Yesterday I was talking have a discussion with my manager. We were going over different parts of my job description, and one of the important things she mentioned was our Google Product listings. She showed me some of the data feeds she was submitting and well as their results – or lack of results.
Now…I don’t know anything about how to optimize product listings, however I do see a huge need for it for my company. For most of our targeted keywords, before any search results appear, there is a list of about 2-3 product listings. We definitely want our products to show up in those positions.
I have a few ideas of where to begin. I possibly will use more keyword phrases in the product titles, a lot more alt text, and perhaps customer reviews. I am not quite sure, and will be spending the next couple of days researching and testing. If anyone has any good ideas, please let me know.
These days, any SEO person is looking for an edge. We are looking for that silver bullet that will propel us to Google’s first page with as little effort as possible. In order to find anything like this, I have gone as far as speaking with employees of Google to find out what their take is on SEO shortcuts. Obviously I haven’t been able to find anything. There is no secret META tag.
However, I have found something almost as good: Your Domain Name. Having the right domain name can really give you a head start in rankings. The right domain is a keyword rich domain, or hopefully, your main keyword phrase.
Let’s look at an example from some of the research I have been doing with my new company Anthro. One of the products that Anthro pushes is radiology furniture (and I really have no idea what that actually is). Their main competitor AFC Industries bought the domain radiologyfurniture.com. If you search for that keyword phrase in Google, their website shows up in the first position. If you look at backlinks, radiologyfurniture.com has a total of 9 backlinks while the competitors have much much more, but aren’t ranking as well.
Another example is my new venture watchfilipinomovies.com. My main keyword phrase is “Watch Filipino Movies.” As of this morning, I am ranked on the first page only after having the site active for a few weeks and doing almost no link building.
Obviously a domain without incorporating other SEO fundamentals won’t help you much in the long run, but a solid keyword rich domain as well as great title tags, and great content, and supporting links is a recipe for success. The power of a good domain is strong enough that for someone starting a new website should definitely do SEO keyword research and pick the right domain even before worry about site content.
For well established websites, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend changing out the domain with a new one (although it can be done successful if you read my earlier post on Successfully moving Your Website). Also a lot of well established sites have a lot of brand recognition and identity. We definitely don’t want to lose that with a new domain. What I would suggest was shown in my first example of domain ranking success. That is, building a separate site all about that specific keyword that can help give supplemental information that will support your main website. This could be a new domain (and website) for each site product line, or maybe a new site for a best selling product.
The point of this is to make sure to take your domain into account when you are going to start an SEO project. I have yet to really test variations of keyword phrases for a domain, but I will definitely update you when I do.
I apologize to all of my avid readers who have been waiting for new content from me for so long. This summer has been extremely busy, and i’ll mention a few things here.
I was the top SEO guy for Marketecture until May when the company management realized they had no money and had to let me go. From what i’ve been told, the company has stopped selling SEO packages (and i’m not sure if they are fulfilling on current SEO clients). Instead of looking for a job right away, I decided to hold off a bit while my wife gave birth to our son who was born on June 25th. Check out these recent pictures of him:
He is definitely a cute baby, and also really fun to have around.
After a series of interviews, I started this week at a new company Oregon called Anthro. Anthro makes office furniture that is very unique and can perform various functions like rise, lower, and expand. Check them out if you are interested in anything like that. I have been brought on as the company’s internet marketing specialist, in which I have spent much of this week analyzing keywords, trying to find out what rankings they currently have, and what efforts are making them money and which aren’t. It will be interesting to see how this job differs than working for an agency. I do see it being less stressful, but also way different.
I have also made a new commitment to getting back into writing for SEO. I feel like being forced to write will keep me updated on the latest trends. I also think I have some cool ideas that perhaps some of you aren’t using.
Anyways, there is a little update about myself.
Go Ducks!
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SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the practice of optimizing a website by both internal measures on the website as well as external measures off the site. SEO is done to increase visibility in search engines and with that, more website visitors. The level and complexity of SEO can vary depending on the website you have and how competitive the competition is. Each SEO expert will vary with their strategy, however there are some generally accepted SEO principles that I will be discussing here. Later on, after the basics have been mastered, I will get into some advanced SEO techniques that can really help your site that is generally in more competitive markets.
Why Does Your Business Need SEO?
According to the Nielson Company, a total of 9.18 billion searches were executed in February 2010 in the United States alone. A lot of people are now using search engines to find what they need, whether it is goods, services, or just information. Every business should be looking to capture a portion of this market, and in order to do that, they must have their website listing show up when someone searches a relevant phrase.
The chart below shows the breakdown of which search engines are being used on a percentage basis:
As the chart shows, Google has the largest share of the market, while Google, Yahoo, and Bing have over 91% together. This information shows that if your company can control the search engine rankings on Google, most likely your company will control the rest of the search engine market.
Going forward, I am going to be giving you tips and tricks to make your website become as search engine friendly as possible. Some of the things we will do will help the search engines find your site easier. Other techniques will make sure all the pages of your website are being found and inside the search engine index. After that, we will focus on rankings and showing the search engines that your site deserves to be at the top.
Wow, it has been about 3 months since I last wrote on my blog. A lot of things have been going on, and I haven’t really found much time to write, especially during the holidays.
I thought I would write today also after realizing that this website was ranked on the first page of Google for the keyword “SEO Tactics” which is the main keyword I am going for right now. It gave me some incentive to buckle down and write this while I watch some American Idol. Anyways, here we go…
I want to talk a little about link building. Actually, not a little – a lot. Link building is a huge portion of SEO. Actually, it is the biggest, along with content writing. Basically, if you want to see success, make sure you are targeting the right keywords, and point enough quality links to your site in the right spots and you should be fine. However, what are the main link building methods? I am going to discuss each method here a little, and then hopefully do a “Link Building Post Series.” I think it is such an important topic that we really need to spend some time on it.
Here is a list of the main ways to build links in which I personally use (well, most of them).
Directory Submissions – These are online directories in which you can post a link to your website. These work with some success, however a lot of directories need to be submitted to, and the success rate of actually getting in the directories aren’t great. However, they are good to keep your links diversified.
Do Follow Blog Commenting – Some blogs will allow you to comment on their site and actually receive link juice for your URL. WordPress is defaulted to have no-follow blog comment links, so blogs need a special plugin to do it. A lot of blogs will start out with doFollow, and then quickly take it off after receiving so much comment spam.
Forum Linking – Forums are great places to get links. If there are any forums you submit to regularly, you usually will be able to put a link in your signature. Every time you comment, you build another link. Forums are usually spidered often and bring in good link juice.
Article Submissions – This is one of the best ways to build links. Article submission websites allow you to post an article about a particular topic, then post a few links as well. That way, you get great links that come from content related to your site. The downside is, in order to be successful, you need to write on a regular basis. The quality of links though are great.
Link Bait – Link Bait is content, or tools, or something that is going to give someone a reason to put a link to your site. Popular link bait includes quizzes, and website tools. After taking an online quiz, you might have something like “Here is code to post on your website to show results.” A tool might be a website counter or a mortgage calculator or something like that. These post a link back to your site. Link Bait can bring in tons of links if the content is unique and useful.
Strategic Partnerships – If you are building a website that can help another company, try to set up a strategic partnership in which they add links to their site.
Link Buying – Buying links is definitely not recommended since Google doesn’t like it, and you can get your site penalized if you do. However, buying links can be a good way to get lots of links quickly, or getting links with high pagerank. Link prices can range for a few dollars, to several hundred, all depending on quality. If you choose to buy links, make sure you know what you are getting into, and how much you should pay.
Grey/Black Hat Methods – I will discuss these at a later time, but there are many methods of link building that allows a lot of quality links to be built in a short amount of time with little effort. I have seen success with these methods, so I will share a few of them.
Again, I will get further into these methods going forward, including specifics. Also I would love to see comments for what anyone else uses to build links.
It has been a week or so since I posted. I have been somewhat busy actually working on SEO for my clients, however I did run across an issue that I wanted to address here that I thought would be useful.
What happens when you decide that you need a new domain for your website? Perhaps your website has been penalized (shame shame). Or, perhaps you realized that your domain could be better if it had a few more keywords. Whatever the reason, if you decide to just scrap your current domain and start another, you need to do it right or you will shoot yourself in the foot for SEO. The reason for this is because the search engines have all of your pages indexed with a certain domain name. Not only that, but all of the links to your site are (you guessed it) using your domain. You don’t have to start over however. There is a way to move your entire site without skipping a beat.
The way to do this is with 301 Redirects. A 301 Redirect is a protocol used to tell the browser (and search engine spiders) that your site has been permanently moved to a new location. This protocol is set in your .htaccess file.
For those who don’t know, the .htaccess file basically controls everything that happens with your server. Before loading your website, the browser will look at the .htaccess file first to determine if it needs to do anything special – like redirecting your website. 301 Redirect aren’t the only functions of the .htaccess file. For a full tutorial, view this .htaccess tutorial.
The code I am going to give you below needs to be inserted into the .htaccess file, which is usually in the root of your website files. If you don’t have one, you can easily create one by using your favorite HTML editor (my favorite is Notepad++).
Copy the following code into your .htaccess file and change the domains.
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine onRewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^olddomain\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=permanent,L]RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.olddomain\.com
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.newdomain.com/$1 [R=permanent,L]
What this code does is redirects both instances of your old domain (from www and non-www) to the new domain. Once this code is uploaded to your server, your site will be moved in its entirety. For example, if you have www.olddomain.com/FAQs, it will redirect to www.newdomain.com/FAQs.
Sometimes you don’t need to just redirect the entire site, but individual pages. I recently did this for a client who had built their website originally with really poor not SEO friendly URLs. Their new site (because of me) had great keyword rich URLs. If this is your situation, you will need to redirect your pages individually, however there also is a function to redirect entire folders to a single page.
Here is how to do this in your .htaccess file.
Start by turning your Rewrite Engine on with this code
Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
In order to move a single page, use the following:
redirect 301 /oldunfriendlyurl.html http://www.newdomain.com/very-friendly-url/
You will need to do this for each page. However, if you don’t have a want to redirect an entire folder to a specific page, use this code:
redirectMatch 301 /oldfolder/ http://www.newdomain.com/newfolder/
With this code, any URL inside of /oldfolder will automatically be redirected.
Finally, you need to tell Google that your old domain is no longer in use and you want your search results to load your new domain. Luckily for us, Google Webmaster Tools has a built in feature to do this for us.
This process might take a few days, but once it is complete, Google will now have your site pulling the the correct results and showing your domain name.
Through my experience of working with scores of SEO clients, I have ran into a lot of good clients. These clients have a decent website, have a little knowledge of what SEO is and how long it takes, are helpful in discussing keyword and content strategies, and are generally patient. I have run into a lot of bad SEO clients as well. These clients have small timetables, think they know everything about SEO, know nothing about SEO, or generally just have the wrong priorities.
I have decided to make some very generalized customer profiles and how I like to deal with them.
This client feels that they know everything that they need to know about SEO, which makes them very distrusting when you do things other than what they know to be true. I have had clients that thought that the most important thing was high PageRank inbound links, in which they didn’t care about their content. I have had clients that only cared about META optimization, and cared very little about link building, keyword stuffing, or adding new content.
This client knows that SEO as a “concept” is important, however they know nothing about what is. They have little concern about keyword research, timetables, or generally staying in contact with you. If they do call, they will ask you why they “cannot find themselves in Google.” For example, I had a client a year ago who was paying for the lowest package selling different kinds of coffee. He wanted to be ranked on the first page for the keyword “coffee.” These clients have no idea what keywords you are targeting. They will also have no idea how long SEO takes.
This client wants you to tell them exactly when they should see themselves ranked on top. Unless you are Google, this isn’t possible. All you can do is perform SEO to your ability and search engines take care of the rest.
This one absolutely bothers me, not just because I get it so often, but because it shows a great lack in understanding about what is important. PageRank actually has very little to do with actual rankings, however it is a good indicator that you are going in the right direction with your website. PageRank also updates just 2-3 times a year. If you study some of the most popular key phrases and check the PageRank of the top ten sites, you will usually notice a large spread from PR 0 to PR 7. That should show you that it is more important to optimize for keywords at not for PageRank.
Hopefully this will help SEO’s better deal with their clients, and also give notice to SEO clients to give your SEO’s a break.
In my last post, I talked a lot about some of the capabilities of the actual WordPress platform when it comes to SEO. Sure, WordPress has several built in tools that can help you out in the SERPs, however these tools are nowhere near the potential power of your WordPress website. WordPress plugins are the magic behind WordPress SEO.
Because of the open source-ness of WordPress, many developers have built plugins to make SEO easy for even the newbie search engine optimizer. I have compiled a list of my favorite SEO related WordPress plugins in order to give you a tactical SEO advantage for your site.
This list is in no particular order.
Get these plugins setup on your website and you will be well on your way to seeing success for your SEO with WordPress. I will continuously add to this list as I find more useful SEO plugins. Do you have any others you like to use?
During my experience as a website developer and SEO technician, I have never found anything quite like WordPress. Not only for its ease of use, but also for its capabilities to help your website gain spots in the search rankings.
For those who don’t know, WordPress is a powerful blogging software (or platform) which makes creating and maintaining a weblog extremely easy. However, not only can it be used for blogs. It can be used as a CMS (Content Management System) to build an entire website. Some of you might have heard of similar platforms such as Blogspot or Typepad, however neither of these has a candle to the power and ease of WordPress. Since discovering WordPress, I have used it religiously to build all of my own websites as well as clients’ websites as it is easy for me and they to modify content, change the site design, and in my most importantly, gain SEO rankings.
But what makes WordPress such a powerful SEO tool? In the next several posts, I am going to make the case for why you should build your next website in WordPress and how to make it as Search Engine Friendly as possible.
I am going to try to break this down into several sections, including powerful plugins, link building techniques, and basic strategy inside the WordPress engine itself to make the search engines (and everyone else) find your content and drive traffic to your website.
In this initial post, I would like to just talk about the barebones WordPress platform. The latest version can be downloaded at www.wordpress.org and installed on any Apache server. After installing and logging into the WordPress Administration section for the first time, there are several SEO features we need to activate.
First, go to Settings > Permalinks
Permalinks will allow us to modify the URLs of our website pages to make them more search engine friendly. For example, the default setting would create a URL like the following:
http://www.jeffashby.com/?p=123
We can create a custom structure that will give us the name of the post instead. I like to add the category and post name by using this code: /%category%/%postname%/
http://www.jeffashby.com/wordpress/the-wonderful-world-of-wordpress-seo-part-1/
This creates a keyword rich URL that is not only more helpful for search engines, but also more helpful to visitors of your website.
Another cool feature about the Permalinks is if you actually go into a post that you write, right below the post title, you will be able to modify the URL of each post anyway you want. That is enough about permalinks.
Second, try going to Settings > Privacy.
This will give us the option to enable or disable search engines from viewing your website. You might be thinking “Why would I ever want to disallow crawlers from my site?” The truth is, when your site is in development, it is a good idea to now allow your content to be added to the search engines. In many situations, you might have development content that gets indexed that you don’t want indexed (and it is sometimes hard to remove indexed content). Just make sure that when your page is done, go back and switch the search engine crawlers back on.
Lastly, I want to talk about pinging. Go to Settings > Writing and scroll to the bottom where you see Update Services.
One of the amazing features of WordPress is that it has the ability to call spiders to your website. Once you create a new post or page, WordPress will send a message out to the different search engines and content websites and basically say “Hey, there is new content on my website, come check it out.” This is called pinging.
In this section of the administration, we can add a list of different websites that we want WordPress to ping other than just the default websites. Currently this is the list I use:
http://rpc.pingomatic.com/http://zing.zingfast.comhttp://zhuaxia.com/rpc/server.phphttp://xping.pubsub.com/ping/http://xmlrpc.blogg.dehttp://www.zhuaxia.com/rpc/server.phphttp://www.xianguo.com/xmlrpc/ping.phphttp://www.weblogues.com/RPC/http://www.weblogues.comhttp://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2http://www.snipsnap.orghttp://www.popdex.com/addsite.phphttp://www.popdex.comhttp://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.phphttp://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloudhttp://www.mod-pubsub.org/ping.phphttp://www.lasermemory.comhttp://www.imblogs.net/ping/http://www.holycowdude.com/rpc/ping/http://www.feedsky.com/api/RPC2http://www.catapings.com/ping.phphttp://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgihttp://www.blogsnow.com/pinghttp://www.blogshares.com/rpc.phphttp://www.blogsdominicanos.com/ping/http://www.blogroots.comhttp://www.blogpeople.nethttp://www.blogoon.net/ping/http://www.blogoole.com/ping/http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.phphttp://www.a2b.cchttp://weblogues.com/RPC/http://weblogues.com/ping/http://wasalive.com/ping/http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.phphttp://topicexchange.comhttp://thingamablog.sourceforge.net/ping.phphttp://syndic8.com/xmlrpc.phphttp://snipsnap.org/RPC2http://signup.alerts.msn.com/alerts-PREP/submitPingExtended.dozhttp://services.newsgator.com/ngws/xmlrpcping.aspxhttp://rpc.wpkeys.comhttp://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2http://rpc.twingly.comhttp://rpc.technorati.jp/rpc/pinghttp://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/pinghttp://rpc.tailrank.com/feedburner/RPC2http://rpc.reader.livedoor.com/pinghttp://rpc.pingomatic.comhttp://rpc.newsgator.com/http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080http://rpc.britblog.com/http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/http://rpc.bloggerei.de/ping/http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/http://rcs.datashed.nethttp://r.hatena.ne.jp/rpchttp://popdex.com/addsite.phphttp://pingqueue.com/rpc/http://pingoat.com/goat/RPC2http://pingoat.com/http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpchttp://ping.wordblog.de/http://ping.weblogs.se/http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.phphttp://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.phphttp://ping.snap.com/ping/RPC2http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.phphttp://ping.namaan.net/rpchttp://ping.myblog.jphttp://ping.kutsulog.net/http://ping.feeds.yahoo.com/RPC2/http://ping.feedburner.comhttp://ping.fc2.com/http://ping.fakapster.com/rpchttp://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpchttp://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpchttp://ping.blogs.yandex.ru/RPC2http://ping.blogoon.net/http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/http://ping.blogg.de/http://ping.blo.gs/http://ping.bitacoras.comhttp://ping.amagle.com/http://packetmonster.net/xmlrpc.phphttp://newsisfree.com/RPCCloudhttp://newsblog.jungleboots.org/ping.phphttp://mod-pubsub.org/ping.phphttp://mod-pubsub.orghttp://lasermemory.com/lsrpc/http://imblogs.net/ping/http://holycowdude.com/rpc/ping/http://hamo-search.com/ping.phphttp://fgiasson.com/pings/ping.phphttp://feedsky.com/api/RPC2http://effbot.org/rpc/ping.cgihttp://coreblog.org/ping/http://catapings.com/ping.phphttp://bulkfeeds.nethttp://blogupdate.org/ping/http://blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgihttp://blogsnow.com/pinghttp://blogshares.com/rpc.phphttp://blogsearch.google.us/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.tw/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.sk/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.se/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.ru/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.ro/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.pt/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.pl/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.nl/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.lt/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.jp/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.it/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.in/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.ie/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.hr/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.gr/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.fr/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.fi/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.es/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.de/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.com/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.com.vn/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.com.uy/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.com.ua/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.com.tw/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.com.tr/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.com.sg/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.com.sa/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.com.pe/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.com.my/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.com.mx/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.com.do/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.com.co/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.com.br/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.com.au/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.com.ar/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.co.za/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.co.ve/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.co.uk/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.co.th/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.co.nz/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.co.ma/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.co.jp/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.co.it/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.co.in/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.co.il/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.co.id/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.co.hu/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.co.cr/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.cl/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.ch/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.ca/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.bg/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.be/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.at/ping/RPC2http://blogsearch.google.ae/ping/RPC2http://blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1http://blogpeople.net/pinghttp://blogoon.net/ping/http://blogoole.com/ping/http://blogmatcher.com/u.phphttp://blogdigger.com/RPC2http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpchttp://blogdb.jphttp://blogbot.dk/io/xml-rpc.phphttp://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPChttp://blog.goo.ne.jphttp://blo.gs/ping.phphttp://bitacoras.net/ping/http://bitacoles.net/ping.phphttp://bitacoles.net/notificacio.phphttp://bblog.comping.phphttp://bblog.com/ping.phphttp://audiorpc.weblogs.com/RPC2http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/pinghttp://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2http://api.my.yahoo.com/pinghttp://api.my.yahoo.co.jp/RPC2http://api.moreover.com/RPC2http://api.moreover.com/pinghttp://api.feedster.com/pinghttp://a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2bhttp://1470.net/api/pinghttp://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b
You could probably find more than this, but this is a pretty good list. You can just copy and paste this list into this section and WordPress will do all the work in order to get more spiders looking at your content. With JeffAshby.com, I am at the point where I can submit a new post, and less than 5 minutes later, it is already indexed into Google. This is just an example of the power that WordPress can give your website in terms of SEO.
This information is a good opening to some of the powers of WordPress. In the next post, I am going to discuss more about important plugins that are crucial to your SEO success.
