Archive for September, 2007
published by Dan in SEO Strategy
On-site factors that will affect your SEO for the good include:
- Site Age - The older your site is the better. This is the reason why some make a practice of snapping up old domain names that are not renewed by the owners. However, even if a site is old if it wasn’t indexed earlier by Google then a slightly newer site that was indexed ahead of time will fare better. To know how long the site has been indexed you can use the Wayback Machine. If you do not have a domain name yet it would be a good idea to raise this issue with your SEO consultant.
- Age of Page Vs Age of Site - While older is better for websites the opposite is true for web pages. The newer your page is the better of you are. This is true because newer pages indicate fresh content. Furthermore the combination of plenty of new pages in an old site is the best. This indicates a stable and reputable site that stays updated and relevant.
As you can see in the past several posts there are plenty of on-page and on-site factors that will influence your site’s status for the better. However, there are also plenty out there that will affect your site negatively. With all the factors to keep track of it is usually best for website owners to leave it in the hands of an SEO specialist.
Popularity: 9% [?]
published by Dan in SEO Strategy
Domain Name Extension - Top Level Domain (TLD)
Google is biased for sites with TLDs that end in .gov (government) and .edu (education). Of course since you can’t get a .gov and .edu extension for your commercial site you’ll have to make do with .com, .org, and .info. The .com extension seems to be the least favoured since spammers and low quality sites have use this the most. Try getting incoming links from .gov and .edu sites beacuse it will do you a lot good in terms of SEO.
File Size
Pages with smaller file sizes are preferred although it is understandable for certain pages with lots of information that cannot be broken down to be more than 100KB in size.
Hyphens in URL
Hyphens are usually used to separate keywords in URLs. This is a good practice but do not overuse it. Your best bet is to stick to several keywords/hyphens (less than 4). URLS with 10 or more hyphens/keywords have a high risk of being considered as spammy. Though not yet proven it is likely that you will be penalized for this.
Page Freshness
I cannot emphasize how much new content is important in SEO. The more fresh pages (not new websites) you have the better your website will fare. This is the reason why blogs are very useful for SEO purposes. Instead of having to update the main website too frequently all you need is a blog to keep on adding fresh content/pages.
Frequency of Updates
The more frequently you update your website (and ping search engines) the more frequently your site will be crawled.
Page Theme
Google is biased for sites that have themed pages.
Source: Google Ranking Factors - SEO Checklist
Popularity: 9% [?]
published by Dan in SEO Strategy
Internal links
- Make sure that all your internal links are valid. Dead links do nothing for your SEO and is an irritant to visitors. To check if all the links on your website is working use link checkers like Dead-links.com.
- Deep linking - Avoid deep linking as much as possible. Structure your pages so that you won’t need to click more than 3 times to be able to access any page withing the site. Pages that are buried too deeply are the ones usually overlooked by spiders as well as visitors.
- Sitemap - Limit links in your sitemap to around 100 so that it will be easier for the spider to crawl all the links. Putting more than 100 links in your sitemap will result in some links being overlooked. If you really do have more than 100 pages to link to then the best thing to do is simply break the sitemap into several pages.
- Anchor text - As mentioned in the post on keywords always use proper keywords as anchor text for both internal and external links.
External Links
- Do not link to sites/pages that have a bad reputation. If the site is not indexed in Google (search the site’s URL to see if it is indexed in Google) and it is already an old site then it might have been penalized and removed from the index. You wouldn’t want your site to be associated to disreputable ones. Furthermore, never ever link to link farms since they are more often than not flagged.
- Just as with internal links make sure all the outgoing links are valid. This means periodically checking the links using link checkers. Remove dead links each time you check.
Source: Google Ranking Factors - SEO Checklist
Popularity: 10% [?]
published by Dan in SEO Strategy
If you don’t know much about SEO and want to hire an SEO specialist but want to make sure they are doing their job right, then you might want to arm yourself with a checklist. I will be doing a series of posts that will list down the various factors that will affect your SEO campaign. Armed with the list, you can check whether you are getting the SEO service you are paying for.
Here’s a quick rundown of keyword uses that will affect your Google SEO ranking in a positive way. For an explanation on the use of keywords in the URL, Domain Name and Title tags read my previous post on Keywords in Key Placements.
- Keyword URL
- Keyword in Domain Name
- Keywords in Header
- Keywords in Title tags
- Keywords in Description Meta Tags
- Keyword in Keyword Meta Tag
- Keyword density in body text - Actual threshold level still unknown. Too much density considered to be keyword stuffing so it is always best to simply make sure you use keywords frequently but in a natural sounding manner. The rule of thumb is, “If it sounds too repetitive then replace the keywords with synonyms.”
- Individual Keyword Density
- Keyword in H1, H2 and H3 styles
- Keyword font size - Words with bigger font size in relation to other words in the body considered to be emphasized
- Keywords proximity
- Keyword phrase order
- Keyword prominence - Refers to the location of the keyword in the body, the start of the paragraph (top of the page) is a more prominent placement.
- Keyword in ALT-text
- Keyword in Anchor text - Refers to anchor text used for internal links.
Up Next: Links and Other On-page Factors
Source: Google Ranking Factors - SEO Checklist
Popularity: 10% [?]
published by Gary in News
Along with two of my associates Leigh and Richard, I will be giving a presentation entitled “How To Make Search Engines Love Your Website” to the Chartered Institute of Marketing this coming Wednesday the 19th September.
This SEO seminar will provide you with essential principles and highly pratical techniques and tips to improve your search engine rankings and ultimately your profitability.
Devoted to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) this seminar will provide answers to these questions and more:
- How do search engines work (and implications for your site)?
- How do you identify the right keywords and phrases.
- What are the design techniques that help (or hinder) SEO performance?
- How can SEO copywriting help?
- How can link building can help you boost your rankings?
- What is SEO monitoring and how can it help me?
- If you want to bring in specialist SEO help, where should you focus your investment?
Guest ticket are available at £15 each
Popularity: 12% [?]
published by Dan in SEO Tools
Last month I discussed several misconceptions about sitemaps. Hopefully I was able to clarify just important and useful sitemaps are. However if you are convinced that your website will not really benefit from a sitemap you might want to think again. Though I do agree that some websites (static single page sites) do not need a sitemap at all chances are that your website WILL benefit from it. Of course, sitemaps are NOT always essential but since they can only do good or no good but never do anything bad for your website’s “crawlability” then it is better to be on the safe side and just create one. However, if your website has one of the following features listed below then a sitemap IS essential for all your website content to be crawled by a spider.
1. Your site menu is flash or pure javascript (most rollover scripts are OK if they use ‘<a href’ links).
2. Your menu structure is more than 3 levels deep.
3. Some of your content is not getting indexed and it is publicly readable i.e. not behind a fire wall, login isn’t required, etc.
4. You want to provide some ‘Spider Bait’ i.e. optimized link text.
Some good sitemap generators include the Google Sitemap Generator and any of the other online sitemap generators listed in Google Webmaster Central.
Source: Search Engine Friendly Site Map by Dylan Downhill
Popularity: 12% [?]
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