Advanced SEO
Which Came First? Speed, SEO or the EGG?
SEO is all about performance. Google and Yahoo/Bing care about performance and user experience. Site speed is really important to users so by default it is equally valuable to SEO and ranking. Speed isn’t an easy demon to catch. With more than 200 ranking factors used in Google’s algorithm, why pay attention to speed? It requires excellent programming skills, the best hosting services and extremely talented web designers to make a beautiful fast website. It’s so much easier and cheaper to just ignore speed. Some people including Google’s Matt Cutts will tell you that speed isn’t all that important to SEO and ranking. Now lets look at some concrete reasons why you shouldn’t listen to them and put speed at the top of your SEO list.
Users Love Speed
Proven through countless studies, the effectiveness and usability of websites are impacted by speed. Speed increased conversion rates, shares and tweets. Users directly influence rankings through their behavior which means that speed in turn impacts many other ranking factors. Moreover, try to create “loyal” customers without a fast website. Good luck with that one.
Speed and Panda Emerged Together
According to Google, the Panda update looks at an entire site’s “quality” rather than grading all of the pages on a site separately. Similarly, speed is usually a site specific rather than a page specific metric. This is because speed is dramatically impacted by a site’s hosting and servers. Language and particularly using PHP for your entire website can increase speed while reducing hosting fees. PHP and fast hosting distinguishes the professionals from the amateurs on the Internet. This isn’t necessarily about big vs. small players although big companies tend to have faster websites. This is about technical sophistication and good code vs. hacks and code filled with junk. Clean code is another ranking factor that goes hand in hand with site speed. In addition, speed in more difficult to manipulate than content.
Google Labs has been concentrating on page speed simultaneously beside Panda. They have developed a new tool for speed optimization called Page Speed Online and they have released something called Page Speed Service. Why would Google go to all this trouble if page speed didn’t factor largely into their future plans?
Being First and Fast Matters
Moreover, as mentioned in a comment by Steven in response to Matt Cutts video about site speed: Speed matters in getting ranking credit for posted content. If a wise and wily webmaster can steal your content fast enough and post it (with or without credit) the search engines rank the faster website before the slower one every time. In the dog-eat-dog world of marketing nothing is more annoying.
Take a Look Around
Lastly, using Google’s little page speed tool: lets see how the top sites rank for speed.?First, the least competitive search term I could think of: “bird watching in Massachusetts.”
Page Speed Scores:
1. www.birding.com 87
2. massbird.org 68
3. www.7seas 69
4. blog.newenglandbirdhouse 51
5. www.massaudubon.org 68
Then for a very competitive term: “shoes.”
Page Speed Scores:
1. www.dsm.com 90
2. www.shoes.com 74
3. www.payless.com 65
4. www.aldoshoes.com 74
5. www.famousfootwear.com 77
And another little company, www.zappos.com: 91
Then for: “computers.”
Page Speed Scores:
1. www.dell.com 87
2. www.apple.com 74
3. www.hp.com 83
4. www.walmart.com 83
5. wikipedia.org 80
Then for a search outside of the US: “rent a car in Australia.”
Page Speed Scores:
1. www.budget.com.au 53
2. www.thrifty.com.au 57
3. www.vroomvroomvroom.com.au 85
4. www.avis.com.au 66
5. www.apexrentacar.com.au 63
Given the evidence, ignore site speed at your own peril.
Jen Thames is Brand Manager for Ugly Cable, Australia’s leading online HDMI Cable supplier
Using Social Media Profiles to Build Up Your SEO
Aaron Wheeler over at SEO Moz recently posted Rand’s whiteboard about using your social media profiles for SEO purposes. We’ve summarized the transcription for you here:
Most people know that social media is extremely valuable for SEO, but even some advanced marketers are at a loss for how to harness the power of this medium. Here five ideas are presented for making the most out of these profiles.
- Direct Links. When my Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook account put out a link they point to other sites. Those sites in turn point to other sites and when you follow the chain you realize that there’s some pretty powerful link juice floating around. Making sure these links are followed and actually point back to somewhere is critical unless you’re just counting on people seeing your link and using it, which is unlikely.
- Dominating SERPs. The race to fill up the top spots can be aided by getting social media sites in the mix – they tend to do well in rankings. The key is to fill these profiles up with good information and not create them just for spam’s sake. That never works and a million people out there are doing it. Make sure to participate heavily when you first get your profiles off the ground. Tweet, comment, send out friend requests – anything to get yourself noticed in the search results. Additionally, make sure to get others to link back to your profile…this will also help your rankings. Give out the same bios and same links everytime you contact anyone.
- Brand Context. Make sure that everything you do in terms of your social media profiles positively reflects upon your brand, especially if you’re acting as a representative. More marketing than SEO, branding is the biggest way to drive traffic and get quality links out of social media. Good branding also leads to sales and additional networking opportunities as well.
- Drive Your Links. Remember that everytime you participate in the social media conversation you have the opportunity to direct a link. This means, each reTweet, each Facebook post, each message should have some sort of link purpose in mind. Don’t forget that formatting and link context is very important, so choose the way you form your content carefully. Also remember that each link you put out has the ability to become a secondary link, that is, one that’s posted on an additional, non-social media site as well.
- Social Media as a Content Source. Use social media profiles as a source of content for your own site. If someone posts a YouTube video, repost it and start a conversation around it. If there’s an interesting Twitter conversation going on, take screen shots then turn the whole thing into a blog post. It’s simple, really. Have other people do the heavy lifting and then repurpose their content, siting them, of course.
Follow these steps and see your link count soar…using social media to your advantage is one of the quickest ways to develop a well rounded SEO plan.
Summary written and edited by Heather Hendrick
Local Search Gets Rich Snippets from Google
Chris Crum over at WebProNews just posted about how Google has decided to use Rich Snippets for Local Search. Now, SEOs can use this data to help reference real world places and events and better optimize for local results and multiple web hosting locations.
Carter Maslan, Google’s Product Director for Local Search or something equally fancy and technical sounding spoke on the changes, “”By using structured HTML formats like hCard to markup the business or organization described on your page, you make it easier for search engines like Google to properly classify your site, recognize and understand that its content is about a particular place, and make it discoverable to users on Place pages.”
Google wants webmasters to use structured markup systems to help the search engine determine the location of your site but to use their provided forms to give them a glimpse of what you’re trying to provide with your content.
Google says it’s excited to expand local even further and wants small business owners everywhere to have more control over what their local listing looks like. Markup does not guarantee your site a listing in local, but any insight you give Google will help them determine the best way to display your results.
There’s a Frequently Asked Questions page provided by Google for customers interesting in utilizing the new rich snippets function for Local Search.
Article summary provided by Heather Hendrick
How Will Instant Affect SEO?
Dave Davies at WebProNews speaks about Google Instant’s impact on the SEO Industry. Here we’ll discuss his main points and see how Google’s newest invention has really changed things, if at all.
When Google announced Instant was coming back in September 2010 many people in the SEO Industry…freaked out. Some declared it the “death of SEO” while others looked as Instant as a new opportunity to work within a set of boundaries developed by Google. There are certainly some pros and cons to Instant but as previously mentioned, the changes to SEO may not be all that significant afterall.
What is Instant?
Google’s calling it search before you type technology which is a simple way of saying the search giant tries to interpret what you’re looking for before you even type the words out. For example, if one was to type “buy so” Google might suggest a list of terms that seem appropriate such as “buy socks” “buy soap” or even “buy something.” The idea is that searches get faster and the site has even greater utility to users. Google’s servers are now functionally processing billions of search queries a day.
Why Instant’s Not a Game Changer:
The technology itself is limitless, it’s the users that are going to determine if this really catches on. Basically, people aren’t going to know how to use the function or the best way to garner results from it, so there will be a sharp learning curve as Instant evolves. Users who have to look at their keyboard to type (most of them) won’t really notice the change right away.
Additionally, Instant only works when it works. This means that users who don’t see their intended search query pop up in the results will just keep typing until they do, sometimes rendering Instant useless. Certain queries are bound to be harder for Google to identify than others, and just the letters in a query can really affect how accurate Instant proves to be.
Why Instant’s a Big Deal:
To a Searcher – Searchers are really going to benefit the most. Either they’re going to notice the effects on Instant and thus be helped by the service or they’ll keep on living like before…a win win for Google.
For Google – Google’s going to benefit in two main ways, neither of which needs much explanation. They’re going to instantly get increased marketshare from the release and also gain increased revenue directly from the product.
For SEOs – It’s important to remember that certain types of queries and industries are going to be affected more than others by the change. Basically, the more web savvy a searcher is, the less their search is going to be directed by Instant. These are who SEOs go after. The short term is going to be spent figuring out which search terms are most vulnerable and exactly what actions to take from there. From the get go, SEOs and seo hosting companies should prepare to shift to more generic term keywords in addition to readying for increased click through rates, which aren’t a bad thing.
Conclusion:
Google Instant isn’t going to change things too much, at least for the time being. Knowing what we know, SEO should prepare to react to this algo change as they have to so many others before, with data and metrics and tests.
Heather Hendrick summarized this article for us here
Creating Mobile SERPS for Usability
Suzzicks over at SEOmoz recently posted about the phenomenon of mobile sites ranking in traditional search results as well as the inverse, traditional sites ranking on mobile devices. She argues that it’s something we need to explore and address as SEOs and we’ve summarized her points for you here.
Will everything be on one index soon?
Google obviously doesn’t want to have to index two totally different versions of the web, and creating one giant index with a multiple host is the clear solution. Multi-format site mapping may be a precursor to the merge, and Google themselves have said that they intend to use mobile bots to search everything soon. Interestingly, the site mapping changes occurred around the same time Caffeine kicked in as well as some major Places pages and Images updates. It seems like Google’s getting even further away from indexing multiple formats and moving to one, streamlined solution.
Certain types of phones getting certain results?
It’s impossible to know for sure if there are in fact different “mobile” indexes, even though Google had confirmed that there were in the beginning. These old results used to be terrible and Google’s been playing around with tons of different domain formats to serve up mobile results.
Mobile bots definitely make differentiations for different handsets and some serve up mobile results better than others. Doing a quick search for mobile results right on your desktop shows you the standard “SmartPhone” results served up by Google. Change the attribute at the bottom of the page to include Feature Phones, and you can see what others are seeing on various types of devices.
Tell the Search Engines You’re Mobile Friendly
The best way to tell the engines that you’re ready is to actually provide a page that is designed for mobile. You can use style sheets and mobile sitemaps to describe to the engines how you want your page to be displayed. Make sure to check your pages to see if they show up properly on mobile devices and also set you systems to ensure that the right pages are being served up to the right devices.
Here are Your Different Mobile Usability Types:
- Mobile/Traditional Hybrid Pages
- Traditional Computer Pages and Mobile Pages for Phone
- Mobile/Traditional Pages (Hybrid) for Computer and Smartphone
- Traditional Pages for Computers
Link Profiles, Visualized
Everyone uses backlinks, as Tom_C over at SEOmoz recently pointed out, and there are seven great ways to visualize them. Link data is useful for many things like analysis, education, adjustments, and sometimes it’s just plain SEO fun.
Which Folders are Top
OSE’s top pages function is supremely useful as it allows users to see which folders and pages are linked to most often. Users can create their own subset of folders and gain data over which pages are the most popular.
Create a GEOlink Map
Create a map of backlinks that shows where your links are coming from…it’s particularly useful for analyzing competitor data and even creating marketing targets for a campaign.
Neat Tag Clouds
Wouldn’t it be cool to create a tag cloud that was shaped like something else to display your most popular keywords? Well, you can! Create a cloud based on the theme of your website for added visual interest.
Directory Links Visualized
It’s good to look at both the spammy and non-spammy links on a company’s backlink profile, and it’s almost always the case that the better links are more interesting to analyze. An interesting way to weed out any directory links from a competitors profile is to use the formula:
=IF(IFERROR(FIND(“directory”,A2),IFERROR(FIND(“directory”,B2),IFERROR(FIND(“Directory”,B2),0)))>0,”Y”,”N”)
Then create a pie chart from the data. This will tell you what kind of links make up the bulk of your competitors stash and also which of their links is worth copying.
Venn Diagrams
It’s interesting to create a Venn Diagram based on your links as well as those of your competitors. You can easily see which links you have in common and which sites’ backlink profiles are most like your own.
Broken Links?
Most easily accessed through Google’s Webmaster Tools, the Broken Links tool is helpful for figuring out which links need immediate attention. A broken link is a useless link and should either be nixed or fixed.
SEOmoz Labs Tools
These tools are helpful for identifying opportunities with new clients as well as existing ones. It can help congregate existing links, developing links, and link opportunities which are always useful for an SEO hosting company to know.
What to Spend on SEO…
Jennifer Horowitz at Web Pro News recently posted to give advice to Small Businesses about what to spend on SEO. In a down economy, it’s tough to budget for marketing that won’t pay off right away, and Jennifer had some helpful tips.
The first question you have to ask yourself is, what is the goal for your site? Do you want to rank higher? Be better converting? Have more visitors? This answer will drive your SEO budget from start to finish.
If you’re an ecommerce site that creates some or all of the income for the owner, you’re going to have to resign yourself to investing heavily in search opportunities. It will be the basis of your marketing efforts and drive visitors that lead to sales. You’re going to have to invest significantly with both time and money.
Online businesses have a reputation as being easier to set up than traditional brick-and-mortar businesses which is simply not true. While it’s easy enough to build a site, getting up the right kind of site is what truly drives conversions and sales.
The first thing you need to do when coming up with an SEO budget is determine how many visitors you currently get to your site and how many sales you’re getting out of those visitors to create a sale per visitor number. Once you’ve got that, calculate how many sales you need to earn (depending on how much each sale is worth) before it makes sense to invest in the website. Don’t forget to consider your paid search/PPC costs as well – and choose carefully! Paying for clicks that don’t convert is like pouring money down the drain!
SEO directories and class c hosting are all part of a well-rounded SEO budget, but don’t go crazy on the cheap directory submissions. These are nearly worthless and will bleed you dry.
As a general rule, small to medium sized businesses have been known to average around $300 – $800 per month on SEO efforts, but some pay as much as $1500 per month, particularly if their businesses is heavily internet based. Remember this range when you’re considering what you’ll get for “quality” SEO services.
People seem to resent paying for SEO, but consider it an investment in your business’s future, much like visiting a doctor for a checkup or a mechanic for an oil change. If you can do it yourself, by all means, go for it, but remember that driving traffic to your site is crucial to success, so don’t cheap out on this area of your business.
Heather Hendrick responsible for this summary
Web Design Trends That Actually Work for SEO
Rand Fishkin at SEOmoz knows his SEO, so people listen when he talks. This time, he’s talking about seven cutting edge web design trends, which we’re sharing with you here at our SEO hosting blog.
SEO and design go hand in hand, and more so now than ever before. SEOs love good design as it helps conversion and leads to more clicks and designers love when their creative efforts pay off in the form of links and organic search love. Let’s learn together what the key trends are being seen today in these overlapping worlds.
1.Emotional Design
Designers who use their talents to elicit emotion from viewers are some of the more powerful people on the web. Emotional design is great for SEO and almost always leads to an increased personal investment in a website by any given visitor. Building a brand and product sense in a visible, viable way is one of the coolest things we’re seeing in design today. Using design to express nostalgia, humor, whimsy…all smart SEO moves.
When users feel emotionally connected to a site they’re more likely to link the site, share it with others, contribute comments and participate in other ways, and ultimately browse more pages. Getting your users connected sells.
2. Scrolling Call-to-Action
Using this design trick is a great way to give customers the option to click, buy, whatever once they’re done reading. The message is less in your face and stands out more…a marketer’s dream. Giving your readers content they didn’t expect will encourage them to share and make them more passionate about your message.
3. Badges
Users love ways to get connected to their favorite sites and sites love offering digital incentives like badges and buttons. Adoption rates are very high for these programs and they’re great for SEO. Think of badges as the online equivalent of giving out a t-shirt with your brand pasted right on the front – if people like your brand they’ll wear it and market for you proudly.
4. HTML Multiheader
The multiheader is great for search engines to figure out what your site is trying to convey and also displays different messages to different targets on your site. If you’ve got a header for each demographic, work them into your design and give the engines a guide to your point.
5. Imbedded Infographics
Infographics are all the rage, so work hard to make your content relevant and imminently linkable. Imbed it in a seamless way that’s easy for your readers to access and you’re as good as gold. Just like with badges, the “sexier” your graphic is, the more people will link to it. Simple.
6. Design with Illustration
Sites designed with CSS have opened up a whole new world of design based illustration. Now all users are able to experience flashy illustrations and at the same time kept it simple enough for search engines to index.
7. Creative Content
Formatting content is a whole new beast, and designers are really leaving their mark. There are no hard and fast rules for this category, only a hope that great design can help display informative content in a new, exciting, eye-catching way…great for SEOs and the user.
Summary of Rand’s work by Heather Hendrick
A Comprehensive SEO Checklist for Your E-Commerce Site
Blue Hat, a relative newcomer to the SEO hosting blog scene recently put out a pretty comprehensive checklist for e-commerce sites on SEO that we’ve summarized for you here. Remember that all these opinions are not necessarily reflective of those here at our seo hosting blog…
A lot of e-commerce site owners don’t even know where to begin when it comes to SEO. Many have paltry budgets, so here’s a pretty good list of things you can do to get your SEO off the ground for less than about $500…
1. Sign Up with all forums related to your site or product. Be sure to put your site link in the footer of your comments and go through weekly making product comments and posting useful (not spammy!) information.
2. Make free OSCommerce and Zencart templates that you can distribute. Get your link on the footer of the templates and distribute them widely to try to garner links.
3. Make an articles section for your own site and ask people to contribute. It’s a good idea to contact relevant websites and ask if they’ll give you content in exchange for links, and there’s a possibility they’ll like your site and link to it when they have the opportunity in the future.
4. Take articles and reviews from your competitors and start doing article distribution – be careful with this one!
5. Get a blog up on your site that posts competitor codes for coupons that are relevant. Make sure to put these coupons as item #1 on your blog at all times.
6. Make sure to log all your products in Google Products – this will help with negative results and continue to get you indexed.
7. Look through Google Products to find small ecommerce sites that may be interested in a link exchange. Set up this link exchange on a separate automated server.
8. Optimize your site’s onsite SEO! There are tons of resources online to show you how to do this.
9. Download and convert to HTML the product books for your products, then link back to them. This will help with indexation and probably catch a lot more longtail keywords in the process.
10. SPAM Yahoo answers – and by SPAM they mean answer tons of questions about related topics and include a link!
11. Submit to directories! Though this sometimes doesn’t work for certain types of sites it usually helps ecommerce sites and they’re always welcomed with open arms by directories.
12. Create some swag (toys, shirts, hats) with your logo on them and mail them to the most influential bloggers in your industry. Bloggers love free stuff.
13. Grab a webcam and some of your products and post product review videos of yourself with the product on video hosting sites.
14. Create some nifty autoblogs and link wheels for posterity.
This should be enough to get your e-commerce site started!
Thanks, Heather Hendrick, for summarizing Blue Hat’s article
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