Tag Archive for: SEO

Many webmasters believed that the 700,000 notifications Google sent out in the first two months of this year were related to link notifications. Not true, says Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts.

According to Cutts, 90% of the messages sent out via Google Webmaster Tools are related to black hat issues. Their estimates are that only 3% of the messages were about unnatural links on a page. You can find out more from Search Engine Land

Bing published their first set of webmaster guidelines in the Help section of Bing’s Webmaster Tools to offer guidance on the best SEO practices for their search engine.

While not nearly as detailed as Google’s webmaster guidelines, hat is seemingly on purpose. According to Matt McGee at Search Engine Land, Bing aims these guidelines at “business owners” to help them “understand the broad strokes of search marketing.”

For more detailed information, look into Bing’s Webmaster FAQ’s.

 

Well, it’s the time of year for wrap-up lists, yet again. For most industries, there aren’t too many big changes throughout a year. When discussing everything that happened in SEO however, there is certainly a lot to cover.

Tom Schmitz over at Search Engine Land has a detailed analysis of all of the important shift in Google SEO throughout 2012. There’s a lot there. Google has been very active in trying to fight webspam, and personalize search results for individuals. Panda alone has had 13 updates since November 18th, 2011.

If Google keeps this up, 2013 will be a busy year for SEO as well.

 

Right now one of the strongest methods in SEO is content marketing. It can help you expand your brand’s reputation and build traffic if you do it right. That’s why there are tons of articles out there telling you what to do.

Of course, even if you’re doing everything right except one important issue, your content marketing plan may still be doomed. To help make sure that nothing is holding you back, Sujan Patel has a list of seven ways you can mess up your content marketing plan.

It is a lot of work to make sure you’re doing every step of your plan correctly, but just neglecting one area can lead to a lot of issues.

 

Creating quality content is always important, but if your website is poorly optimized it will still struggle to achieve visibility.

One of the biggest issues when trying to optimize pages is having so much “design” on their page that they have very little room for text, or content. With so much physical page structure taking up the viewing area, the page only allows room for a few hundred words of real value.

Justin Arnold from The Mightier Pen has two simple ways to work around this issue however.

  1. Use a ‘Read More’ Feature – This involves a little extra work, because to do this effectively you have to begin writing short ‘teasers’ for every article, which has a ‘read more’ link underneath. However, rather than linking to a different page, a special DIV tag can be used to have the text on the original page, but hidden until the user clicks for more. This ensures the search engines still see all of your text, while users still get a sleek and efficient page.
  2. Use a Scrolling Frame to Include More Text – Frames are often disparaged due to some rumor that Google can’t read content in frames. This is nothing more than a silly rumor, and frames allow you to get all of that text on the page.

These two tips will help you keep the design you began with while offering a better experience for users and better results in the search rankings.

 

Many local businesses want a quick and easy way to boost their local rankings. The bad news is, there isn’t really a shortcut anyone can take to better local SEO. There isn’t any way to just make a one time change and suddenly be rocking the rankings.

The good news is, there is a simple method to improving rankings, it just requires consistent output of quality content or promotional activities. This usually equates to blogging, which takes consistent effort, but is highly rewarding.

Chris Silver Smith lists all of the reasons why starting to blog can seriously help local businesses at Search Engine Land.

 

Do you understand how color affects your website content? Do you know color can affect how your site is interpreted by commercial search engines?

Most people don’t. Normally, for designers, color selection comes down to aesthetic preference or corporate color palatte. What they don’t realize is color selection can have a negative effect on your conversions if it isn’t well planned.

Shari Thurow examines the link between SEO and color selection in her article at Search Engine Land. Beyond impacting the usability of your site, color selection can cause different cultural understandings of your site. More frightening for the developers out there, improper color usage can even be considered search engine spam. Make sure you think before you paint your site the wrong colors.

 

I’ve heard this question asked a few times, and it is a pretty fair question. Should I invest my limited resources to a mobile website or an app? The debate is a complicated one.

Mobile optimized websites offer different looks, functionality, and content based on what device is viewing them. Many companies seem to treat mobile websites as “lite” versions of their desktop pages. They have less links, but are still hopefully filled with content.

Mobile applications on the other hand can allow more integrated experiences, offering compatibility with smartphone cameras and information on the phone. They are platform specific, but not necessarily device specific.

The answer to which you should invest in relies on what your needs are. If you aim to deliver steady content to your users, a mobile website is the obvious choice for its ability to be steadily updated. Entertainment businesses on the other hand will likely find applications advantageous because you can control the interface more fully.

Rohit Singhal from Designer Fix has a list of positives and negatives, but a quick look at the trend in your specific market will likely help guide you toward the best choice.

 

With every new bit of analysis that comes out, it becomes more and more clear how quickly mobile browsing is becoming a huge source of search traffic. One study shows that up to 25-30% of all paid search traffic now comes from mobile devices. Here we will explore the latest trends in mobile browsing that search marketers should know.

Tablets Have a Much Higher ROI Than Desktops

The cost per click (CPC) of any ad is supposed to be proportional to the return on the investment (ROI). That seems like common marketing logic. However, it seems the web market is not so logical.

Smart phones have a lower cost per click because they do not convert as well as desktops. Because of this, the ROI from smartphones or desktops are about equal. According to Siddharth Shah from Search Engine Land however, the CPC for tablets is currently 30% lower, even though they have a 20% higher conversion rate than desktops. That means the ROI from tablets is actualy 70% more than desktops. This is a huge opening for search marketers.

ROIs Vary Significantly By Mobile Device

Because of different demographics, user experiences, and varying contexts different devices offer, the ROI for different mobile devices vary significantly. For example, the most current data suggests the ROI from iOS users is roughly double that of Android users. When creating marketing campaigns, be specific to what devices you are marketing to, especially designating between tablet and smartphone. Being specific with who you are marketing will allow you to get the highest ROI possible for your market.

Mobile browsing has no sign of stopping as new and cheaper devices are being offered every day for consumers. Nearly everyone now has a smartphone, and tablets are becoming more and more common. The market will only be more important in the future.

 

On-page optimization goes back to the very beginning of SEO. It has also changed a lot since then. In the old days, on-page SEO was mostly about keyword usage. While you can still use this aspect to create some optimization, it won’t do as much as you would like. This is because on-page SEO has been expanding.

Instead of focusing on keywords, focus on what your users want. You don’t need to repeat keywords your users may be searching for, you just need to have the answers to their questions. The keywords you do use, should be more circled around a theme than they should be trying to exactly match what your users are looking for.

Basically what I’m saying is, if you are still trying to exactly match what your users are looking for, you are as likely to be penalized as you are rewarded. However, if you have content talking about every facit of a topic, users looking for that topic will find you.

It is also important that every bit of information offered on the results page reflect your business and your brand. If the title says the article is about guitars, but the description is about amplifiers – or worse, completely off topic, like kittens – people will be confused and move on.

If you want to see how on-page optimization has gotten here, Almog Ramrajkar has an article on the evolution of the topic. What is important to note is, the old ways are not dead. They still work, but they are no longer all you can do. The few tips I offered here are just the tip of the iceberg to what on-page optimzation offers now.