Archive for the ‘SEO’ Category
Last time I checked, there were a few thousand Firefox plugins, many of which are geared toward web developers and SEO’s alike. For every SEO plugin that I use, I’ve probably tried 3 or 4 others out that didn’t work quite the way I need them to. Here are my 5 favorite SEO firefox plugins that make being an search engine marketer just a little bit easier.
#5 Rank Checker
Rank checker is an easy-to-use and convenient tool for quickly checking keyword rankings. I don’t honestly use this tool too often but when I need to check a series of keywords quickly, (new client research, competitive research) it comes in handy. To use this plugin, just enter a domain and list of keywords and hit Start. You can choose to check rankings on Bing, Yahoo and / or Google. Additionally, results can be stored within the program to make comparisons later.
#4 QuickJava
QuickJava is a simple plugin that allows you disable JavaScript easily. I mostly use this to check the navigation and crawlability of a website. After installing the QuickJava plugin, a Java and JavaScript symbols will appear at the bottom of your browser. Clicking on any of these symbols will toggle Java and JS on and off.
#3 Meta Description and Title on Top
This plugin has an incrediby descriptive name. Meta Description and Title on top is a simple SEO plugin that, believe it or not, displays the current page’s title and meta tag. I only recently started using this plugin (to replace another no longer compatible with FF) and have found it incredibly useful in verifying that the correct meta description have been applied to new websites before launch. Meta Description and Title on Top is a simple plugin that saves a lot of time.
#2 SEO for Firefox
SEO for Firefox is another SEO Book creation of and displays website data like links, pagerank, traffic, age and much more within Google’s search results. This one is pretty useful for doing surface-level competitive research. A plus to this plugin is that the data displayed is fully customizable so you can hide any information that you don’t need.
#1 Foxy SEO Tool
Foxy SEO Tool is probably my favorites. This plugin adds a feature-rich toolbar to the top of your browser. The toolbar provides a quick way to perform frequently repeated functions like checking inbound links, indexed pages, cached page versions, traffic stats, internet archives and much more. I definitely make use of this one throughout the day.
Tags: firefox, seo plugins
It seems almost certain that local search will become more important as Google and other search engines improve their ability to accurately display local listings when they are relevant to search queries. One of the easiest and least time-consuming things that local businesses can do to drive targeted traffic to their website is to add or verify their local listing in Google. Here’s how it’s done:
1. Search for your business – Begin by going to Google Maps and searching for your business. A good way to search is to do “[business name] near [location]“. For example, I searched for THAT Agency near West Palm Beach. When your listing appears, click more info.
2. Click Business owner?
4. Click Edit my business information and then continue.
6. Now, you’ll be taken to you business listing management screen where you’ll be asked to fill in information about your business such as the location, description, website, email, business category, hours of operation, payment types accepted, photos, videos and more. Here are some quick tips for filling in this information:
- Name – Use the business name that most of your customers or potential customers will know you by. This seems pretty obvious by for businesses that have a different legal name than ‘marketing’ name, it can cause difficulties when customers are searching.
- Description – Use descriptive keyword phrases in your business description. For example, if you sell cars in Miami, FL, you may want to use phrases like Miami car dealer, car dealer in Miami, etc.
- Phone number – Make sure your local phone number is included (even if you also have an 800 number).
- Category – choose the most relevant and specific categories that match your business.
- Photos and video – Photos and videos can make your listing more appealing. A brief video outlining your business services can be a great way to set you apart from your competition. Likewise, photos of work you’ve done (if appropriate) can also help improve your conversion rates.
- Website – Don’t forget this one! Include your website address so users can click-through for more information.
- Coupons – Entice searchers to contact by including an appealing coupon offer within your Google Local listing. Coupons are also a great way to track the success of your Google Local marketing efforts.
When you’re finished entering your business information, click the Submit button at the bottom of the screen.
7. In the final step you’ll need to verify ownership of your listing. In this step, Google gives you the choice of verifying by phone or verifying by postcard. Both are easy to do although verifying by phone is much quicker.
That’s about all there is to adding and optimizing your listing in Google Local. As time passes, you’ll be able to track results through reports which can be found in your Google Local Listing Center. Best of luck!
Tags: google local, local seo
Posted on Oct 23, 2009 by Rick to SEO
Recently, I received a call from a new search engine company who offered me a “unbelievable advertising deal” (as the salesman put it) for pay per click ads on their search engine. The salesman claimed that their new search engine was the fastest growing engine in the world, stealing millions of Google users every month. Naturally, I was skeptical and curious.
Since I had never heard of this particular search engine, I consulted Google. I searched for this company’s brand name and, as expected, their new search engine website appeared first in Google’s results. In positions 2 through 10, however, I found a number of forum and blog posts about this new search engine. I read through all of them and found one thing in common; every other site listed in the top 10 for their brand name had negative things to say about the search engine, their marketing practices and lawsuits related to their brand.
How silly, I thought. I would expect that a new search engine, especially one trying to sell advertising to other search experts, would do a better job at managing their own online reputation. Couldn’t they have guessed that I would do at least a little research prior to signing an advertising deal? Being an unknown in any industry almost guarantees that potential customers will research a particular company. Why wouldn’t this new search engine ‘clean-up’ their brand name search results before starting a new cold-calling sales campaign like the one I was just hit with?
When your customers search for your brand name, what are the top ten results they see? Hopefully, your business website appears in #1. Don’t stop there, though. What appears in positions 2 through 10? Do the results promote the positive aspects about your business or products? Are some of these results hurting your chances at gaining new customers? What can you do about it?
What is Reputation Management?
Reputation management is not about hiding your faults, but is about putting your best foot forward. Think of it like you would think of someone looking for a new job. You wouldn’t expect a job applicant to present their weaknesses on a resume or in a cover letter would you? Then why would you let the search engines present similar information to your potential customers?
Strategies for Managing Reputation
In this post, I want to review a few strategies for helping business get more of their own content and others’ positive content to appear for their own brand name searches. Of course, there are many other aspects of reputation management that aren’t covered here. Today, I want to focus on search reputation management.
Using the Social Networks
More and more, social media profiles dominate the search results for both individual and business names. You’ll see this most often when searching for an individual’s name. You’ll also see it for companies that have active profiles on given social networks. Begin by starting a profile/fan page for your business on relevant social networks. Take a little time to build out an informational profile on each network keeping in mind that this may be the first exposure that a potential client has to your business. Once the profiles are complete, link to them from your website to help improve their ranking in the search engines. Consider starting with these networks:
Press releases
Press releases are a great way to help control the SERPs for your brand name searches. If you’re not already doing so, submit press releases regularly. Make sure your brand name appears in the press release title and copy. Again, building links to these releases will help move them into top positions. Here are a few free and paid press releases websites which are good for this:
• PR Web
• PR Inside
• PR Log
Wikipedia
Wikipedia more or less owns the search engine results for countless numbers of keywords. The authority of Wikipedia makes it another good place to get listed. Often times, your Wikipedia listing will make it to the first page of search results for your business without too much effort.
To get listed on Wikipedia, you need to be ‘notable’. Is your company significant? Of course it is! Unfortunately, the editors at Wikipedia don’t always agree. There are plenty of articles to help you convince the wiki-gods that you belong. Once your listing is secured, link to it from other relevant articles in Wikipedia. This will help improve its ranking in the SERPs.
Sub domains and Websites
Have you ever Googled Google (say THAT 5 times fast!)?
What do you notice? You should see that Google’s many different websites and sub domains of google.com appear in the top results. This same affect can be seen for other major brands like Pepsi, Ford and others. If it makes sense, create addition company websites or break some of your content into sub-domains. Google will usually only return one or two pages from the same domain on any given search. By breaking your content out into sub-domains, you can bypass this limitation and can sometimes get Google to list more of your pages. Of course, breaking content into sub domains can have other significant impacts so plan this carefully.
Linking to other websites
In cases where there are positive articles (on other websites ) about your company that come close to ranking in the top 10, you can also try to help those link higher by linking to them from your own website. This is easily accomplished by creating a pres section and linking out to all the positive press about your company.
Over time, monitor the progress of each of these strategies to see if they helping move the best results into the top 10 listings for your brand name searches. You’ll notice that certain pages will naturally advance very quickly and others won’t make much progress at all. Focus your future efforts on the ones that have naturally moved up. In time, you’ll find that your new profiles, press releases and other efforts will give you more control of the top results for your brand name queries in the
Tags: reputation management
Cartoon courtesy of WittyComics.com
As an SEO and webmaster, I get a number of emails each week asking me the same silly question, “Will you please link to my website?” And honestly, I read every single request for one very selfish reason- I want to see if other SEOs have come up with clever ways to request links from strangers. Almost always, I am disappointed.
In the past, the SEOs at SEObook and SEOmoz have written pretty solid posts about constructing effective link request letters and also avoiding common mistakes. They list a few guidelines that can go a long way:
- Send link requests only to relevant websites – Seems obvious, sure. About 3 people a week mess this one up and ask me to link to their auto parts e-commerce websites.
- Personalize the link request – If you actually visit the website from which you are requesting a link from and take time to learn a little about it, you can make mentions of the website’s content, tools etc. in your request. This will show the webmaster that you’re actually paying attention and that you care about his/her content.
- Be professional – Show respect to the recipient of your letter and clearly explain your proposition. Don’t make up stories about google magic and improved search engine rankings. Just be straight-forward and honest.
- Add value – Will the webmaster that you’re contacting actually benefit from adding a link to your website? Do you really have content that their visitors will find useful? If not, don’t waste anyone’s time. The Web is already full of garbage, please don’t add to it.
While there is no one right or wrong way to request a link (even the worst requests probably yield some results), there is a general rule that can be followed to ensure better requests-
BE HUMAN! When constructing a link request letter, pretend you’re going to actually have to read it to the webmaster that you’re sending it to. That’s right, pretend you are going to have to approach this individual on the street, at a convention or in a bar and actually request the link in person. The point of this exercise is to help you gain perspective of how good or bad your request actually sounds.
For example, if you run a website which sells red bunny rabbits, would you really walk up to the webmaster of a sports-related website and ask for a link? Or, would you feel like a complete ass in doing so?
The shotgun approach of mass link requests through email is not only ineffective, it also contributes the garbage which fills the Web around us. Stick with a “human” approach to link requests and you can’t go wrong.
Tags: link building, rants
The utility of the various Google tools explains why it is the most versatile online search engine. Google tools, such as Google webmaster tools, Google Toolbar and Google Wave, represent the constant innovation that the Internet bigwig believes in.
Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: google tool bar, google tools, google wave, google webmaster tools
Google local search has been around for a while now and I’m still surprised by how few small business know how to take advantage of it. For many who are not experienced with it, organic SEO can seem confusing which may be why many may just ignore it. However, local search optimization is one of the easiest ways for local business to generate traffic to their websites. Since millions of searchers are using Google Maps to find businesses, Google can offer a steady stream of traffic to almost any business that optimizes for it.
Lately, I’ve also noticed Google Local results appearing in organic search more and more often. And as Google fine-tunes their search logic, it would make sense that local results continue to appear for a greater number of searches in the US and worldwide when they are relveant. This further argues the point that a local search strategy is worth the time.
First, lets look at an example:
In a recent search for Miami Movers, I get the following search results:
Click to Enlarge
You’ll see in the image that a map and several local business results appear in the first position. These results are being pulled from Google Maps listings. While it may not be reasonable for many companies to rank in the top position for specific keyword phrases in general search, a well-optimized local listing can still yield a good amount of traffic as the local results seem to trump the general search results.
Here’s how you can take advantage:
First, go to Google Maps and search for your business name. Chances are pretty good that you your business already has a listing if you’ve been around for a little while. If so, click more info next your listing. Then, look for a link that says edit and then on edit this listing. At this point, Google will take you through a number of steps to validate that you are in fact the business owner. Once you’ve confirmed ownership, you’ll have access to edit your listing.
What next?
Click to Enlarge
Now that you’ve validated your listing, it’s time to edit a few things. First, make sure that all your business information is correct. Check the phone numbers, email address, hours of operation, etc. Next, you’ll want to make sure that your business name and description are fairly keyword-rich. For example, a moving company in Miami might assign the business name Bob’s Moving Company – Miami. The business description should also have relevant, location specific keyword phrases such as miami movers, moving company in miami, etc. Lastly, make sure your business is assigned to the appropriate categories. You’re allowed to assign yourself to multiple categories so be sure to assign all categories that are relevant.
Once you updated and saved your listing, wait a couple weeks and log back into your Google Local Business center. You’ll then be able to view statistics regarding the number of times your listing has displayed and how searchers found it. As with any SEO strategy, this can take time. Following these steps and the other fundamentals of SEO will yield long term results for your company.
Click to Enlarge
Tags: local search
So you’ve got lots of traffic and your blog/site is becoming more and more popular. If you’ve done any kind of update, rearrangement of the site you may have loose ends that just lead nowhere resulting in those pesky 404 pages. It’s often difficult to track these down unless you dive into your traffic reporting Cpanel software but that’s sometimes a daunting task and often yields mixed results.
One solution would be to simply make a more intelligent 404 page and adjust and fix the site accordingly as you collect the necessary information. This nifty little PHP script both notifies the user at to what may have gone wrong, as well as send out a detailed report to you with the users IP address, what they were looking for and when they were looking for it. It’ll even tell you what platform/browser they were using at the time.
Another benefit of using a script like this is that you can track when someone is trying to hack through your directories looking for something they shouldn’t be. From there you can just block their IP and be on your way.
Click here to download the raw text version
The great thing about this is all you have to do is drop this in your 404 page, adjust the email addresses at the bottom to match your own and you’re almost done. Once you’ve got the script in your 404 page you’ll need to make sure all errors redirect to this page. Add this to your .htaccess file
ErrorDocument 404 /404.html
or
ErrorDocument 404 /404.php
depending on what your 404 page is and give it a try.
Tags: 404 errors
There’s often confusion about how nofollow, noindex and robots.txt should be used for good SEO. I’m going to give an overview of the three, including when, where and why you should be using these.
What is a robots.txt file
First, a robots.txt file is simply a file that you can place on your web server which will give instructions to search engine robots with regards to which sections and pages they should not crawl. This is the equivalent of putting a ‘do not disturb’ sign on your hotel room door. While most will obey your request, there is no guarantee. The reasons for blocking robots from visiting site pages and sections vary by website but are usually related to not wanting the search engine to crawl or index select pages or site sections.
What does the noindex meta tag do?
The noindex Meta tag is a simple tag that instructs the search engine not to display a given page in the search index (search results). This tag is often used when a website owner does not want select pages appearing in search. Websites with duplicate content issues often use these tag to remove the duplicate content from the search index.
Placing a noindex tag on a page is different than excluding that page in robots.txt file in that a page with noindex in the header can still be crawled by the search engines and can still accumulate and pass PageRank. A noindex tag will simply put any given page in invisible mode to searchers.
What does the nofollow tag do?
Nofollow tags can be inserted in the header or attached to links to provide instructions for the search engines like Google not to crawl a given link. In essence, this prevents PageRank from being passed from one page to another when nofollow is used. This is done for a couple reasons:
- Spam reduction – Most websites allow users to contribute in some way. By placing nofollow links on any links added by users, you can discourage users from blatantly spamming your website because the links will carry no SEO value.
- PageRank sculpting – For webmasters concerned with the distribution of PageRank throughout their website, nofollow can be placed on links pointing to unimportant pages within their website. For example, a link going to your privacy policy page could use nofollow because it isn’t likely that this page is very important to the search engines. Adding nofollow to all links pointing at this page will mean that more PageRank is passed to the other more important pages on your website.
Utilizing robots.txt, nofollow and noindex can make a noticeable impact on your organic search marketing results if used correctly. However, using them incorrectly can lead to adverse effects such as ranking pages being removed from the indexed and loss of PageRank. Apply them with caution.
Tags: nofollow, noindex, pagerank, robots.txt
The latest statistics indicate that 90% of traffic landing on web sites originated with a Google search. That’s a pretty impressive figure for Google but it also says a lot about how people find websites. many people use google as a way to find a site when they may not know its exact location on the web. for example, rather than looking on someone’s business card to find a domain name, its often easier to enter their name or the name of the business and let google spit out some results. Surely one of the resulting pages is the correct one.
And so the million dollar question in the web development world has become – how do i appear first on the list? or for the less ambitious / realistic how do I appear on the first page of results? A good SEO would tell you to make sure you have chosen the right key words, built your pages using table-less CSS, have good keyword density and plenty of inbound links.
In an increasingly-competitive search environment, it’s more important now than ever to have a solid strategy for building quality links to your website. Inbound link quality and count still seems to be one of the most influential factors in determining search rankings. Many of the traditional techniques used for building links, such as article marketing and link exchanges, are still pretty effective and important to an SEO campaign. To gain a competitive edge, however, one has to be creative and adapt new ways to attract quality links. Here are four link-building strategies that you may not have tried.
Contests
Both online and offline, contests have always been a good strategy for creating buzz around a brand, product or business. Consumers love opportunities to win free stuff and are usually attracted to contests. Next time you’re running a contest, promote it on popular contest promotion websites and social networks. Attractive contests are viral by nature and word of them can quickly spread across the blogosphere. If you’re contest is unique enough, you may get a lot of press from this strategy.
Guest blogging
Guest blogging is when a writer posts to another writer’s blog. There are many incentives for guest blogging including; increasing exposure, monetary compensation and of course, backlinks. Contact bloggers in your industry or in related industries and offer to write a good article for them. In exchange, ask for a link back to your website. It may take a little work to form a good relationship with blogging partners, but it will be worth the effort if you can acquire a link and traffic from new blogs.
Job Fairs
College job fairs are not only a great place to find new talent for your organization; they are also a good place to find quality .edu links. Most colleges and universities promote upcoming job fairs online, often linking to the websites of employers who are sponsoring the job fair. If you’re organization recruits new college graduates on a regular basis, be sure to follow-up with the organizers of these events and make sure you’re getting a link back to your website. Sometimes, all you have to do is ask for a link. From the perspective the search engines, .edu links are a strong indicator of the importance of a website. While it may not be feasible to attend these events just for the purpose of gaining a link, it is worth a little extra effort to get a link if you’re already attending.
Charities
Links from non-profit organization websites can be great because many of these sites already have strong trust. Do you regularly donate to any charities, non-profit organizations or foundations? If so, make a phone call and see if they’ll link to your website as thanks for being a supporter of their organization.
Oddly enough, some of the best links you can get won’t come from your online efforts. Your actions offline, such as involvement in charities, professional organizations, etc., will provide the best opportunities for high quality links. Take a minute to ask yourself or your clients what they are doing in the ‘real world’ that might provide a linking opportunities online.
Tags: link building
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