Every now and then we like to put together some Resource Pages that group the best/most popular blog posts together so it makes is super easy for you to find some useful resources all in one place.
We write so many great posts on different elements of SEO on this blog that it gets hard to keep track of everything so we figure its about time that we make a resource page with some links to (what we think) are the best SEO hints, tools and tips. So here you go:
Let us know if you’ve found any of them useful, and of course, keep browsing through the blog to find even more tips to help you along in the world of advertising!
There are literally hundreds of different techniques that can contribute to an SEO strategy. Content creation, keyword targeting, link building, usability etc. Starting with the basics is always the best idea but what happens when you’ve got a pretty good grasp on those and you’re still not seeing the results you want?
That’s when you need to start looking at the technical bits of SEO. The bits that you might need a programmer to help you set up so you’ve never bothered trying before, or the bits that you didn’t think were that important because they’re not discussed as much as others.
Its never a good idea to just play around with bits of your code and hope you’ve done the right thing, so I’ve put together this ‘Resource Page’ with a bunch of Quick Guides that will (hopefully) get you on your way to understanding and implementing the more technical bits of SEO.
Lately it seems that every article I read about SEO or online marketing techniques is thrusting a new programme or app at me. It’s always ‘the best new SEO tool’ or the ‘app that SEO’s cant live without’ and all I keep thinking is… I’m coping pretty well without this tool already?
In fact, I’d go as far as to say that I’m coping really well without this tool. So if like me you’ve come to that conclusion, it might be time to take a quick look at your current repertoire of go-to tools and show your appreciation for the years of service they’ve given you.
Since my entire working life pretty much revolves around Google, it’s no surprise to anyone that some of my best used SEO tools are courtesy of the Big G itself (and free, of course). So, if you’re not bothered by the latest SEO fad, here are the steadfast Google products that I think every SEO and online marketer should use:
You know how I referenced Google as the Big G? Well to me, Google Analytics is the Bible. No matter what your marketing strategy is, you will need to track it which will probably mean you’ll spend time in here on a daily basis.
Improving for presence in Google Search? Track it in Analytics. Experimenting with different AdWords campaigns? Track them in Analytics. Studying how users navigate around your site? Track them in Analytics.
Webmaster Tools is like your websites doctor, except you go for a check up every day. It can tell you exactly which bits of your site arent working; links, broken pages etc. and for the bits that are working, it can give you various stats like CTRs, navigational patterns, referrers etc.
It can also show you which search queries are bringing traffic to your site, which pages they’re landing on and how many impressions those queries are receiving. Even more recently, Webmaster Tools can show your +1 statistics and which pages are receiving the most +1’s. It’s like the Bible, part 2.
If you’re a content creating online marketer then Think Insights is a haven of sharable information that Google will freely allow you to use in your blogs, articles, white papers, infographics, case studies etc.
If you’re just looking for a little educational material then you can search for journals and studies based on your industry, your media platform, your audience, or your marketing objective. The marketing objective search is really useful as you can search for objectives like ‘Drive Online Conversions’, ‘Engage your Audience’, and ‘Build Brand Awareness’; all great stuff if you need a helping hand.
You can also compare search patterns for certain terms and over certain periods of time. So if you’re really clever you could make an educated guesstimate of which search patterns are likely to emerge and tweak your SEO strategy accordingly.
Given that this is a paid tool, it’s not vital that you use it, but it’s a pretty big part of most online marketing strategies so I’d recommend that you do.
AdWords is a pretty intricate system and can take some time to get used to but once you’ve got the hang of refining campaigns and keyword targeting it’s a great tool for bringing in highly targeted traffic from an audience with the right intent.
It’s likely that you already have a list of obvious keywords you want to try to rank against/include in content/advertise against; but sometimes obvious isn’t enough to produce an effective marketing campaign.
Enter the Google Keyword Tool. Based on a phrase or website you provide, the tool will show you a load of similar terms and how high the competition for ranking is. Its not a tool you need to rely on but if you find your keywords arent putting out the results you’d like, then giving it a go is a good idea.
As you well know, everything you do when it comes to marketing (online or otherwise) needs to be tested. Testing SEO changes is relatively easy in that traffic will either increase or decrease, you’ll either rank or you wont, etc.
Where it does start getting a little tricky is testing how effective actual pages are, and that’s where Google’s Website Optimiser can help you out.
A/B split testing is a pretty common thing when you’re trialling landing pages and the website optimiser will allow you to test several different elements on the same page to see which headlines, content, images, etc. are the most effective. (You can do similar tests using AdWords and running a few different campaigns).
So there you have it, my favourite Google tools for SEO and online marketing! Let me know what your favourite tools are in the comments below. (No, SEOmoz doesn’t count, everyone loves SEOmoz).
The rel=”NoFollow” attribute is a HTML attribute that can be applied to individual links so that none of the ‘link juice’ from the linking page is passed through.
How is the rel=”NoFollow” attribute used?
The rel=”NoFollow” attribute is used by adding it to the end of the link you do not wish to vouch for (example below).
By adding the attribute to a link you are telling search engines that you cannot say that the content on the linked to page is of high quality and that you do not wish for your page to pass on any of its value, i.e. its ‘link juice’.
What does the rel=”NoFollow” attribute look like?
Attaching the rel=”NoFollow” attribute to a link looks like this:
When a search engine reaches this link, it will know that anything beyond it has not been vouched for and should not receive any ‘link juice’.
How do search engines look at the rel=”NoFollow” attribute?
This image from The Art of SEO (Enge, Spencer, Fishkin, Stricchiola) shows how most search engines will look at the rel=”Nofollow” attribute in a link.
Note that the rel=”NoFollow” attribute does not omit the linked page from being crawled. Search engines will usually not follow the link as the current site has not vouched for the quality of the content; however, it is possible for it to happen (the exact circumstances in which it happens are still unknown).
How does the rel=”NoFollow” attribute differ from the Robots Meta NoFollow tag?
The rel=”NoFollow” attribute differs from the Robots Meta NoFollow tag in that it is only applied to one link at a time.
The Robots Meta NoFollow is aMetatag that can be applied to a whole page of links, thus excluding every link from the crawl of a search engine. It is a way of applying the NoFollow attribute to a whole page of links without having to edit each one.
With most search engines taking a completely different approach to serving results and algorithms changing, what seems like, every day you wouldn’t be blamed for getting a bit mixed up with what constitutes as necessary SEO (search engine optimisation).
While there never will be a universal formula for SEO, there are, unfortunately, a handful of pointers that have somehow stood the test of time and seem to appear on most (outdated) SEO guides.
At a first glance, a few of these might seem like an alright idea, and if you’re new to SEO you may find yourself being suckered in by how easy they make SEO appear… but don’t be! In today’s SEO world, the points below are sure fire ways to get your site ignored by Google. Here are 7 outdated SEO tips you should ignore:
1. “Keyword stuffing will get you ranked in Google” –
No, it won’t. Google has been refining its algorithms for nearly 14 years; do you really think it wouldn’t have addressed the keyword stuffing issue yet?
Some people think there’s a fine line between keyword optimisation and keyword stuffing. I disagree; there is a huge difference between the two.
Optimisation is planning content themes, picking appropriate titles for pages, and writing informative meta descriptions. These all involve choosing precise individual keywords and long tailed keyword strings.
Stuffing is spontaneously/unnecessarily adding keywords to content, only including keywords in page titles and meta descriptions, and even matching keyword text to the background colour of the site so they’re not visible but still crawlable (Yes, people really do this.)
Google is very much aware of these practices and hundreds more that I haven’t mentioned (known as black hat SEO). Google will not rank these sites well. In fact, with the high level of sophistication Google’s algorithms show, and the introduction of content specific algorithms like Panda, sites conducting black hat SEO will be lucky if they’re repeatedly or frequently crawled at all.
Also on this topic, a personal pet hate of mine is bolding keywords. Back in 2001 it might have been the case that Google will see a bold keyword as a better indicator of the page context, but that certainly does not apply today. Bolding keywords within text will just make you look spammy and inexperienced in (modern) SEO.
2. “Excessive Link Building will improve your PR” –
No, it won’t. People have been fooled into thinking that participating in link building schemes; link farms etc. will quickly boost the PR of their site. This behaviour will do the complete opposite. Google has been aware of link farms for a long time now and has tweaked its Panda algorithm to detect sites like these, ignore them, or even remove them from the web.
Relevant link building can improve the ranking of your site but its vital that the sites you’re linking too, and the sites that are linking to you, all have related themes. When Google is crawling a site it looks at the context of each link to determine its relevance to the site.
If you’re a web hosting site and you have inbound and outbound links to a shoe retailer, Google will see this as irrelevant and could (in extreme circumstances) label you as a link farm, and at the very least it will have a negative impact on your ranking.
3. “Publishing your content on article sites is a good thing” –
No, it’s not. When Google finds a piece of duplicate content online, that is, exact content on 2 different websites, it will look at which site was crawled, cached, and indexed first in order to determine where the content originated from. (It also uses a number of other factors, including the presentation of content and its ease of readability to users, though this is subject to change.)
The chances are, if you need to put your content on an article site, your own website is of low quality or is poorly indexed, meaning Google could determine that the article site is the original author of your content.
Article sites will very, very rarely benefit businesses and are mostly users for individual writers, who perhaps don’t have a website, as an outlet for their work. As these sites usually have a much higher PR as well as a higher number of relevant linkbacks you’re likely to lose out on Google spots to them.
4. “Duplicating content on your site gives you more content…” –
No, it doesn’t. Google designed the Panda update specifically to target Content Farms; sites duplicating content or proving random paragraphs of short, irrelevant content (Google calls it ‘shallow’ content).
Duplicating content isn’t too different from keyword stuffing in a sense that there’s only so many times to need to present information before the message is understood. After so many keywords, Google ‘gets’ what you’re talking about, the same with content. Duplicating content suggests you may be spamming visitors with the same info.
It can also have an effect on your Google rankings; if you have duplicate content on multiple pages of your site Google will rank each page to determine which is the most relevant and of the highest quality. This could mean that you’re fighting your own site for higher rankings and Google could end up ranking your less important pages higher than others.
5. “Using the same metas and titles for all pages is okay” –
No, it’s not. Just about every SEO book you can get your hands on will tell you this is bad and goes hand in hand with the duplicate content issue above.
Page titles, header tags, and meta descriptions can be powerful SEO tools if written correctly. Google may use all of these factors to determine the context of a page and if these are incorrect, duplicated, or keyword stuffed, it could equate in negative ranking for your site.
Duplicating all of these factors across your whole site could also cause the same outcome mentioned in point 4; Google may rank (positively or negatively) the wrong pages or just see the duplicate content as spam and extend the time it takes to re-crawl your site. Always make sure you meta tags and headers are unique and relevant to the page.
6. “Focusing on your keywords is enough” –
No, it’s not. While looking at keywords is (arguably) the easiest SEO practice, Google looks at a number of other things when awarding ranking scores and SERP positions. Unfortunately, there’s not a confirmed list of what these factors are (if we had that, we wouldn’t need SEO’s), however, after trialling things we can get a pretty good idea of what works.
Every year SEOmoz.org conducts a survey of SEO specialists to determine the prominent Google ranking factors and how they’ve changed since the previous year. In 2011 they asked 132 specialists what they thought these factors were, based on their personal experience. The results included (see image for the full list):
Analysis of site/page’s perceived value to users (this is a result of the Panda update)
Social signals at page level
Social signals at domain level
Usage data (CTR, bounce rate back to SERPs)
Content readability/usability/design
Presence and prominence of advertising vs content
You can see from a quick glance at some of the results that a lot more emphasis is being placed on social signals and quality of content than on onsite keyword usage. SEO is a site-wide endeavour, if you only focus on keywords you’ll be subject to a dramatic drop in traffic and visibility at any algorithm change.
7. “PageRank is an accurate signal of site quality and SERP position” –
No, it’s not. PageRank is a funny one; years ago most SEO’s believed that PR was a representation of the quality of a website and therefore its placement in SERPs. Nowadays there’s speculation as to whether it plays any role in ranking at all.
The common consensus is that PR doesn’t contribute to SERP positioning but can still contribute to the strength of inbound links (though this has not been proven). Whether or not this is the case, once again, it’s important to remember that there is a whole list of other factors that Google takes into account when determining site quality and SERP positioning. Relying on PR alone is very much an outdated mistake.
This is INTENT, a blog by Serchen Interactive about Online Advertising, SEO, Marketing, Social Media and Online Business. Established in 1997, follow us on Twitter for more information on our products and services.
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