Reply to: SEO - On the cheap

[Jessica@WhiteFieldTax]

A little knowledge is a very dangerous thing, and I'm no techie.

However what seemed to help me in google was using google products:

- google+ page
- google maps entry
- using google site search code on homepage

It was the last that seemed to make the difference, and has done on two seperate amateur sites ( I.e. ones I prepared), propelling them to first on google for key terms. Alas Bing - which I'm told some people use by choice - is proving a harder nut to crack.

[Cliphead]

More and more I'm getting asked by clients to 'do some SEO' with their sites some of which I'm designing. Got all the tools and know most of the techniques but please feel free to add to the techniques which you find are useful, I'd be most grateful.

[eek]

I guess humour doesn't go down well here. Although judging by all the +ve rep for my post some people enjoyed it.

I think you've got confused there.

[proggy]

FYI, being a twat in the serious sub-forums will get you banned.

I guess humour doesn't go down well here. Although judging by all the +ve rep for my post some people enjoyed it.

[NickFitz]

…

FYI, being a twat in the serious sub-forums will get you banned.

[proggy]

Please don't tell anyone else this, but when I worked for Google on the crawler I put a backdoor in the search engine code.

Just put this in your <meta> tag in the head section.

"ProggyRank1BkDr: Keyword1,Keyword2...."

After a few days you will be number one for each keyword.

[Platypus]

Great advice from Nick. I'm no expert but let me just throw a few things out there.

A friend of mine does a bit of this and one of tips I picked up was to make the website an "authority" on the subject. As Nick says, publish articles, since SE use "content" not "keywords" as much these days. But ensure that you have content such as "what is collecting military figures all about" ... "background" .. "history" blah blah so that the site becomes more of a resource on the subject rather than just a sales site. You're also more likely to pick up genuine inward links doing that too.

Whether this is still true or not, who knows, but some repetition of key phrases is supposed to help: ABC Military Figurines Ltd is your one stop shop for all things relating to military figurines. At ABC Military Figurines we believe that collecting military figures isn't just a hobby for small boys, but for real men too. That's why we at ABC Military Figurines ... blah blah. Repeat this kind of BS for your keywords on as many pages as possible but incorporating it into content.

I remember reading the Google SEO guide myself. Very good tips in there. I have one website I did for a charity which I believe is still the no.1 for all things relating to that topic even though its main keyword is also a video game character.

If you google for SEO guides you'll pick up lots of other tips. Who knows what works.

God help you, you could ask AtW.

[NickFitz]

Don't forget to have a read of Google's SEO guides: the PDF via the first link at Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - Webmaster Tools Help is well worth reading.

Also, be aware that, these days, Google et al. aren't particularly bothered about minutiae such as what's in a query string (the "?foo=bar" bit of a URL); it's the broader principles that are important.

[administrator]

[QUOTE=SimonMac;1744162]Would I exclude the SpecA pages etc with robots.txt?

No point blocking with robots.txt IMO as if someone links to these pages then Googlebot will still crawl and index these pages

[administrator]

Also is there away to clean up what is being referenced? ie

domain.com\product1\specA.html
domain.com\product1\specB.html
domain.com\product2\specA.html
domain.com\product1\specB.html

Is it best to have them all competing for attention, or just try and promote them at the product level?

Depends on what you are trying to achieve but if it is doubtful that anyone searches for "Product 1 specA" or "Product 1 specB" but they only search for ""Product 1" then I would have a single page "Product 1" as an overview to that product and then link to "specA" and "specB" from that page but make sure that:

• links to the product pages are <a href="" rel="nofollow"> - to help stop GBot even pulling those pages
• Possibly even mask the URL with JavaScript so <a href="#" onClick"somestuffheretopopupwindow">
• on the specA/B pages put in <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW"> - this will stop these sub-pages being indexed

This will concentrate Google just on the main product page so there will be less internal competition for the phrase and IMO would be a better structure to meet the highest level search phrase for the term.


If you find that specA and specB do get searched for then I would do the same as above still but lose the effort to stop Google getting into the sub-product page but retain the hierarchical structure of main product page at the uppermost level and that to then link to the smaller and less often searched for products. Depending on search volumes and how competitive the search space is of course.


Agree with the others saying on page isn't all that. I don't tend to care about meta keywords and description. If you have good internal linking structure, a good chunk of incoming links and all the basic on page SEO covered then you should do OK.

[d000hg]

I wouldn't advise adding a forum though. They did that on CUK, and look what happened

Also, on nearly every site, forums flop completely and a forum with 5 posts all by the same person, from 2009, doesn't give a good impression

[NickFitz]

One good way to boost the site's rankings is to regularly publish new content. If he adds an articles section and, every few weeks, publishes an article about some aspect of the matter at hand, he'll start appearing in search results for those topics. This will help bring in some additional visitors of just the right kind - enthusiasts, who are likely to purchase.

However, because search engines nowadays are much more sophisticated than mere keyword counters, the presence of the specialised content will also start to improve his ranking for the more generic terms relating to his business.

It would be worthwhile doing articles at various levels: introductions to the subject, overviews of particular areas, and detailed examinations of specialist topics. This will give the greatest reach in terms of attracting the target market.

Needless to say, the articles should link freely - but only appropriately - to the product pages on the site, as well as to each other. He should be able to include five to ten good (in the sense of relevant) links per article. These are links either in the text of the article, or attached as footnotes; the generic site navigation links should of course also appear on the page. (Search engines are smart enough to distinguish generic site navigation links from in-content links, so this level of internal linkage won't be seen as spammy.)

He also shouldn't shy away from linking to external sites when it's relevant. Lots of morons who know bugger all will bleat about "keeping visitors on your site" but that's a load of crap. He's building a set of resources that help make a name for his site, not a cyberprison. If he has good content, and links to good content elsewhere, he'll become a valued and trusted resource, and that will benefit his business. (I've gone slightly OT here, talking about what actual humans will think, rather than search engines. Still, search engines may index the site but they'll spend sod all; humans who've been helped by the site, even when that help was a link to a different site, will remember it and search for it again when they've money to spend.)

If he aims to publish a new piece every two weeks to a month, then the search engines will learn that the site is updated regularly and start visiting more frequently. They will also rank the site higher, as they generally favour sites that are regularly updated over those that seem to be abandoned.

As far as the technology to support this goes: WordPress is easiest. He doesn't have to call it a blog, and it doesn't have to look like one: WordPress is a very good general purpose CMS nowadays.

I wouldn't advise adding a forum though. They did that on CUK, and look what happened

[Bunk]

Would I exclude the SpecA pages etc with robots.txt?

No, I meant putting the shared content on domain.com\product1 and the specific information on domain.com\product1\specA or domain.com\product1\specB but if that's not possible I'd keep both pages. Google aren't likely to penalise for two similar product pages, it would mainly be if large swathes of the site contained identical content. It's still better to have both pages indexed by Google than to hide one of them.

[SimonMac]

As far as I'm aware meta keywords and descriptions now have very little impact on SEO (as they're so easy to abuse). Far more important is that the page contains good, relevant content and is linked to from other related sites.

For the product types, I'd try to avoid duplicate content where possible. Keep that at the product level and concentrate on the things specific to the individual types on their own pages.

Would I exclude the SpecA pages etc with robots.txt?

Do you already have a Google Analytics account?
Have you read the "MicroISV On A ShoeString" blog?

Yes I have a GA account, so now trying to fine tune the wheat fromt he chaff its bringing back

[eek]

SEO - On the cheap

Do you already have a Google Analytics account?
Have you read the "MicroISV On A ShoeString" blog?

Doesn't necessarily help nowadays as a lot of search criteria referrer data has been removed by google on "privacy" grounds