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Last week I was asked to consult with a design firm. One of our new clients was using a design firm to build their new site. I was asked to provide some advice when designing for search engine optimization. At Big Oak we are not SEO Nazis who insist everything must be HTML text and the site must be visually lifeless. Far from it. I was a web designer not to many years ago so I am very sensitive to outside influences giving direction to your design, especially when your artistic integrity is being put at risk. After all, most design shops are trying to build a impressive portfolio and “search engine people” appear to be the enemy of design to some.
With this in mind I submitted some things to be wary of, but didn’t need to be avoided. I explained that the idea is to let the search engines know what your page is about and you have to have some text for the spiders to read in order to do that. So these items can be added, with moderation and strategically, but remember to think like a spider when you do.
Graphical text: Spiders can’t read graphic text and and I would prefer to use HTML text for all text, but headlines can be enhanced through graphics so using graphic text is okay, but be sure you are using the title and alt tags with these images. Wrap it in a H1 tag if that is warranted for a heading.
Images: Obviously spiders can’t read images whether they are text images or otherwise. Our main concern is an all image page. All images means no text, which means no traffic. Images are okay, even for navigation as long as you are using a sitemap and text navigation in the footer. Of course all images should have alt tags and title tags as referenced above in an earlier post.
Flash Animation: This may be news to some of you, but the spiders don’t read Flash and although you can add some context to your Flash through programming, I would never rely on that entirely. Instead use Flash as an enhancer and let the site speak through body text on the page.
If you do decide to create an entirely Flash site (may the SEO gods be with you) then be sure to create an alternate HTML version for the spiders and for those of us who prefer good ol’ HTML sites.
Read more about this in my earlier post: SEO and Flash
SEO consultants always have their favorite tools and a few months ago we hired a new employee which necessitated showing what SEO tools I like to use. That led me to come up with this list of my favorite tools for SEO. I wanted to list the tools I use most frequetly rather than a list of sites with large collections of SEO tools. Maybe that will be a future post.
My SEO Toolkit:
SEOpen
I use this dozens of times everyday for client and competitor sites. Provides some basic tools to help with search engine optimization. Including google backlinks, yahoo backlinks, PageRank check, http header viewer, and more. All features are available by right-clicking on an open area of a web page, or by using the included toolbar. I wouldn’t leave home without it. You will need Firefox, but that shouldn’t be a problem. I can’t imagine an SEO consultant or SEO company not recommending Firefox over every other browser.
Keyword Discovery
KeywordDiscovery compiles keyword search statistics from over 180 search engines world wide, to create a very powerful research tool. It has a free trial, but it is well worth the money to get full access.
WebPosition Gold
Web Position Gold offers a nice set of tools that we use for monitoring search results. I know it does much more than this, but we do most things manually around here. I like the way it displays the search results online for our clients to see anytime they like.
WordPress Blogging Software
All of our clients, and this blog, run WordPress. It is the BEST software for blogging in my opinion. The ablibity to add funtionality through plugins will always be the deciding factor, especially with so many plugins being created to support our SEO efforts.
SEO for Firefox Want to know why Google or Yahoo! ranks pages? SEO for Firefox pulls in many useful marketing data points to make it easy get a more holistic view of the competitive landscape of a market right from the search results. You can turn it off and on easily.
Google Toolbar for Firefox
Do I really need to explain this one? Google search in your browser with lots of helpful toos, especially for on-page optimization.
SearchStatus
Add-on for Firefox that displays the Google PageRank, Alexa rank and Compete ranking anywhere in your browser, along with fast keyword density analyzer, keyword/nofollow highlighting, backward/related links, Alexa info and other SEO tools.
Google Webmaster Central
Be sure you have signed up all the sites you manage SEO for. This is very helpful for understanding how Google sees your website.
Yahoo! Site Explorer
I mentioned Site Explorer in an earlier post, Research Your Competition with Yahoo Site Explorer but it bears repeating, this tool is indispensable in my daily routine. Fortunately, SEOpen (see above) access most of the features for Site Explorer from its menu.
If you have any tools you use, please take time to comment and let me know.
There are two types of redirects you can use, a 301 and a 302. These numbers refer to the HTTP Status Code returned by the server for a given URL. A 301 redirect tells the search engine that the page has moved permanently to the new URL. A 302 redirect tells the search engine that the move is only temporary, and you may decide to show content at the original location in the future without a redirect.
301 Redirects
All three major search engines handle 301 redirects the same, that is to say they ignore the original URL and instead index the destination URL. For example, www.beekerfurniture.com uses a 301 redirect to www.hendersonsfurniture.com and Google, MSN and Yahoo all return the result www.hendersonsfurniture.com when searching for “beeker furniture”. The word beeker doesn’t appear anywhere on the hendersonsfurniture.com site, and a site search in Google shows that only the home page has any relevance for the word. Clicking on the Cached link in the site search results further shows that the word only exists in links pointing to the site, “These terms only appear in links pointing to this page: beeker.” Those links Google is referring to are actually pointing to www.beekerfurniture.com and the 301 redirect is passing along the relevance of the word beeker to hendersonsfurniture.com.
301 redirects can be very powerful when you redesign your site and the URLs change, move to a different domain, acquire a new domain, or implement a URL rewrite. In most cases, this is the type of redirect you want to use because you know exactly how the search engines will respond.
302 Redirects
The three major engines handle 302 redirects very differently, and because of this 302s are typically not recommended.
Google treats 302 redirects differently depending if they are on-domain or off-domain. An example of an on-domain redirect is athletics.mlb.com which uses a 302 redirect to http://oakland.athletics.mlb.com/index.jsp?c_id=oak. If you search for “oakland a’s” in Google you will see that athletics.mlb.com is displayed in the results because links point to that URL, which in turn uses a 302 redirect to the destination page. This is a great example where 302 redirects can be used effectively, since the shorter URL looks much more enticing in the results pages.
Off-domain 302 redirects would be ripe for hijacking situations if treated the same way. Because of this, in most cases, Google will treat off-domain 302 redirects like 301s, where they will ignore the original URL and instead index the destination URL. I say most cases because Google will sometimes determine that the 302 is legitimate & index the original URL instead. An example of an off-domain redirect is pets.roanoke.com which uses a 302 redirect to a third-party site http://www.gadzoo.com/roanoke/pets.aspx. In this case, Google determined that this was a legitimate use of a 302 redirect and displays pets.roanoke.com when searching for “pets roanoke”.
MSN treats 302 redirects exactly how it treats 301 redirects, it will always ignore the original URL and instead index the destination URL. A search for “oakland a’s” in MSN shows the URL oakland.athletics.mlb.com/index.jsp?c_id=oak in its results. And a search for “pets roanoke” shows www.gadzoo.com/roanoke/pets.aspx in its results.
Yahoo takes the same stance that MSN takes, except that they reserve the right to make exceptions in handling redirects. A search for “oakland a’s” in Yahoo shows the URL www.oaklandathletics.com in its results. (www.oaklandathletics.com also uses a 302 redirect to http://oakland.athletics.mlb.com/index.jsp?c_id=oak) But a search for “pets roanoke” shows www.gadzoo.com/roanoke/pets.aspx in its results.
There are very few times where you actually want a 302 redirect, although they are used more often than 301s merely because most people don’t know the difference. 302 redirects are often the default redirect in website control panels, and JavaScript or Meta redirects will produce a 302 status as well. In certain situations however, 302 redirects work wonders.
As with all our tips, please use them responsibly. When in doubt, use a 301 redirct.
Why you should use a flat site architecture rather than a deep, or nested, site architecture if SEO is important to your site?
In my previous life as a website designer and HTML developer I loved to have a folder/directory for everything. While I’m not a organized person (ask my wife) I did like keeping my files structured in clearly labeled directories. So nesting directories 4 or 5 levels deep was common practice. When I transitioned to an SEO specialist my ideas on structuring files and site architecture began to change and here is why.
A flat site offers quick access to all the pages within the site. A minimal number of clicks are needed to find all the pages within your site, usually no more than three clicks is ideal. According to the views of the search engines (SEs), less clicks mean higher importance. The view of the SEs are that more important information will be easier to reach. Home page information is the most important, one click from the home page is secondary information and two clicks is tertiary information and so forth.
Think of it like bodies of water. Your home page is the ocean and off of the home page are large rivers and then smaller rivers, then streams, then creeks and brooks and finally the smallest trickle of water is all that is left. Don’t let you products, services or information be at the end of the trickle, drying up eventually. Closer to the ocean is always better and that is how the search engines will rank your pages too.
I’ve seen some site place everything in the root folder and this isn’t good practice either. Structure your sites as to what makes sense, but be aware that more clicks can mean less viewers, both for search engine traffic and visitors on your site.
Page titles are one of the most important parts of any web page, especially when performing search engine optimization. A page title is located at the very top of your browser’s window. It can bring traffic in abundance or completely isolate your site. Knowing how to properly word a page title is critical to your site’s SEO success. Let’s look at how page titles can be used to increase your site’s traffic.
Snowflakes and Titles
It is said no two snowflakes look exactly the same. Well, the same should be said for page titles on your site.
Every page on your site should have a different focus from the other pages on your site, or you are repeating yourself and duplicating content. So if all your pages are telling a different story, shouldn’t they all have a different title? And that title should effectively reflect the content of the page.
Missing an Opportunity
In my daily web searches, I see many missed opportunities with poorly titled web pages. Pages simply named “Untitled” or “Untitled Document” can be found in the millions (79 million were found in a Google search). Search engines depend on titles to gather information about your web pages. And a page title without a unique description does not help the search engines – in fact, a generic page title makes the page nearly impossible to find…
Putting Your Company Name in the Title Tag
I’m not against putting your company name in your page title – after all, it will help build brand awareness. But, I am against putting only your company name in the title and until you become a household name, I would suggest putting your company name at the end of your title. The focus of your web pages should be on what people would search for to find your company. In other words you want targeted keyword phrases in the title. Let me give an example:
If your company name is “Miller & Sons” and you sell fishing equipment near Whitefish, Montana you should not limit your title to “Miller & Sons”. Instead try “Fishing Rods & Reels in Whitefish, Montana – Miller & Sons“. With this you are netting traffic searching for your product, your location and your company name. Keeping the location in the name is very important if you are serving only a regional or local market.
Let Your Copy Be Your Guide
When deciding on your page titles, read the page first and let that guide your decision. If you can’t confine the theme of your page copy into a concise page title, you may need to break the copy into more than one page.
If you sell toys on your site, your page copy should have the keyword “toys” and so should your page title. Even better it should include what type of toys. Do you sell dog toys? Cat toys? Children’s toys? Your title should convey this. Adding in other possible search terms is also a good idea. An example of a toy site home page title could be “Children’s toys and games – toys for boys and girls of all ages” You have your most important keyword, “toys,” listed twice and have added some other important keywords such as “games,” “boy” and “girl.”
Suppose one of the sub pages of your toy site showcases Leap Frog’s Discovery Ball. What type of toy is this? It’s an educational toy and you should use that in your title along with the actual toy name. This gives you an opportunity to be found in the search results for the toy name, the popular toy company and the heavily searched key phrase “educational toy.” A title catering towards SEO for this example would be: “Leap Frog Discovery Ball – Educational Toys“. Since the more targeted term is the name of the toy you put that first. Educational Toys would be shown first on a category page.
Now that you have integrated your keyword phrases from your page copy into your title, you’ll find that getting found in the search engines is a much easier task.
Update 6/10/09 – Video from Matt Cutts about the underscore vs. Dashes issue.
Spaces should never be used in a URL or file names because the space character gets translated to “%20″ by the browser, and this can wreak havoc with both readability and statistics or analytics programs. The question then remains, which is better to use instead of spaces, underscores “_” or dashes “-”.
As far as Google is concerned Big_Oak consists of one word, “Big_Oak”, and Big-Oak consists of two words, “Big” and “Oak”.
The reason Google does not treat the underscore as a word separator is because Google was created by programmers who knew that programmers often wanted to search about programming. Many computer programming languages use the underscore character in such ways that CLASS is different from _CLASS.
Because of this, I always recommend using dashes instead of underscores in your filenames and URLs. Be careful not to use too many dashes in your domain name, as that could get your site flagged for other reasons. I prefer to have a domain name with no dashes, and to use dashes where appropriate in the directory and file structure.
Other things about Google to keep in mind when choosing filenames and URL structure.
There is no difference between lower-case and upper-case: big oak, Big Oak, BIG OAK, and biG Oak are all the same.
The ampersand “&” is a word seperator: Big&Oak is treated as two words.
Singular words are not the same as plural words: oak and oaks are treated as different words.
Google cannot read words that are within other words: bubble will not be seen inside of bubblegum.
As with any tip, keep in mind that it’s a combination of many factors which will ultimately decide your placement in the search engine rankings and quite often every little bit counts.
Update: A Test
I created a test page to illustrate how Google reads words.
A search for Flibstopper Test shows the sample page. The two words are even highlighted in the URL. The word “test” appears in the page title.
A search for travveran shows no results in Google. Google did not read my made-up word from the URL or content because it only appeared in phrases with underscores.
A site search for choosing colors shows all the pages in our Out on a Limb section because those two words appear in the navigation on all pages.
A site search for “choosing colors” (in quotes) shows no pages because those two words do not appear together in our site, choosing_colors on the test page is treated as a single word.
A site search for “the blue pill” (in quotes) shows our test page since dashes are treated as word separators.
A site search for “bush seo” (in quotes) shows our test page since the ampersand “&” also acts as a word separator.
Obviously one of the most important parts of an SEO Company’s success is keeping up with the new trends, latest techniques and search engine news. The best way to do that is to read the best SEO blogs out there. I have listed some in my blogroll to the right. I hold them all in high esteem, and of course, I would recommend reading my own SEO blog.
SEO Forums
Keeping up to date with SEO forum browsing is also a good idea. Here are some of my favorites:
http://www.webworkshop.net/seoforum/
http://forums.seochat.com/
http://www.highrankings.com/forum/
http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/
http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/
http://www.seo-guy.com/forum/
Search Marketing Standard Magazine
I have recently discovered something almost unheard of in the Internet world, a printed magazine that still has relevance. It is Search Marketing Standard. I read my first issue this month and was impressed with the wealth of information and the breadth of subjects covered.
As an avid researcher and online reader it is refreshing to sit away from my desk, or outside, or at my home, or anyplace other than my office, and read a printed document. There is something comforting even in the this digital age about holding a glossy magazine and flipping casually through the pages. I even looked at the advertisements, something we have trained our eyes to avoid online.
Looking at a colorful magazine is one thing, finding it useful and informative is quite another. Search Marketing Standard did a nice job in both areas.
Search Marketing Standard (SMS)
The issue of Search Engine Marketing Standard that I read (picture to the right) covered many topics in the search engine marketing arena. Of course they had articles about search engine optimization and search engine marketing, but they also gave commentary about social media marketing, SEO certification and a few other gems, including blogging and linkbaiting.
One of the most useful items in this issue was a very informative listing of SEM training courses and certification. I would have like to have seen a review of each course, but that could be very subjective, time-consuming and costly so I can understand the omission.
I also felt a nice job was done bridging the sometimes enormous gap between beginners and professionals in the SEO industry. It is something I try to do on this blog so I was pleased seeing SMS attempt this as well.
SMS also realizes a magazine without a website is a missed opportunity, so they have built a companion site. While you can’t read the published articles (why would you subscribe if you could?) they certainly don’t withhold information about the SEO tips and advice. The site is a useful tool for research with helpful blog posts.
Yearly subscription to the magazine starts at just $15 for 1 year/4 issues for US-based readers and $20 for international subscribers (shipping included). Click Here to subscribe today, I recommend it.
This week’s SEO tip gets to the heart of the linking question. We know we need links, but what kind of links? Well, what if we could choose a link to have all the qualities that would benefit our site? This “perfect link” would benefit our SEO efforts, and it would be useful at driving traffic through clicks as well as inflating our link popularity and increasing our search engine rankings. Of course, this is can be subjective and I always welcome differing opinions, so if you feel I’ve missed something, please add your comments to this post.
The anatomy of a perfect link:
It would be a simple HTML link as follows: <a href=”http://www.yourdomain.com/page.html”>keyword phrase</a>.
The anchor text would would include keywords that are important to your site.
It would be part of a sentence, which would be part of a paragraph.
The content surrounding the link, and the entire page, would be on topic with your site.
It would reside on a site with a similar theme as your site.
The page would have links to other sites similar to your site.
It would be on a trusted site, with the site itself having backlinks from many sites including .edu and .gov sites.
The link would drive direct traffic to your site…targeted, highly converting traffic.
The site the link resides on should be popular and well-read.
I think you can also see why the perfect link is only slightly easier to find than Bigfoot or Nessie – much of the link’s perfection is derived from the site and page where the link resides. The old adage in real estate applies to link building too, it all about location, location, location!
Most websites focus on their home page which is of course a good idea. It is the most important page of your site whether you are looking at search engine optimization, internet marketing or customer conversion. Making sure you homepage is optimized and marketed should be of primary importance, but be sure not to forget your interior pages.
Often the arm chair optimizer will make the mistake of only trying to rank their home age. By this I mean they will only build links to the home page or make sure it is titled with the most important keywords and so on. And while the home page should get the most SEO love, it is also important to your online marketing success that you show your interior pages some SEO attention. Do you interior pages that aren’t ranking well, but should be? Not every keyword can be crammed on to your home page, although I’ve seen it attempted. A car dealer has tried this approach.
Supporting the Home Page
While marketing the home page is a monthly focus for us here at Big Oak, we are also aware of the power interior pages have for converting visitors into clients. We think of the home page as a lobby that helps direct you to the page that will provide the information or product you are searching for. If we can skip the lobby altogether and get the user directly to the page that would be better. That is unlikely to happen without providing deep linking to your interior pages.
Marketing Interior Pages
I like providing examples so here are some real world examples from our own clients. Our client ExhibitDeal provides trade show displays and accessories. Their number #1 term is “trade show displays” and as of today May 18, 2007 they are ranked #1 in Google (Trade Show Displays Ranking). They also rank #1 in Google for the term “trade show flooring (Trade Show Flooring Ranking Screen Shot). If you click the links to view the screen shots you will notice the #1 ranking for trade show flooring is an interior page of ExhibitDeal.
Trying to rank the home page for trade show flooring would have been impossible. So we marketing both keyword phrases for their respective pages and achieved high ranking rankings for both. Currently the trade show flooring page has 89 backlinks according to Yahoo. Not an extremely large amount but decent amount when a targeted strategy is applied to a single interior page. Of course it helps that the site has 4,374 links overall, but only 3,009 links are pointing to the home page.
Obviously it works for ExhibiDeal. Leading searchers to a page about trade show flooring when the search matches will increase sales.
Choosing Interior Pages for SEO
Decide on a a few interior pages that can help your conversion efforts. If placing a user directly on an interior page, bypassing the home page, would help the sale or get them calling wouldn’t you want that? After you have decided which pages might help your business if they ranked well, maybe 2 or 3, start optimizing them and then start link building.
Providing deep linking to these pages will allow your site to have increased value overall and not just on your home page and the search engines like to see a site with popularity throughout on just on the home page. This can increase you authority and your ranking for your entire site.
Sound link a lot of work? It can be, but the rewards will be a website with much higher search engine visibility. If you need help, Big Oak SEO is available.
Using Flash is a slippery slope, even Adobe’s Flash page is light on the Flash. I hesitate to bring up this topic as it can be very heated. Why, I myself used to be an avid Flash developer about 8 years ago. But back then not many people understood the concept of SEO or Internet Marketing and Google was just a twinkle in the Internet’s watchful eye.
Well, now SEO has become one of the fasting growing industries on the Internet and Flash has lost some of it’s…well, Flash. In other words, more often than not, we search frantically for the “Skip This Intro” button when we see animation start flying around the screen. If not the first time then definitely the second time. We don’t have time for Flash intros and tedious downloads in today’s world. We want information and we want it fast. Flash is contrary to this in many cases.
Don’t get me wrong, I like Flash, and think it can be helpful and entertaining of sites for entertainment, gaming and site’s that have inherit brand popularity such as Coca-Cola. Most of us running a business on the web need visitors, customers, users and clients coming to our sites. Truth is though, it is hard to find a Flash website vs. a non-Flash website. Yes, I know that Flash can be indexed, I also know that an HTML site will beat a Flash site every time when all things are equal.
Of course, using Flash in a traditional website can be fine and dandy. When used efficiently, Flash can enhance a website without damaging it’s search engine rankings. But Flash must be used with caution.
If all of your content and menus are in Flash, search engines will have a harder time following the links. If you feel strongly about using Flash, be sure to create an HTML version of the page as well. Your users will thank you as they will now be able to find your site with the help of the search engines. You may wish to block the Flash version of your pages from the crawlers with a robots.txt file, since you don’t want your pages indexed twice. If your website contains Flash, be sure put the navigation outside of the Flash content or the search engine spiders won’t be able to navigate your site. Your content should also reside outside of Flash’s influence.
Think of Flash as accent material for you site. Use it for graphical callouts, product images, interactive portions of your site and anywhere you can enhance the user experience without causing problems for the spiders or confusion for the user. Remember, never use Flash as your entire site if you want any search engine visibility. This is important because you can optimize the page title, meta tags and other content placed on invididual pages making sure each web page is unique.
Finally, give your users a Flash and a HTML version of your site. Watch the visitor stats and I’m betting you see a much higher number of visitors view the low-bandwidth verision of your website. In any case you will have given the spiders something to follow and the search engines something to index and searchers something find. It may seem like extra work, but the traffic you will acquire from it will be worth it.
Finding one-way links to your website can be a tough task. Finding quality one-way links to your websites can be even more difficult.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if people put links to your site without you even asking them to? Well, submitting a press release can help accomplish this. Similar to my tip on SEO with articles, using a press release to build links and increase search engine rankings can also be effective. What so many people overlook submitting press releases, which are copyright free, is the fact that you can put links to your site within the content of the press release. We used this method of promotion for our online toy store client and you can see one of their press releases.
Not only can you place helpful links to your home page in the body of the press release but you can use deep linking and link to interior pages of your website. Deep linking is often harder to do as most websites would rather link to your home page. We use PRweb.com and the cost is higher to use text links rather than actual URLs.
Press Release Submit Site
As I wrote, PRweb.com does charge a fee for submission, but there are many free press release submission sites as well. Here are some that we also use:
Press release submission is not the magic bullet for SEO success, but it is a valuable tool in the SEO consultant’s toolbox. Whether it is a product release, a major hire, or a strategic acquisition you can make the press release perform double duty as both a internet marketing tool and a link building tool. Big Oak provides press release writing & submission as part of our SEO strategy.
This SEO blog is provided by Big Oak SEO, a SEO Company. Most blog posts are related to search engine optimization, short reviews, SEO tips and increasing site conversions. Email us at contact@bigoakinc.com or give us a call 804-741-6776 to see how we can help your company. More
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Last week I was asked to consult with a design firm. One of our new clients was using a design firm to build their new site. I was asked to provide some advice when designing for search engine optimization. At Big Oak we are not SEO Nazis who insist everything must be HTML text and the site must be visually lifeless. Far from it. I was a web designer not to many years ago so I am very sensitive to outside influences giving direction to your design, especially when your artistic integrity is being put at risk. After all, most design shops are trying to build a impressive portfolio and “search engine people” appear to be the enemy of design to some.
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