Archive for August, 2007

This post is not about all the typical page optimizations. It is about how to write content optimized for the Search Engines, and human visitors.

SEO Copywriting can be the secret sauce that’s needed to boost your position in the Search Engines to a top spot. Search Engines are looking for the most content-rich, relevant, resourceful page to rank higher in the SERP’s. Sometimes that means just writing an an additional paragraph, and using the keyword in it. Sometimes it means writing several paragraphs.

Users will appreciate the content development especially if it is sincere, quality content. Not junky filler that is stuffed with keywords.

Depending on your website ( ecommerce vs brochure ) you may only need an additional paragraph or two. Or, depending on the competitiveness and difficuly of the keyword phrase, you may need a “long-page” of SEO Copywriting. Ecommerce sites are typically content-light. So, writing additional copy can provide the boost you’re looking for.

The content should have keyword density (between 2%-5%), but it’s not crucially important. Insert hyperlinks within the content that deep link to other relevant areas within your website. Remember to use keywords in the anchor text. External linking to “authority sites” is also recommended. This will provide the Search Engine spiders with the impression that your webpage is a content-rich resource page. The resource pages tend to rank higher in the SE’s.

Make sure your SEO Copywriting is unique content. Beware of reusing product descriptions on an ecommerce site.

Perhaps create a common theme on each product page. Remember, sell benefits, not feautures. Eg: the feature is *blah blah*. The resulting benefit is *blah blah*.

SEO Copywriting strategies include Placement on page, creating a Call-to-Action, and copy that converts. The Titles/Descriptions on the webpage will appear in the SERP’s, so be deliberate in writing optimized copy for your meta tags.

Besides writing content to provide your webpages a lift in the Search Engines, you might want to consider SEO Copywriting to just add copy to your site. Additional pages are good! Some sites with 10 webpages wonder why they can’t outrank a site with 1000 pages. Hmm. There could be many reasons, but one glaring reason is the site is “content light”. So, use SEO Copywriting to add useful, relevant content to your site that the Search Engines & users will appreciate.

Use SEO Copywriting to write Viral articles, that act like Linkbait besides adding value. Use SEO Copywriting to write optimized Press Releases. Use SEO Copywriting to write great email Newsletters. Then, publish those email Newsletters on your site. Create a section on the Navigation bar for Newsletters. Use SEO Copywriting to write “How-to” articles on an ecommerce site.

SEO Copywriting pricing can range by project & copywriter. But, an average is approximately $1/word.

When marketing to a Hispanic demographic it makes sense to use search engines that are specific to the Latino market, and/or have a large hispanic user-base. Below is some useful data to help your Hispanic search strategy.

Search Engine market share to Hispanics:
Google: 72%
Yahoo: 17%
MSN: 2%
Combined Local Country Engines (see list below): 9%

Demographic of typical Hispanic search user:
1) Users tend to be younger, and do more online.
2) 49% speak Spanish fluently.
3) 13% of the US Population.
4) 51% US Hispanic adults view web in Spanish.

Top 10 Hispanic Search Regions in the US (based upon searching in Spanish):
1. Florida
2. Texas
3. New Jersey
4. California
5. Arizona
6. Washington DC
7. New York
8. Nevada
9. Connecticut
10. Utah

Search Marketing Tactics to Target US Hispanics:
1) Set both English & Spanish as the target languages on both Google and Google Espanol.
2) Opt into the content network to increase your impressions and clicks. Contextually relevant messages via AdSense (eg: MySpace Espanol, and international Spanish sites which are in the Google Content Network).
3) Create Regional (geo-targeted), and Nationwide campaigns.
4) Local advertising via Google Maps to Hispanic areas.
5) Experiment with Dynamic keyword insertion.
6) Experiment with Spanish language in the ad copy.

Spanish Language Search Engines (many are distribution partners with Google or Y!):
Wanadoo Spanish:
Google in Spanish:
Yahoo in Spanish:
Yahoo Search Marketing Mexico:
MSN Latino:
Directa Click Network:
Ya:
OZU:
Telepolis:
Terra: (Spain)
Terra Mexico: (Mexico)
Terra Argentina: (Argentina)
Terra Brazil: (Brazil)
IG Busca: (Brazil)
Terra Chile: (Chile)
Tabarca:
Istamania:
AOL in Spanish: (Mexico)
Lycos in Spanish:
AOL in Spanish: (Argentina)
123:(Chile)
Excite in Spanish:
Brujula: (Mainly Argentina)
Grippo:(Argentina)
Mundo Latino:
Antena: (Chile)
Mexicoglobal:(Mexico)
MSN in Spanish:
Mexmaster: (Mexico)
Tiscali in Spanish:
Mexico Web: (Mexico)
Biwe:
Auyentepui: (Venezuela)
Trovador:
Caraygaray: (Argentina)
Lamira
Xolo: (Nicaragua)
Iguana: (Mexico)
Panama 1: (Panama)
Ideay: (Nicaragua)
Latin World:
Buscapique: (Latin America)
Buscador Espanol:
Hondurainfo: (Honduras)
Terra Venezuala: (Venezuela)
Centramerica:
Todo Latino:
UOL Busca: (Brazil)

While doing some research, I happened upon the White House Robots.txt file.

Could this be a national security issue?

The Robots.txt file is a list of pages they don’t want indexed by Google. The search engine spider checks for a Robots file on every website before starting the crawl, so it knows what NOT to index. It’s a list of exclusions.

It appears as if the Whitehouse basically doesn’t want people finding those files/pictures with searches on Google and associating with the White House. Whoever set it up could have simply disallowed directories, etc., rather than actual filenames.

Perhaps the Whitehouse has revealed too much? Could be some nice juicy investigative material in there.

Here’s a search query to find all the .gov’s with a robots.txt file [site:.gov/robots.txt]. Just remove the brackets.

Maybe we should peak at the Iraqi Embassy’s robots.txt file?
Here’s a list of TLD extensions of countries.

Now just choose the country and swap out the .gov for the TLD country extension. Happy hunting!

Below is a quick reference guide that should help you optimize your site.

The specific optimization recommendations will differ depending on the keyword analysis per webpage.

Navigation:
Text is best. Javascript, Flash, and Images are bad. Best practice is to use Keyword in navigation links.
If a drop-down navigation, make sure it’s crawlable.
Rollovers are okay as long as they are crawlable.

URL Structure:
Build a static (not dynamic) URL structure to include the keywords (eg: Directory, path names, file names).
Hyphens, underscores, and forward slashes are good separators.
Dynamic URL’s are bad.

Page Content:
Make sure keywords are used appropriately in text links.
Ideally use at least 250-500 words of text between the body tags.
Use keyword throughout copy. Write UNIQUE content. Don’t just reuse a manufacturer’s product description (eg: duplicate content issues).
Create a footer with “quick links” that contain keyword.
Create a separate webpage for each keyword.

Source Code:
Write a Title tag & Meta Description (length, keyword usage, relevance, call to action).
Title and Description tags NEED to be different for every page.
Use a H1 and H2 tag, and include keyword.
Put any Javascript in an external file.
If necessary, carefully use the robots.txt file. Make sure it’s written correctly. Here’s a cool robots.txt generator tool. Check out the White House Robots.txt.
Check for www and non-www domains ( i.e., canonicalization issues). Only one should resolve; the other should redirect.
Use the keyword in image Alt tags.
The image filename should contain the keyword.

Sitemap:
Check keyword usage in anchor text on sitemap page.
Make sure all important (category, sub-category, etc.) pages are listed.

By adhering to all these guidelines, and taking the time to do all the analysis correctly, this could take anywhere from 60 minutes to SEO your site, to several hours.

Ideally, if you can identify a page on the site that the subject matter is about one of your keywords. Then, you can optimize that specific page to the specific keyword. Basically, map each of your keywords to a particular webpage.

This post has a very Black Hat SEO flavor. I do not endorse any of the techniques below. They are a collection of techniques to keep your text hidden on a webpage. Google is vigilant about discovering anyone “spamming” their engine, and if they discover your site hiding text, there is a good chance you’ll be penalized/removed from their index. Remember, BMW?

So, if you want to test how well a Black hat technique like hiding text on a webpage can be, then you should buy a throwaway domain (one you don’t care about), and use it as a testing ground. Make sure the Whois info is different from your primary domains.

14 Methods to Hide Text:

1) Using “Display:none” in your CSS.

2) Noscript tag - Will hide text, but there is disagreement whether or not links within noscript tag pass PageRank.

3) Blend text color into background color.

4) IP Cloaking. Using Cloaking Software like Kloakit, or Search Engine Cloaker ca get the job done.

5) Using the Div tag to hide text:

6) Use the position command to place the text off the viewable screen area;
.hideme {
position : absolute;
left : -1000px;
}

7) Use the “visibility : hidden” command to cause the browser to keep the text in the div hidden;
.hideme {
visibility : hidden;
}

Use the z-index command to place the text below the viewable layer. SO, it only appears after a user takes some kind of action…like clicking on a button.

9) Hiding text labels within Forms on a data table.

10) Using Flash files to hide text, and sFIR

11) Font size. Make the font super small. Like -10000px.

12) Alt attribute text. Although, the Alt attribute is not really hidden, because it appears when you mouse over the image.

13) Link Title attribute. This is like an Alt tag, but for a hyperlink.

14) Including text behind an image.

Not all invisible Divs are used in a spammy way.

I’m not sure if Google requests & spiders the CSS, so these particular methods of hidden text might be beneficial for awhile. But, you’re certainly playing with fire. Check out this recent find by Matt regarding hidden text.

I recently was asked this question:

We’re moving our servers later this month and our site will be down for under 10 hours - we plan on 301 redirecting to a “we’re down for maintainence” page. The question is should we use a global noindex, nofollow command for that timeframe - we’re trying to understand best practices for a maintence window

Answer:
My recommendation is not to do anything while the site is down for maintenance. Search Engines’s understand that servers go down, and maintenance is done from time to time. I understand you don’t want the search engines to index your “Down for Maintenance” page, and then they might possibly think that is the new index page.

But the risk of using a 301 redirect, and noindex is way too risky. The noindex has the possibility of actually removing you from the index….and that is just way too risky.

However, if someone comes in on a deep link, they should be redirected to the “Down for maintainence” page, rather than get a “404 Not Found”.

This could be an opportunity to create a custom 404 page, with your custom message.

Here’s my 404 page.