How to Use Nofollow, Noindex and Robots.txt for SEO
Nov 11, 2008 SEO
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
Google Makes Flash SEO Friendly
Nov 5, 2008 Flash, SEO, Technology Trends
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.
Tags: Flash SEO
4 Link Building Techniques that You Haven’t Tried
Oct 31, 2008 SEO
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
How Important is a Domain Name to SEO
Oct 24, 2008 SEO
The importance of the domain name in SEO is a widely debated topic. There are those SEOs who swear by the effectiveness that a keyword rich domain name has on rankings. There are others who swear that the domain name is not all that important. In the end, it’s a really hard thing to test which is why there isn’t more collusion. For the most part, we rely on what we see in the search engine results pages (SERPs) to make inferences about this issue. Today, I want to briefly point out both sides of the issue.
Argument: Domain Name IS Critical to Search Engine Rankings
There’s no doubt that, if you were to search several random, short-tail keywords, you’d find that keyword rich domains appear toward to the top of search results quite often. While writing this article, I searched for shoes, cars, doors and rental cars. After taking a look at the results of each, many of the domain names in the top 5 or 10 of the search results are keyword rich. This in itself could be an argument that domain name may have a strong impact on search rankings.
When considering this argument from a logic standpoint, there is an argument that’s hard to dispute and that’s that a website’s domain name, more often than not, is a good indicator of its content. For example, you wouldn’t likely see news articles about your favorite celebrities on the a website www.car-rental-agency.com. Likewise, you would expect www.cars.com to contain information about cars.
Argument: Domain Name ISN’T Critical to Search Engine Rankings
Analyzing the results from above in a different light, there are domains appears in the top 10 of search results that contain absolutely no keywords from the search query. The argument could be made that the keyword rich domain names are correlated with high rankings for competitive search terms, but may not be the entire cause of those rankings.
Can a case be made, then, that it’s more often the SEO-conscious companies that utilize keyword rich domains and than that it’s their other SEO efforts that drive their rankings? Perhaps. If I were to build a site from scratch that was going to rely on organic traffic, I’d certainly choose a keyword rich domain name. But I’d also have a solid optimization strategy implemented, too.
Overall, I think it would be tough to argue that domain name has no importance or effect on search rankings. While you can certainly get by without a keyword rick domain, life would probably be a bit easier if you had one. If you’ve got an established site and are considering a changing to a more keyword-rich domain, you may want to consider focusing on other optimization techniques like creating better content and building quality links instead.
PageRank Sculpting- Maximizing the Impact of the Links You’ve Earned
Oct 15, 2008 SEO
When it comes to SEO, link building is probably the most time-consuming part of most campaigns. This is why it’s important to tweak every onsite factor possible to maximize the impact of the inbound links that you’ve acquired. One tactic we’ve used in the past here at THAT Agency is a tactic known as PageRank sculpting. This tactic is geared towards maximizing the impact of the inbound links that a website already has on search engine rankings.
What is PageRank Sculpting?
PageRank sculpting is a technique where, by adjusting onsite elements like website architecture and applying nofollow tags to chosen links, you can guide the search engines in assigning PageRank to the most important pages of your website. Ideally, you’ll want to guide PageRank to pages that you’ve optimized for search and that will convert well with your visitors.
In general, most websites have the strongest PageRank on the homepage. This is because PageRank is determined mostly by inbound links and most people will link to a website’s homepage more often than to an interior landing page. Since PageRank can be passed from one page to another when one page links to another page, how you design your website navigation will affect the way that Google assigns PageRank to internal pages of your website.
For example, internal pages linked to from the homepage will look, in the eyes of Google, as important pages because the most important page on the website, the homepage, links to them. Pages not linked to from the homepage but linked to from other pages on the site will still get PageRank, but not as much. Also, on most websites, the navigation area and footer appears on each and every page of the website. Usually, these areas content links. In the eyes of Google, any page that is linked to from many internal pages also appears to be important and thus, will likely receive more PageRank than internal pages with fewer internal links. These are only two examples of how your website architecture will affect your PageRank. The important thing to remember is that your most important pages should be linked to from your homepage and from the global navigation, if possible.
The NoFollow Attribute
On many sites, the global navigation links to the ‘About us’ or ‘Privacy Policy’ pages. From the user experience perspective, this is necessary. From a search engine perspective, this can be a bad thing. By linking to these types of pages, which aren’t typically optimized for search, you’re passing PageRank that could better be used on pages that are optimized for search.
This is where the nofollow attribute comes into play. It looks like this html:
a href=”http://www.yourwebsite.com/page.php” rel=”nofollow”
The nofollow attribute can be applied to any link and tells Google not to pass PageRank to the page on the other end. In effect, this means that a little more PageRank will be passed to each of the other links on the same page. By applying this attribute to global navigation links which link to non-important pages (form the perspective of search engines), you can force PageRank to be passed to the more important pages.
The three important things to remember about PageRank Sculpting are:
* Link to the important pages on your website from your homepage
* Link to the important pages on your website often
* If you have unimportant links (privacy policy, about us, etc.) in your global navigation, apply the nofollow attribute
Tags: pagerank
THAT SEO Tools
Oct 8, 2008 SEO
To keep track of all the SEO tools that I use while working on SEO projects, I’ve mostly used bookmarks. I’ve got one bookmark for a tool that analyzes inbound links, a bookmark that tests website speed, two bookmarks that check search engine rankings, a bookmark that checks keyword density and the list goes on. In all, I think I’ve got bookmarks to about 15 different websites, each of which have one or more tools useful to doing SEO analysis.
Of all the tools I typically use, some are more difficult to use than others. Some of the tools required me to login and register, some charge a yearly fee and some require nothing at all. It can be pretty time consuming jumping around this much when researching SEO projects.
This is why I’m glad to announce that THAT Agency has finally released a new set of SEO tools. Phase two of our launch of thatseo.com included the launch of an entire SEO resource section which includes over 15 SEO tools, SEO whitepapers and checklists and a comprehensive SEO glossary.
In our collection of SEO tools, we’re got a PageRank checker, AlexaRank checker, keyword position research tools, a keyword density checker, a link suggestion tool, a link analyzer and much more.
Whether you’re a beginner or experience SEO, I’m sure you’ll find these tools and resources valuable to helping you to improve your search engine visibility. Most importantly, you’ll be able to access all these resources in one place and you won’t have to register or pay to use them. Checkout these new tools and bookmark ‘em if you like what you see.
Tags: seo tools
Link Building Resources
Sep 6, 2008 SEO
Since link building is such a critical process, it’s no surprise that there is so much hoopla over what the ‘best’ and ‘worst’ strategies are. I’ve put together some link building resources below that can help SEOs of all skill levels. Every time I get stuck for link building ideas I take a look trough some of these lists and always get something new. There’s always a fresh approach and I’m sure that at least one of these resources will give you some fresh ideas.
* 131 (Legitimate) Link Building Strategies from Search Engine Watch
* 101 Link Building Tips to Market Your Website from SEOBook.com
* 17 Creative Link Building Ideas from Search Engine Journal
* 5 Rare & Valuable Link Building Tactics
* The Link Building Rap from YouTube.
When all else fails, research where you most successful competitors are getting links from and go after those links. It’s a tedious process but will pay off. Link building can be a tedious process but unfortunately, it’s also one of the most important processes in SEO. Happy hunting…
Tags: link building
Google Suggest
Aug 29, 2008 SEO
Very recently, Google released it newest feature, Google Suggest. This feature has been out there in a beta version, and a similar feature has also been available through your Google Toolbar. The idea behind Google Suggest is that when a user starts to typing, it will offer suggestions, in real time. It is fairly similar to Google’s existing “Did you mean?” feature, which offers variations on spellings for your query after you search. This difference though, is that Google Suggest works in real time.
Google Suggest differs from the existing Google Toolbar feature as it does not account for personal search history, as it does with Google Toolbar. Google Suggest simply offers up potentional keyword phrases, in real time, based on data about the overall popularity of various searches to help rank the refinements it offers.
We are anticipating a potentially drastic change in Search in general, as it pertains to how users locate information using Google and the information that is displayed within Google’s SERPs. The downfall to this new feature, as it relate to search engine optimization and search engine marketing, is that these more historically searched keyword phrases, will be displayed to users to select, rather than typing in a more “long tail” keyword phrase, causing both the reality for getting ranked for that keyword phrase and the cost-per-click for that keyword phrase to become and unrealistic burden to bear. The longtail keyword phrase that search engine specialists were utilizing to supplement the more competitive keyword phrases could potentially become obsolete as the user is basically directed as to what they should search for.
Doesn’t this seem to be a round-about way for Google to control (even more so than in the past) the sites that are going to appear within their SERPs?
Tags: google
Organic SEO Success Metrics
Aug 25, 2008 SEO
What makes an organic search marketing campaign a success? This is a question that continues to cause confusion. For each client, the answer seems to be a little different. The success of an organic search campaign needs to be measured in a way that supports the business goals of each client. Let’s look at a few important measurements of SEO progress and what these metrics do and don’t tell you.
Keyword ranking
What this metric tells you: The ranking a website holds for any one or many keywords. While this is a popular metric for businesses to look at, it doesn’t come close to painting the whole picture.
What this metric doesn’t tell you: How much traffic you’re actually generating from the rankings you have, whether the keywords are relevant, how much of that traffic is converting, etc…
Organic traffic
What this metric tells you: Measures the amount of traffic that comes to your website through organic search. It’s always nice to see organic traffic on the rise as it’s a sign that the website is increasing in search engine visibility.
What this metric doesn’t tell you: Which types of keywords are attracting traffic, whether they are targeted for your product or service, whether they are converting, etc…
Organic keywords
What this metric tells you: Keywords that are driving traffic to your website and how much traffic each term is actually driving. It’s good to keep an eye on this number to make sure that, if you rank highly for a given phrases, you’re actually getting that traffic to come to your website.
What this metric doesn’t tell you: Whether visitors coming to your website for a given set of keywords phrases are converting (making a purchase, filling out a form, etc.).
Organic conversions
What this metric tells you: Measurement of the number and value of conversions you’ve had because of organic search efforts.
What this metric doesn’t tell you: Whether these conversions pay off from the standpoint of your business model.
As you can see, no one metric paints the whole SEO picture. Outlining specific goals and metrics for measuring success is critical for making an organic SEO campaign work. When considering employing organic search marketing experts to help you achieve your search marketing goals, make sure you’re working with a company who takes time to understand your business needs and not just a company who understands search engines. An experienced search marketing company will be able to take this information and provide you with the feedback you need to determine the value of the service they provide.
Tags: metrics
Google Opens Up to Webmasters
Aug 7, 2008 SEO
Google offers several useful tools for webmasters. These tools have a variety of functions but generally help webmasters optimize websites so that the search engines can access and understand their content. One such tool is the keyword research tool. For a long time, Google has offered a keyword research tool intended to help website owners select keywords for pay per click campaigns. Unfortunately, the tool wasn’t very helpful because users weren’t given complete data.
As a result, webmasters have relied on third party tools like WordTracker and Trellian to help with keyword research. These tools provide webmasters with ‘estimated’ keyword search statistics and competition. The only down side is that the data collection method used by most of these tools leaves room for error.
Google has finally exposed search volume for keyword phrases
Recently, Google decided to improve its keyword research tool by adding numerical search estimates. This is an improvement that many of us have been waiting for a long time to see. The revised Google keyword tool gives users the ability to type in a search phrase and get back results of exact and similar phrases that are commonly searched. Each keyword phrase is accompanied by a numerical estimated monthly search volume and competition level. In the past, the actual search numbers were not revealed. Instead, a bar graph would indicate a low, medium or high search volume.
So if Google is giving away for free what we’ve been paying for, why still use third-party tools?
Don’t get me wrong, I still love to use WordTracker and probably will continue to do so, for now. It’s a powerful tool that does more than just return keyword search volume stats. But, I think I will add Google’s tool as another resource for determining search trends and verifying search volume on keyword phrases important to our projects.
Tags: keyword research
