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It is well-known that huge amounts of effort put into SEO can bring significant rewards. However, it should also be noted that there are a number of quick tasks that you can carry out to keep your overall SEO effort ticking over.
Writing for Search Engine Watch, Josh McCoy, has highlighted a number of these tasks – which can be done in under 15 minutes.
Here are just a few of those tasks in a summarised form:
- Review your Robots.txt file; assess your Meta Robots tagging – This can be done by checking /robots.txt. In the process of doing this you may find that images, folders and pages on your site are being withheld from search engines – preventing traffic from being driven to your site.
McCoy also recommends running “a site scan with a tool such as Screaming Frog to assess if there are any pages on your site you are excluding via a meta robots tag.”
- Review your site for duplicate title elements – Checks for duplicate title elements can be carried in Google Webmaster Tools.
McCoy adds: “Checking this Google property feature can quickly show you these issues and give insight into whether you need to spend the next 15 minutes writing unique title elements, creating redirects, or thinking about which of the multiple pages should include a certain keyword term.”
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We are increasingly moving from a search driven world to a social driven world. If your online marketing spend includes the vast proportion being spent on SEO and SEM, it is time for a rethink. Google’s development of Google Plus in an effort to ‘get social’ (against the behemoth in the social world that is Facebook) is based on a simple fact: that Facebook and social is beginning to dominate traffic on the Internet. And traffic = money. Not just for the big players such as Facebook and Google, but to those these giants serve. That’s you, and your business.
There is no getting round it. We have moved into a new era on the Internet and there are now companies (and not just those who at first glance would seem most suited to the social world) where anywhere from 30% upwards of traffic comes directly from Facebook activity, and not from the search engines. Some companies, according to research published in 2011, are seeing nearly all of their traffic coming from social sites such as Facebook, Stumbleupon, Twitter etc rather than the carefully crafted SERPs.
Whilst it is unlikely that the world is suddenly going to cease using the search engines, and hence the need for SEO will continue, the reality is that social media marketing is becoming THE traffic driver and cannot be ignored.
“We don’t do Twitter or Facebook because we have banned all access to social sites within our business” sounded fairly ludicrous 4 or 5 years ago. But now it sounds more like a death knell for any company taking such a stance.
Ignoring the fact that Facebook is introducing new forms of advertising and using social signals amongst friends and networks to bring advertisers closer to potential customers would be plain daft. Google would seem to be deeply concerned about the Facebook threat to the display advertising market Google has held almost absolute power over this last few years. After all, that’s part of Google’s core business, and any threat to that level of revenue has to be taken seriously.
We are seeing the big advertisers exchanging www.ourdomain.com on TV and print ads, packaging, websites etc with Follow Us on Twitter and Like us on Facebook. Short status updates are so much easier to manage than redesigns and website updates. There is a level of immediacy about social media which is missing from websites; a layer of personalisation and response that is difficult to ’see’ on your bog standard, old school website. Whilst adding +1, Tweet, Like and other social sharing buttons to content on a website can help to illustrate the popularity, authority and quality of content, it somehow lacks the impact of a status update with 100+ comments, or a tweet that has been ReTweeted multiple times. A website also lacks the reach of social updates and it is easy to see how a simple tweet or status update can go viral, (mainly because of the lack of overlap between every individual’s personal network), at a cost – HR and cash – that is verging on impossible with more ‘traditional’ internet marketing methods.
Google’s Search Plus Your World is a clear indication that social signals are receiving more importance in the algorithms. And hence businesses need to pay more attention to the social space.
Are you still focussed on SEO and SEM? Or has your business decided to put more budget into social? What are your social media marketing plans for 2012?
Traditionally social media rivals, Facebook, Myspace and Twitter have grouped together to create a new tool, aimed at drawing users’ attention to the “biased” results provided as part of Google’s Search Plus Your World, according to an article published by the Telegraph.
Entitled “Don’t be evil” (a nod to one of the search engine giant’s early mottos), the browser add-on is currently only compatible with Firefox.
The tool has been created to prevent Google searches returning content that’s been ‘ranked up’ by Google from its own social network, Google+.
A recent change has seen Google searches return Google+ content at the top of search results – a change previously announced as part of Search Plus Your World – at the expense of results from Twitter and Facebook.
Google has explained how the new update – which could affect SEO – worked.
A post published by Google read: “Starting today, if you search for a topic like (music) or (baseball), you might see prominent people who frequently discuss this topic on Google+ appearing on the right-hand side of the results page.”
The search engine giant has yet to respond to the launch of ‘Don’t be evil’ – which is currently only available in America. However, Google did previously say it had tried to strike a deal with both Twitter and Facebook to include their results in a prominent position – but wrangles over cost and privacy scuppered such a move.
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In recent times, search engines have made a number of advancements that allow them to look at and evaluate the content featured on websites in a much more comprehensive manner.
Gareth Owen, writing for Search Engine Watch, has attempted to pinpoint the ten elements of a “perfectly optimised page.”
Here are just a few of the elements highlighted by Owen:
Title Tags – Owens states that while title tags are important, it is vital not to “over optimize them.”
URL – The URL should ideally mention the keywords determined in your overall SEO strategy.
Content – Rather than featuring multiple keyword mentions, Owens states: “Content is now about semantically relevant supporting keywords.”
Using a recipe as an example, he adds: “In order to make béarnaise sauce there are specific ingredients that are 100 per cent relevant to the eventual outcome. One way of checking what keywords Google might consider as relevant is to do a ‘~keyword’ (or tilde) search.”
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Thanks to tools such as Blogger and WordPress it has become very easy for SMBs (small and medium-sized businesses) to set-up and create a blog to increase their exposure.
However, it is much more difficult to make that blog successful and draw in an audience.
Writing on the SEOmoz blog, Rand Fishkin, has produced a list of 21 tactics that can be used to increase the amount of traffic a blog receives.
Here are just two of those tactics in a summarised form:
Get involved in the communities where you audience is – Forums, social media pages and other blogs that are focused on a similar topic to those featured on your own blog should be targeted.
Fishkin states that when you’ve determined where your audience is, start getting involved.
Set up an account on a forum or social media site and use it to get involved in the conversation; however, only involve yourself when you feel you have something useful to say, otherwise your comments could come across as being spam-my – which isn’t something you want to be associated with.
SEO-friendly content – SEO is fantastic for getting your blog more views if done correctly. Make sure your content is rich in keywords as this will increase its visibility to search engines.
Fishkin also adds that: “SEO, when done right, should never interfere with great writing,” and that spammers and bad press should not deter you from putting an SEO strategy in place.
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Many businesses operate some kind of presence on a social media platform – such as Facebook or Twitter. In order to get the most out of having a social media presence, pages and accounts must be correctly optimised.
Writing for Search Engine Watch, Eli Goodman and BrightEdge Technologies have created a list featuring three social SEO practices that could improve the ranking of social media pages.
Here are those aforementioned practices in a summarised form:
Provide a link on your homepage: Although extremely obvious, six out of the top 20 most searched retail brands don’t have any kind of social media integrated into their homepage. Take advantage of your brand by linking the two together; Goodman pledges that it will have an “immediate impact.”
Mention the brand name in posts: Whether on Twitter, Facebook or Google+, be sure to mention your products and brand name in posts. URLs matching search terms having an SEO advantage – social posts are exactly the same.
The power of likes: Follows, Likes and +1’s are all having an increasing impact on rankings, with search engines seeing them as a sign of trust. By gaining a greater popularity on social networking sites, you could be improving your ranking at the same time.
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In the past it was possible to convince any search engine that the content produced by your website was of a good standard – providing that it was jam-packed with keywords.
However, recent improvements to algorithms – such as Google’s Panda update – mean that it is much harder to achieve a good ranking through rehashed content, according to Kevin Gibbons, writing for Search Engine Watch.
Gibbons has produced a ten-point list detailing the ways in which publishing rehashed content can impede your site’s success.
Here are just three of those points in a summarised form:
Point 1 – No social buzz: A number of recent studies have displayed that there is a “clear correlation between ranking and social signals,” Gibbons writes.
Therefore if your site is publishing content that is dull, boring and generally of no use, the chances of it being shared on social media sites are extremely low; this means that the likelihood of it ranking is also diminished – meaning that any implemented SEO strategies could be going to waste.
Point 2 – Google doesn’t like rehashed content: Google’s Webmaster Tools provides an insight into what has to be done to rank well. If you publish content that isn’t original or is auto-generated there is a good chance that your site will be punished with no ranking – without you even knowing about it.
Point 3 – Nobody will bother to comment: Comments can be start of a good conversation with your readers. They can help to create discussion which in turn can help gain a loyal fan base. Encouraging people to comment can be extremely difficult though; there’s also a fine line to toe between publishing content that is just controversial enough to get people talking and publishing material that is simply offensive.
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Although it is impossible to know exactly what is going to happen within the world of SEO, Sujan Patel, writing for Search Engine Journal, has stated that there are five facts that everyone in the industry should be aware of.
He states that these five facts will play a huge role in SEO for years to come and those that take note will succeed in the long run.
Here are just three of those five aforementioned facts in a summarised form:
Fact 1 – Content will remain vital: Despite the introduction of Google’s Panda algorithm earlier in the year – which saw SERPs (search engine results pages) cleared of the content produced by content farms, Patel argues that content remains king.
He finishes by stating that webmasters focused on providing quality content will succeed in the long run – as opposed to those that focus on cheap, spammy articles, which search engines are looking to ‘weed out’.
Fact 2 – SEO for various platforms will increase in importance: Smart phones and tablet devices are increasingly becoming a platform of choice for users when browsing the web; as a result it is important to ensure that your site is optimised for each of these various platforms.
Face 3 – Personalised searches will become widespread: Bing has already launched a personalised search function; this element of search is expected to become a common feature on other search engines in the future too – providing users with results based on their previous search queries.
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Yahoo! has announced an update to its image search results. An idea previously implemented by rival Google and search partner Bing, Yahoo! search now features an infinite scroll, according to an article published by Search Engine Results.
Users will also be able to share any image that catches their attention via both Facebook and Twitter, as part of the update.
Infinite scrolling has become a common feature in image searching but has not yet made the transition to standard search results – though it has been rumoured and could have a potentially massive impact on SEO.
Rather than featuring pages of results, infinite scrolling – as it suggests – simply allows users to scroll down the page.
Yahoo! has also revealed that other features in image search will remain as they are when the users is scrolling down the page.
Although a positive move by Yahoo!, the move has widely been considered as being implemented too late.
Bing have had the feature in place since 2009, whilst Google implemented the feature into their own image search function last year.
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Google has unveiled a number of changes made to search, whilst also announcing that it will be creating a monthly post for its Inside Search blog – to sum up any changes to algorithms made during the month – according to an article published by Search Engine Watch.
Ten changes in total have been made; here is a short, summarised breakdown of the most important of these changes:
- “Related query results refinements”: This change will mean that searches in which synonyms and other related terms conflict, with other words in the query, will see some results excluded.
- “More comprehensive indexing”: Google has improved its ability to locate long-tail documents; this means that ensuring that long-tail optimisation is implemented vitally important.
- “Image result freshness”: Now means that Google is more capable of finding the latest images – which can be important for breaking news stories.
- “Fresher and more complete blog search results”: This change will make the content published on blogs more likely to appear on an SERP (search engine results page) – thanks to an improved indexing system.
With many in SEO reliant on knowing the latest changes to search algorithms, Google’s move to sum up any alterations on a monthly basis – on the Inside Search blog – could prove to be extremely useful.
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