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Archive for March, 2009

Mar 25th

Long Tail Keywords = New SERP’s Results (Google)

written by: Lee Johnson

So you woke up and noticed that Google results pages now have slightly changed in terms of looks. Any idea what’s different?

Let me explain; Google has introduced two new additions to the way the SERP results work and display. Google explained that it said would “help guide users more effectively to the information they need.” (It sounds like a winner, but will it return better results?)

So what are the changes?

1. Search refinements

Google is trying to understand what you’re looking for when you search, not just the words you type. So if you type “Paula Abdul Idol,” for instance, Google will understand that you’re looking for information about the “American Idol” judge, not people who idolize Paula Abdul. (If you want a geekier search term, check out the image below on the search for: “principles of physics.”) At the bottom of the page (and sometimes at the top, Google says), it will give you terms related to the “principles of physics” or what ever search term that was typed in.

principles-of-physics

This should help people find related pages and make it easier for us all to find what we are looking for. The related searches will also give us ideas of what to search for. Looking at this on an SEO point of view this will help when looking for associated phrases that can be used for a new or existing webpage.

2. Snippets

The other change to Google’s SERP’s is “”snippets. Google says, when you enter a query longer than three words, it will give you snippets with longer lines that show you more of the words you typed into the search, showing those lines in bold (bigger description area, see image below for an example). The query “spice market review shrimp starter dessert,” Google says, will show you snippets that include a review of Spice Market, with segments talking about shrimp starters and desserts, with the relevant words in bold.

snippets

“We’re constantly looking for ways to get you to the Web page you want as quickly as possible,” said the post on Google’s blog, by Ori Allen, the founder of Orion who is now technical lead for the search quality team, and Ken Wilder, the snippets team leader.

What remains to be seen is if these improvements will alter user behavior, either by keeping people on Google longer or by changing the way they enter search terms. If they don’t like the bold and snippets, maybe they’ll enter search terms that are shorter than three words. If they like the snippets, Sterling said, they could enter increasingly specific searches, knowing that the words they’re looking for will show up in the results and potentially save them time.

In conclusion

I will be doing lots of research into these changes as it may be a huge change in possible search behavior or is it just a ploy to get searchers to stay on the serps for longer for paid ads viewing. Clicks on PPC listings means more coppers in the pocket. Time will tell…

Let me know what you think and why you think Google has changed things.

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Posted in Google, Search Engine Watch | No Comments »

Mar 25th

Buy a Keyword Happy Domain Name

written by: Lee Johnson

There are various reasons why a web address needs to be right – and right from the very start of your websites life. The first thing that should be considered when choosing a web address is the marketability of the address, will it stick in peoples mind? Many online companies now don’t use the typical names associated with a company and prefer to go for terms such as “blue-widgets.com”. This is largely due to the fact that domain names are more effective if they have a keyword within them (i use lee-johnson.com, I want to be found for my own name)).

Make it keyword rich

By choosing a keyword rich domain name you are further emphasising the relevance of your website to that term. Although this is not as effective today as it has been in past years, it is still worth getting right. As well as the beneficial effects a keyword rich domain has on your search engine rankings, it also has an effect on your sites “click through”. If a search engine user sees a domain name which matches their search then it is more attractive than a domain which is more generic.

Make the domain name easy to remember

When building your site you should also think about web addresses which are simple and easy for your visitors to remember. Rather than having long complicated URLs with query strings and many sub folders you should keep URLs short, to the point and keyword rich.

image of: google results page for the search term lee johnson (position no2)

Lee-Johnson Domain testing

I have been studying how a domain name (website address) can help assist in getting good search engine results page positioning for the keyword rich domain. As you can see by the above image I have been getting great results for my name “Lee Johnson”. As we all know both “Lee” and “Johnson” are very common names which makes the above result even more amazing. It does fluctuate a little in the results (which is quite normal) but is always in the top 5 of Google results pages.

I have been doing lots of testing to see how easy it would be to get to No.1; as you can see I am nearly there. I know it is not really a keyword but I want to be found for my own name and not just keyword phrases. There are many examples of keyword rich website addresses that rank well on the SERP’s, they help the smaller online business that don’t have a brand, it all help’s. ToysRus recently bought the domain toys.com for 2.1 million dollars, in time it will help them achieve more natural traffic; it’s easy to remember too.

Conclusion

When considering purchasing a domain; make it keyword rich, short and easy to remember, if you want it to be a keyword phrase: REMEMBER: no more than 3 words and use hyphens between the words (e.g. lee-johnson.com). This artilce is also to test if I can get this article found for the term Lee Johnson and also for the new snippet search engine results pages.

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Posted in Website Optimisation Tips | No Comments »

Mar 23rd

301 Redirects and Custom Error Pages

written by: Lee Johnson

The .htaccess file has a variety of purposes and all SEO’s should have a basic knowledge of these. In this post I’m going to tell you how to create an .htaccess file and how to setup two of the most frequently used .htaccess features – 301 redirects and custom 404 error pages.

Creating an .htaccess file

Firstly, a few points about the .htaccess file:

• The .htaccess file is a plain text file which should be created using Notepad or Simple Text.
• Each instruction should appear on its own line.
• You will need to save the file as .htaccess. (The file name can be quite confusing as it appears to look like a file extension. It is NOT an extension and the biggest mistake that most people make is not adding the full stop at the start.)
• You may need to manually rename the file after you create it as Notepad will only allow you to save files as “something.txt”.
• The file should be uploaded to your sites route directory.

301 Redirects

As most of you will probably know, when you change the URL of a page all of the PageRank, search engine positions, bookmarks and in-bound links that the page has established will be lost or broken. The 301 redirect is the only type of re-direct which will successfully solve this problem.

A 301 redirect has a very specific job. It tells the search engines that you have permanently moved a page to a new URL and it is essential when you’ve changed things such as page name, domain name, site sub folders or file extension.

The .htaccess code for a 301 redirect is very simple:

redirect 301 /old/old.htm http://www.url.com/new.htm

Although this code is very simple I’ll break it down for you. Firstly you need to specify that it’s a “redirect 301”, leave a space, write the old URL (which should be relative), leave a space, write the absolute URL of the new page and that’s it!

A 404 Page Not Found Error Page

I’m sure many of you have seen the “The page cannot be found” page which appears when you type a URL in wrong or there is an error in a sites navigation. This page is usually a standard IE, Fire Fox or server page.

Using .htaccess we can create our own “The page cannot be found” page which appears when visitors make mistakes in their navigation. The custom page will also appear if you have made any mistakes with your site navigation or programming.

The benefit of a custom error page is that it has all the features/menu etc of your site. This is beneficial as it reduces the chances of your visitor leaving, if you have an e-commerce site you may still be able to keep the sale and it looks good!

The code that you need to add to your .htaccess file is:

ErrorDocument 404 /directory/my_error_page.html

Although it looks simple, I’ll break it down again. Firstly you write “ErrorDocument 404” which tells the browser that every time a 404 error occurs it needs to re-direct the user to your specially created error page. Leave a SINGLE SPACE then give the relative location of your error page. Easy peasy!

More uses of .htaccess to come!

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Posted in .htaccess | No Comments »

Mar 22nd

Duplicate Home Pages – Canonicalization

written by: Lee Johnson

Site Construction – The Problem

When building a site there are certain SEO fundamentals that web designers often miss. This is understandable as search engines aren’t their specialist area; although many web designers now have a basic knowledge of SEO and know how to build a site that is search engine friendly.

One of the key SEO mistakes which designers miss is the creation of several home pages due to site navigation. The problem occurs due to the way search engines view sites, or more appropriately the way search engines view URLs. You see, although there is only one index (home) page on a server when that page is delivered to the end user it can appear in the address bar in a variety of different ways:

http://www.yourdomain.com

http://www.yourdomain.com/index.htm

http://yourdomain.com

http://yourdomain.com/index.htm

Each one of these URLs will pull the same file (index.htm) from the server. This is obvious to us, but to the search engines a different URL means a different page and it treats all four as independent pages from each other. This causes various problems with PageRank, duplicate content and spidering.

The Solution

There are various ways which we can solve this problem and all are very easy to setup. What we need to do is tell the server to always produce the correct URL no matter what is requested. We do this by using 301 redirects, htaccess and mod_rewrite’s.

You don’t need to be a programmer to do this, simply add the code below to your .htaccess file.

To redirect non www URLs to include the www use:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^ yourdomain.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]

To redirect yourdomain.com/index.htm to yourdomain.com/ use:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/index\.(php|html)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/ [R=301, L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)/index\.(php|html)$ http://www.yourdomain.com/$1/ [R=301, L]

Any internal site links and any external inbound links will now seamlessly redirect to one URL. This solves the problem but the lesson is… make sure the site is built correctly from the start!

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Posted in Website Optimisation Tips | 1 Comment »

Mar 22nd

Mozzilla Launches Fennec BETA

written by: Lee Johnson

Many have you have heard of Firefox and if not it should be your browser of choice. If you would like a copy for your Mac or PC go here. You will love it. Anyway back to the article, as we all know that desktop computers are turning into laptops and notebooks are getting smaller with technology capabilities and so are the browsers.

Fennec is a mobile browser from Mozilla

Fennec is a mobile browser that will for tablets and mobile devices. Here is a small intro video on what the Fennec will be able to do. It is quite an interesting concept. The main facility that stands out is it is full screen until you choose otherwise.

Take a look at the video guide to see some of the capabilities of Fennec:


Fennec Beta 1 walkthrough from Madhava Enros

The newest build of Fennec features faster zooming, panning, and start-up times. It also users Mozilla’s TraceMonkey JavaScript engine, allows for editing of bookmarks and use of bookmark folders.

I currently work on a mac and have an iphone in my pocket, so lets hope this will be available on my iphone too. Let me know what you think, add you comments below.

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Posted in Browsers, Video Articles | No Comments »

Mar 17th

Nofollow or no follow ? That is the question

written by: Lee Johnson

So the nofollow attribute has been around for a long time now but there are many who think that it has devalued the net and especially Google. Well here are two questions regarding the nofollow attribute that Matt Cutts answers on a new video.

Getting the most from PageRank & your Link Juice

The next thing that needs to be discussed concerning the internal linking is the fact that your pages could have a PageRank. This is something that needs to be considered & carefully thought about when making your site work for you. It is possible to make you PageRank stick to a page or somewhat be watered down to leave a page to help another. This is sometimes called Link Juice.

This takes some explaining so please be patient. You should be looking for your products/services pages that are important to you and the business to get the best PageRank possible. Some pages will not be so important like you Terms & conditions, Privacy Policy and Contact page or the About the company page. You can include a No Follow Tag so that Google will not allow the PageRank to disperse from the page to a non important product/service page.

How do you add a nofollow rule to a link?

Lets take a look at how to implement this on internal links to non important pages.

Wrong:

<a href=”/contact.html” title=”contact us”>Contact</a>

Right:

<a href=”/contact.html” title=”contact us” rel”nofollow”>Contact</a>

Imagine this is on a product/services page, you do not want the PageRank (Link Juice) to be diluted as PageRank is an important determining factor to be ranked well on Google’s SERPs This needs to be done on all pages that are products & services. These are the pages that make you business money, so you want Google to look at them as highly as possible.

Finally:

One article that could be worth looking into more and I will be doing some testing is at: SEOROUNDTABLE, it discusses a new tweak to the above article. Interesting concept.

Other article that is worth a read: The definitive nofollow attribute rules from Google

Let me know your thoughts on the nofollow and no follow rule as it really does intrigue me…

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Posted in Google, Video Articles | No Comments »

Mar 16th

Back to Google Adwords Basics the Video

written by: Lee Johnson

This is a very interesting article I found today about Google Adwords. I have dabbled into it before on several sites but this is a great way to learn (video). If you are quite new or just want an easy way to learn how the understand the auctions; this is a must watch. Its only 9 min’s of your life but will help you save more money than the time taken to watch it.

Looking to sign up a Google adwords account ? http://services.google.com/tutorial/awsignup/awsignup.html
Let me know your thoughts and what you do to get the most from Google adwords. I love to hear what people think…..

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Posted in Adsense, Google, Video Articles | No Comments »

Mar 15th

The Truth about the Keyword Meta Tag

written by: Lee Johnson

The Keyword Meta Tag Argument

There are various Meta tags we use at Customer Street but the keyword Meta tag causes by far the most arguments and disagreements between Webmasters and SEOs. When first conceived, the main function of the keyword Meta tag was to tell the search engines what subject / product / industry your site was orientated around and in the early days of SEO it was one of the key elements to high search engine rankings.

The keyword Meta tag:

The advice below DOES NOT relate to keyword research (which I will cover in my next post). Keyword research is still the basic fundamental behind SEO and has implications far beyond the keyword Meta tag.

Yahoo and the Keyword Meta Tag

The original “big daddy” search engine was Yahoo. When Yahoo first started indexing and ranking the world’s online content they placed a great deal of ranking weight on the keyword Meta tag. The problem with this ranking method was that black hat SEOs realised that to get to the top of the search engines all they needed to do was stuff the keyword Meta tag full of keywords and wait.

The Keyword Meta Tag today

As time went on (and we saw the arrival of Google) algorithms improved and, due to the abuse it received, the keyword Meta tag was made semi-redundant. Debates still go on about whether or not the keyword Meta tag is taken into account by any of the search engines, but the common consensus is this:

It is widely agreed that Yahoo is still placing SOME weight on the keyword Meta tag but it is thought that they do not place any way near as much weight as they did. It is also widely agreed that MSN is still paying SOME attention to the keyword Meta tag although not as much as Yahoo. It is also agreed that Google pays little (if any) attention to the keyword Meta tag and it never has done.

How should we handle the Keyword Meta Tag today?

Just because Google doesn’t pay much attention to the keyword Meta tag doesn’t mean that we should ignore it, although many SEO’s and webmasters do. One thing is clear – the keyword Meta tag is still used in some way, so you should observe the following:

- Add no more than 5 or 6 keywords to each page.
- Add geographical references if you engage in localised business.
- Add any common spelling mistakes that relate to your business.

There is also a theory that the search engines look at how the keyword Meta tags relate to the content of the page and try to observe correlations. There is also a theory that on page served ads (such as Google AdSense) generate their ads based on the keywords Meta tag.

So the evidence conclusively suggests one thing – get them right from the start but don’t get too wrapped up in the whole keyword Meta tag area!

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Posted in Metadata | No Comments »

Mar 15th

SEO is like Snowboarding

written by: Lee Johnson

Last week I was in Andorra (Pas de-la Cassa resort) on my second Snowboarding trip. Just like my SEO career, being self taught, I realised that snowboarding is all about try, try and try again; understanding, balance and technique. Nothing comes free in this life, its all about graft and work ethic and getting the basics right.

Day 1 – Getting the basics right

Understanding & Balance

After the first full day I realised that taking snowboarding (SEO) patiently and methodically (getting the basics right) works far better than thinking you can rule the slopes (search engines) in a day. This is so like the search engine optimisation world, using a method based methodical approach holds you in good stead for the future and builds confidence in your site slowly but surely.

Day 2 – Experimentation

Technique

Having got the basics right (Meta data) it was time to experiment a little. Day 2, I was confident that the basics were there and I was able to predict what lay ahead of me and it was time to do a little testing (keyword phrase positioning, content writing). I decided to go a little further into the mountains and try some more difficult runs.

So all of you know, there are 3 types of ski – snowboard runs (paths), blue, red and black, blue being the easiest and black being the toughest.

I would compare these to search engine optimisation techniques:

  • Blue run: Getting the basics right
  • Red run: Experimentation within the guidelines
  • Black run: as some call it black hat, I call it stupidity and always will (I will explain later).

Anyway back to day two, I decided to listen to my more professional ski – boarding friends (who have been more times than they have fingers and thumbs). I followed them through several blue and red runs feeling confident that the basics had given me the confidence to try some more daring testing and experimenting.

I listened intently to my boarding peers (testing what I had learned from SEO articles from the top recourses) and tried a few several more complicated techniques and runs. Due to this going well without collapse or breakages or removal from the slippery slopes I thought I could do anything and get great such a thrill and a high (ranking) without the pain or disaster.

I followed them across the Pass de-la Cassa’s mountain range to the second resort range, where I was rudely awoken and realised they wanted to push me too far (when looking at I faced), I did the right thing (I did not allow myself to be easily drawn in and do something I could not control or was comfortable with).

Daring but unwise SEO Companies

Just like the SEO world there are many daring but unwise SEO companies and individuals out there that try to push the boundaries too far that can cause collapse (possible refusal by the search engines to accept your site) I decided to stick to what I knew and enjoyed testing myself on what I understood to be correct. (A wise move that should be heeded). Always look at the company history, get examples of work, testimonials of clients that you can contact yourself.

Going forward through the week

Each day I pushed myself a little further and enjoyed the return on investment, not trying to take things too far but understanding how far I could push my body and skill base (I was adding quality content each day and doing it sensibly (no keyword stuffing, no content theft, no spamming) but more re-submitting my site-map cleaning up my website code (techniques) etc).

Last day

Following the correct paths (runs)

I thought as I had done so well during my time in Pas de-la Cassa i decided to experiment a little too far and followed my friends during the day; which I came to realise was way too far.

Time came to get of the lift at the top of the mountain. This is where i discovered the black hat black run. I was extremly nervous and with trepidation I watched my friends take the plunge on what only can be described as complete madness. I was left alone to make a decision that would potentially cripple me and cause no end of pain (removal from the search engines) and life itself.

Was I to risk it all and have possible exclusion from my active life in the fast lane for what could have been months, or follow my own understanding from the guidelines I have come to understand (Google guidelines) and do the right thing and take a different route?

So what did I do? Yes or No?

One stage too far Sidney it was just sulfurous , I started over the edge and within what felt like a second (re-indexed), I was too far to return to the top in fact all I could do was prey and drop like a stone down the mountain (which is Google). I called my friends for help but it was too late they could not get to me and recover me from the black hat run and from the most horrible of experiences I would not wish on my enemy.

To be perfectly honest I was way out of my depth and had tried something that within my heart I knew I should not have attempted. I did eventually get to where I could get back on my snowboard but this was after much anxiety, swearing at my friends and also a complete humbling for me for being so foolish to even consider the extreme (black hat SEO).

Stick to what you know

It was a huge learning curve; I was very disappointed in myself and my decision that I had not heeded the warnings, wobbly legs, increased blood pressure etc. There always signs to follow, heed them; they can help guide you through the dark murky world of the unscrupulous SEO Company and individual. If you are looking to understand the SEO world in more detail get some books, do research, testing, and remember ballance and technique. Following the correct runs (paths) will hold you in good stead now and in the future.

I am in one piece but I had a very lucky escape, don’t be fooled,

A relieved snowboarder,

Lee Johnson – UK SEO manager at BT Customerstreet

Posted in Fun | No Comments »