Search Engine Optimization « Christopher Ross

Archive for the ‘Search Engine Optimization’ Category

01
Sep
2009

Link Building Question & Answer

When I posted Bella’s question at Four Quick SEO Tips yesturday I mentioned that I love to hear from everybody and that your questions are always appreciated. I want to thank Lee from http://myblog2day.com/ for posting the following link building question and take a moment to answer.

Thanks for sharing these Chris! I have a question about getting links from high PR site. In fact, I’m doing a new link building by register in high PR site (PR4-PR7) and insert my link in the profile that points to my blog, so the profile page will be PR0 or no PR at all. In this case, is this type of link increases the blog ranking for the keyword since it’s just a PR0 page links to the blog (Even though people said that is a PR4-PR7 site link to the blog)?

Regards,
Lee

What Lee’s asking about is the value of linking from a low PageRank page on a high PageRank website and if that has any value at all but before I answer, I want to explain that concept to some people who may not be aware of the difference.

PageRank, as we’ve discussed before is a rank (0-10) which Google assigns every indexed webpage and website on the planet. Every time a page links to another page, it deducts a portion of it’s own PageRank and gives it to the receiving page. If it links to 10 pages from a single page, it transfers 1/10th of its PageRank value to each of the 10 links.

Now, a page may appear in the Google Tool bar as a PR0, even if it’s on a PR5 website but that’s an error or more specifically a flaw in the update routines but one that is well enough known that it doesn’t impact SEO value transfers within Google. The reason is simple, if my website hosts a page which is linked to from other pages on my website and my website has a PR value of 5, all pages which are links and interlinked must also by default have an assumed PR value of 5. In lay mens terms? If the domain your posting to has a PR value, all the pages interlinked on that website have the same PR value.

So to answer Lee’s question, if the website you’re posting your link on has a high PR ranking don’t worry so much about the rank of an individual page. Instead worry if people who are visiting that page are likely to find value in your website being listed there!

Remember, if you have a question I’d love to answer it for you!

Tags: Bella, blog, google, Google Tool Bar, Profile, Register
Posted in Questions and Answers, Search Engine Optimization

31
Aug
2009

Four Quick SEO Tips

4 Comments

I received a great question this week via my Model Mayhem account (it’s like Facebook for models and photographers) from a website owner named Bella Valentine, here’s her email and what I had to say about it, I’m sharing this (with her permission) because I believe Bella’s questions are the same questions many people have about Search Engine Optimization and online marketing.

Hey,

Saw your post in the forums and I was hoping you could help me out with a few questions that I have…

How do you find related blogs?

Do you write your site’s link as the signature when posting a comment on such blogs? (I’ve been looking for blogs that have the slot for your website’s url but have come only across one that was set up that way)

Wouldn’t that be considered spamming?

Should I try to stay away from sites that have a worst ranking then mine on Alexa or do all links back help?

Thanks,
Bella

Hi Bella, thanks for asking!

You can find related blogs using Google’s blog search function, it’s found under the “More” tab on Google or at http://blogsearch.google.com/. If for example you’re hoping to improve your ranking with Denver models, search Google for that phrase and you’ll see 92,000+ blogs appear but you’ll want to play with the keywords until you find the right combination to return the best results for you.

Many of these blogs will have a comment form at the bottom of the page and on these forms you will see a space for your name, email, website and comment. Now you have to be careful, some web masters such as myself frown on “keyword spam” which is when you replace your name with keywords such as “Denver Model”, so instead I always suggest people using their name in addition to the keywords they’d like to leave. For example, I will always delete people using “Denver Model” but look the other way for “Bella, the Denver Model” or “Bella a model from Denver”. I appreciate self promotion is part of the game, but not at the cost of my site’s reputation.

On that point, I will also point out that 75% of people surveyed prefer the Ben & Jerry’s brand vs. Häagen-Dazs yet … 75% of people surveyed prefer Häagen-Dazs ice cream. Why? Because as people, we like people … so website owners and other surfers are far more likely to “connect” to you if you’re a person rather than a keyword.

There is a fine line between blog spam and self promotion. I tend to think of it as the same line men often cross in a bar, keep it genuine and nobody gets hurt but when your comments are fake, false or generic … web site owners will reject you. Instead of leaving generic comments which will get flags as SPAM, only leave comments which add to the texture of the article or benefit the website owner. You’ll be surprised how quickly your comments get you traffic when you’re helping others in a positive way.

Commenting on websites with a lower PageRank value will not hurt your website, in fact each successful link regardless of where it comes from is either positive or neutral, but never negative. This is because Google knows that you can not control who links to you, so they don’t punish you for poor incoming links.

That said … the higher the PageRank of a link coming to you the better.

For example, if you can get a link from Model Mayhem (5) to your website it’s better than a PR 1, but a link from Apple (9) is better still. There’s a complex math formula that is used … way to complex for me to explain or even understand but basically, in the simplest terms possible assume that every PR point is worth double the value before it so … a link from a PR1 is worth 1 point while a PR2 is 2, a PR3 is 4, PR4 is 8, PR5 is 16, PR6 is 32, PR7 is 64, PR8 is 128, PR9 is 256 … OK, so that scale is completely made up but it holds some analytical water and more to the point, it reinforced that incoming links from high ranking sites is better but lower ranking sites are not worse.

Chris

If you have a question about SEO, why not ask me? I’m always happy to answer your questions and look forward to hearing from people!

Want to learn more about Bella’s website? Visit her at http://www.BellaValentine.com.

Tags: alexa, blog, Denver Model, email, Facebook, google, Model Mayhem, Models, photographers, phrase, reputation, Right Combination, Search Engine Optimization, Search Function, self promotion, Signature, spam, Valentine, web masters, Website Owner
Posted in Questions and Answers, Search Engine Optimization

30
May
2009

What’s the biggest mistake you’re making on your website?

3 Comments

We all make mistakes but when it comes to our online web businesses, it’s important that we fix our mistakes before they become crippling.

Keywords

A keyword (or Tag in WordPress lingo) is a word or phrase intended to help support the content that you’re reading on a specific page, not the entire website. People often overload pages with keywords which have no relevancy to the page they’re designing with the hopes that Google will fall for the trick. Google will not fall for it. In fact, there’s plenty of evidence to show that Google will punish you for using unrelated keywords, which is mistake #1 on most websites.

Boring Content

Content matters, it’s a silly reality but you have to stop thinking about your visitors as a funny little line in an analytics program and begin caring about them as people. Every person who comes to your website should feel they are better off after reading your content. If they don’t you’re wasting their time and they will not come back, so write better content and watch your website traffic increase dramatically.

Failing to Reach Your Market

The old days of building a website and assuming people will find it are over (if they ever existed at all), website owners need to tell people about their website and promote it everywhere. Make sure your site address is on your business cards, marketing materials, the side of your building, company vehicles, all of your online profiles and in prominent newsletters, magazines etc. Remember, if you don’t tell people about your website they won’t know it’s there.

Poor Titles

Writing for websites is easy, make sure you have a catchy title that will help people determine if they want to read your piece and then make sure it’s been properly placed in your HTML code. A great title needs to be in two places on a website, first it has to be in the <title></title> tags of your page but it should also be reflected in your <h1></h1> tags in the body of your content. This helps search engines know that your page is about your title by labeling the document but also by placing the title in an easy to read and powerful tag within your text.

Poor Structure

Web pages are a lot like books, they need structure for people to be able to read them. In this case, you want computer software such as FireFox, Safari and IE to read your pages as well as Google, MSN and Yahoo right? Well then, you’d better make sure your page is coded to their standards! Luckily, the W3C has a wonderful tool to help you ensure your page can be properly read.

Stale Content

If you’ve follow my advice, you know that your visitors are people not mindless data points on a graph so you have to respect that they simple won’t come back to your website if you don’t take the time to post anything new there. Work out a schedule that you can keep and write a blog posting at least once each week (more if you can) to provide your audience with fresh content.

Be Organic

While it’s acceptable and even encouraged to buy ads on services such as Google be careful that you’re building your client base through organic methods, not paid advertising. Google looks very poorly on paid link placement and has a reputation for punishing people excessively for buying links. If you really want to build your websites online reputation, do it honestly and take a little more time, in the end it’ll get you where you need to be.

Be Original

The web is a very big place and people have a lot of choice when it comes to content, so try to be original and write content people want to read. Ask yourself why you read specific websites and learn to improve your content to ensure people have a reason to come back. Once you have unique, original content others will start linking to your content because you’re an authority.

SEO is Irrelevant

Would you rather optimize your store for the local newspaper or for your customer? Stop looking to optimize your content for search engines, they’re irrelevant. Don’t get me wrong you have to make sure your content can be read by them and that your website is compatible with Google but stop treating your website content like it needs to be written to appeal to the big search engines and instead, write your content to appeal to people like your mother, your father, your kids and your neighbors. After all, they’re the ones who are reading your content … not a robot.

Learn to be co-operative

The biggest mistake people make? Failing to ask other website owners to link to them. Search engines rankings work on a system called PageRank, the way PageRank works is by counting the number of links from other websites to your website, the more links you have coming into your website … the higher you rank on Google. If you want to be successful on the web, ask your friends and family as well as other related businesses to link to you.

Tags: Biggest Mistake, Boring Content, building a website, business cards, business marketing, Catchy Title, Company Vehicles, google, h1, Lingo, lt, Magazines, Marketing Materials, Online Businesses, People, phrase, Profiles, Relevancy, Traffic Increase, Web Businesses, Website Traffic
Posted in Search Engine Optimization

22
May
2009

Why I’ve decided to nofollow and how that will help you.

5 Comments

My decision earlier this week to deactivate a dofollow plugin here on thisismyurl.com stirred up some pretty interesting feelings and resulted in a lot of interesting comments both publicly and via email. So what’s with my choice? Well as I explained in my post earlier it has a lot to do with keyword spamming but there’s also a few fringe issues I’ve been grappling with here on the site and I hope that by deactivating the dofollow aspect of my site, I’ll actually increase the value to those who post here regularly.

So how does adding the nofollow tag help many of you? Actually it’s fairly straight forward and for those of us who read Matt Cutt’s posts regularly, you’ll agree that I should have done it years ago. To quote from SEOmoz.org:

Matt’s exact words – The “keep the number of links to under 100″ is in the technical guideline section, not the quality guidelines section. That means we’re not going to remove a page if you have 101 or 102 links on the page. Think of this more as a rule of thumb. Originally, Google only indexed the first 100 kilobytes or so of web documents, so keeping the number of links under 100 was a good way to ensure that all those links would be seen by Google. These days I believe we index deeper within documents, so that’s less of an issue. But it is true that if users see 250 or 300 links on a page, that page is probably not as useful for them, so it’s a good idea to break a large list of links down (e.g. by category, topic, alphabetically, or chronologically) into multiple pages so that your links don’t overwhelm regular users.

In a nutshell, if you follow Google’s guidelines for the nofollow attribute you quickly realize that

There is no stigma to the tag, being labelled nofollow isn’t a bad thing it just isn’t a good thing.
When calculating how much PageRank to transfer Google uses the number of links per page to help calculate it.

25 simple ways to make WordPress SEO friendly

6 Comments

Making a website (especially a WordPress website) search engine friendly should be the focus of every webmaster but many independent website owners get it all wrong, so let’s take a quick look at 25 things every website owner should do to make sure their website is making the most of free marketing tools.

The title tag

In HTML there are two tags that can make a website sink or swim. The first is your title tag. Located in the <head> section of your websites HTML the <title> tag controls what search engines think your sites name is. This title commonly includes both the name of your website and the name of the article that is stored on a specific page but which is more important?

To search engines the answer is easy, it’s the name of the page that people are on … not the name of your website, so placing the content in the right order is critical! Instead of placing My Site Name || My Post, I can instantly improve my ranking by posting My Post || My Site Name. To do this in WordPress, simply open your header.php file and make the required changes.

The H1 tag

No tag is more misunderstood or more poorly used than the poor H1 tag. It’s the most critical tag in the entire body of a post, yet people waste it on their website title! It’s not really you’re fault … WordPress themes often mistakenly use the <h1> tag as the title of a website.

To fix this, open your header.php file and remove the <h1> from around your site name. Replace it with a <div> tag such as <div id=’logo’> so that you can format your title to look how you’d like.

The H1 tag is meant to encompass the page title, so next you’ll have to open and edit your single.php and page.php files to ensure your title is using an <h1>. Remember, there should only be one <h1> on an entire page!

H2 … H6 tags

Document structure guidelines dictate how these tags should be used. They’re mean for headings, not formating! If your document has multiple depths, use <h2> .. <h6> tags to structure your document depth, for example an <h3> tag should only ever follow an <h2> tag. Remember, search engine robots are looking for consistent order and logic in a page.

W3C Validation

There’s a little debate over how important it is to validate your pages, my opinion on the subject is simply that if a robot (which is all search engines are) can’t read your page … how can they index it? Run your page through the validator at The W3C Markup Validation Service.

Images

When naming images, use descriptive keywords in the filenames as well as the ALT tags. ALT tags are used to “display” the images to people who can’t see but they’re also hand for companies like Google to understand what the image contains.

Friendly URL’s

Does Google really care if your URL’s include keywords? Wow, great question. According to Matt Cutts (Googler Prime) … no but it’s more attractive and it’s one of those simple SEO things that helps make our websites feel more friendly.

Anchor Tags

Remember to add titles and rel values to your anchor tags! The title can be added through the WordPress WYSIWYG editor but rel tags? You’ll have to delve into the HTML if you want to use them effectively.

Meta Descriptions

Like the <title> tag, Meta description tags are found in the header.php file for WordPress and instruct web search engines what your website is about. These description tags should be updated for every page and remember, it should reflect the content … not the site!

Meta Keywords

Meta keywords are also stored in your <head> section and summarize the article for search engines. Want a clever trick? Use the post tags as your comma separated list of keywords! That way, you’ll be sure to get rich, descriptive tags to match your content.

Content Placement

Remember that the content for your website is the most important part! Make sure it’s as close to the top of your HTML as possible or else search engines might not be able to find it.

HTML Clutter

One great way to keep HTML clutter to a minimum is to link as much as your code as possible to external files. This keeps your document as empty as possible so Google (and other robots) know that your content is key.

Fresh Content Matters!

Websites are like restaurants, people want fresh content and Google knows it. One great way to optimize your content for Google is to ensure your content is always fresh, using a blog or a forum is a great way to keep fresh content online.

Link to Quality Content

Search engines love links so if you have a favorite website that helps your audience, link to it (remember to use the title tag as well!), this will not only increase your standing with search engines but it’ll help build a great community

Avoid Flash

Flash is a great tool, we all love it and it sure is sexy but … no matter what anybody tells you it can not be read properly be search engines and if search engine robots can’t see your site, your website is worthless. It’s just that simple, I’m sorry.

Include a Sitemap File

Robots search for content on your website by crawling (literally traveling from link to link) this is a painful long process so help them out by posting a sitemap.xml file for them to read! This file orders your content and helps robots to understand where fresh content is located on your site.

Include a Sitemap Page

Sitemaps aren’t just for robots anymore! Help people find everything on your site by including a comprensive page with all your links in a single place. This also ensures that SEO robots can find all your links.

Build a better footer

Footers are an easy way to help both people and robots easily find important content on your website.

Use Tags and Categories

WordPress has some wonderful SEO features build right in, so use them! Every one of your posts should use categories to help optimize them but they should also link to each other! By linking your article to list of other articles which use those keywords, you’re helping index your content.

Deep link your articles

If you’re writing an article that could benefit from another article on your website, include a hyperlink to the supporting piece! It’s called deep linking but I like to think of it as common sense, after all if you’re not willing to cite your own articles why should others?

Keyword your titles

What words do you want people to use to find your site? Use those words in your title! Don’t push your luck though, nobody likes a keyword spammer so make sure your article title is natural but try to use the words that you’d search Google in hopes of finding your article with.

Keyword your page content

Don’t be shy to sprinkle your article with your keywords either, especially your header links! Make sure that whenever you have a chance you’ve used the words and phrases that you feel people would search for in Google.

Know your competition

Search for your competion in Google, what terms are they using? Should you be using the same to compete with them in search engines? You can optimize your website for your community, your industry or your products … make sure you’re doing the best job you can.

Don’t duplicate your content

Content should only appear once on your website and only on your website! Don’t fall into the habit of posting other peoples recycled posts on your site and be careful that WordPress isn’t duplicating content on your site. If you’ve posted your content to two categories, chances are that Google is penalizing you for it so make sure you’re only allowing it to be indexed once!

Format your text

We touched on this with regards to using headers but your website should also use tags to format your text! Search engines respect tags such as <cite>, <strong> (<b>), <em> (<i>) and <blockquote> so why not use the to help robots understand your content?

Write better content

I’ve said it before … but here’s tip #25 … write better content. Well written, formatted and structured content is still the best SEO value you’ll ever earn.

Tags: Div Id, Div Tag, Documen, Document Structure, Free Marketing Tools, free tools, H1 Tag, Headings, Html Tag, Independent Website, logo, Making A Website, One Lt, search engine, search engines, seo, Structure Guidelines, Tag Search, themes, title tag, Website Owner, Website Search
Posted in Search Engine Optimization, Web Site Advice, WordPress Help

11
Feb
2009

Obama is a miserable failure, or at least that’s what Google says.

10 Comments

I kid you not, this one came across my RSS feed from two places. First Obama Is “Failure” At Google & “Miserable Failure” At Yahoo then again from Googlebomb Explodes for President Obama – Failure. It appears that even years after Google’s work to repair Google Bombs, it still managed to explode egg on the face of the new president.

What is a Google Bomb?

For this of you who don’t know what I’m talking about … this is a Google Bomb:

As of eight o’clock tonight, if you search for miserable failure at Yahoo, that’s the result. The above screen capture was taken a couple minutes ago and while I will admit it’s at Yahoo the same appears to have been working at Google for most of the day.

There’s a lot of great coverage on this if your on the right RSS feeds, so I’m not going to blabber on about it for hours but there’s a (now) funny article by Matt Cutts on the subject Algorithm to reduce Googlebomb impact as well as a piece here on website called Why your search engine rank depends on your competitors. that explains what a Google Bomb is and how (*cough*) Google’s done a great job protecting us from them.

Tags: algorithm, bomb, google, google bombs, job, matt cutts, miserable failure, new president, o clock, obama, search engine rank, yahoo
Posted in Search Engine Optimization

11
Feb
2009

Free SEO eBooks

17 Comments

Well this morning was a momentous day, my blog has been operating for just a few months and I’ve been putting up content whenever I have a chance but today I received my one thousandth comment. That’s right, there have been 1000 comments posted here on thisismyurl.com and I wanted to celebrate by giving something to all of those who took the time to post here, not just the person who posted as Culinary Art School on my Want to Know How to Make Money Online? Stop Thinking So Hard. posting, so here are five free eBooks on Search Engine Optimization, thanks again everybody!

Tags: blog, free ebooks, how to make money, press release, Search Engine Optimization, traffic
Posted in Search Engine Optimization

07
Feb
2009

What SEO Web Sites do I read?

8 Comments

While most web designers are busy pushing pixels around a screen, I’m busy fixing my clients websites and making them more search engine friendly, I don’t really like the term SEO (search engine optimization) because what I do is try to make websites more friendly for organic marketing while also increasing their appeal to search engines. My theory is simply, search engines are only one source of traffic so building websites should be about optimizing organic marketing, not trying to trick search engines.

So what websites have I been reading lately to help me increase my clients chances of succeeding on the web? It might surprise you. There’s a great article over at Darren Jamieson’s blog called SEO benefits of the ‘follow up post’ and another fantastic post called Webmaster Utilities We Dig (which would have been a lot funnier if they’d called it Webmaster Utilities We Digg). Both articles are informative and amusing, well worth the read.

There’s a great video of Joost de Valk talking about SEO that I watched last night while drinking a glass of wine from Castello Romitorio, I’m not sure which I enjoyed more but we’ll talk about that another time. I generally try to read David Naylor’s blog at least once a month. He’s an SEO chap from Exeter which is near a little town called Crediton which happens to have a lovely pub and some amazing cider just outside the town which as you can imagine is more than enough reason to read his blog.

You’ll notice that all these blogs have a few things in common, they’re not hard core marketing websites and they’re not complex sales sites. Each provides great information, informative content and makes a personal connection with the reader. The other thing that you’ll notice? They all have great PageRanks … which proves that even if they’re not making a lot of money at blogging they really know what they’re doing.

Tags: blogging, blogs, building web sites, core marketing, crediton, david naylor, exeter, hard core, informative content, marketing web, organic marketing, personal connection, search engines, seo search engine optimization
Posted in Search Engine Optimization

05
Feb
2009

SEO News Worth Watching

11 Comments

Search Engine Watch pointed to Bill Slawski’s latest patent find, an application by Yahoo entitled Automated System to Improve Search Engine Optimization on Web Pages. For anybody interested in organic marketing trends, all three of these articles are a must read. There’s another piece at Yahoo Plans to Automate SEO that summaries much the same thing.

Avoiding SEO mistakes is pretty easy these days as long as you follow some basic guidelines but where oh where can you gain access to these oracles of knowledge? Frankly, I’d start by reading the Google SEO & Quality Guidelines and Yahoo SEO Guidelines. After you’re done that, take a look through my own blog here or pop over to read Blog SEO Tips: Top SEO Mistakes to Avoid and Basic SEO Tools for Real Estate.

My article yesterday about Improving your SEO with Site Maps will be able to walk some of you through the simple art of WordPress SEO and you all should check out the new contest I’ve posted for this month, with three great prizes for all of you!

Tags: automated system, oracles, organic marketing, prizes, quality guidelines, Search Engine Optimization, search engine watch, seo tools, simple art, site maps, web pages
Posted in Search Engine Optimization

04
Feb
2009

Improve your SEO with Site Maps

10 Comments

Every day people take the time to read my posts on building better websites and optimizing website content but I’ve not written about one of the most important aspects of Search Engine Optimization previously, the dreaded site map. To be honest, I haven’t written about it because I assumed everybody knew how important a site map was and simply implemented them without question. Apparently I was wrong.

Let’s start by determining what I mean by a site map and then we can look at how to properly use one. There are two types of site maps common on the Internet today. The first is a hypertext document filled with all the links on your website, organized in a way that is comfortable for people to read. The second is an XML data file designed for search engines and other computers to read.

Both types of site maps are important for SEO (let’s call it organic marketing instead) because it helps search engines and visitors traverse your website more effectively. Visually, having a site map allows visitors to quickly load an index of all the pages on your website and find what they’re looking for while it also allows search engines to link to various pages and ensures your whole website is indexed. Mechanically, the XML variety also provides major search engines with the ability to know when pages are updated on a website.

In essence, a site map is a document that acts as a table of contents for your website and both people and machines use it the same way, to rapidly find areas of your website which would otherwise be difficult to locate.

For those of us who have had our websites designed in WordPress, the task of implimenting a site map is pretty straight forward. Simply download and install a plugin such as the Google XML Sitemaps before signing up for a Google Web Master Tools account. Once you’re signed up, you can specify the URL of your XML file and you’re all done.

Articles worth reading:

Tags: better web, google, google web, hypertext document, major search engines, organic marketing, Search Engine Optimization, site maps, web master tools, web site content
Posted in Search Engine Optimization

02
Feb
2009

SEO Poster and other fun stuff

11 Comments

Do you love search engine optimization and decorating your cubicle?

Do you wish there was a way to combine your two loves? Well now you can with the totally excellent, completely amazing, stunningly spectacular and organically organized SEO poster from Prospect MX.

Thanks to Donna at SEO Scoop for the link.

Speaking of illustrations, Rebecca has posted what I think has to be the funniest series of illustration on the Internet this week, my inbox will never look the same again.

Tags: poster, Search Engine Optimization, seo
Posted in Search Engine Optimization

31
Jan
2009

Web Design and SEO Go Hand in Hand

10 Comments

I’m often asked how Search Engine Optimization works and without being an expert on the subject, what I can tell you is that SEO is about more than just adding a few keywords, as a small article on the British Computer Society website points out the optimization of your website for organic traffic starts with the design. While I was ‘across the pond’ I also came across a strange article by Nick Sommerlad on SEO spam. What I found odd about it wasn’t the article (OK that was strange too) but the comments, take a look and you’ll see what I mean … those Brit’s seem to get pretty passionate about bashing things. Search Engine Land had a feature this morning called Are You an SEO Hybrid?. The article pretty much covers my life with questions like:

“I didn’t hire you to redesign my site. I hired you to get my site #1 on Google.”

One article that really caught my attention today was over at addicottweb.com and it focussed on how to fix some of the problems WordPress has with SEO. I’ll admit that WordPress isn’t well optimized out of the box but I’m going to have to disagree on the solution. The two plugins he recommends (All-in-One SEO plugin & SEO Title Tag plugin) are acceptable if you have no programming skills but a much better solution is to take care of the problem yourself in the code. Here’s my three simple recommendations for people who are legitimately concerned with WordPress SEO:

This allows you to do something that neither plugin will do, control your blog. Remember that major search engines don’t care who (or how) you optimized your blog poorly, so take ownership of it and do it right or you might be making the worst mistakes you can.

Jonathan Aston wrote an interesting piece on SEO and made the point that country specific domain names are a great idea. I also wanted to point out that Dave Bascom has the funniest license plate I’ve seen in weeks and that the economy may be tanking but jobs for people in the SEO field? On the rise …

Tags: better solution, british computer society, dave bascom, domain names, license plate, major search engines, meta description, programming skills, Search Engine Optimization, small article, society web, strange article, title tag, worst mistakes
Posted in Search Engine Optimization

30
Jan
2009

What do Search Engines Really See?

Comments Off

One of the most difficult things for the average business owner to understand is how major search engines work and what they can read from a web site. All of the holiday and hotel web sites we build here at Getaway Graphics are designed so that major search engines can properly read the content from sites.

To see what major search engines see, take a look at our free SEO checker found at seocheck.getawaygraphics.com. This tool was original designed as an internal tool for our development team to ensure quality marketing and online promotion for our clients so it’s not the prettiest tool but it gives you a great idea of what major search engines can see.

Why does it matter?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) isn’t really about making it possible for companies like Google or MSN to find you, it’s about making it possible for people who have never heard of you to find you. If you think of major search engines as a blind person, then you begin to understand that the single most important aspect of your web site is the text you display and that by extension the better the text you display, the more people can find you.

We call it organic traffic, it’s designed to save you countless marketing dollars.

Tags: Blind Person, business owner, checker, getaway, google, hotel web, Internal Tool, major search engines, msn, Quality Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, search engines work, Search Optimization, Seo Optimization, Single Most Important Aspect, traffic
Posted in Search Engine Optimization, getawaygraphics.com

27
Jan
2009

Five SEO Scams to Avoid

9 Comments

There’s no magic bullet to help you build your online business. There I said it. It’s out there on the Internet now and there’s nothing I can do to take it back. You’d be amazed how many people I meet or talk to who believe they’ve found The One.

There are a lot of ways to tell if a Search Engine Optimization firm is legit, but here are five guaranteed signs that the company (or person) you’re dealing with is scamming you:

Guaranteed Search Results

There are exactly three companies in the world who can guarantee you top quality SERP (Search Engine Result Page) results. They are:

Anybody else that tells you they can guaranteed top quality organic search results is trying to separate you from your money and usually at an inflated rate. There is absolutely no way to guarantee making it onto the first page of a major search engine unless you’re dealing with Matt Cutts and I’m pretty sure he’s not taking bribes.

If it looks like a duck …

Quality SEO work is not cheap. My blog here has a PageRank of 5. That’s really good for a personal website. Want to know how I did it? It’s all here on my blog. It’s a lot of hard work, more hard work than most people can imagine. It’s about sifting through hundreds or thousands of pages on your website and tweaking every one of them so if somebody says they can do if for cheap, they’re simply lying.

Organic Results

An organic results is a non paid result. Google listings for example are organic unless you’re paying for an ad placement on the SERP’s. Make sure that the company that you’re hiring isn’t running paid links or postings on unrelated pages to artificially bolster their results. Frankly, scamming people with fake results is too easy so make sure you keep your eye on the Queen.

Their Own Secret Formula

There is no secret formula. Honestly, there’s no such thing as a secret formula to SEO. Search Engine Optimization is real, but there is no secret to it. In fact, you can do it yourself if you have the time and knowledge. Read this, in fact read any article by Darren Rowse and then if you’re still confused buy his book. Here’s the secret in a nutshell:

Write content people want to read
Make sure you understand the basic structure of HTML
Make sure you understand the two meta tags
Repeat

OK fine, there’s a bit more to it than that or his book wouldn’t sell but for free I’ll give you this advice … as soon as your SEO firm tells you they have a secret formula, run.

Paid Links

Do you know what Google hates more than a gopher in the garden? Paid links. I promise you, paying for links will get your website slapped so fast you won’t know see the light of day for a month. How do I know this? Because I listen to the people who work there.

The way I read it, the people at Google take pride in what they do and their whole corporate mantra “do no evil” actually appears to be true. I used to think Google was just a robot, spidering the Internet looking blindly for content. Then I discovered that Google was a company made up of people, and those people took a lot of pride in what they do, that led me to understand that Google was like any gardener … if you try to steal their carrots, you’ll get a shovel on your furry little head.

Tags: blog, bribes, google, magic bullet, matt cutts, microsoft, money, pagerank, personal web site, postings, Search Engine Optimization, search engine optimization firm, search engine result, serp, sifting through, signs, top quality, tweaking, yahoo
Posted in Search Engine Optimization

27
Jan
2009

What is a PageRank?

9 Comments

It’s been a while since I did a summary of some of the websites that I read, but this week I think I’d like to get back into sharing a few of the sites and specifically articles that I enjoyed. Starting with a handful of great pieces on PageRank. For those of you who still don’t know what a PageRank is (or why it’s so important to the success of your website) try giving Collin LaHay a read. He has a lot of great pieces on the importance of linking. There’s also a great piece called PageRank: Some Basics which will give you a really great high level understanding.

The Busby SEO Test article is a really interesting case study on what to do (and sometimes not to do) to help get a better PR, while the list over at 600 ofollow blogs will help you achieve your objectives. Ever wonder what impact your anchor text has on SEO? I know I have. If you’re looking for a variety of SEO Tools then you’re in luck, there’s also a ton of tutorials on the site.

Well, that’s a round up of the type of SEO stuff I’m reading today. If you have any great links you’d like to share please feel free to include them below.

Tags: anchor text, blogs, busby, case study, handful, pagerank, seo tools, test article
Posted in Search Engine Optimization

Archive for the ‘Search Engine Optimization’ Category

Keywords

Boring Content

Failing to Reach Your Market

Poor Titles

Poor Structure

Stale Content

Be Organic

Be Original

SEO is Irrelevant

Learn to be co-operative

More links = less love

The title tag

The H1 tag

H2 … H6 tags

W3C Validation

Images

Friendly URL’s

Anchor Tags

Meta Descriptions

Meta Keywords

Content Placement

HTML Clutter

Fresh Content Matters!

Link to Quality Content

Avoid Flash

Include a Sitemap File

Include a Sitemap Page

Build a better footer

Use Tags and Categories

Deep link your articles

Keyword your titles

Keyword your page content

Know your competition

Don’t duplicate your content

Format your text

Write better content

Articles worth reading:

Why does it matter?

Guaranteed Search Results

If it looks like a duck …

Organic Results

Their Own Secret Formula

Paid Links