Posts Tagged ‘SEO’

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Action List: Lose the Flash animations

Wednesday, January 21st, 2009

flash

There are plenty of websites out there that have fancy, all-singing, all-dancing Flash animations as ’splash pages’ to greet the user upon arrival.  The problem is that most users are impatient and, unless it’s a masterpiece, the Flash animation will give them an excuse to leave your site.

Adobe’s popular web animation software powers many big websites around the globe – just take a look at the Nike Plus website for some sexy stuff.  It’s certainly impressive, but it takes time to load and time is one thing that I don’t have….

Flash animations can also confound a user because it adds a layer of complexity to a website - what are all these moving parts, what do I click next, how do I buy, where do I go to get what I want.  Excessive animation will just confuse people and turn them away.

Another consideration is the search engine compatibility of pages that contain Flash and other animation files.  Animation can’t be read by search engine spiders (although I understand that technology is getting better in this area) and the lengthy delays required to download animations will also cause some spiders to reject the page altogether.  Google and others prefer rich, text-based pages, rather than pages chock full of animations, images and non-HTML elements.

So, my advice is to do away with the Flash animations, unless you are trying to sell the fact that you are an animator or video effects specialist.

Remember that old chestnut – KISS – keep it simple stupid.

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Action List: Get inbound links to your site from other websites

Tuesday, January 20th, 2009

A big part of your search engine optimisation strategy needs to be inbound link building.  The search engines see inbound links from quality websites as a tick of approval for your site.

Getting a link from a good site is a vote of confidence that your website is equally good, and your search engine ranking will improve accordingly.  Links from thematically-similar sites and high credibility sites, such as government or educational institutions, will normally hold more credence than other links.

So how do you go about getting inbound links.  Here are some suggestions:

1. Offer something in return

You can offer a link in return, but sometimes webmasters don’t want to do this.  Alternatively, you could provide discounts or an advertising slot.  Be careful about paying for links – Google will penalise you if it suspects that links are paid for.

If you are selling something, you might provide your buyers with a discounted price if they install a link back to your website.  This has been our strategy with CapitalJobs.com.au – we have provided discounted rates to recruitment companies who have installed a ‘Find our jobs on CapitalJobs.com.au’ link button on their websites.

2. Ask your current link partners

If another website already links to you then they might be willing to add further links to your website on other pages.

3. Network with people in your industry

Networking with like-minded professionals in the same industry can help you to get links to your website. A great way to exchange links with these people is via blogs.  If you write an article on your blog, then you might ask a colleague to link to it, and vice versa.

4. Demonstrate that others have linked to your site

If you have existing links from well-known websites, then this fact might heighten the chances of you getting further links from other sites.  You will need to advise prospective link partners of your existing links to prove your credibility.

5. Produce fantastic content

The search engines use inbound linking as a major measure of your site’s importance, because they expect that sites with good content will naturally be linked to from other places on the internet.  So the best strategy for obtaining inbound links is to produce fantastic content.

Getting links from other websites isn’t difficult if you know how to do it. It can be time consuming, but well worth it in the long run.

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Action List: Use Gravatars to build your online personality

Monday, January 19th, 2009

gravatar

As a netpreneur, it’s a good idea to subscribe to like-minded blogs and websites and to offer comments and suggestions to posts written by other authors.  By posting well-written and useful tips and commentary, you can greatly bolster your credibility in a certain field – not to mention increase your search engine popularity through cross-linking with a thematically-similar website.

One way that you can set your comments apart from others on blogs and websites is by using Gravatars, or globally recognised avatars.  A Gravatar is simply an image that follows you from blog to blog appearing beside your name when you comment on gravatar enabled sites.  These normally take the form of a small portrait of the person adding the comment.  Gravatars are associated with the author’s email address, so each time you enter your email address when posting to a website, your gravatar will also display (assuming that the blog has enabled their display).

Why would you use a gravatar?  It allows readers to ‘put a face to a name’.  An image of a commenter is instantly recognisable, particularly if you are a prolific commenter.  In a world where time is short and web site pages are scanned, not read, the gravatar can provide a very important marker for indentification.  Think of it as your own ‘pen pic’, similar to the portraits that appear next to regular columnists in the newspaper.  And if you are a credible commentator, then it’s likely that your gravatar will prompt people to stop and read your comments (and hopefully visit your website).

It is recommended that you use the same gravatar image for all of your commenting and social media interaction – for example, your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and StumbleUpon images should all be the same.  This serves to increase your brand recognition and the credence of your online personality on the web.

To set up a gravatar, visit: http://en.gravatar.com

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Action List: Get your page titles correct

Friday, January 16th, 2009

title-tag

One of the most important factors – if not THE most important factor – in optimising your website pages for the search engines is the page TITLE tag.  This tag describes what the page is all about and appears at the top left of the browser window when viewing that page.

It’s important that you get the TITLE tag right for every page on your website, because not only does it appear in the browser, but it almost always the bold linked text that appears in the search engine results.  This is the cue that will determine whether a visitor clicks through to your site or not.

If you get your TITLE tags right, then you will enjoy higher search engine rankings and more targeted traffic to the most appropriate pages on your site.

Here are some tips for good TITLE tags:

- Include your business name, nature of your business and locality in the tag – particular if you are targetting local traffic

eg. Getaroom.com.au – Hotel reservations booking engine in Sydney, Australia

- Depending on the strength of your brand name, you should position your business name accordingly (ie. well-known businesses should place their business name first, as it is likely that many web surfers will search on the business name):

eg. Hotel reserverations booking engine in Sydney, Australia from Getaroom.com.au

- Use keywords in your TITLE tag that people are likely to use in a search on Google

eg. Adelaide hotels and accommodation – get cheap hotel deals in Adelaide, Australia

- Don’t try to stuff too many keywords into the title

- Don’t use special characters in your TITLE tags, such as symbols.  These might not display correctly in the search engine listings.

- Use a different TITLE tag for each page – if you use the same tag for multiple pages, then Google and other search engines may not index the page.  Also, it’s likely that the tag won’t adequately explain what the page contains and the page will not attract the right type of traffic.

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Action List: Don’t use shady optimisation techniques

Thursday, January 15th, 2009

shady

Everyone wants to appear top of the pops on Google and the other major search engines.  Some people will do almost anything to achieve the top ranking.  Some of these shady methods may result in a short term win, but it’s likely that websites that use ‘black hat’ techniques will ultimately incur Google’s wrath.

It used to be that you could stuff your website full of keywords and achieve high rankings in the search engines.  Those times have changed.  Search engines have become very smart in how they go about indexing websites.

The aim of the search engine is, of course, to deliver the most relevant search results to the web surfer and so it is the search engine’s best interests to exclude or demote sites that try to manipulate the rankings.

To that end, it’s important that you use ‘white hat’ optimisation techniques for your website, and not resort to those tempting ‘black hat’ techniques that many so-called search engine optimisation specialists use.

Black hat techniques include automatically generated doorway pages, cloaking and false redirects, keyword stuffing, hidden text or hidden links, paid links and automated linking systems.

If you are caught using these methods, then you may be excluded entirely from the search engines – and it’s often a very long road back for redemption.  Being excluded from Google could have a debilitating effect on your online business by cutting off the lifeblood of your website - web traffic.

You should avoid shady SEO methods at all costs. Do not participate in automated linking schemes or sign up with an SEO specialist that promises instant results. If someone promises you a quick and easy solution that requires no or little work then it is very likely it will do your website more harm than good.

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Action List: Use Google Trends to benchmark your site against competitors

Tuesday, January 13th, 2009

trends

A new tool, Google Trends for Websites, allows you to compare your website traffic to a competitor’s website traffic.

Coupled with the Alexa Toolbar and other traffic analysis tools, Google Trends for Websites will provide you with a detailed understanding of how your site is performing in relation to other sites.  You can compare five sites at a time and the tool provides information about geographical location, other sites visited by users, and search terms used by visitors.

Take a look at it now: http://trends.google.com/websites

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Action List: Develop effective ‘landing pages’ for your paid advertising

Monday, January 12th, 2009

landingAttracting customers to your website through Google AdWords is one thing, but it is an entirely different thing to persuade them to transact with your business once they get there.

Each time a person clicks on your Google AdWords advertisement, it costs you money. It doesn’t matter whether the page fails to load or if the visitors spend only 2 seconds on your site, your money still goes into the Google coffers.

That’s why it’s so important to develop effective ‘landing pages’ for your Google Adwords campaigns – landing pages are the pages that visitors ‘land’ on after they have clicked on one of your advertisements.

If you want conversions, your landing page must have a clearly defined goal. It must guide the visitor and it must contain a clear call to action. Your website visitors must be able to see within seconds what’s in for them when they visit your website. 

It’s also important not to distract the potential buyer by offering them ‘escape’ routes on your landing pages.  You’ve paid for them to arrive at your site (and they are a qualified buyer because they have used a keyword combination relating to your goods or services), so it’s not a smart move to distract them with third-party advertising banners, links to other sites, or with content that does not relate to the original keyword entered by that person to find your site.

If you are not following these guidelines, then your Adwords campaigns will not achieve their aim – that is, to convert visitors to leads.  You may very well be wasting your hard-earned marketing dollars if your ads and landing pages are not constructed correctly.

This ebook is the most comprehensive specialised book about Google AdWords that is currently available. The ebook contains comprehensive screenshots, tables and check lists, which help you to get quick results and lower advertising costs for more profit.

To read a little more about good landing pages, take a look at this article from Search Engine Watch – http://searchenginewatch.com/3632318

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Action List: Choose ‘long tail’ keywords over short keywords

Sunday, January 11th, 2009

I’ve just been reading an article about long tail vs head keywords – http://searchenginewatch.com/3632347 - and it prompted me to add this action item for netpreneurs.

It is almost impossible to get your website optimised for single-word keywords – eg. hotels.  It’s much better to optimise your site for a combination of keywords, or what are known as ‘long tail’ keywords.  Not only will it be easier to get to the top of the search results, but you’re more likely to get a sale if somebody finds your site using these keyword combinations.

Using the example above, how many times have you searched on the single keyword term ‘hotels’?  I’m willing to bet that you have never done so, because the keyword ‘hotels’, in isolation, has no context – where is the hotel that you are looking for?   It’s not likely that you will find what you are looking for in the search engines if you were to use this term.

If you were looking for a discount hotel in Sydney, you would be more inclined to use the terms ‘cheap hotels sydney’, which is an example of a ‘long tail’ keyword.  It is much easier to optimise for this keyword combination and get results, than if you were to use the generic term ‘hotels’.  In fact, one of my sites, www.getaroom.com.au, currently appears in the top ten listings on Google for this keyword combination (at least it did when I checked last).

Clearly, the person that searches on ‘cheap hotels sydney’ is closer to making an accommodation purchase, than the person who simply types in ‘hotel’ – the former is more motivated towards a sale than the latter.  Hence, it’s best to employ ‘long tail’ keyword combinations.

To work out which keyword combos are best, it’s a useful exercise to try and emulate your customer’s behaviour when settling upon keywords – if I were a customer, what would I plug into a search engine to find my products?

Be aware that it’s a lot easier to optimise for combinations of 4-5 words, than combinations of 2-3.

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Action List: Implement a weekly test regimen for your website

Friday, January 9th, 2009

healthA successful website requires constant oversight.  It’s important that your site is checked regularly to ensure that it is performing optimally. If you just ‘let your site go’, then it’s likely that the site will come undone over time.  A regular ‘health check’ – preferably weekly - will keep your site on track.

Here are some of the things that you should be doing on a regular basis – schedule it into your diary!

  • Check for broken links
  • Check for redundant or out of date information
  • Check your competition – what are they up to?
  • Check for site errors via your statistics package and rectify
  • Check, record and analyse your site statistics – unique visitors, repeat visitors, page views, page views per session, time on the site, most popular pages, etc.
  • Check for web accessibility and standards - does it meet Web Accessibility Initiative and W3C guidelines?
  • Check your search engine listings – where do you appear in the search engine results pages?  Has there been an improvement over time?
  • Check that all pages have correct metadata tags
  • Check that you have an XML sitemap and that the information is being sent to Google Webmaster Tools and Yahoo Site Explorer
  • Check your site navigation to ensure that it is logical
  • Check any search engine marketing programs (eg Google Adwords) that you are running to make sure that you are getting a good return on investment

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Action List: Avoid duplicate Title and Meta Descriptions

Friday, January 9th, 2009

webI often come across websites on the internet that have the same page title for every page on the site.  In effect, these sites are telling Google and the other search engines that every page is about the same topic, even though every page is different.  Bad move.

It’s important to ensure that all your title tags and description elements are related to the content on that specific page. If you don’t do this, then Google may penalise you.  Creating specific page titles will not only reduce your chances of getting penalised but it will also dramatically increase the breadth of search terms you will rank for.

I think most site owners are guilty of this one – check your pages today and ensure that no two page titles and descriptions are the same.  It can be a labourious task changing all of those titles and metatags, but ultimately it will be of benefit to your business.

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