Archive for the 'SEO' Category

If your job involves convincing clients why they need to redesign their sites with SEO in mind, sooner or later you’ll run into the splash screen conundrum. Splash screens are terrible from an SEO perspective, but some clients love them more than their own children. They think about their website the same way they see the receptionist at their office in the real world… when you enter the front door, they want the first thing you see to be a pretty face.

Creative companies are the worst offenders when it comes to demanding splash screens. If you’re doing SEO consulting for a site related to the entertainment industry, for example, you’re probably dealing with someone who places a lot of value on the “Wow!” factor. They think that just because you’re a fan of Adam Lambert, you’ll be more than happy to sit around for 30 seconds watching celestial bodies swooshing through the universe as the artist’s name is slowly revealed. They couldn’t be more wrong.

The main effect of a splash screen is to cause valuable visitors to leave your site. A bounce rate of 20% or more on splash screen pages is typical, which may cause you to say, “Well, heck, that’s a lot better than the 50% bounce rate on the home page!” But if your splash page is the default entrance to your site, it’s probably getting 3x to 5x more traffic than your home page. So maybe 100,000 people enter your site every month through the splash screen, while only 30,000 enter directly through the home page. If you’ve got a 20% bounce rate on your splash screen, that means you’re losing 20,000 visitors every month before they even see your home page! Wouldn’t you rather drive that traffic to the home page instead of losing it while your users stare at some stupid Flash animation?

You want users to get “inside” your site ASAP. Don’t leave them waiting for someone to “open the door”!

Here are some of the main reasons why you don’t want your user experience to start with a splash:

Hurts Search Rankings
Having a splash screen usually complicates your website’s structure. Search engines rank top-level URLs first, so having your home page under /us/wpcontent/home/ (or any other nested directory structure) can really hurt your rankings. Why waste your top-level URL on unimportant splash content?

Splash pages are not optimized for search engine indexing. The content of a splash screen is typically Flash or graphics heavy. This lack of text makes the page nearly invisible to text-based web crawlers… that is, all search engines.

No Keywords, No Links
Online search results are based on keywords. Splash pages typically contain no text except for the “skip intro” or “enter site” link. These keywords are obviously useless in terms of SEO.

Online search results are based on links. But the only link on your splash page goes to your home page. And what are the chances that anyone else will ever link back to your splash page? I’d say slim to none.

In terms of SEO, splash pages are a complete waste of your best online real estate.

Base-level URL Redirection is Bad
Splash pages often redirect to the home page. Search engines like Google and Yahoo! want to deliver people directly to the information they are seeking. When they see that your base-level URL is redirecting to another page (after the splash “performance” is done), your site’s ranking will be affected negatively.

You almost HAVE to redirect from a splash screen. There’s no good reason to redirect from your base-level URL (e.g. www.site.com/), but having a splash screen sit there pretty much forces your hand. Either you redirect the user to make sure he actually makes it to your content, or you risk losing him to splash frustration.

User Frustration
Even user-friendly splash pages include a “skip intro” link. This tells the user this page is less important than your other content, i.e. not worth viewing.

Most splash pages waste time. You’re asking the user to wait for content to download. Then they have to sit through an unwanted presentation. And you wonder why they’re leaving? Many sites even force users to see the splash page each time the site is loaded.

Reduced Credibilty
Your home page is the most important page on your site. Splash pages are a wasted opportunity to make a good first impression.

No matter how someone reaches your site, eventually they will visit the home page. Users want quick access to information. Splash pages are a speed bump, hindering access to your site’s content.

Poor Site Performance
Splash screens are graphically intensive and slow to download. Users with slower connections (mobile, dial-up, foreign countries, etc.) will get stuck with a “loading” message, and may never even make it to the home page. If your site is getting heavy traffic, the bandwidth used by the splash page will reduce your entire site’s performance.

Page load time is a now a major factor in search rankings. If your site loads slowly, your search ranking will suffer. Get your users to the home page as quickly as possible!

There’s a good quote floating around from Jared Spool of User Interface Engineering on how to convince your clients that splash pages are bad:

“When we have clients who are thinking about Flash splash pages, we tell them to go to their local supermarket and bring a mime with them. Have the mime stand in front of the supermarket, and, as each customer tries to enter, do a little show that lasts two minutes….

“Then stand back and count how many people watch the mime, how many people get past the mime as quickly as possible, and how many people punch the mime out.

“That should give them a good idea as to how well their splash page will be received. That’s the crux of it.”

Lightboxes: A Better Splash Option?
If you’ve explained everything above but your client still insists on having something “splashy” upfront, you may consider recommending a lightbox. At the very least, lightboxes have a better reputation among users than splash screens. And when your users click on the “CLOSE” or “X” button, you won’t be losing them into the ether… in fact, they’ll be looking right at the content you want them to see.

Lightboxes may not be as Flash-y (pun intended) as a splash page, but they give your site a chance to project some sort of welcoming message or offer without such a high risk of losing visitors.

They’re also much more friendly for SEO purposes. Lightboxes don’t dilute the strength of your site because your home page sits at the base-level URL, and the content inside a lightbox – images and/or text, rather than Flash – is typically more friendly to indexing by search engines.

Anybody out there have a positive or negative experience of using a lightbox as a splash screen to share? How about any other ideas on replacing splash screens when the client absolutely insists?

Have you ever received an RFP (Request For Proposal) for SEO Consulting? If you have, then you know they’re usually detailed and well-thought out. For a SEO Consultant not familiar with responding to an RFP, this process can be slightly challenging. Where do you start? How much site analysis should you do for free?

Within an RFP for SEO Consulting is usually a section where the prospective client asks about a Site Analysis.

A full-blown Technical Site Analysis consists of:

• Analysis of information architecture.
• Analysis of source code, and page layout.
• Site Navigation.
• Analysis of Flash & Javascript.
• Keyword usage.
• URL structure.
• Content siloing.
• Internal linking structure.
• Dynamic strategy.
• Robots.txt exclusions.
• Sitemaps (website & XML).

Once you land the consulting gig, there should be a deep dive into each of the Analysis factors above, and a detailed SEO recommendation and implementation.

But, for the purpose of an RFP, it’s certainly okay to provide an overview, or a brief abridged Site Analysis to demonstrate that you put in the time to understand their site & their needs. It also shows you know what you’re doing, and instills confidence in your ability.

The “abridged” Site Analysis can consist of a summarized statement for each of these:

• Sitewide TITLE tags.
• Sitewide META tags.
• Navigation.
• Site Architecture.
• Flash usage.
• Overview of Department, Category, Sub-category, and Product pages.
• Indexibility.
• Is there duplicate content?
• Canonicalization.

Remember, you’re just doing a quick analysis, and providing a summary statement on each of the above factors for the abridged site analysis.

It’s often helpful to also do an abridged Keyword Analysis consisting of:

• Keywords to be Targeted
• Keyword ranking.
• Keyword traffic.
• keyword revenue.

You will also want to examine their inbound link profile, and their internal linking structure.

As you can see, you don’t need to give away the milk for free. This is just part of the work involved to win the business.

Photo credit: sugadeaux

This is an area of SEO that got hot once Google started showing “Universal Results”. Universal results is just a term that means Google includes in the Search results everything now. Along with the organic text listings are News, Images, Shopping, and Video. Google pulls these search results from all types of different websites.

The big question is “How can I get my video there?” Now it behooves advertisers & publishers to conduct a Video Optimization for specific keywords related to the video. In many cases it’s worth the time & money invested to get your video to the top of the search results page.

Without showing any of my client work, I’ll show a personal video that is ranking. Search for the term, AFX race cars.

10 Tactics for Video Optimization:
1. Use the Keyword in the Title. Make the Title sound interesting.
2. Write approx 2 paragraphs of text for the Description.
3. Tag each video with keywords.
4. Choose proper category for each video.
5. It’s best to put a hyperlink to the target page within the Description, but before the user needs to click (more info) to see the hyperlink.
6. Upload all videos to multiple video sites (Youtube, Viddler, etc)
7. Comments help by showing interest, and by additional user-generated content (more words on the page).
8. Video responses show interest/activity.
9. Rating. Try to get as many 5 star ratings as you can
10. Views, views, and more views.

Treat the video as you would any other webpage, and begin a Link building optimization to increase the amount of Inbound links. Ideally, your objective is to increase Link popularity and Link relevancy. While building links for your off-site optimization, try to mix up textlinks and the number of Embeds. All these are Video Ranking Factors.

A great productivity tool to upload videos to multiple video sharing sites is TubeMogul .

SEO has always been about getting high rankings and traffic via the search engines. In the early days SEO tactics like keyword stuffing worked quite well. Not anymore though. The big three search engine’s (Google, Yahoo, and Bing) algorithm’s have all become increasingly sophisticated. So, the tactics an SEO Consultant uses must also become more sophisticated, and change in kind. It’s kinda a cat and mouse game. As Google changes, our strategies and tactics change.

There will always be a need to drive traffic. But, where will the focus be? Will Google still be the primary target?

We’ve all seen the rise in Social Media usage. Some of the more popular Social Networks include, Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter, Stumbleupon, Digg, and Youtube. And, we’ve all seen the explosive growth of Twitter. Not only are these growing and active communities, they also can drive a significant amount of traffic. Here’s the forecast of Social Media usage by emarketer:

Niche communities are popping up everywhere now. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Social Networks like Ning. Anybody can now create a niche social network by using their free platform. To see a great example, here is a ning community that I joined, which was created by Larry Brauner. Niche communities like his have the potential to grow huge, and drive highly relevant traffic.

An SEO Consultant should prepare for the shift to social media by getting active on some of these. This takes a lot of time. Some of it I’ve heard described as “busywork”. But, the investment of time is needed. Even if you just choose one or two networks to become active on, it’s very possible that your traffic needs will be spread out to different networks from those people you’re connected to on a single social community. Think of it as a scaled-down version of viral marketing. Although, it could explode into full-blown viral activity.

Now with all this talk of the importance of social networking, I don’t want you to think that traditional SEO is dead. Cause it ain’t!

The search engines aren’t going away anytime soon. There is no Google killer anywhere in sight. And, search engines still drive an enormous amount of traffic. Search engines are where your customers find you. In the future a good SEO Consultant will get you traffic regardless of where it’s from. It’s all about:

• Right Message
• Right Place
• Right Time
• Right Person
• Right Experience

Photo credit: Saioki Fugiyoshi

I like the symbolism of the photo. A good SEO Consultant (the mouse), can control Google (the cat).

Checking for duplicate content is part of the process of analyzing a website. The most common types of duplicate content to look for is in Title tags, Meta descriptions, product descriptions, dynamic URLs, and Canonicalization.

Many websites reuse the same Title tag for their entire site. That’s duplicate content.

Many ecommerce sites resell products from manufacturers will often use the product descriptions provided by the manufacturer. Hence, an abundance of duplicate content.

Top 6 Duplicate Content Mistakes:
1. Circular Navigation - multiple paths though a website.
2. Print-Friendly Pages - Fix: block search engine’s from printer friendly pages.
3. Inconsistent Linking
4. Product Only Pages - with nothing differentiating them from other pages.
5. Transparent Serving
6. Bad Cloaking

There are various ways to check for Duplicate Content. You can do a manual check, and/or use tools to check for dupe content. There are a ton of fee-based SEO tools out there that bundle a duplicate content tool into their suite of tools. However for this post, I’m just going to stick with just the free tools.

Free Tools

Copyscape will check to see if any other site contains the same text as your page. This is great to see all the other ecommerce sites that have the same product description.

Yahoo Explorer is a great free tool to find duplicate content. Make sure you see the results for Pages. Then, Export results to TSV. Open in Excel.

The spreadsheet will contain the TITLE tag, URL, SIZE, and FORMAT. Sort the data by descending or ascending for the Title tag. This will enable you to quickly scan the document for batches of duplicate content.

Xenu Link Sleuth is a popular free tool. This is an application download. Besides providing the same data as Yahoo Explorer, the Xenu Link Sleuth can detect broken links. Then, export to Excel. Sort data as needed.

Google Webmaster Tools. Go to Diagnostics, HTML suggestions, Duplicate title tags - next screen is a list, with a hyperlink to “Download this table”.

Additional Reading:
How to find your website Duplicate Content Issues
How to Remedy Duplicate Content
Google Dupe Content
Site Explorer is a First Step
Duplicate Content Issues

Photo credit: kajojak

Website navigation structure and behavior affect the ease with which search engine spiders can navigate through the site and index it. Your site navigation should facilitate the uninterrupted movement of crawlers within the site.

Search engines prefer sites which are easy for them to navigate and retrieve information related to the site’s topical information, and consequently rank them higher for the site keywords. Therefore it is very important for the site to have a simple navigation structure that is easy for the spiders to crawl.

There are many types of navigation structure that can make it search engine-friendly or not.

Simple text-based navigation is the most search engine-friendly. Apart from being easily followed by spiders, text-based navigation gives an opportunity to include the keywords in the page content. The keywords included in the navigation are valued by all search engines.

However, it is not always possible to incorporate text navigation in the site because of design/aesthetic reasons. Even if the navigation cannot be text-based, the best practices listed below should be followed to make sure that the site navigation is search engine-friendly.

JavaScript based navigation: Search engine crawlers can read JavaScript but cannot parse it; hence, they are unable to follow the links embedded in the JavaScript code. Usage of JavaScript based linking would not allow the crawlers to follow the links and crawl/index the sites completely. If the navigation has to be JavaScript based, it should be made sure that in case the scripts are blocked by user settings, they should still be able to navigate through the site. It’s recommended to use the html noscript tag.

Flash navigation: Flash is not parsed by search engine crawlers in normal circumstances (unless the text/HTML alternative is provided or unless the flash movie is using deep linking to all the content). The reason for search engines being unable to read flash code is that flash is published in the .swf format which does not contain the code (code is embedded in .fla files) which are not published on the pages. This means that in order for search engines to read the flash embedded content and navigation, they will have to decompile the flash movie, which is not done by search engines at this point. It’s recommended using SWFObject to replace flash video on a webpage, so you can include text.

Image based navigation: Often, the site design requires the navigation to be in form of images. Search engines can follow the image links (as long as they are not JavaScript based) but using image based navigation takes away the ability to create keyword targeted navigation. Quite often while embedding rollover or other interactive images for navigation, JavaScript is used for linking. It should be made sure that the links behind the images are not JavaScript based.

It’s recommended to use the Alt attribute whenever an image-based navigation must be used.

Sliding/DHTML menus: If the site structure and architecture requires the use of rollover menus. Most often, the sliding menus are implemented on the sites using pure JavaScript for interactivity and functionality of the navigational links. The best practice is to use the CSS/JS hybrid navigation to make sure that the links embedded in the navigation are readable and followed by search engines. In case JavaScript has to be used, it should be made sure that the JavaScript code is placed in external files instead of page code.

Using a drop-down or pull-down menu helps you save on screen space when you have a lot of material that needs to be displayed on your pages, or a complicated multi-level navigational structure. In general it is recommended to use XHTML and CSS style sheets to present drop-down or pull-down menu navigation so that the search engines will still see the href links when indexing your Web page. If you must use drop-down or pull-down menus using JavaScript or a CGI script as your main navigational format, remember to include a secondary form of navigation to allow search engine spiders to follow links to the sections of the web site easily. Eg: footer text links.

Regardless of the navigation structure, both a Webpage sitemap and an XML sitemap should be created.

Suggested Reading:
Advantages and Disadvantages of Different Types of Navigation
Hierarchical, Site-wide, and Locally-determined Navigation
How to Determine a Website’s Navigation Structure
Navigation Menu Versus In-Content Links
Drop-Down or Pull-Down Menus
The 8 Types of Navigation Pages
Creating a navigation structure for both usability & SEO
SEO: Breadcrumb Trail Boosts Rankings
SEO Basics: Text Navigation Links vs. Image Links

Photo Credit: walt_s

How have SEO Services changed over time? How would you define SEO Services today?

When search engines emerged, keyword stuffing the meta data worked to get you high rankings. If you knew how to do that, you could call yourself an SEO Consultant. But, the search engines have gotten more sophisticated over time. The algorithms check for a multitude of criteria these days. Thus, SEO has gotten more complex, with a variety of subsets.

A full-site optimization includes Keyword analysis, Technical Site Analysis, Content Analysis, and Link Development. There are SEO Strategists, SEO Copywriters, Link Builders, Technical SEO specialists, Usability experts, Analytics gurus, and similar types of sub-divisions of optimization.

SEO Services have changed as the Search Engines have changed.

SEO has evolved into a school of thought - Not a Process. But, let’s face it. Practically speaking, there is still an SEO Process. Big agencies want to know process. Clients want to know process. Process helps keep you on track. Process allows you to report on progress. Process provides for a client deliverable. However, there is an overarching school of thought.

Social Media:
Social Media is the new frontier of web traffic. SEO nowadays is more than just optimizing a website. SEO is about driving traffic, and has branched out into Social Media. Sure there are Social Media consultants. But, many people that are well-versed in SEO, have jumped on the social media bandwagon. Many SEO’s are early adopters, and have been on the social networks for a long time, and have built strong profiles. So there ya have it. Another SEO Service being offered. Driving traffic from social networks.

But, lets keep something in mind. SEO has been and is still about driving high quality visitors, from Search Engines, that convert. That’s the difference between a Social Media and SEO Consultant.

Web Usability:
SEO Consultants look at a website differently than a web designer or advertising agency. SEO people tend to browse a site while analyzing how search engine friendly the site is, AND how user-friendly it is.

Web Analytics:
Part of SEO consulting is measuring traffic, share of voice, analyzing clickstreams, path analysis, conversion funnels, A/b Split tests, etc.

SEO Services include:
1) Increasing Keyword Ranking.
2) Increasing the site’s overall visitor traffic
3) Making the site search engine friendly.
4) Driving traffic from the search engines.
5) Driving traffic from social media.
6) Driving traffic from related websites.
7) Driving traffic from all sources, regardless whether they are online or offline (newspaper, radio, magazine ad, WOM, Conferences, billboards, taxi cabs, mass transit, etc.)
8 ) SEO Audit : What are you doing good & what are you doing bad.
9) Competitive Analysis: Providing insight on your competition. What are they doing good & bad, and how to beat your competition.
10) Brand Awareness / Mindshare
11) Measuring and Analyzing web traffic.
12) Reviewing the website usability, and if there are any obstacles to conversions.
13) Reputation Management

Defining SEO:
SEO is using various strategies & tactics to drive traffic to a website, working with the website ownership/marketing team to ensure traffic converts, and measuring the revenue generated from those efforts which if done correctly, will generate a positive ROI.

Photo Credit: Burning Image