Sunday, May 11th, 2008
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While I’ve discussed why having quality writing is important for various reasons on our SEO Copywriting Blog, the following image shows why not only is writing quality content important, but paying attention to your meta descriptions can be equally important.
While the website bullysticks.com may be ranking in the top position for the keyword “bully sticks”, their meta description “boasts” that their “prices do not compare!” Clearly not the message they meant to send to potential customers. While bullysticks.com seems to be claiming that their prices are higher than their competition, our client, Best Bully Sticks, has a meta-description that clearly states how their high quality product, low prices, and customer service make the difference.
Meta descriptions do get read so make sure your’s says something useful. Amazing how four little words can make a difference.
Popularity: 10% [?]
Posted in SEO Copywriting, SEO Mistakes, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engines | 21 Comments »
Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008
When it comes to SEO, many small to medium players can get discouraged by the bigger players. They have more resources, so why should the smaller businesses even put forth the effort with SEO? Simple – because they can actually compete with the larger companies. Here’s why.
Brand Recognition
One thing to remember is that the big guys have resources, but because of that they often focus on the more traditional avenues for gaining traffic to their sites and stores. Take the diamond engagement ring business for instance. While any number of us can probably name a dozen national chains off the top of our heads (DeBeers, Zales, Kay Jewelers, and Jared to name a few), not a single one of them shows up in the top 50 for the term “diamond engagement rings”. In fact, only Kay is in the top 100 and Jared isn’t in the top 500. Why? Because they don’t have to be thanks to brand recognition. How does this help you?
Because they rely so much on brand recognition, most of your larger companies never bother to engage in SEO. For example, the #5 result for “diamond engagement rings” is Danforth Diamond, who’s home page title has the words “diamond engagement rings” in it, where as Jared and Zales both have only their company name in the title. Probably why Danforth Diamond is ranked #5 and Jared and Zales are both outside the top 50.
Red Tape
When it comes to writing copy for your website, you usually have one, maybe two writers, and yourself to answer to. When a big corporation decides to write copy for their website, they have to have one of their writers come up with copy that is SEO friendly, then that copy has to be worked over by the marketing people to make sure it works with the brand message, then it has to go to the legal department to make sure that they aren’t making any claims that can’t be substantiated, then it can go back to the writers for more edits, then back to…well I think you get the picture.
Smaller companies have the advantage of not having to deal with the same red tape that larger corporations do when deciding to make changes to their website. While you only answer to yourself, larger companies have to answer to their CEO’s, board of advisors, stockholders, and anybody else that has a corner office with a view.
Site Maintenance
SEO takes work, especially on your website. Between changing titles, adding products, adding content, installing a shopping cart, there’s a lot going on with your website. While smaller companies can handle having systems that are SEO friendly and perhaps take a little longer to make changes on, larger companies need changes made over night, and that typically means a content management system (CMS) that is less than SEO friendly.
Because the larger companies use CMS that aren’t SEO friendly, many of them don’t bother engaging in SEO and instead rely on brand awareness (which I mentioned earlier) to help drive traffic to their sites. Going hand in hand with this is the fact that since the larger companies don’t engage in SEO, when you do find them you’ll find their home page and have to search through their site for what you’re looking for, whereas with smaller sites you can have focus on internal pages to take customer to exactly what they’re looking for. This helps conversion rates, which ultimately means more profits for the little guy.
Reporting to Everybody
As I mentioned when talking about red tape, larger companies aren’t just answering to themselves. Zales might do a lot of business, but they have to report to their shareholders, board of trustees, and everybody else. When the little jewelry store down the street has a good quarter, the only person they’re answering to is themselves.
Because of having to answer to shareholders, larger companies need to be able to quantify their numbers into something that is easily understood, and that usually means time, energy, and resources channeled into producing these reports, as well as a system in place on the website that can easily produce the numbers needed. Those systems are often not SEO friendly. So while Zales might be able to tell their shareholders how much money they sold in the 3rd quarter of 2005, the small jewelry store down the street can figure out how much money they made, how many of each product they sold, and still rank in the top 10 for their big keywords.
Keep on Fighting
Sure, it can be discouraging to look at big companies and the money they can spend, but in this digital age with more and more people finding the products and services they want online through search engines, smaller companies can compete with larger ones through quality SEO and user-friendly websites. With a little work your company can get more internet exposure than those that spend millions of dollars on commercials, radio spots, and billboards. That’s the beauty of quality SEO.
Popularity: 19% [?]
Posted in Link Building, SEO Strategies, Search Engine Optimization | 8 Comments »
Tuesday, March 11th, 2008
Google has updated its advanced search page. While most people probably don’t look at the advanced search page very often, it has some nice features, especially for an SEO Expert. One of the best features is the ability to see 100 results at a time rather than the usual 10. Add the CustomizeGoogle Addon for the Firefox browser and you can view numbers beside your listing-now you don’t have to count to find you are at position 67, there will be numbers beside each listing to show you.
Also, selecting the Language as English will more realistic results. (You can also select the English language in the preferences.)
For example searching for ‘big oak seo’ returns 77,900 English pages with results when English is selected language. If you search with Any Language selected the results return 88,100 pages. Not a huge difference, right? It gets worse with more generic phrases. Searching for ’search engine optimization’ with English shows 1,900,000 and without shows 36,900,000. These number will fluctuate, but using English as the language will get you more accurate resutls, especially when you are trying to factor the level of competition for a key phrase you may be targeting.
Of course you can filter your searches through the Advance Search form in a variety of ways and that’s for the for the power user as well as the Mom looking for the best place to groom her pet. Getting familiar with the advanced features can help you do research for keywords as well as finding information about how to grow an avocado plant or a video on growing an avocado seed.
For the SEO enthusiast or the small Internet business owner you can search by date, usage rights and even where the keywords show up on the page. All helpful information when trying to create your SEO plan. Google provides a wealth of information you just have to know where to start digging. The Advanced Search page by Google is a great place to start.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Posted in Google, SEO Research, SEO Tools | 4 Comments »
Friday, January 11th, 2008
Here at Big Oak we finished a long process that culminated in a very refined and sophisticated estimator for search engine optimization projects. It is split into two parts, exactly the same as our SEO process, with part one being the optimization phase and part two a monthly marketing phase.
I thought to myself this is something very good for the industry: A tangible guide for our plan and a perfect explanation of why we charge what we charge in one document.
We have always based our pricing on the level of effort we suspected would be needed to achieve high rankings for our clients. So our pricing has always been fairly accurate. We have never raised prices after the fact and our clients are happy with their results. We didn’t make this a more formal process because we thought we weren’t being fairly compensated and we didn’t do it because our results weren’t stellar. We did it so we can show the clients that we aren’t making up pricing numbers, we aren’t pricing it at “what we think they will pay” and we aren’t charging a flat fee for everything.
We put much thought into what we need to do such as articles, link building, press releases, blogging and so on. We also put thought into how many of these items we need to do. From our years of successful experience we know very well what to do and how many times to do it over the course of a contract so it has been an easy migration to documenting this and pricing it accurately. The beauty of this is the fact that we can show the client how the final price was determined. There can be no argument or debate as to the price. We show them exactly what needs to be done to get them ranked and how much each part in the process will cost.
After that is simply a matter of “affordability” and return on investment.
It is my hope the SEO industry can become a more honest and reputable industry. Far too often I have seen articles referring to SEO consulants as snake oil salesmen or even worse…lawyers. That should be enough to scare anyone in our industry.
How do we combat this? We hold to a code of ethics and we be honest and hide nothing. Tell your clients exactly what you are going to do and how much it will cost. Don’t hide behind a flat price and reveal none of your “secrets”. Anyone can do their own SEO; all you need is time and the desire to learn it. So for us to be afraid of giving away secrets that others will use is absurd. People will pay you for SEO because they don’t have the time and want it done correctly and quickly. Meeting with the client in a monthly call or in person is mandatory at Big Oak. We won’t take a client who can’t agree to this. It holds both parties accountable and keeps the communication, both good and bad, open.
Show your work and be accountable.
For Big Oak that means starting off with a clear plan that the client can understand and refer to at anytime, and more importantly, they never have to wonder where the money goes.
Popularity: 3% [?]
Posted in Choosing SEO Company | 3 Comments »
Sunday, September 9th, 2007
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.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Posted in 52 SEO Tips, SEO Research, SEO Tools, Search Engine Optimization | 2 Comments »
Sunday, September 2nd, 2007
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.
Popularity: 21% [?]
Posted in 52 SEO Tips, Google, Live Search (MSN), SEO Strategies, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engines, Yahoo Search | 20 Comments »
Thursday, August 9th, 2007
Google representatives posted this on August 1st, “Given all the progress that we’ve been able to make so far, and thinking ahead to future improvements, we’ve decided to stop labeling these URLs as “Supplemental Results.”"
Well, this isn’t good news. Google announced that the supplemental index label is being removed. Google claims, “The distinction between the main and the supplemental index is therefore continuing to narrow,” but I’m still skeptical. This now means we won’t know which pages need help and which pages are doing well. We use the supplemental label to help us see which pages need more attention as well as to see if a page can provide a quality link.
The bottom line is this, the supplemental index will still be there, we just won’t know which pages are in and which pages out. Seems to me Google is providing less information and trying to keep SEO companies and site owners in the dark.
Supplemental Results are pages residing in Google’s supplemental index, a secondary database containing pages of less importance, as measured primarily by Google’s algorithm.
Popularity: 4% [?]
Posted in Google | No Comments »
Friday, July 20th, 2007
Google is indexing more pages now then ever before, but that’s not always a good thing. Sometimes these pages get sent to the supplemental index instead of the main index. It’s perfectly normal for most sites to have some pages in the supplemental index, but if your main pages (and especially your home page) get sent to the supplemental index you’ll likely not see much traffic from Google any more.
My site’s listed in the supplemental results, what does that mean?
As Google states, “Supplemental sites are part of Google’s auxiliary index.” Google will always show results from their main index before showing results from the supplemental index. This means that supplemental pages will almost never show up for searches, and will only show up for super specialized searches if few or no results come from the main index. With so many blogs and tag pages out there, even crazy many-word searches will bring back at least a few non-supplemental results.
How did my site get in the supplemental index?
One way pages end up in the supplemental index instead of the main index is a lack of PageRank (PR). This could be because you orphaned the page (no links pointing to it), the page lies too many clicks away from your home page, or your home page itself has a very low PR. If this is the case, you should work on your link building to those important pages of your site and build up their PageRank.
The other way your pages end up in the supplemental index is by having duplicate content on your page. This could be because you used the same manufacturer written product description that dozens of other sites use, you copied content from another website, or your pages have very little content and too much template which is duplicated on all pages. If this is the case, try writing unique content or changing your template so it doesn’t have the same elements on every page.
I changed my pages, what’s next?
Now that you’ve fixed your pages, it can be a long and hard process for getting them out of the supplemental index because the supplemental spider doesn’t come along very often. You should create or edit your Google sitemap XML file and hope that will be enough. If that doesn’t work, try changing the name (URL) of those pages and delete the old file.
Feel free to add your own observations about supplemental results here, we’d love to hear your stories.
Popularity: 9% [?]
Posted in 52 SEO Tips, Google, SEO Mistakes, SEO Strategies, Search Engines | 7 Comments »
Friday, July 6th, 2007
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.
Popularity: 6% [?]
Posted in 52 SEO Tips, SEO Mistakes, SEO Strategies, Search Engine Optimization, Website Conversion | 7 Comments »
Friday, June 22nd, 2007
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.
Popularity: 6% [?]
Posted in 52 SEO Tips, SEO Copywriting, SEO Mistakes, SEO Strategies, Search Engine Optimization | 2 Comments »
Friday, June 15th, 2007
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.
Example URL:
http://www.bigoakinc.com/blog/category/52-seo-strategies/
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.
Examples:
A search for Test_travveran shows the sample page.
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.
Similarly Google can find the page with reality tv and bubblegum, but it cannot find the page with bubble or 1971.
Even though many of the stranger examples have little relevance to SEO, it’s a good idea to understand how Google reads and understands words.
Popularity: 6% [?]
Posted in 52 SEO Tips, SEO Strategies, Search Engine Optimization | 9 Comments »
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