Web Page Mistakes

Using a consistent design throughout your website or blog adds to the usability of the site. It also adds accessibility and search engine optimization features. A site designed with the user in mind improves the overall experience when visiting the site which in turn results in:

1. Return visitors.

   A happy visitor is a returning customer (or reader if you have a blog).

2. Lower bounce rate.

   The visitors stay on the site longer and cruise around to other pages than the one they landed on via their search in the search engine (or however they got to your site in the first place).

3. Improved accessibility for everyone.

   You don’t have to have difficulties surfing the net to appreciate the usability features of also making a site accessible.

4. More incoming links (backlinks).

   One easy way to improve the on-site/on-page search engine optimization of your site is great usability. People will give you free natural incoming links:

   • Bookmark your site on social bookmarking sites.

     Although a lot of the social bookmarking sites use the nofollow attribute to stop the search engines following the outgoing link to your site it does drive traffic to your site which in turn can result in a bookmark on a site that does not use the nofollow attribute.

   • Spreading the word about your site on social networking sites.

     Some social networking sites also use the nofollow attribute in their links but like social bookmarking sites this can lead to traffic to your site and links on sites which do not use the nofollow attribute in their links.

   • Website/Blog Review or Mention.

     Someone may write a review or mention your site in one of their articles just because they found your site user friendly.

   • Word of Mouth Offline.

     The old word of mouth via offline conversations whether in casual conversation or at a networking event can result in any of the above online search engine optimization benefits.

Think big! The more usable your website or blog is, the more word will spread around about it.

So how do you improve the usability of your website or blog?

Design Conventions

There are established design conventions are in place. Why? Because they work. (smiles)

Part of your site being memorable is that it is different but if you want to buck design conventions will your visitors understand how to use your site easily?

Keep in mind that if you have optimized your site properly a visitor can enter your site on any page, usually the page that best fit their searched for phrase in their preferred search engine but not necessarily your home page. This is why consistancy between pages on the site is important. Typical elements should be on each page.

• Logo and tag line on each page.

  You might not have a tag line (you should though) but some kind of logo or typical head section of the page should be established and on each page. This identifies to the visitor who’s site they are visiting.

• Typical navigation.

  Depending on how large your site is you may need 2 navigation systems:

  1. The main navigation linking to the important pages within the site.
  2. The secondary navigation linking to categories or sections of the site.

  Location of the navigation should be consistent within the site. The usual locations are:

  • Across the top of the page. This can be used for your main navigation on larger sites or if you choose to use a dropdown menu the categories/sections could be included in the top navigation.
  • Down the left or right for the secondary navigation although if you have a smaller site one of these could be used as your main navigation location.
  • In the footer you can use this area to show links to things like policies, copyright notice, shipping information, return policies or your social networking profile links.

  The goal with your navigation system is to make it easy for the user to get to the section of the site they wish to get to easily and quickly.

• Search Function

  With larger sites particularly providing a search function adds usability to your site.

  The better placement of your search function the better. Two of the best places for a search function are:

  • In the head section (top) of the web page design preferrably on the right.
  • At the top of your side column.

Other things to include in your navigation to improve usability:

• An HTML site map.

  Lost visitors or those wanting a quick way to the information they want will look at your HTML site map (not to be confused with an XML Sitemap used for other things.)

• A custom 404 error page.

  Sometimes a user follows an incorrectly typed link to your site or within your site and sees a 404 error, meaning the page could not be found. You may have even removed the page or renamed it for some reason and forgot to use a 301 permanent redirect instruction in your .htaccess file. Providing a custom 404 error page helps the misguided user to a way to find what they arrived expecting to find.

Font

Keeping in mind that PCs and Macs have different sets of default fonts installed, pick a universal font (called font-family in your cascading stylesheet (CSS)) and use it consistantly through out the site and the same way. One obvious sign of a DIY (Do It Yourself) website is that the same font is not used throughout the site. This is a particular problem with content management systems and ecommerce software where the person editing the content uses the HTML editor as a word processor, forgetting there is a CSS file associated with the design or not understanding the styles will be applied once the page/changes are live on the site.

Font sizing (called font-size in your CSS file) is another area where inconsistancies occur. These are set in the CSS file associated with your design. If you don’t like set size, fix the style in the CSS file, not via the HTML editor you are using. You can also create additional styles in the stylesheet for special instances of highlighted text.

Graphics

On a website or blog there are usually 2 sets of graphics involved:

• Site Design Graphics

  Site design graphics give the overall feel of your site. If you are adding additional graphics (say buy now buttons or social connection buttons/icons) they need to fit the feel of the original design. Nothing screams “this site is maintained by someone other than the original person who designed the site” more than graphics that have a different style/feel being used after the original design was done. You can either hire the original designer to create additional graphics to match the original theme or search for someone that does the same style of graphics so they don’t stick out as “add-on” graphics.

  Keeping with the original colour scheme is also important. If the design was created by a professional graphics person a colour scheme was planned. If you built the site yourself use one of the colour scheme sites to find coordinating colours.

  Bottom line is: Everything should match to look professional whether you did it yourself or purchased the theme.

• Site Content Graphics

  Have you ever noticed how nice a site looks when all their product images are all the same size? Doesn’t it make the site look nice and tidy?

  Making all your content images look tidy can be a little time consuming and stressful for the DIY webmaster but it is worth it. The user “learns” how far to move the mouse to activate the zoom feature of the next image in a category page for example.

  For consistant site content images you are going to decide on the “standard” size you want to use for the entire site then resize/edit the images to be included in a graphics program, not by using coding. When you manipulate image sizes via coding the browser still downloads the original image as it was uploaded to the web server and just changes the dimensions visually in the page. Downloading large images slows down the rendering of your pages. The browser stops as the image is downloaded making it difficult for users to visit other pages on the site when you have a lot of images.

• Provide alternative text for images.

  Alternative text (alt text) appears when the user decides to surf the net with images turned off to save on their internet usage costs. Alternative text is also read out to those who are blind or have poor vision and use assistive technology to read web pages to them. The search engines notice your image alt text also.

  To be useful, the alt text should describe what is contained in the image.

Links

Links are the way people get around the web and move around within your site. Making your links easy to find and use leads to better usability, accessibility and internal linking (search engine optimization).

• Make your links findable.

  Convention says unclicked links (links the visitor hasn’t visited yet) should be underlined. You will notice on this blog our links are underlined and bolded so they stand out. By default, unstyled unvisited links will be blue and underlined. If yours are not then the defaults have to altered via the CSS file associated with your design. a:link is what you are looking for in the CSS file if you want to fix this.

  Visited links by default change to a purple colour. If yours don’t then the designer has changed the visited state of links using a:visited setting(s) in your stylesheet.

  Whether the default link colours go with your theme or not, make the linked text stand out. This would include not underlining text that is not a link. Very confusing for the visitor and annoying when clicking the text and it doesn’t take you anywhere.

• Make the linked text descriptive.

  Click here is the most useless, unusable, inaccessible and unsearch engine friendly thing people do on websites.

  Make the linked text descriptive. Link a phrase within a sentence so the reader understands why the text is linked through the surronding text. This not only makes the link user friendly, it adds accessiblity and search engine optimization to the link.

• Utilize the link title attribute.

  A link can have a title attribute within the coding of the link. Using the title attribute of your links adds usability, accessibility and search engine optimization to the link. When the user puts their mouse over the link a tip is displayed for those who can see the link, is read out to those who use assistive technology and is read by the search bots. All three know what to expect at the linked page.

Ultimately you want to make it easy to navigate around your website or blog.

Make the Content Scanable

People don’t read content from top to bottom on the web like they do when reading a book. When you read a magazine do you read every single article top to bottom? Not usually, you scan the article to see if you want to read the whole thing. Well, people on the web do the same thing. They scan the page looking for key information they are looking for.

• Add white space to breakup the content and define areas of the pages.

  Information all squished together is hard to read and comprehend. By including white space (empty spacing areas) to the content of your page it makes it easier to read and scan.

• Use headings and sub-headings to define areas of the page or sections of the content.

  Using headings and sub-headings help define the areas and sections of the page. It also creates some white space when the heading tags are formatted properly.

  There are 6 heading tags available (H1 through H6) within the HTML specification. Use them as intended and in the right heading hierarchy order. This adds accessibility and search engine optimization to the page as well as making the structure of the page clear to the visitor.

• Consistant Text Alignment

  It is really hard to read a page where the text on the page uses different alignment.

  Keep the text alignment of the page consistant, preferablly left aligned for easier reading. Centered and justified text is hard to read.

  A centered main heading would be ok but having a mash of centered headings and non centered headings makes it hard to figure out how the page is structured.

Better Usability for Better ROI

Provding better usability on your website or blog will improve your return on investment (ROI). The more happy visitors you have the more social proof you will get via social bookmarking, social networking sites and general word of mouth endorsements.

See your profits increase, newsletter signups grow, your readership grow or what ever goals you have set for the site be accomplished by reviewing and improving the usability of your site.

Continuing with our search engine optimization articles, today we are going to learn about the meta description tag. In this article we will discuss:

• What is a Meta Description Tag?
• How to Create a Meta Description Tag
• Contents of the Meta Description Tag

What is a Meta Description Tag?

The meta description tag is a member of the meta elements of your web page. We have already discussed the meta keywords tag and title tag (which isn’t really a meta tag but some lump this in when discussing meta tags).

The meta description is hidden from your visitors when they view your page but is accessible by the bots (also known as web crawlers, search engine robots and search engine spiders) that roam the web. The contents of your description meta tag may be displayed in the search results of the search engines or in a site description in a directory or information site where they scan your description meta tag. Some CMS (content management systems) and ecommerce software software may also use this information when displaying a summary page like an articles list or category list.

How to Create a Meta Description Tag

The description meta tag contains a name attribute and a contents attribute. Below is what a description tag looks like when inserted into a page using XHTML:

<meta name="description" content="Your meta description goes here " />

This tag goes between the head tags:

<head>
</head>

I like to keep all my meta tags that change per page together in the head section just before the opening body tag. This is so all the typical other stuff in the head of the coding can be inserted with an include or if building a DWT (dynamic web template) the editable section in the head section is all together and one set of editable region tags is required. Saves on a bit of coding.

<title>Title of the document</title>
<meta name="description" content="Your meta description goes here " />
<meta name="keywords" content="Your meta keywords go here " />
<body>

Contents of the Meta Description Tag

The contents of the meta description tag should describe what the page is about.

Some search engines may use the contents of the meta description in their results when your page comes up for a search. There no way to force the search engines to display what you want as the description. All you can to is write the best description for the page and hope that the search engines think that is better than what they came up with.

Examples of what the search engines say about how they display the description for your page when it comes up in a search result:

From Google:

Google’s creation of sites’ titles and descriptions (or “snippets”) is completely automated and takes into account both the content of a page as well as references to it that appear on the web.

We use a number of different sources for this information, including descriptive information in the META tag for each page. Where this information isn’t available, we may use publicly available information from DMOZ. While accurate meta descriptions can improve clickthrough, they won’t impact your ranking within search results. We frequently prefer to display meta descriptions of pages (when available) because it gives users a clear idea of the URL’s content. This directs them to good results faster and reduces the click-and-backtrack behavior that frustrates visitors and inflates web traffic metrics.

While we’re unable to manually change titles or snippets for individual sites, we’re always working to make them as relevant as possible. You can help improve the quality of the snippets displayed for your pages by providing informative meta descriptions for each page.

Changing a site title and description – Webmaster Tools Help – Google (there is a video and more information on this page.)

And from Bing:

While search engines reserve the right to use a variety of inputs for filling out site description snippets in their SERPs, webmasters who provide unique, concise, compelling, and keyword-laden descriptions in their tag’s description attribute help guide the development of their websites’ SERP captions.

When creating the description text, remember the following:

• Create unique descriptions for each page, using keywords specific to that page
• Keep the description text between 25 and 150 characters in length
• Do not copy title tag text content as a description; this is a wasted opportunity to develop more keywords and adds no value
• Make the description text unique on every page
• Don’t use any of the following special characters in description text: ‘”<>{}[]()

Bing Heads up on <head> tag optimization (SEM 101) – Webmaster Center blog – Site Blogs – Bing Community

If you do not want the DMOZ description of your page used by the search engines (that honour this next line) then add the following meta tag to the head of your page(s): (XHTML version shown)

<meta name="robots" content="NOODP" />

Each Meta Description Needs to Be Different

For each and every page the meta description needs to be different. When you something like a ecommerce site with different similar products similar meta descriptions (just changing the product name for example) doesn’t cut it.

Meta Description is to Describe the Page Contents

The text you put in the meta description needs to describe what the visitor will find on the page when they click your link in the search results.

Make the Meta Description Enticing

The more enticing you make your meta description, the better your click through rate will be from the search results, if the search engines use your meta description. Also consider the “other” bots that read your meta description for inclusion into their directory or resource listing page. There is also the category listing or article listing your CMS or ecommerce site will display if they use the meta description tag from the page.

Include Keywords in Your Meta Description

Use a keyword phrase in your meta description. The keyword(s) will be bolded in the search results if the search engines use your meta description instead of their own. But don’t list a bunch of keywords. That just looks spammy and really is of no help to the person who did the search when they see you in the search results.

How Long Can My Meta Description Be?

Meta description length is a common question on the web. Everyone has their own opinion on how long the meta description contents can be. The only publically states answer to this question (at the time of this writing) I could find is from Bing:

Keep the description text between 25 and 150 characters in length

Bing Heads up on <head> tag optimization (SEM 101) – Webmaster Center blog – Site Blogs – Bing Community

Now if you search around you will find that SEOmoz says:

Meta descriptions can be any length but search engines generally truncate snippets longer than 160 characters, For this reason it is best to keep meta descriptions between 150-160 characters.

Meta Description

The only real way to see how many characters your meta description should be is to do a test. The following images show the meta description length in different search engine results:

This also shows how the different search engines will display the search result listing for SEOmoz when meta description length is the search phrase plus that the keywords are bolded in the results.

Add a Meta Description to Your Pages

The specifics on how to add a meta description to your pages will depend on how your pages are constructed.

For a static (regular) web page you would open the web page file, add the meta description tag, save the file, close it then upload to your web server.

With a content management system, blogging software and ecommerce site software you will have to consult the owner’s manual. They quite possibly have a field for you to fill in within your control panel. It is also possible a plugin will be needed to add this capability.

Which ever method you use to add a meta description to your pages make sure it is unique for each page and descriptive of what the visitor will find on the page.

Remeber that the search engines might decide that they know better as to what to put for the description in your search result based on the search conducted. Don’t get upset, especially if you are on the 1st page. All you can do is have a look at what you have written and maybe tweak it but there are still no guarantees.

As part of your link building strategy you may have considered buying links on sites or exchanging links with other sites. After all links are what make the web work, right? That is how people find you when they did not find you through a search in their favourite search engine. Before you buy or exchange that link you should be aware of how it could affect your standings in the search results and what rotten things some people do to make the link on their site worthless to you (but gladly took your money or got that nice incoming link from you).

Incoming links (a.k.a. backlinks) are good if they are from quality sites that are related to the subject of your website or blog. This whole thing can snowball if you notice someone linked to you that was a respected authority on your subject. It can turn into a business partnership, a friendship and/or further mentions by you and the other site about each other’s content. Win, win situation.

Now put you newcomer to your site hat on. If they see irrelevant links to other sites from yours they are not going to be too impressed. One way to build quality content is to find related articles to the subject of your content and include them as references to backup what you have said or for further information. No one is going to want to link to a site that doesn’t take care when including outgoing links to other sites. This is organic link building. Why ruin it by including links to other sites just for the link exchange or a few dollars?

Be Aware of the Webmaster Guidelines

First you have to be aware of what the search engine guidelines are regarding buying links and link exchanges.

Link Building Schemes

There are all kinds of link building schemes around. Google lists some of these schemes that they consider inappropriate:

…some webmasters engage in link exchange schemes and build partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. This is in violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and can negatively impact your site’s ranking in search results. Examples of link schemes can include:

• Links intended to manipulate PageRank
• Links to web spammers or bad neighborhoods on the web
• Excessive reciprocal links or excessive link exchanging (“Link to me and I’ll link to you.”)
• Buying or selling links that pass PageRank

Link schemes – Google Webmaster Tools Help

From Bing:

Bing’s position on link building is straightforward – we are less concerned about the link building techniques used than we are about the intentions behind the effort. That said, techniques used are often quite revealing of intent….

Examples of potentially conspiratorial hocus-pocus that might be perceived as unnatural and warrant a closer review by search engine staff include but are not limited to:

• The number of inbound links suddenly increases by orders of magnitude in a short period of time
• Many inbound links coming from irrelevant blog comments and/or from unrelated sites
• Using hidden links in your pages
• Receiving inbound links from paid link farms, link exchanges, or known “bad neighborhoods” on the Web
• Linking out to known web spam sites

Bing Link building for smart webmasters (no dummies here) (SEM 101) – Webmaster Center blog – Site Blogs – Bing Community

Paid Links

Bing’s take on paid links is included in the quote above. Here is Google’s policy on paid links:

However, some SEOs and webmasters engage in the practice of buying and selling links that pass PageRank, disregarding the quality of the links, the sources, and the long-term impact it will have on their sites. Buying or selling links that pass PageRank is in violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and can negatively impact a site’s ranking in search results.

Not all paid links violate our guidelines. Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results. Links purchased for advertising should be designated as such.

Paid links – Webmaster Tools Help

So now you know where you stand with the major search engines in regards to exchanging and buying links. Read the full articles quoted so you get all the information.

If you decide to proceed with link exchanges or buying links there are some other thinks you should know before doing so. There are some unscrupulous people out there and if you are a novice to this you need a checklist of what to look for.

What to Look For When Exchanging or Buying Links

Remember not all link exhanges or bought links are bad. You just have to check them out before committing.

• Actually Check Out the Page Where Your Link is Going to Be On

  When you receive an offer of buying a link or exchanging a link, ask what page yours will be on and go look at it. Also checkout the site in general. Is this a site you want to be associated with?

• Can People and the Search Bots Actually Find the Page?

  When looking at an offer for link exchange or purchase go to the site as new visitor (the offer sometimes tells you which page your link is going to be on). If you were a visitor to the site could you easily stumble upon the page or otherwise find it without knowing where it was? Can the search engine bots find it?

  Reviewing some of the link requests our clients have received, there is no way an average visitor would find the page offered.

• Form Letter Link Requests

  Link builders search the net looking for links for their clients. That’s fine. Some people don’t have time to do this and decide to hire someone to do it for them. The thing is you have to read the link request email to determine if they actually looked at your site or just rifled your email address off your site. After you have received a few of these you will be able to determine the form letters from legitimate link requests.

• Nofollow Attribute or Meta Tag

  The nofollow attribute is used by the search engines as an indication they should not follow the link provided. You can view the source coding of the page where your link will be placed or use a nofollow plugin if you use Firefox to see these. Not all nofollow links are bad. If the audience of the page fits your target audience then they could still drive traffic to your site.

  Another way the search engines can be told not to follow the links on the page is with a meta tag in the head of the web page coding. Like the nofollow attribute in links, if you view the source code of the web page you can see it in the head section (between the<head> and </head> tags) of the web page coding.

• Type of Page Link Will Be On

  Will the link be on a page full of links or resources type page?

  Is the page topic specific? Say your site is sewing related. Is it going to be on a page with only sewing related links?

  Does the page allow for a description or some kind of blurb on it about your site with your link within the content of the description?

• Page Blocked From the Search Engine Bots?

  As a novice website owner you might not even know what a robots.txt file is. The robots.txt file is a plain text file on the web server that contains directions to the search engine bots about what sections of the site to stay out of. Some people put the link pages in the list. Not all search bots follow these directions but it is something to be aware of. The website owner might have actually attempted to do this but did it wrong.

  Viewing the source code of the page and looking for the robots meta tag in the head section is another way to block the page from the search engines. Look for <meta name="robots" content="noindex, nofollow"> This tells the search engine bot not to include this page in their index (in this particular example the nofollow is included also).

• Do You Trust the Person?

  Are you prepared to check that your link is actually placed where they said it would be? Some people use a delay tactic where you put their link on your site but they just never seem to put yours on theirs. In the meantime they have an incoming link to their site.

• How Long is the Link Going to Be For?

  Some link building offers are for a specific amount of time. Once that time has expired you loose the incoming link.

  If it was supposed to be permanent, are you going to check regularly that your link is still there? Only fair if you are providing a permanent link the person you bought or exchanged links with does too, right?

• Does the Link Go Directly to Your Site?

  When you put your mouse over a link, the url of the page you will be taken to will appear in the bottom right of your browser window if the website owner has not done some creative scripting to fox you. This is an old technique. Webmasters use to use a script to place a message instead of the url in the bottom status bar of the browser. What you have to do is actually click the link to see where it takes you.

• Page Rank

  Some will boast that your link will be on a PR whatever site or page. If you were promised a specific PR page, make sure it is.

  PageRank isn’t really something that important to be worried about. It’s nice but in the background the PageRank of the site and pages within it are constantly changing. The tools to check PageRank are not that accurate either. For example, the Google Toolbar PR bar is out dated as soon as it is updated.

  Look at the future potential of the page where your link will be. Does it have good content that eventually will earn a better PageRank? Does the site look like a stable site that is in this for the long haul and they are going to work on getting a better PageRank some day?

• Cloaking

  Cloaking is where the search engines see one thing and real visitors see another. You can check for cloaking by looking up the page in the search results. Does the description match what you see on the page? View the source code and check the meta tags also.

• Are They Offering to Put Your Link on a Different Page Than What You are Linking To?

  There are link schemes where you are offered an exchange where you link to a page but the link to your site will be on a different site all together. They are offering this to try and hide they are purposely link building (instead of organic link building). Do you want to get involved with this type of scheme?

• Can You Link to a Page on Your Site Other Than Your Home Page?

  Each page on your site needs incoming links. When link building you need to spread out the incoming links so people see the other pages on the site. If you worry about PageRank, it is quite possible for an inner page of your site to have a higher PageRank than your home page because of the quality and quantity of incoming linkds to it.

  Maybe you have a special page you want to building links for. Say, your specials page. The quickest way to get people to that page is to have a direct link pointing to it.

• Build Links Slow and Steady

  There are link building specials all of over the place. Just do a search for link building to see them. If you are going to use one of these services make sure the links are going to be built over an extended amount of time. If you read this article from top to bottom you would have already seen that Bing states a signal of unnatural link building is a bunch on new incoming links all of a sudden.

• When Was the Page Last Cached by the Search Engines?

  Using the Google toolbar you can check the last time Google cached the web page your link will be on. If it has been a long time that means the site owner is not keeping the content of the site fresh which resulted in the search bots saving their energy and not visiting very often.

• Is Your Link Going to Stay on the Page?

  What this question is about is: Are they adding new links to top of the page as they add them and is your link going to get bumped off to the next page? This happens on classified and some directory sites.

Before You Buy or Exchange That Link Think About It

As previously stated, exchanging and buying links (for the purpose of advertising) is not a bad thing. You just have to be careful of the deal. Will this deal really benefit your site?

More Link Building Articles:

• Creating Win-Win Link Building Scenarios
• Buying Links is Shallow, Short-Term Thinking. Buying Blogs? Now that’s a Strategy.

Those new to search engine optimization (SEO) ask lots of questions about the HTML title tag in their web pages and blog posts like:

• Where is the title tag in my web page coding?
• How is the title tag used?
• How should I construct my title tags?
• My title in the search results is different than what I have in my title tag!

We are going to answer all of these today. Click the links above to skip to the specific question you came looking for the answer to or read the whole article.

Where is the Title Tag in My Web Page Coding?

The title set of tags are located in the head section of your web page coding. The head section of your web page coding is defined with the opening and closing head tags as shown below:

<head>
</head>

The title set of tags look like:

<title>Title Tag Contents</title>

The above are basic examples of where to find your head section and title tags. Depending on how your site is built and run this section could be in a separate file which is included when the page is assembled and presented to the visitor. e.g. The head section of a site built using WordPress is in the header.php file of your theme. An ecommerce site might have this section in the main template that is used for the general layout of your web pages.

How is the Title Tags Used?

The contents of the title tags are used different ways:

• The contents of your title tags are shown in the browser’s top bar. Look above. You will see the title of this article in the top bar of your browser (or in the tab if you are using tabbed browsing).
• When you or someone else bookmarks your web page the title tag contents are used as the link to your article.
• If a visitor still uses their browser’s own Favorites or Bookmarks, once they add your page to their Favorites the title of your page will be listed.
• The search engines may use your chosen title tag for the page when displaying your page in the search results. Read on to find out why I said may.

How Should I Construct My Title Tags?

There are a few points to keep in mind when creating your title tags:

• Unique Title Tags for Each Page

  Each page needs an unique set of title tags. This is something that some content management systems and ecommomerce software do not do. If the software running your site is not allowing you to have unique title tags for each page, complain or get one that does. WordPress, for example, by default uses the post/page title you fill in at the top of the editing screen.

• Limit the Number of Characters Used in Your Title Tags

  You want your whole title to show when someone bookmarks your page in their browser Favorites, visits your site, bookmarks your page on social bookmarking sites and when the search engines show your page in the search results, don’t you? Well there is a limit to the number of characters your title tag can be to accommodate all these different senarios.

  The W3C (World Wide Consortium) which develops the standards for the web recommends you keep your title tag contents to 64 characters so the title will be displayed in browser Favorites and the top browser bar.

  The general consensus for your title to display properly (without it be truncated) in Google is 66-70 characters. You can see in the image below our Most Common Screen Resolution artile title doesn’t quite fit with Google’s layout to accommodate their page preview over on the right. Google has truncated the title based on the search I did to get the screenshot (web page mistakes).

  

  If I had searched for common screen resolutions the title fits.

  

  The reason for these 2 different results will be discussed later in this article.

• Use Proper Title Type Case in Your Title Tags

  Ok, this is a user experience thing more than a SEO thing. Use capitals in your title tag just as you would use capitals in the title of a paper you wrote in school. It looks more natural for the reader. All caps is definately a no no. All caps is considered yelling on the net.

• Communicate What the Page Contains in the Title Tags

  Create a title tag that communicates what the page is about. Something that when the user bookmarks the page in their Favorites they will know by looking at the title what the page is about would be a good guideline. Will the user know what the page is about without reading the search description or social bookmarking description?

• Use Some Keywords in the Title Tags

  Use some keywords the person searching for the information on your page would put in the search engine box. Notice I said some. 2 or 3 keyword phrases would be fine. A title tag full of a bunch of keywords just looks spammy and doesn’t really convey to the person looking through the search results what the page is about.

• Make the Title Tag Contents Attention Getting

  Communicate what the page is about but also make the title tag attention getting. If you were searching for the information on the page would your chosen title tag make you want to click the link in the search results, on a social bookmarking site or if someone tweeted your link?

• Special Characters and Title Tags

  Can you afford to use up your character limits with special characters? If something in the title is copyrighted, trademarked or registered then maybe you could add the appropriate symbol to the title tag contents but other symbols are really a waste of valuable character space.

• No Boring Title Tags!

  Have you ever searched for something and in the results you see Home, About or Contact used at the search result link? That isn’t really very helpful. Think back to the person who bookmarks pages in the browser still. If they have a bunch of Pricing titles bookmarked, how are they going to know which one is you?

  A boring title is also a missed opportunity to incorporate some kind of title which includes a keyword or two that you could have been found for.

Why Are My Titles Not Used in the Search Results?

This really is a mystery to those new to search engine optimization. They made sure the title tag on each page is different, thought they constructed the perfect title tag contents and it’s not showing up in the search results!

The search engines decide what title to put in their search results for your page based on what the user searched for.

If you read this article from top to bottom this was demonstrated above under how the title tag is used.

Here they are again:

A search for web page mistakes had this result in Google:

A search for most common resolutions had this result in Google:

The title of the same article is different based on what is searched for.

Google specifically addresses this in their Changing a site title and description – Webmaster Tools Help article. There is a video on that page you can watch.

Bing also addresses the title tag in their Anatomy of a Bing caption.

Compose Better Title Tags for Better Search Results Placement

Compose your title tag contents so they are catchy, describe what the page is about, do not contain too many keywords or phrases and fit within the search results alloted space. Don’t get too upset if you composed the perfect title tags and they are not being used as intended in the actual search results. The title tag contents help the search engines (along with other search engine optimization techniques) determine what the page is about. If you are showing in the first 10 results for your chosen keyword phrase, be happy instead of upset that the search engines have a mind of their own.

With the advent of DYI (Do It Yourself) websites and blogs those that are not web designers or web developers do not know how to tweak their sites (or just can’t due to the set-up of the DYI software they are using) without using plugins. This is good for plugin developers but bad for your DYI website/blog. One really needs to look at how many plugins they are using to run their site, which are repeating tasks and whether you really need all those plugins to run an effective site.

Take Stock of the Plugins Your Site is Using

Take stock of what plugins your website or blog is using noting what they actually do for the site.

• Are there plugins you are using that repeat tasks/benefits?
• Are some plugins disabled and just taking up space on your web server?
• Are the plugins on your web server making your site subject to hacks because they are out dated?
• Are the plugins you are using providing benefits to your target audience?
• Are the plugins you are using causing load problems at your web hosting?

Plugins Repeating Tasks/Benefits

Which of the plugins you are using repeat tasks? One common mistake people make is running a bunch of SEO (search engine optimization) plugins. You need to pick one! They are all fighting each other and adding to the download speed of your site (besides confusing the heck out of you which one is doing what). Ideally, you should not need any if the theme of your blog or website has been built and programmed properly from the get go.

Disabled Plugins

Once you have sorted out which plugins you absolutely need remove the disabled plugins. They are just taking up space on your web server. You need that space for more important stuff like great content (pictures, videos, etc. if that is what your target audience wants to see). Disabled plugins can also be a source for your website or blog to be hacked as you would not be monitoring their updates.

Did you know that even if a WordPress plugin is disabled it can still affect your site’s load time?

Yes, it’s true! Every time someone opens your site, the database is checked to see which plugins need to be loaded, including the disabled ones. Your WordPress installation queries the database to see which plugins are active and which ones load on the post/page that your visitor has clicked on. It may only take a nano-second, but it does affect load time for each and every plugin you have.

Are Your WordPress Plugins Making Your Site Slow And Vulnerable? –

Keep Plugins Up to Date

Some times plugins can’t be avoided. It is really important to keep plugins up to date if you are going to use them. If it is a registered plugin with WordPress, in your dashboard you will get a notice of updated plugins (active and non active). You can also follow the RSS feed for the plugin site in your RSS feed reader to monitor other plugin updates.

Does the Plugin Benefit Your Readers?

The latest greatest technique or what you think is cool may not be of any benefit to your targetted readers. Maybe they don’t care every image in your shopping cart has a zoom feature. Maybe they would rather phone you or email you instead of usng online chat. Just like choosing the right social network site to participate on, it all boils down to what the people you are trying to attract to your site want to see. If what you are doing is working or you know for sure that a plugin adds to your visitor’s experience then go for it. But if you are posting stuff people are not interested in (e.g. videos and slideshows that take too long to download or watch) then it’s time to rethink your strategy. Not saying to avoid all latest techniques and features. Just saying be selective about what is going to work for your site.

Web Hosting Problems Due to Too Many Plugins

If your site or blog is loading slowly then one of the problems could be that your share of the web server at your web hosting is over loaded. Each request sent to the web server to make your site or blog run consumes memory and other web server power. When multiple plugins are installed each adds it’s own links in the head section of your pages to scripts on your web space and it’s own CSS file too sometimes. If you are using a specific feature just on one page, the plugins generally still add their required “stuff” to the head section of all your pages. This sends unecessary requests to the web server when that particular feature is not used on the page.

Cross Posting to Social Networking Sites

Do you really want to bore your followers by posting the same automated updates from your site? Yes, some of your social networking locations could have different followers but also you could have a lot of the same followers on all your social networking sites. Social networking is about being social, not spamming each location with automated updates (that’s a whole other post). Plus, just you plugging your articles is not a valuable as enticing followers to follow you on each social network because information posted on each is different. A bunch of different followers bookmarking your site or blog articles is better social proof.

How Do I Avoid Using Plugins?

You can avoid having to use plugins by taking a serious look at the software and theme that will be used to run your site or blog.

• Does it include all the on-page SEO HTML benefits you need?
• Does it use search engine friendly construction?
• Can the programming be altered without using a plugin?

These are all things to look at before selecting the platform and theme to use for your site.

Google Analytics script for example can be added to the footer of your theme. This way you require one less plugin and it is added to each of your pages that use this footer. That’s the point right? To collect data about each page on your site or blog.

Adsense can be added to the sidebar (or any template or include in the theme) without a plugin.

If you have a spammer problem there are a few things that you can do instead of installing something like Akismet (which can spam can legit comments through false positive findings). In the .htaccess file you can deny access from certain IP addresses or ranges (this could ban legit visitors though) or if you are using WordPress you can blacklist certain words, IPs, emails and/or domain names.

Blogging software, content management systems and ecommerce software already (generally) require more processing on the web server and by the user’s browser due to their programming compared to a static HTML site. What is more important to you? Keeping up with the Jones by using all those plugins just because every one else is doing it or creating a site people want to visit because it loads fast, is not cluttered, provides what they want to see and doesn’t stall because of some 3rd party plugin or feature being unavailable. What ROI (return on investment) do you want from the site/blog?

There are different things you can do for the on-page SEO (search engine optimization) of your web pages and blog posts. Today we are going to cover how you can improve your on-page SEO through proper use of the back ground coding (HTML coding) used to create your pages. Optimization of the HTML coding is one of many on-page search engine optimization tasks you can look at when deciding on a content management system, an ecommerce software package and/or when selecting a theme/template for your site. It is also something you can add to your checklist when hiring a web designer.

When examining the search engine friendliness of a design or software package that you have not built or worked with yourself yet (e.g. Contemplating hiring a web designer or purchasing a theme/template) you will need to view the source code of the web pages.

We will look at the HTML coding of a well optimized page from the top down next.

DOCTYPE Declaration

The DOCTYPE declaration should be the first line of the web page background coding. This line defines what standard the web page is coded to. The browser uses this information to understand how the web page is constructed and to interpret the coding correctly. You can see if the designer has followed the standard specified in the DOCTYPE declaration by testing the page with the W3C HTML Validator.

Some would say that code validation has no effect on your search engine optimization and yes, even Matt Cutts, Google Spam Department says this too but consider:

1. Code validation helps troubleshoot cross-browser compatibility rendering issues. It doesn’t solve all cross-browser compatibility issues but it eliminates your coding as the cause.
2. With cross-browser compatibility in mind, if visitors to your page(s) cannot see them because your site uses browser specific coding or just doesn’t render well in their chosen browser you are not going to get organic incoming links happening. They will just leave without seeing what great content you worked so hard to compose.
3. Web page load time also influences visitor happiness. If your web page download speed is slow due to excessive coding and the time it takes the browser to interpret your coding the visitors are going to leave. You once again have missed out on an opportunity to earn organic incoming links. Also, web page speed is one of the many factors Google uses when evaluating your pages.

There is also the issue of website maintenance which isn’t SEO related specifically but if it is a chore to update your site then it does become an issue because you are not updating your content (which the search bots love).

Character Encoding

Right after the opening <head> tag should be a line defining the character encoding for the site. This is an important line of coding as it tells the browser what character set your website uses. If it is not there or is further down in the head section of your page the browser has to guess which character set you are using. If it guesses wrong, it will rerender the page once it figures things out. An annoying thing which will send visitors away.

Title Tag

The content between the <title> and </title> set of tags will show in the topmost bar of the visitor’s browser window. It is also used when they bookmark your page in their browser and on bookmarking sites. The search engines will use the contents of the title tag in your search results also, if it suits the user’s search.

Each page needs a unique set of title tags. The contents of this tag need to describe the contents of the page while being catchy and using the keywords/phrase you are targeting for the page.

Some things to look for when deciding on a content management system or ecommerce software package are:

• You can have unique titles for each page.
• You can edit the title tag contents to whatever you want. Some systems you can’t.
• You don’t have to have the name of your site first in the title of the page. Some systems won’t let you change this. If they won’t then this is an issue because all your results in the search results will start the same way, possibly cutting off the important part of the title, what describes the contents of the page.

Meta Description

Like title tags, unique meta descriptions for each page are important. These could be used in your search results or picked up by a bot collecting resources for another site, like a directory. Make your meta description a mini ad describing what the visitor will find on the page.

Meta Keywords

Now you may have seen that the major search engines are not using the meta keywords tag in their evaluation of your pages but it doesn’t hurt to include this meta tag as things could change in the future plus your seach function on the site could use them when producing internal search results for your visitors.

One of the reasons the major search engines quit using the meta keywords tag in their evaluation was the people were misusing this tag to manipulate the search results. When used, it should contain keywords/phrases used on the actual page and not be stuffed with unrelated keywords or a zillion of them.

Heck, you have to do keyword research anyways for the content of the page, so why not include the keyword meta tag to help keep yourself focused on the theme of the page if nothing else.

Link and Script Tags

One thing with the advent of web design is the use of plugins and scripts to make web pages fancier. This is all well and good if it provides a great experience for your visitors.

A few things to look at for link and script tags:

• Each line that links to something in the head section of your web page is called a request. The line requests (fetches) the function/feature associated with it. Each request adds to the download time of the page.
• The link and script tags in the head of your page adds to the overhead of the page. i.e. makes the web page coding larger and more complicated for the browsers to interpret.
• If the link line is fetching something from another site and the site is down this will stall the rendering of your web page on the initial fetch as the browser waits for a response from the other web server. It can also slow down the rendering of the web page if the other web server is busy or just slow.
• If a script is used on multiple pages, it is better that it is in an external script file (preferrably on your server). Once downloaded by the browser it is kept in the browser’s memory until you leave the site or the browser is closed.

One thing with blogs is there are a zillion plugins to manipulate the contents of your blog posts. Each plugin you add increases the head section coding and requests of the page(s). Some of these plugins are not necessary as a good web designer/theme designer can incorporate these functios into the design without using plugins.

Style Tags

Style tags are also in the head section of your web pages. These are called internal styles meaning that they are applicable to the page they are on. If the design you are looking at repeats the same styles on each page this adds to web page overhead, the browser has to reread the coding and increases the maintenance of the site. Using an external stylesheet (separate file linked to the pages with the link tag) is better all around. Reduces web page overhead, the browser keeps it in memory and it is much easier to maintain the site.

Going back to blogs, each time you add a plugin it could a) insert internal style tags or b) add a link to it’s specific external stylesheet. Something to consider when you have more important stuff to be on the page like content.

Heading Tags

Each page needs a heading (just like you expect a chapter in a book to have). For proper heading structure the first heading tag on a page should be the set of <h1> and </h1> tags. These should not be around your logo or any other image at the top of your page. This set of tags belongs around the title of the page which is within the web page. Don’t confuse this title with the title in the title set of tags, they are differnt.

There is a set heading hierarchy within the set of heading tags (h1 being the largest and at the top of the hierarchy and h6 being the smallest and at the bottom). Use these tags as they were meant to be used for, to create the headings within your web page to define sections of the page, and not for manipulation of the web page content’s appearance. If you don’t like the look of the h2 tag within your theme but want your headings to look like the style for the h3′s then this is fixable it in the stylesheet.

Using the heading tags out of logical order interfers with the usability, accessibility and search engine optimization of your page.

Web Page Content Formatting

All the formatting of your web page content (making it look nice) should be in your stylesheet, preferrably the external one.

Some content management systems and ecommerce software provide a builtin HTML editor. This is great for those of you who don’t care to learn HTML coding but the problem is that when you use something like the button which changes to colour or size of a section of content it adds what is called inline styling. This inline styling adds to the web page file size plus adds to the maintenance of the site in general if the particular styling you are applying is repeated throughout the site. Get you designer to add a style to the external stylesheet which you can reference within the content when you want it applied.

Web Page Construction

There are two basic ways to construct the background coding of a web page:

1. With tables
2. With CSS only (mostly)

Table Layouts

Tables take time for the browsers to render. The browser stops to assess all the table coding before sending it to the screen. Poorly constructed tables or nested tables (tables within tables to force formatting) slow the web page download speed.

The browser (and search bots) read the background coding of the page in the order it is in the page. Generally the designs that use tables for layout are not constructed so the search bots get to the content fast. e.g. If your design has a left navigation, usually the theme designer has not fixed it so the bots get to the center (or right) cell which contains the actual content of the page. The search bots have to read all the links in your navigation before getting to the meat of your page. While internal linking is a good thing, you don’t want to waste the search bot’s allotted time on your site reading links each time it comes to the site.

CSS Layouts

CSS layouts are a bit difficult for some people to get their head wrapped around but these make it so much easier to maintain a site. All the layout and formatting is manipulated through one file, the external stylesheet.

With CSS layouts (if the designer is good) you can construct the background coding in anyway you want between the opening <body> and closing </body> tags thus manipulating in what order the search bots see your web page content.

Using HTML Coding for On-Page SEO

After reading this article (which turned out long, sorry) you now have an idea of what to look for when constructing your own web pages or purchasing the services of others when it comes to on-page search engine optimization. HTML coding when used properly can be an easy way to improve the on-page search engine optimization of any site.

Further Reading on HTML Coding and On-Page SEO

HTML Code & Search Engine Ranking Factors – Search Engine Land, part of their The Periodic Table of SEO Ranking Factors

How often have you looked at the HTML coding as part of your on-page search engine optimization?

There seems to be a big confusion between Sitemaps and a HTML site map for those new to websites. We are going to run through what each is and what they are used for today to try and undo the confusion.

First of all, notice the spelling of each. Sitemaps vs site map.

Sitemaps are XML files. They are meant for search bots and computer programs that understand the Sitemaps protocol (standard). Not all bots that roam the net understand the Sitemaps protocol. The 3 big players in the search industry do, Google, Bing and Yahoo! along with some others.

A site map on the other hand is a regular web page that humans, assistive technology and all search bots can read. It uses regular (X)HTML coding to present the information.

We will cover Sitemaps first and then move onto (X)HTML site maps.

Sitemaps

What are Sitemaps?

Here is the description from sitemaps.org (the site about Sitemaps):

In its simplest form, a Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site.

What are Sitemaps – sitemaps.org

The description goes on to say:

Web crawlers usually discover pages from links within the site and from other sites. Sitemaps supplement this data to allow crawlers that support Sitemaps to pick up all URLs in the Sitemap and learn about those URLs using the associated metadata. Using the Sitemap protocol does not guarantee that web pages are included in search engines, but provides hints for web crawlers to do a better job of crawling your site.

Notice where the text has been bolded?

Web crawlers usually discover pages from links within the site and from other sites.

That means your pages are found by the web crawlers (also known as search bots and spiders) through your internal linking and by finding links to your pages on other sites.

The first part is simple, build your internal linking structure so all search bots can find pages on the site other than the page they entered on. There is no guarantee a search bot or a human is going to arrive on the home page of your site. They can arrive on any page of the site through a search or from an incoming link somewhere.

The second part, incoming links, you can help along by having great content that ranks in the search results and then the word spreads that your site has fantastic content through organic links. There are other ways to get incoming links but that is for another post.

Using the Sitemap protocol does not guarantee that web pages are included in search engines..

When a person with a new site asks how to get their site indexed an bunch of people will say to create a Sitemap and submit it to Google, Bing and Yahoo!. That is a misconception. The bolded text above clearly states that submtting a Sitemap does not guarantee the site or it’s pages will be included by the search engines which support the Sitemaps protocol (not all do).

Google themselves clearly state this also:

Creating and submitting a Sitemap helps make sure that Google knows about all the pages on your site, including URLs that may not be discoverable by Google’s normal crawling process….

…Google doesn’t guarantee that we’ll crawl or index all of your URLs.

About Sitemaps – Google Webmaster Tools Help

When Should I Use Sitemaps?

A small site doesn’t really need to use Sitemaps unless you are selling something and want to get your merchandise listed in a merchant/product search site that supports it as the file to feed your product information to their site.

Here is what Google says about when using Sitemaps is useful:

Sitemaps are particularly helpful if:

• Your site has dynamic content.
• Your site has pages that aren’t easily discovered by Googlebot during the crawl process—for example, pages featuring rich AJAX or images.
• Your site is new and has few links to it. (Googlebot crawls the web by following links from one page to another, so if your site isn’t well linked, it may be hard for us to discover it.)
• Your site has a large archive of content pages that are not well linked to each other, or are not linked at all.

About Sitemaps – Google Webmaster Tools Help

Ya, I know, Google listed if you have a new site it might help but remember, using Sitemaps does not guarantee your pages will be indexed.

So lets look at site maps and how they work.

(X)HTML Site Maps

What is an (X)HTML Site Map?

An (X)HTML site map is a regular web page that can be read by any bot roaming the net, by those using assitive technology to surf the net and by regular web surfers.

The (X)HTML site map contains links to pages on your site. If you have a large site, you would list the main pages (e.g. category pages) of the site which takes you to a sub site map with links to pages within that category. For a small site, just one site map will be fine.

For search engine optimization and usability purposes, include a short description of what the person will see when they click the link. This will also help prevent your site map looking like a link farm page (page of just links).

Again for search engine optimization and usability purposes, a link to your site map should be included on each and every page. Remember, a bot or human can arrive on any page of your site so you want to make it easy for them to find their way around the site to discover other pages. Also remember, web crawlers find page through links so a site map is like a directory to the site with links for the web crawlers to follow.

When Should I Use a Site Map?

On every site! As already explained, a site map is accessible to everyone, human and bots. There are all kinds of bots roaming the net. Ones for directories, ones looking for reference sites to add to their site, all kinds! You can earn some free organic links just by providing a site map.

Ok not every site needs a site map to start with. If you are starting out small with 2, 3 or 4 pages a site map might be overkill at the beginning but plan for where the link will go in the future. As your site expands you can distroy the usability of your design by adding too many links to the navigation. Also too many links on a page compared to actual content can turn your pages into what looks like a link farm/spammy page.

For people who have accessibility challenges and those who just plain got lost on your site, a site map is a savour. They can just go to the site map to find where they want to go next on your site.

Which Should I do First? A Sitemap or a Site Map?

The site map! It’s the easiest to do and provides the most initial benefits: accessiblity, search engine optimization and usability.

But everyone says to do a Sitemap!

Well, even Matt Cutts, Google Spam Department Engineer says to do your site map first:

Sitemaps vs Site Map

When deciding which is better for your site, using Sitemaps or a site map, think beyond the search bots. You should always build your site for people first so that would include creating a site map first.

Later on, if your site gets really big or you decide to add your merchandise to a shopping search site, then tackle creating Sitemaps.

Submitting a Sitemap to the search engines is no guarantee that your pages will be indexed any faster than if you did not have one.

All it takes to attract the search bots is an incoming link from somewhere that gets visited by the search bots regularly which links to your site. The bot will find your site map and explore the rest of your site way quicker than you sitting around fretting and waiting for Google to review and index your Sitemap.

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If you visit webmaster forums one of the more common questions when it comes to social networking, social media and social bookmarking is “Which social network (social bookmarking, social media) site should I join”. The short answer: The one where your target market is. (smiles)

Credit: Laurel Papworth and Gary Hayes

Entering into the online social environment isn’t any different than networking offline. Just like offline, if your purpose of online networking is to create connections to eventually expand your business connections then you have to be where your target market is. Social networking can take a lot of time if you want to be successful at it so you need to be selective about where you are going to be or it will gobble up your whole day resulting in no actual money making work being done.

Planning Your Social Networking Strategy

Keeping in mind what the name social networking (i.e. you are supposed to be social, not just selling) means, coming up with a productive social networking strategy is important.

• Know Your Target Audience

  As with any marketing campaign, knowing your target audience is the key to success. Most of the time when someone asks on forums “Which social network is the best?” or “Which social network is right for me?” there are the standard answers of:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • MySpace

  Yes these are popular social networking sites but so are YouTube, Digg and Sphinn in some circles. It all depends on where your target audience is on the net. You might have better success using a niche social networking site than one of the more popular and busy busier social networks.

  Ask yourself these questions about your target audience:

  • What social networks, social bookmarking and social media sites are your target audience using?
  • Where on the internet are they? Maybe social networking isn’t where you need to be. Do they like forums or traditional email groups better? Do they even know and understand social networking?
  • Where are your competitors on the internet? Are there too many of them in one location? Can you find an untapped place where your target audience is but lacking your competitors?

• Research

  There are lots of things to learn about when venturing into online social networking so spend some time researching what types of social networking, social bookmarking and social media are available. You need to understand how each works to use them to their full potential.

• Experiment

  You won’t learn what works and what doesn’t work for your target market if you don’t experiment with the different ideas you see on the net.

• Set Goals for Your Social Networking

  You will not know if your online social networking is working unless you set some goals. Perhaps it is to meet 3 new people a day or find the right crowd to socialize with within a month. Maybe you have a longer term goal of increasing your website or blog visits by 25% within 6 months. What ever the ultimate purpose of using social networking is (not forgetting the social part) you need some milestones to shoot for just like any other marketing or business plan.

With this information in hand, you can come up with a better plan of attack. Your plan can be adjusted if you find it is not working but don’t give up too soon. It takes time to build up relationships (as in offline networking) so don’t expect super results right off the bat.

Don’t Spread Yourself Too Thin

There are thousands of social networking sites available to join. Select a few so your time is spread effectively on each of those you chose to use. Networking takes time and devotion. Signing up for a social network and then not putting in the time to build relationships isn’t going to work.

Prune your message and your list and build a reputation that’s worth owning and an audience that cares.

Only one of these strategies builds an asset of value

The trap of social media noise – Seth Godin

Make Real Connections

You will see offers of selling bookmarking services, Facebook fans and/or Twitter followers. Even offers to set you up on hundreds of social networking sites or forums. These are not real connections. How can you communicate with and build a relationship with these people who may or may not be in your target audience? Real connections come when you personally participate in the community and exchange with the members of that community. It might take you a while to build your network of connections but they will be people who truly are interested in what you have to say, your knowledge and what you can offer (as in being an expert in your field). Thousands of connections does not equate to immediate growth of your business.

Create an Consistent Appearance Across Social Networks

Whether you decide to brand yourself or your company, having an consistent logo, avatar or picture across each of the networks you belong to will make you a familiar face if people see you in their own collection of social networking memberships.

Learn how you can personalize each of your profiles at the sites you join. Some may have limited options but others will let you really brand your profile.

Social networking isn’t just signing up for every popular networking site. It requires time devoted in the right social networks for you, your busines and your goals. Maybe joining a social network that is not related to your business/work is the ticket to making a whole new bunch of friends that can later turn into business connections.

Further Reading on Which Social Networking Site to Join

A social network should not replace business website services and functionalities. Instead, it should be an extension, a complement and perhaps an enticement to visit the business website in the first place.

Read more: How to Choose the Best Social Network for Your Business

Why you should NOT make too many Social Media profiles

Social Connections: It’s Not Who You Know, But Where You Go

Social Media Burn Out and Why You Shouldn’t Try to Do it All

I Don’t Have Time For This Social Media Thing!

How to become more effective with your social media efforts

Beyond Facebook: 5 Questions to Ask Before Jumping into a New Social Network

5 Things You Need To Know BEFORE Designing Your Social Media Strategy

What Do You Want From Social Media?

This post was created as part of the V7N Blogging Challenge with a Twist

What Social Network Is Your Target Demographic Using?

Introduction: How to Create a Social Media Plan

We participated in the V7N’s last blogging challenge in January and we are participating in the new one starting on March 7, 2011.

Details of the Blogging Challenge are on the V7N blog: V7N Blog Challenge With A Twist

There are prizes! V7N is giving away listings in their web directory to 3 randomly selected participants. There is also prizes for referring at least 5 people to join in the fun.

To enter, join the V7N forums and post your entry in the V7N Blog Challenge Participants thread.

One of the easiest ways to get backlinks to your website or blog is to build organic incoming links to the site. Each organic link is a vote for your site without you doing any work other than providing great content and keeping it up to date.

What is an Organic Link?

An organic link is a link from someone else’s website, blog or social account where they linked to your site without being asked to. You had nothing to do with this other than provide great content that they felt was worth sharing with their readers and/or followers.

As people find your articles or website pages they will link to a specific page within your website or blog. These links can be within the content of the article or listed as a reference at the end of the article. They are a great way to drive targeted visitors to your site because the person that linked to you has vouched for your article or page.

Advantages of Organic Links

The advantages of organic links are:

• They drive targeted traffic to your site.
• The search engine bots follow the links they find on other sites and consider a link from a related site a good vote for you site.
• Great way to get known in your field/niche.
• The more organic links you get from trusted sites related to your niche the better. Over time you will be in the ranks of trusted sites too.

How to Get Organic Links

There are lots of ways to earn an organic link:

• Provide Great Content

  You are probably thinking the “provide great content” answer is just a suggest coming from a broken record. Well it is not. The way Web Page Mistakes (and other sites we own) has built backlinks is by providing quality content that our targeted audience likes to read. Our articles are linked to from educational sites like University of Minnesota Duluth’s Web Design References based on the content we provide.

  This can work for you also in your chosen niche. Become the “Go To” resource in your niche and you too will start get links from respected sites without asking.

• Participating in Related Communities

  Participating in communities related to your niche or where your target audience are to be found is a great way to establish yourself as an expert in your field. This doesn’t mean you go in there and start self promoting and link dropping though. Be a part of the community first. Provide solutions to posted problems. Start interesting conversations. Post related resources you thought the community would be interested in.

• Make it Easy to Link to You

  Provide a link to me page complete with the coding people are to put into their pages when linking to your site.

  Now that we have social media, provide social networking icons to make it easy for people to quickly post a link to your article on their favourite social networking or social bookmarking site.

• Provide Instructional Articles

  Demonstrate your expertise by providing How To or tutorial articles for your product (if you sell one), your service (again if you sell one) or a general instructional article than your niche would be interested in. Why to you think when you search for something like Photoshop tutorials there are so many? Because it works.

• Write About Something Newsworthy in Your Industry

  Some new tax come in that affects your industry? Write about it. Cover the controversial side if no one else has. Or do the opposite, find the good points about the issue if everyone is writing about the negatives.

• Provide Not So Well Known Facts

  Do some research on little known facts about your industry. Provide your research results on your site. This is how some people have established themselves as experts in their industry. Dan Zarrella is one person that comes to mind. He started analyzing social media and social media strategies and has now earned the respect of many as a social media researcher.

• List Posts/Articles

  List posts on blogs or list articles are always popular. Lists of related resources or tools that you have tried complete with your review work too. Don’t be afraid to link out to these. It is how you become the “Go To” resource in your field. Plus it will get you noticed by the resource and could snowball into an organic link back.

• Get a Blog

  If you have not created a blog yet, you should. Sharing information on your blog is another way to build your expertice in your field. Include a RSS feed with your blog. This way your readers can subscribe to your blog and be notified of your new content. Also, some social networking sites let you connect with your blog and post updates to your profile.

• Provide a Useful Product or Service

  Develop a useful product or service for your niche in the industry. Something new and exciting.

• Videos

  Create videos and make the available on your site or blog. People love videos right now and good ones spread like wildfire via the social networking sites and via email.

There are all kinds of ways to work on your organic link building. You just have to provide great stuff and present it uniquely.

GoogleWebMasterHelp has a video done by Matt Cutts: What are some effective techniques for building links? you should watch to learn more effective ways to build organic links. Matt also talks about organic links in this video: Is there such a thing as building too many links?

This article was created as part of the V7N 30 Day Blogging Challenge. Click the image below to see who else is participating.

As you learn more and more about search engine optimization there are all these terms and things you need to learn. Today we are going to learn about 301 redirects, what you use them for and why you need to use them. First of all you need to know what a 301 permanent redirect is.

What is a 301 Permanent Redirect?

A 301 permanent redirect is an instruction at the web server level indicating that something has moved/changed location. The instruction indicates the old location, the new location and that this move or change is permanent. The change can be a change in domain name, web page name, path to a web page on the site or to another site.

On a Linux server using Apache this instruction is in a file called the .htaccess file. The .htaccess file is placed in the root of the website or blog. The root would the folder that contains all your website/blog files, the one where the home page is. If you want to use the .htaccess file to record your 301 redirects your Apache installation also needs to have the mod_rewrite module enabled on your account.

When a page is requested by a browser or the search engine bot your web server will check the .htaccess file for any instructions regarding this page. If there are none, the request is processed as requested. When there is an 301 redirect instruction a message is sent back to the requesting party letting them know there is a change and the request is then processed as instructed.

Here is an example of the headers (message) sent back the visitor’s browser when they request a page that has moved to a new name:

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently =>
Date => Sat, 22 Jan 2011 07:28:23 GMT
Server => Apache
Location => http://www.htmlbasictutor.ca/clean-compliant-html-code.htm
Connection => close
Content-Type => text/html; charset=iso-8859-1

The search engine bots get this message also. They know to update their index (records).

Why Do I Need to Use 301 Redirects?

When things change on a website or blog and you do not have a 301 redirect instruction covering the change an few things can happen:

• If someone clicked a link on another site that points to a page that has now moved or is gone the visitor will get a 404 error page, indicating the web server cannot find the page. When you have done your own custom 404 error page complete with full navigation and a message about this page must have moved the person is still lost as to where they should go on your site for the information they wanted. With a 301 redirect instruction in place you can send them to the correct page or an alternative page if the page was deleted.
• A search engine bot is just like a visitor who has been directed to a page from a link within your site, from another site or from their records in their index. They need to know also that the page has removed or moved to a new location.
• Your page is listed in a search engine or a directory somewhere and that link you worked so hard for is now useless if you moved it without a 301 redirect. You need to keep that incoming link by including a 301 redirect instruction so you don’t loose the link. A directory editor might not take the time to find where you moved the page to and just delete the link.

When you redesign a website or blog with any changes to page names and/or location it is imperative that you do 301 permanent redirects so you do not have to start all over from scratch getting your new pages (possibly the whole site) reindexed in the search engines.

When to Use a 301 Permanent Redirect

The 301 redirect is a very useful tool to use.

Have Only One Version of Your Site Available

Have you ever noticed that for some sites you can access it typing www.domainname.com and domainname.com? This is the way the web hosting has been set up. You need to fix this so only one version of the website is available. Pick either the with www or without www version and redirect the other one to the one you chose. Make sure you always link to the version you chose also.

You may have heard of a canonical redirect. This is what they are talking about. Fixing 2 versions of the same thing.

Duplicate Content

Whether you believe that there is a duplicate content penalty from the search engines, the duplicate is just not shown in the search results or it is not something to worry about, think of it this way: Every link to a page is a vote for the page as in this is a good page. If half your votes are to www.domainname.com/mypage.htm and the other half are for domainname.com/mypage.htm for example you are diluting (spreading out) your links. Why do that? The more votes for a page the better so why not fix the problem with a 301 redirect so the one version of the domain (or page) gets all the votes? Makes senses to me.

Domain Change

You should really thing long and hard before changing your domain name. All that work you did to develop the original domain, the site and the associated branding with be for not unless you do extensive rebuilding of your presence on the web.

Should you decide that all that reworking is worth it, you should use a permenant redirect from the old domain name to the new one to keep your existing traffic and links following. It will also let the search engines know about the change.

Multiple Domain Names

Some people buy multiple versions of their domain name to protect their branding. i.e. stop someone buying another version of your domain name and stealing your thunder by mistaken identity possibly. You can either leave the extra domain names parked (just sitting there) at your domain registrar or you may decide to 301 permanently redirect one or all to the main domain name you intend to build up.

Website Redesign

Whether it is an overhaul of your existing site using the same technology as it had originally or if you have decided to change the technology used to run your site you need to keep track of all changes and use 301 permanent redirects to point to the new format or new web page file names. Examples:

• Website Overhaul

  You have come to realize that the set up of your site or blog is not too user friendly or it needed an overhaul for better search engine optimization. All the changes need to be covered with 301 redirects so you don’t loose what pages you have indexed in the search engines and those incoming links you don’t know about.

• Moving from One Technology to Another

  You have a regular HTML site (static site) and you decided that having a content management system like WordPress would make it easier to maintain. That’s fine. WordPress uses a different url system than a static website. On a static website the web page names end with .htm or .html. When using WordPress the pages can be the same name but they end with a slash. Look at the url for this page. 301 redirects are needed to redirect the search bots and incoming links to the new format or you will be starting all over again.

  A third example would an ecommerce site that has gotten too big to manually update so you have decided to go with an ecommerce software. Again that’s fine but ecommerce software generally uses PHP (or other) technology to communicate with the database that has your store information. The pages end with .php for one thing and sometimes if the programmig isn’t done to be search engine friendly after the .php there is coding to tell the database what info to import into the page. All your existing pages had .htm or .html. 301 permanent redirects need to be put in place to transfer the old naming convention to the new one.

Can’t I Use rel=”canonical”?

No. Below Bing’s Webmaster Central Blog explains:

This past week at a conference someone had a question and asked if they could use a rel=canonical in place of a 301. They argued that since the rel=canonical passes value similarly to a 301, it should do the trick.

The answer to the queston is…no. You should not use a rel=canonical in place of a 301 redirect. The rel=canonical is designed to help manage duplicate URL issues. It is not a true 301 signal to the engines, though it can pass value similar to the way a 301 does. Implementing a 301 redirect is tough to mess up. It either works or it does not, and when it does, it passes value. We recently enountered a website that had so botched implementing its rel=canonicals that it essentilly would lead to all of their pages, save one, being stripped of value and de-indexed over time.

Bing Moving content? Think 301, not rel=canonical – Webmaster Center blog – Site Blogs – Bing Community

PageRank and Redirects

Matt Cutts, Head of Google Spam Department and Eric Enge sat down for an interview. They discussed PageRank and redirects:

Eric Enge: Let’s talk a little bit about the impact on PageRank, crawling and indexing of some of the basic tools out there. Let’s start with our favorite 301 Redirects.

Matt Cutts: Typically, the 301 Redirect would pass PageRank. It can be a very useful tool to migrate between pages on a site, or even migrate between sites. Lots of people use it, and it seems to work relatively well, as its effects go into place pretty quickly. I used it myself when I tried going from mattcutts.com to dullest.com, and that transition went perfectly well. My own testing has shown that it’s been pretty successful. In fact, if you do site:dullest.com right now, I don’t get any pages. All the pages have migrated from dullest.com over to mattcutts.com. At least for me, the 301 does work the way that I would expect it to. All the pages of interest make it over to the new site if you are doing a page by page migration, so it can be a powerful tool in your arsenal.

Eric Enge: Let’s say you move from one domain to another and you write yourself a nice little statement that basically instructs the search engine and, any user agent on how to remap from one domain to the other. In a scenario like this, is there some loss in PageRank that can take place simply because the user who originally implemented a link to the site didn’t link to it on the new domain?

Matt Cutts: That’s a good question, and I am not 100 percent sure about the answer. I can certainly see how there could be some loss of PageRank. I am not 100 percent sure whether the crawling and indexing team has implemented that sort of natural PageRank decay, so I will have to go and check on that specific case. (Note: in a follow on email, Matt confirmed that this is in fact the case. There is some loss of PR through a 301).

Matt Cutts Interviewed by Eric Enge Published: March 14, 2010

Note that Mr. Cutts is quoted saying some PR is lost when using 301 redirects.

When you redirect something and are viewing the Google Toolbar (which is outdated as soon as it is published because your PR is constantly changing in the background) you may notice that the PR for the changed pages disappears. Don’t panic, it will come back visually in the next toolbar update but it’s still there in the background. Now whether the changes you made were a good choice or not as far as PR is concerned is not known until the public PR information is updated again.

301 Redirects Are a Useful Tool

301 permanent redirects can benefit your site or blog in a search engine optimization way and in a visitor way when used and used properly . They keep the information about your site up to date with the search engines and avoid you loosing incoming links and annoyed visitors. Use 301 redirects anytime you make a change to your website or blog.

Is there a limit to how many 301 (Permanent) redirects I can do on a site?

Matt Cutts answers the question on how many 301 permanent redirects is too many in the video below:

301 Redirects More Information

4 SEO Steps To Follow When Changing URLs

This article was created as part of the V7N 30 Day Blogging Challenge. Click the image below to see who else is participating.

A lot of people are afraid to incorporate linking out into their websites and blogs. This is caused by a fear of loosing the visitor to the site you linked to so people do things like open a new tab or window to supposedly avoid loosing the visitor. Today we are going to show you why you should be linking out as part of your link building strategy.

Opening Links in a New Window or Tab

Out of fear of loosing their visitor, people use the target=”_blank” attribute in their links to make the external links on their site open a new window or tab. This doesn’t work too good.

But Using New Windows Keeps Users on my Site!

Not on its own, it doesn’t! Web users will stay on a site because it has the information they’re looking for, or because it helps them achieve their goals — not because the browser window is still open.

If users want to return to a Website, they’ll use the back button. If a new window is used, the back button in this window is reset, so users won’t be able to do return to your site using this common method (cue frustrated users).

Beware of Opening Links in a New Window – Sitepoint

Next, it causes your site have poor accessibility. Those who use assistive technology to read web pages to them get confused which window they have active. Try it yourself if you don’t believe me. Open a couple of browser windows or tabs, turn on Windows Narrator, close your eyes and try and figure out which tab you are on. Difficult, isn’t it.

Until user agents allow users to turn off spawned windows, do not cause pop-ups or other windows to appear and do not change the current window without informing the user.

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Point 10.1

Opening a link in a new window or tab also creates a usability problem. The visitor can get confused which window/tab to close. Even a seasoned web surfer can do this. Admit it, you have closed the wrong tab or window yourself.

Why not open links in a new window?

Here are my top five usability reasons why you should beware of opening links in a new window:

1. Unless you warn them, web users are likely to expect the new page to load in the current window. Unexpected surprises can be fun, but not when you’re browsing the web.
2. Using a new browser window resets the back button in that window. The back button is the second most used navigation function (after following hyperlinks) (source: useit.com2) so resetting it is a big no no.
3. Opening a new browser window can be disorientating for very novice web users and for those who are visually impaired. They might not realise that a new window has opened and might struggle switching between windows.
4. Using a new browser window is a little disrespectful to web users. If they want a new window, they’ll ask for one. Don’t force a new window upon users unless there’s a very good reason to do so.
5. Using new browser windows can make an already cluttered taskbar, even more cluttered and difficult to use. We’ve all spent ages hunting through the taskbar, looking for the window we want. Don’t make this even harder by increasing the number of windows to look through.

Beware of opening links in a new window – Webcedible

Just leave the external links you have alone. No special attributes or scripting when the link is clicked. If you want to notify the user they will be leaving the site you can include a little icon indicating external link via CSS to add some usability.

Now that we have what not to do out of the way, let’s get to the benefits of linking out.

Benefits of Linking Out – External Linking

We all want our sites to be popular, the hub of your chosen niche. You do this by providing valuable information that people want to link to.

Providing Relevant Outbound Links is Good

Why is linking out good? Because as you write your article and make statements you should provide links to related and respected sources to backup your statements. This can be done by quoting a source and providing the link to the original article you quoted from (besides being good manners on the net).

Another way to provide relevant outgoing links is to provide a further reading or resources section at the end of your article.

If you have a look around Web Page Mistakes you will see we use both of these methods to provide you with information within our articles. You’ll also notice, we don’t use the target=”_blank” attribute in our links either.

Citations (Quotes) from Relevant Sites

Citations (or quotes) from relevant sites back up your statements. It shows you have researched the topic you have written about. These citations can either backup what you said or create conversation with your readers if you allow comments on your articles.

The proper way to quote a piece from another site is to use the blockquote set of tags surrounding the text quotes and provide the link where you quoted the material from.

<blockquote cite="link where you quoted from">
<p>Text you quoted</p>
<p>Link to the location where you got the quote</p>
</blockquote>

You can learn more about the blockquote tags and it’s cite attribute at W3Schools.

#1: Attribution

“Links are the currency of the web,” writes Jonathan Bailey. “If you use someone else’s content, whether licensed directly or through fair use, it’s important to be sure to provide a clickable link to the original site if at all possible. This not only helps visitors to your site find the original work, but it also provides SEO benefits for the creator of the content and guards against your site being mistaken by the search engines as the original work.

26 Ways to Enhance Your Blog Content | Social Media Examiner

Become a Useful Site by Linking Out

People who surf the web are impatient. If they visit a site looking for something and they can’t find it easily they leave. Some spend hours surfing looking for the information they want. You want to be the one stop source for all the information they will need. To do this you need to provide all the resources they need and stay on your site absorbing the information you provide instead.

There is an added benefit to being the resource hub for your topic, you can earn free incoming links from visitors bookmarking your site on StumbleUpon or other social bookmarking sites, tweeting that they found this fabulous site, mentioning on Facebook that their like minded friends should visit your site and then there are the not so public referrals like spreading the word in emails, newsletters and general conversation.

Earn Incoming Links

Beyond the ways of getting incoming links mentioned in the last section, there are those that just happen upon your site in the search results. Here is where the snowball effect of incoming links to your site starts. Getting discovered in the search results and in turn the visitors start spreading the word about your site on their own.

Get Noticed by Those Who You Link Out To

By linking out to respected resources you could get noticed by someone influential in your niche. They could stop by to see why they got an incoming link from your site, leave a comment in your comments section, join the conversation in the comments section or even check out your site and then write about you.

9.Link out to other blogs. Pointing to other relevant information and sources is integral to blogging. It also helps you get noticed by relevant content creators.

31 Ways to Make Your Blog Stand Out – Heidi Cohen

Link Out to Those Who Reference Your Site

Did you get noticed in the paper? Mentioned on someone else’s blog or site? Linking out to the site that referenced you is a way to provide social proof that you are gaining respect from your peers. It also provides a little opportunity to brag (smiles).

Use Related Keywords in Your External Links

You will notice that as you read this article we used related keywords or the respected source’s name when linking out to their site. This adds to your overall on-page search engine optimization.

What Others are Saying About Linking Out

By its nature, a search engine looks for sites that are helpful to its end users. If the engine is ranking sites that aren’t useful to people, its user base will shrink. It’s in a search engine’s best interest to find and rank the most useful sites first.

With that in mind, when a search engine discovers a page pointing users in the direction of more useful information, that page will be given more credit.

Afraid to Link Out? Think Again – Search Engine Watch

Creating outbound links on your site, or “linking out”, is our topic for Day 3 of Links Week. Linking out happens naturally, and for most webmasters, it’s not something you have to worry about. Nonetheless, in case you’re interested about an otherwise simple topic that’s fundamental to the web, here’s the good, the bad, and answers to more advanced questions asked by our fellow webmasters.

Linking out: Often it’s just applying common sense -Official Google Webmaster Central Blog

As for costing PageRank – yes, it’s true. Technically, the original PR formula (described in great detail here by my grandfather, Si) dictates that any link equity spent on external pages is lost opportunity that could have been spent on internal pages. HOWEVER, I (and many other notable SEOs) have seen very compelling evidence to suggest that not only does linking out NOT harm a site’s rankings, it appears to carry some positive correlations with ranking, trust, etc. on both a page and domain-wide level. I’ll cover this more in my reasons to link out below.

5 Reasons You Should Link Out to Others From Your Website – SEOmoz

I hope you will look around your online world today and figure out a way to give something back – whether it’s a link, a ReTweet or sharing some information. I do believe what goes around comes around. And I know that linking out is useful for SEO as well as Karma. You’re saying to Google and other search engines: this is my neighborhood and I am sticking/linking to it.

Link Building: Christmas Gifts and Gratitude – Social SEO

Many of the poorly ranking websites that I am asked to fix share a common problem – they do not link out to any websites. Apparently, some people still think this is a terrible idea and go to extremes to never link out to anyone. Taking any idea to an extreme is generally never a good plan. By changing the outbound link policy, I have been able to help many sites boost their rankings. Let’s be clear – I am not talking about blindly linking to random sites. I am talking about linking out to quality websites that are relevant to the specific web page content.

Outbound Linking Can Boost Rankings – Michael Gray Graywolf’s SEO Blog

Linking Out is Not Bad

Linking out is not bad for your site. It provides complete information for your readers and entices them to come back to see what new information you have. Linking out builds your incoming links (what you need and want) without going out and looking for them or paying for them.

Links are how the web works. Get in the loop by linking out and becoming the go to site in your niche.

This article was created as part of the V7N 30 Day Blogging Challenge. Click the image below to see who else is participating.

More on Linking Out

Why Small Businesses Should Link Out

A New Linking Strategy: Out is the New In

Continuing with our link building strategies topic, today we are going to look at some basic internal linking techniques you can apply to your website or blog. Internal link building is one of the easiest ways to create incoming links to the pages of your website or blog. You have total control, unlike when someone links to a page on their own. Combine great content, internal linking and that will eventually lead to natural incoming links. There are 2 main sections of work your internal link building strategy can be broken down into:

• Website Construction
• Within Your Content

We will start with how website construction can be done for improved internal link building.

Website Construction for Internal Link Building

How your site is constructed from the start will affect your internal link building.

Site Navigation

Site Navigation can be broken down into the main page navigation and a sub navigation. The main page navigation generally links to the main pages on the site. e.g. Home Page, About Us, Site Map, Contact Us

A sub navigation menu could include categories (for services, an ecommerce site or blog).

Whether you decide to have all your site navigation together in a dynamic menu or split up into a main navigation bar and sub menu there are some things you need to do to improve your internal link building and on-site search engine optimization.

• Use text links instead of image links.

  Search engines do not read images (yet) and neither does assistive technology people use to read web pages to them. Your visitors that use a non graphical browser won’t see the image either. And what if you make the link names too small in the images and people can’t read them?

  Text navigation links will add a search engine optimization element to your pages, add accessibility and add usability.

• Use a CSS dynamic menu instead of a Javascript driven menu.

  Although Google says it’s getting better at reading Javascript, that doesn’t mean the other search engines are.

  A CSS dynamic menu uses lists in the creatation of them. All the coding and links within the menu is within the actual web page, unlike some Javascript driven dynamic menus.

  With a CSS dynamic menu, you add search engine optimization, accessibility and usability by having the coding right in the page for screen readers and non graphical browser users plus the search bots will see the links
  too!

• Provide breadcrumb navigation.

  Breadcrumb navigation contains links to the sections within the site the page is. It shows the path of how the user got there.

  The search engine bots will also see your breadcrumb navigation and that will lead them to the pages within the path to the page. e.g. An ecommerce site can add great usability and on-page search engine optimization by including a breadcrumb navigation. The visitor can trace the path back to related previous pages if they landed on a product page plus they can trace their steps back as to how they got to the page. The search engine bot will do
  this too.

• Include a site map link.

  A traditional site map (one where you list all your pages on the site on a web page) is an important link. It adds usability to the site, especially if you have a large site, in that should a visitor get lost they can go to the site map and find where to start over. A site map is also great for those who don’t want to go through all the navigation to find what they want, the people who want to cut to the chase and get to where they want to get to now. The search engine bots will also visit that page, which will lead them to the other pages on the site.

• Have your categories well organized and use keywords to describe them.

  Well organized categories will group like topic pages together. This in turn will interlink with pages of the same topic, which is good from a search engine optimization point of view and also makes them more useable.

  Any time linked text contains a keyword or phrase related to the page it links to it is a plus.

• Have your home page link link to your domain name.

  Some people link their home link/button to the index page (home page) of their site. e.g. index.htm Yes, a visitor will reach the home page, so will the search engine bots. The both of them will also reach your home page if they type www.yourdomainname.com. Why this works is a web server will look for the index page (your home page in this discussion) when someone types just your domain name. Web servers have a hierarchy of which pages are presented first when someone types your domain name. Whether you are to use index, default or another name is up to your web hosting, check their documentation and use the correct file name for your home page.

  Typing www.yourdomainname.com or www.yourdomainname.com/index.htm present the same page, this is a problem because you are linking to your home page one way and all the incoming links that people are placing on their sites/blogs/social networking sites will use www.yourdomainname. The search bots will see these links as 2 different links. The more links that look exactly the same pointing to a page the more votes for the page. If you use the one with index.htm for your internal link building then the votes get reduced for the home page so link to the home page just like everyone outside your site does so all the votes go to the same version of the url.

• Make a conscience choice about the file names of your pages.

  Search engine optimization is all about creating a theme of a topic. You select your web page file names, web page title tags and anchored text with that theme in mind.

  Instead of just having a services page, if it is a specific service, say dog walking, then a better choice of web page file name would be dog-walking-service.htm Put this together with proper use of the title tag, meta data, headings in the pages and related content and you are one more step to an overall well optimized site.

General Site Construction Internal Linking Tips

• Use the same extension at the end of your links for all links.

  This is mainly applicable to static websites or maybe an ecommerce site that produces static HTML pages for you but you should check any type of site for this.

  services.htm and services.html are both the same page and yes, linking to either will work. But, as with absolute links they look different to the search engines. Pick one way to do the extension of your pages and be consistant throughout the site. It makes it easier to remember how to link to your pages.

• Make your internal links absolute links.

  Absolute links are the exact path to the page on the web server. e.g.http://www.yourdomainname.com/services.htm is the absolute link to your services page. If you are using a WYSWYG or online editor when creating your internal links, it will just put the relative path in the hyperlink. e.g. <a href="services.htm">Services</a> This is a carry over from developing your site offline and testing your internal links offline. Good for offline testing but bad for search engine optimization.

  Just like described above for your home page, the more links that look exactly the same pointing to the page, the better. When someone links to one of your individual pages or articles, they are going to link with the absolute link. You should too!

• Include the title attribute in your links.

  This goes for all your links on your pages. The title attribute describes the page the visitor will be taken to. If your web page titles are done well, the link title attribute can be the title of the page they will be
  visiting.

  Once again, this technique adds to the on-page search engine optimization, usability and accessibility of your pages.

• Include related pages/article links at the end of the page.

  This really good for ecommerce sites and blogs. If you provide a list of related pages or posts at the bottom page content,

  1. You entice your visitors to look at other pages on your site. On an eccomerce site they usually call this section You Might Also Like. On a blog, these are previous posts on the same subject.
  2. This will get the search bots to go visit those other pages.
  3. It will add to your internal link building for the page.
• Use keywords/phrase for your linked text.

  These keywords or phrases must relate to the topic of the page you are linking from and the topic of the page you are linking to.

  You are trying to create a theme here. The themed anchored text has a title attribute with a similar theme, the file name is a related theme, the linked to page is a related theme, they all go together on the same theme.

  You Keep Mentioning Votes for the Page..

  Votes was the easiest way to explain the very complex topic of Google’s PageRank and how it is determined.

  As Larry said long ago, we want to give you back “exactly what you want.” When Google was founded, one key innovation was PageRank, a technology that determined the “importance” of a webpage by looking at what other pages link to it, as well as other data. Today we use more than 200 signals, including PageRank, to order websites, and we update these algorithms on a weekly basis.

  Technology overview – Google

  In the most simpliest terms related to this article, each internal link you have and how many times a page on your site links to it affects the “vote” for the page.

  The topic of PageRank is for another post but if you really want to know right now about it read Wikipedia’s PageRank article.

Internal Link Building within Content

You can build your internal link building by linking your page content to related pages on the site or blog.

Smart internal linking tightens content structure and tells the search engines which keyword phrases are related to your pages.

Internal linking also gives some of your lesser-known pages an ‘endorsement’ from your more successful pages.

Read more: Two Simple and Effective SEO Plays that Increased My Rankings [SEO Starters]

Notice the first paragraph in this article. It has what is called an in-content anchored text link which links to another post on this site. Not only does this introduce why this article was written it has the same benefits as the related articles/posts/ You Might Like list at the end of your page:

1. You entice your visitors to look at other pages on your site. On an eccomerce site they usually call this section You Might Also Like. On a blog, these are previous posts on the same subject.
2. This will get the search bots to go visit those other pages.
3. It will add to your internal link building for the page.

The principles of in-content internal link building are the same as previously discussed for your site construction:

• Use text links, not linked images.
• Link to your domain name when you want to link to your home page.
• Use absolute links, not relative links.
• Include the title attribute in your links.
• Use keywords/phrase for your linked text.

Proper Internal Link Building Has Many Facetts

Generally when people think of link building they think of getting other people to link to them and placing links places. With internal link building you have a head start on getting those visitors and the search bots to your other pages. A person or the search bots can arrive at your site or blog on any of your pages, they don’t always arrive on your home page. Anything that you do to make your site more search engine friendly, accessible and usable is good. They all feed off each other. Hope you got that reading this article.

Internal link building and incoming links are only part of the equation when working on the search engine optimization of your site. You still have to work on the content of your site so once you get the people there, they stay and check out the rest of your site. All that is for more posts in the future.

Just remember internal link building is just as important as external link building. Be careful to not go overboard by linking every keyword of your content. This makes it really hard for people to read and makes your content look spammy.

Further Reading on Internal Linking

Internal Linking: The Benefits Of Great Information Architecture For SEO

URL Structure for Usability and SEO

Why In-Page Navigation Links Matter More Than Menus

The Power of Internal Links

WordPress SEO: How to Maximize Your Internal Link Strategy

12 Timeless Link Building Tips for Business Blogs

This article was created as part of the V7N 30 Day Blogging Challenge. Click the image below to see who else is participating.

Everything You Need To Know About SEO Web Structure & Internal Links

How to Use Internal Linking to Improve Your Website’s SEO

Owning a website or blog has it’s responsibilities. You can’t just upload it and forget it. Regular website maintenance is a must if you want your site to be successful.

Why is Website Maintenance Important?

With regular website maintenance your site will run smoothly. No disgruntled visitors because something on the site didn’t work or a link you provided is broken.

Regular visitors are looking for what is new, so provide them with new and exciting information, products or features.

Website are subject to being hacked. Using a proper website maintenance program you can try and avoid being hacked by keeping everything up to date.

There are all kinds of things that need to be done when maintaining a website. Whether you decide to do these yourself or hire out the work, it still needs to be done.

Website Updates

Think about it, if you visit a website that is not updated regularly will you continue to visit it? Why should your own website or blog be like that then?

Website Content

Website content can include written text, images, free downloads, anything that is going to draw new visitors in and keep your existing visitors coming back. Here are some ideas:

• Product Updates

  Product updates are really important if your site has an ecommerce element to it.

  1. New products added announced.

     Don’t forget to update your navigation, to add a page for the new product and add it to your site map.

     If you have a design that has a side navigation (called a sidebar in a blog) the updates can be added to it so no matter what page a visitor arrives on, they see the new product announcement.

  2. Discontinuation of a product. Like the announcement of new products, if you are discontinuing a product, including an announcement in the side navigation will make the information available on all your pages.
  3. Upcoming price changes would be another thing to announce. It might even spur some rush purchases too.
• Company News

  Did you get a mention in the newpaper? Someone did a review of your site or product? This is all what is called social proof and you need to show visitors what others are saying about you.

  Growing so much you need new staff? Announce and introduce your new staff members.

• Giveaways

  Having a giveaway or a contest periodically is a good way to create some buzz about your site.

Updating old content should be on your website maintenance list also. Information becomes out dated so keep your content up to date to show your visitors you are on top of the subject.

Feature Addition

If at the time you created the website there was something that got left out because of budget constraints, maybe the budget can afford it now?

Take a look at your website/blog every once in a while and see if there is some kind of improvement that can be made. Something that you didn’t think of previously.

Maybe you have some feed back from visitors that needs to be implemented?

• Fix a usability issue that has been mentioned.
• Time to add a blog if you have a regular website and do not have one already?
• Did you join a social networking site or two? Add the appropriate button(s) and links to your social profiles.
• Add a frequently asked question section to cut down on emails and phone calls aske these regular questions.

Regular Website Maintenance Tasks

There are some regular website maintenance tasks you should perform on a scheduled basis. Scheduling at least monthly would be the timeline to start with.

Backing Up Your Website

Backing up your website is something you should do all the time, especially if you are the type that uses the online interface of your store or blog to make changes. Things happen. Even though the web hosting company says they backup the sites on their servers, their last backup could have been before your last edit. If the server crashes for some reason or your site gets hacked, your edits will be gone if the web hosting company restores what they had backed up. Image loosing a whole day’s work, just because you didn’t take a few minutes to backup the site.

Monitor Website Outages

If your site goes down, you want to be the first to know and not receive an email from someone else they can not access your site.

SiteUp is a small program that runs on your computer in the background checking your site on a regular basis. It will notify you when the site is down with a popup. Obviously though, your computer has to be on for it work.

Check Domain Registration Information

Look up in the WHOIS records what information is recorded for your domain name. Make sure it is correct. Sometimes when you initially sign up for your domain you would have used an email address that is no longer vaild. This needs to be updated as when there is a problem with your domain or an expiry notice is sent out you won’t get the emails. They are sent to the email address on record.

Test Website Speed

Testing the download speed of your site regularly is important. Especially if you have added a new feature. Web surfer have a very short attention span. If your site is slow to load, they are not going to wait. You need to do everything you can to improve the download speed of your site or blog so visitors stay to read your content and hopefully provide you with organic incoming links by spreading the word for you what a wonderful site you have.

Link Check

Links become broken over time. With changes within the site and if you referenced someone in one of your articles or somewhere else within the site links could have changed or are broken.

The task to find broken links isn’t too hard. Just use a link checker to test your external links and internal links at least once a month.

Software Updates

Third party software, like your ecommerce software, WordPress and Joomla for example, are always updating their software. You need to keep on top these updates and install them as soon as they come out. The updates won’t just be new features, they will include security updates too.

Analyze Your Stats

Analyze not just your sales stats but your website stats too.

Traffic Stats

Look at your web server stats to determine your website traffic. If your web hosting account doesn’t have website stats then get one installed. Something like Awstats that provides:

• Pages entered on and left on
• Time spent on the site
• Bounce rate
• Referring sites
• Countries your visitors are from
• Keywords/phrase that were used to find you

Google Analytics will provide some of this information. It may not be as complete as a website stats program that is run from your actual server.

One thing a website stats program installed on your server will do that Google Analytics doesn’t is show you who is hotlinking (linking directly to your images on your site) . e.g. your images, PDFs, reports, etc.. These people are stealing your content and your bandwidth if they do not have your permission to do so. With this information your can stop the hotlink.

Search Engine Results

Are you showing up on the first page for the keywords/phrase you want to? If you have given it some time, e.g. a few months, to get onto the first page of the search results naturally then maybe it is time to look at your content and revise it.

Reputation Management

Using Google Alerts, you can monitor your website name, your name, your brand and your content on the web.

You will know who is talking about you. This gives you an opportunity to jump into the conversation. Thank those who are praising you. Fix a problem that is being discussed related to your business.

Tracking your website address with Google Alerts is 2 fold.

1. You see who is linking to you and can pop over there and say thanks.
2. You can catch the use of your content without your permission.

You can learn a lot from your website maintenance program. Take the time to set one up.

This article was created as part of the V7N 30 Day Blogging Challenge. Click the image below to see who else is participating.

The speed at which your web page(s) load has always played a part in the success of a website or blog. If your website or blog loads slowly, the visitor will just leave. Web surfing people are very impatient. It doesn’t matter how they are accessing your site, if it’s slow you are not going to make that sale, have a reader added to your blog, have the visitor spread the word for you by word of mouth or get bookmarked on any of the social networking sites.

Now, because Google announced that web page download speed plays a part in your positioning in the search results everyone is on the band wagon to improve the download speed of websites and blogs. Don’t figure. It takes Google to watch something for people to pay attention they should have been doing in the first place.

You may have heard that here at Google we’re obsessed with speed, in our products and on the web. As part of that effort, today we’re including a new signal in our search ranking algorithms: site speed. Site speed reflects how quickly a website responds to web requests.

Speeding up websites is important — not just to site owners, but to all Internet users. Faster sites create happy users and we’ve seen in our internal studies that when a site responds slowly, visitors spend less time there. But faster sites don’t just improve user experience; recent data shows that improving site speed also reduces operating costs. Like us, our users place a lot of value in speed — that’s why we’ve decided to take site speed into account in our search rankings. We use a variety of sources to determine the speed of a site relative to other sites.

Using site speed in web search ranking – Official Google Webmaster Central Blog Friday, April 09, 2010

How to Test Web Page Download Speed?

There are various ways to test the download speed of your pages. Here are a few:

Web Page Analyzer

This site has been around since 2002. That just shows you that web page download speed was important before Google decided to make it part of the factors they use.

You can enter your url in the box provided or copy and paste your (X)HTML coding in the larger box. Click Submit Query and the program begins analysis of the page. It might take a while, depending on how much code it has to process and of course, how slow your page loads.

This site was created to accompany the author’s book he wrote years ago. He has a new one, Website Optimization: Speed, Search Engine & Conversion Rate Secrets, that you should consider adding to your library.

Google’s Page Speed

If you have a Webmaster Tools account with Google, down at the bottom of the left menu (Labs > Site Performance) is the Site Performance link. It will show you an approximation of the download speed your site has and also notes which pages it found slow with suggested solutions. For a more detailed analysis, even Google suggests you use their Page Speed for Firefox.

Google also has Page Speed available for download. You need Firefox and Firebug addon to use it. You have Firefox installed already, right? (You should for cross-browser compatibility testing.)

With Page Speed installed, open Firefox, start Firebug then run Page Speed. The results are pretty quick.

Like the online version, you get a list of what needs fixing but this time it is more detailed.

The Page Speed official documentation is available if you really want to study how this works and see explanations of the details.

YSlow

Yahoo! has YSlow for web page download testing. It also requires Firefox and Firebug to run.

Like Page Speed, once you install YSlow, go to the page you want to test and run the test you get results complete with what needs to be fixed.

Out of the three download speed testing programs mentioned above, Web Page Analysis is probably the easiest to understand for a non web designer.

Web Page Download Improvement Tips

Before you even run the tests above, there are somethings you can look at before actually running the tests:

• Web Page File Size

  A good web page file size is 30k. A litte more would be ok but if your web page file size is over 40k you really need to have a look at what can be removed and/or improved upon.

• Nested Tables

  Tables in general slow down the download speed of a page because the browser has to stop and process all the coding for the table. And in nested tables (tables within tables) and that process is slowed down even more.

  If your web page coding is using nested tables for manipulate the placement of the page elements, then remove these and use CSS (Cascading Stylesheets) instead. You could save a bunch of file size.

• Image File Size

  Quite often people use images as they received them or straight out of the camera. You need to resize the images before uploading the website. If you use the oversized image and force it to the right size using coding, the browser still downloads the original image.

• Combine CSS and Javascript Files

  If you see links in the head of your web page coding to a number of CSS files and/or Javascript files you can reduce the download speed of the page by combining all the CSS together and then all the Javascript together in another file.

  Internal CSS and Javascript coding in the head section of the web page or in the body of the page should be moved to the external CSS and Javascript files also. This also makes things easier to maintain.

• Third Party Content

  These days there are lots of third party stats, features and ad networks that can be added to your site, particularly blogs. Unless the background coding is done in such a way that these are loaded at the end of the web page coding being processed, they slow down or even hang your web page if not working.

Some Things to Understand About Web Page Download Speed

Even if you have improved on all the above, run the tests and tweaked the heck out of your site there are still a couple of things to understand.

Your web server plays a part in how fast your web page downloads. If the web server is crowded with lots of sites and they are all really active, this slows down the web server’s performance. Paying a higher price for better web hosting is something to consider if this is a problem.

Dynamic websites (sites that include programming and databases, like ecommerce sites and blogs) are affected by the quality of the programming and database optimization used. A poorly programmed page or poorly optimized databse takes time to process the information requested before sending it back to the browser.

Your visitor’s location is really not a valid excuse for slow download speed. If your site is optimized properly it shouldn’t matter if they are in Timbuktu or next door to you. Optimize the site for the slowest internet connection your visitors have.

One other thing, if you have not set up your browser to clear it’s cache (history) when closed things like images and external CSS files are stored on your computer. The next time you visit the web page, the browser fetches these from the copy on your computer, not the website. This of course makes it appear that the site is loading fast when it’s not. Learn to clear your browser cache so you see the site like a new visitor.

Web page download speed will be important whether a ranking factor for your site or not. People don’t have the patience to wait for your site to load. With mobile devices becoming more common than the traditional desktop computer or laptop download speed is crucial as these people are paying for data plans based on how much data they download.

Test your web page download speed now and improve your overall search engine optimization program.

Further Reading on Web Page Download Speed

• Why Marketers Must Care About Site Speed – Search Engine Watch

This article was created as part of the V7N 30 Day Blogging Challenge. Click the image below to see who else is participating.