips-even-your-mother-would-love/
Saturday, 6 September 2014
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