I decided to kick off this week of SEO tips with a little piece of general wisdom for how to approach your overall SEO strategy: Design your site for humans not for search engines.
If you start compromising the user experience in order drive more organic search traffic, you'll soon find yourself with a site that is great for bots to read but terrible for users. In the long run you won't be able to retain users, not even for their first visit (driving up the bounce rate as people land on your page and don't get your value proposition).
The reverse is also true - if you build a site that delights real users, you'll soon gain the respect of other sites, earning you valuable inbound links that will give you far greater value than the SEO tweaks you might be doing that destroy the user experience. Hope you enjoy that bit of Monday morning wisdom.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Re-directs and SEO: When to Use 301 and 302 Redirects
URL redirection or URL forwarding is basically when a website tells a browser that a page has moved. For example, the page formerly hosted at http://OldURL.com may now be at http://NewURL.com. Thus, as the webmaster you'd want to tell anyone that goes to OldURL what the new address is - something you can do automatically via a browser redirect (http status code starting with a 3)
There are two most common types of redirects, a 301 redirect and a 302 redirect. A 301 redirect means that a page has been moved permanently while a 302 redirect means that a page has been moved temporarily (or for an unknown reason).
If your page is moving to a new URL for whatever reason, and you want to maintain the SEO authority that you've built up (e.g., from multiple inbound links pointing to the old URL), you'll want to use a 301 redirect. The 301 redirect tells search engines that whatever authority they were previously ascribing to the old URL should now be passed on to the new URL, and therefore you shouldn't lose any of your SEO authority.
That said, there have been occasions where people have attempted to use redirects to game search engines. For example, one could buy another site with a good deal of inbound links and then attempt to 301 redirect that site to your site and transfer its link credit. Search engines can often spot these maneuvers and will see through them, thus removing the inbound link credit. If you're going to purchase a site and want to maintain its credibility make sure to thread carefully and read up about best practices prior to doing it.
There are two most common types of redirects, a 301 redirect and a 302 redirect. A 301 redirect means that a page has been moved permanently while a 302 redirect means that a page has been moved temporarily (or for an unknown reason).
If your page is moving to a new URL for whatever reason, and you want to maintain the SEO authority that you've built up (e.g., from multiple inbound links pointing to the old URL), you'll want to use a 301 redirect. The 301 redirect tells search engines that whatever authority they were previously ascribing to the old URL should now be passed on to the new URL, and therefore you shouldn't lose any of your SEO authority.
That said, there have been occasions where people have attempted to use redirects to game search engines. For example, one could buy another site with a good deal of inbound links and then attempt to 301 redirect that site to your site and transfer its link credit. Search engines can often spot these maneuvers and will see through them, thus removing the inbound link credit. If you're going to purchase a site and want to maintain its credibility make sure to thread carefully and read up about best practices prior to doing it.
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Site Speed and SEO - Does a Slow Site Get Penalized or a Fast Site Rewarded?
Folks often ask me whether site load time affects their SEO, and the short answers is: Yes!
The importance of having a site that loads fast (or at least adequately fast) can be imputed from the fact that search engines want to point users towards reputable and high-quality sites that match their search queries. A slow site that hangs forever is not a good experience for the user, and by extension, for the search engine that led that user there.
The fact that Google's webmaster tools reports on crawl speed (time spent downloading a page), shows that they're watching (aren't they always?). Also, I've noticed a direct correlation between the faster load times translating to more pages crawled per day (which should mean better indexing of your content).
More recently though, Google's top SEO oracle (technically the head of it's web spam team), Matt Cutts, laid it out for us (covered here by SEO Moz): Although slow load times will NOT adversely affect your rankings, fast load times may have a positive effect. So there you have it, straight from the horse's mouth. So, keep those sites scaling and those pages loading as fast as you can!
The importance of having a site that loads fast (or at least adequately fast) can be imputed from the fact that search engines want to point users towards reputable and high-quality sites that match their search queries. A slow site that hangs forever is not a good experience for the user, and by extension, for the search engine that led that user there.
The fact that Google's webmaster tools reports on crawl speed (time spent downloading a page), shows that they're watching (aren't they always?). Also, I've noticed a direct correlation between the faster load times translating to more pages crawled per day (which should mean better indexing of your content).
More recently though, Google's top SEO oracle (technically the head of it's web spam team), Matt Cutts, laid it out for us (covered here by SEO Moz): Although slow load times will NOT adversely affect your rankings, fast load times may have a positive effect. So there you have it, straight from the horse's mouth. So, keep those sites scaling and those pages loading as fast as you can!
Monday, November 16, 2009
Clickthrough Rates (CTR) by Position in Search Engine Results Page (SERP)
So, how much of a difference does it make to move up an extra spot in the search results rankings? Should you be happy with #2 or should you go the extra mile to be #1? What about being on the first page of results versus on the second page?
The short answer is that every spot really matters - especially the closer you get to the top of the rankings in the search engine results page (SERP).
I've seen this data shown on a number of sites, but here's one I most recently looked at (they're all roughly similar). What this data says is that the #1 search result gets nearly 4 times as many clicks as the #2 result, which in turn gets 50% more than #3. We can clearly see how your placement in the SERP makes a world of difference.
Not only that, but position 11 (first result on the second page) only receives 0.7% of clickthroughs, or 1/4th of what the last position in the first page receives. This pretty much means that if you're not on the first page for a search result, you're getting a miniscule share of the overall traffic for that keyword. In fact, 90% of all search traffic goes to a result in the first page.
The short answer is that every spot really matters - especially the closer you get to the top of the rankings in the search engine results page (SERP).
I've seen this data shown on a number of sites, but here's one I most recently looked at (they're all roughly similar). What this data says is that the #1 search result gets nearly 4 times as many clicks as the #2 result, which in turn gets 50% more than #3. We can clearly see how your placement in the SERP makes a world of difference.
Not only that, but position 11 (first result on the second page) only receives 0.7% of clickthroughs, or 1/4th of what the last position in the first page receives. This pretty much means that if you're not on the first page for a search result, you're getting a miniscule share of the overall traffic for that keyword. In fact, 90% of all search traffic goes to a result in the first page.
Number of Pages Indexed: How to Find out How Many Pages You Have Indexed
Ensuring the search engines are properly indexing pages from your website is critical for SEO - after all, if the search engines aren't indexing your pages, those pages will never come up for search results!
So, how do you find out how many pages from your site are getting indexed? The easiest way is to search for the following on Google:
"site:url.com" (no spaces)
SEO Book notes that searching for site:url.com and site:www.url.com can lead to slightly different results. Also, you can use Google Webmaster Tools to get some additional information on the pages Google is crawling on your site and how that changes over time. We'll go over Webmaster Tools in a future post.
So, how do you find out how many pages from your site are getting indexed? The easiest way is to search for the following on Google:
"site:url.com" (no spaces)
SEO Book notes that searching for site:url.com and site:www.url.com can lead to slightly different results. Also, you can use Google Webmaster Tools to get some additional information on the pages Google is crawling on your site and how that changes over time. We'll go over Webmaster Tools in a future post.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Robots.txt and SEO - How to Use Robots.txt
Tonight I ran into my same friend who had previously asked me about hiding text using the same text and background colors, and this time he had another very pertinent question: How is robots.txt to be used for SEO?
Honestly, I have always thought of robots.txt as a way to tell search engines which pages on a website not to index, but hadn't thought about it more broadly than that. So, I figured I'd do some quick web research and let you all know what I learned about using robots.txt for SEO.
First of all, the robots.txt file is used to provide cooperating web robots with instructions on how to crawl the site. If the file is not present, the robot will assume no specific instructions are being given. Also, you need to include a robots.txt file for each subdomain (i.e., subdomain.domain.com/robots.txt).
The main instruction is the "Disallow: /directory/page" command which tells the robot not to crawl those pages. You can also specify that instruction to all robots (with a *) or mention specific robots (or user-agents) (check out this example from CNN).
Another common instruction is to point the robot in the direction of the sitemap file. This is done through the "sitemap: URL location of sitemap" instruction. This is helpful in making sure the robot finds all the pages on your site (more on sitemaps in a later post), but again, not necessary to include.
Honestly, I have always thought of robots.txt as a way to tell search engines which pages on a website not to index, but hadn't thought about it more broadly than that. So, I figured I'd do some quick web research and let you all know what I learned about using robots.txt for SEO.
First of all, the robots.txt file is used to provide cooperating web robots with instructions on how to crawl the site. If the file is not present, the robot will assume no specific instructions are being given. Also, you need to include a robots.txt file for each subdomain (i.e., subdomain.domain.com/robots.txt).
The main instruction is the "Disallow: /directory/page" command which tells the robot not to crawl those pages. You can also specify that instruction to all robots (with a *) or mention specific robots (or user-agents) (check out this example from CNN).
Another common instruction is to point the robot in the direction of the sitemap file. This is done through the "sitemap: URL location of sitemap" instruction. This is helpful in making sure the robot finds all the pages on your site (more on sitemaps in a later post), but again, not necessary to include.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Use Google Analytics as a Tool for SEO
Part of what we want to do here at Daily SEO Tip is to showcase various tools that make you better able to optimize for search engines, and to do so in less time. One such tool that we absolutely love is Google Analytics.
First off, you should have Google Analytics enabled on your site in order to track overall traffic. If you're driving blind it can be quite difficult to steer.
But Google Analytics is so much more when it comes to SEO. It gives you access to all the keywords that drive search traffic to your website as well as summary statistics on the value of each of those keywords (bounce rate, pageviews per visit, etc.). You can also define custom goals (e.g., registration, filled out lead form, made purchase, etc.) and see how traffic from different keywords performs. Of course, you can also monitor your overall level of search traffic and do so for all search engines (not just Google).
Google Analytics also has a very useful blog which I recommend following as they often have great case studies, updates, and tips.
I could dedicated an entire blog just to Google Analytics and how to use it (and in fact, many do!), but the best way to get acquainted with it is to read the product description but then very quickly just start using it. As with most things, the best way to learn is by doing so go on and try it.
First off, you should have Google Analytics enabled on your site in order to track overall traffic. If you're driving blind it can be quite difficult to steer.
But Google Analytics is so much more when it comes to SEO. It gives you access to all the keywords that drive search traffic to your website as well as summary statistics on the value of each of those keywords (bounce rate, pageviews per visit, etc.). You can also define custom goals (e.g., registration, filled out lead form, made purchase, etc.) and see how traffic from different keywords performs. Of course, you can also monitor your overall level of search traffic and do so for all search engines (not just Google).
Google Analytics also has a very useful blog which I recommend following as they often have great case studies, updates, and tips.
I could dedicated an entire blog just to Google Analytics and how to use it (and in fact, many do!), but the best way to get acquainted with it is to read the product description but then very quickly just start using it. As with most things, the best way to learn is by doing so go on and try it.
Internal Cross-Linking of Keywords (a la Wikipedia) for SEO
Have you ever noticed how every article on Wikipedia is full of links to other wikipedia articles? For example, the first sentence of the article on SEO reads (including links):
"...is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via 'natural' or un-paid..."
Linking internally serves two main purposes -- First, it allows readers to easily access other reference information that is pertinent to the article they're reading rather than having to lookup that information themselves (and possibly leading to a loss of that reader to another site). Second, it helps a lot with SEO by providing the target articles (in this case the article on "web site" and the one on "search engines") with both relevance and authority.
Relevance is given by the association of that anchor text (the underlined and linked text, like "web site" above) to that page. It tells the search engine that the page that link is pointing to is about the keywords that are pointing to it. Authority is given by the link authority that is transferred from the current article to the linked to article. Of course all the articles are inter-linking throughout the site, so the authority is being spread throughout.
The example of Wikipedia is a powerful example of internal cross-linking in effect. Think about how you can do this on your web site in a programmatic fashion that both adds value to the user (allowing them to access related content quickly - thus keeping them around for more pageviews) as well as improves your own SEO.
"...is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via 'natural' or un-paid..."
Linking internally serves two main purposes -- First, it allows readers to easily access other reference information that is pertinent to the article they're reading rather than having to lookup that information themselves (and possibly leading to a loss of that reader to another site). Second, it helps a lot with SEO by providing the target articles (in this case the article on "web site" and the one on "search engines") with both relevance and authority.
Relevance is given by the association of that anchor text (the underlined and linked text, like "web site" above) to that page. It tells the search engine that the page that link is pointing to is about the keywords that are pointing to it. Authority is given by the link authority that is transferred from the current article to the linked to article. Of course all the articles are inter-linking throughout the site, so the authority is being spread throughout.
The example of Wikipedia is a powerful example of internal cross-linking in effect. Think about how you can do this on your web site in a programmatic fashion that both adds value to the user (allowing them to access related content quickly - thus keeping them around for more pageviews) as well as improves your own SEO.
Monday, November 9, 2009
Hiding Text and Keywords for SEO: A Big No-No
I want to do a series of posts on some commonly-known "black hat" tactics (black hat refers to practices that are deceptive and try to game search algorithms). Many folks that are starting out with SEO (and also some experienced SEOs) mistakenly assume that they can trick search engine algorithms and get their sites ranked higher.
I had lunch with a friend today that was referring to the practice of hiding keywords on a page by making the text the same color as the background color. This once-common way of tricking the search engines was quickly detected and added to search engines' ever-growing list of spam tactics they look for. Those attempting the practice are usually punished by being pushed down in the rankings or the ultimate punishment of all - getting removed from the index altogether.
And if you think you can get around this by using similar (but not exact) shades of color, or hiding the text off the page, or any other thing of that sort -- think again, the engines will catch on to you pretty quickly.
I had lunch with a friend today that was referring to the practice of hiding keywords on a page by making the text the same color as the background color. This once-common way of tricking the search engines was quickly detected and added to search engines' ever-growing list of spam tactics they look for. Those attempting the practice are usually punished by being pushed down in the rankings or the ultimate punishment of all - getting removed from the index altogether.
And if you think you can get around this by using similar (but not exact) shades of color, or hiding the text off the page, or any other thing of that sort -- think again, the engines will catch on to you pretty quickly.
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