So, I thought I would compile the 10 most common SEO questions, and issues we come up against when assessing client's websites.

• 1. URL's and Duplicate Content: Do you have both a www version of your web pages AND a non-www version of your web pages? If so, Google sees these as 2 separate pages (the www version is effectively a sub-domain) and may determine either version as duplicate content. Also, natural incoming links may pass juice to either version of your page rather than a single one, diluting your incoming 'link juice'.

• 2. Internal Links and Duplicate Content: Does any part of your internal page navigation link to a duplicate version of another page? The most common scenario here would be that your home page URL is 'www.monkeyheadfood.com' but your internal navigation points to 'www.monkeyheadfood.com/index.html' (or similar) which serves the same content. This also leads to duplicate content issues and the potential for incoming links to be split between the different versions.

• 3. Poor Keyword Selection: I think it was Darth Vader who said 'the ability to destroy a planet is insignificant compared to the power of keyword research'. Something like that anyway. All websites, new, old, good, bad and ugly, need to have conducted a full keyword research otherwise you are indulging in the webmaster equivalent of trying to nail jelly to a wall. If you haven't produced a full keyword research document (or had one prepared for you) how on earth do you know what to target? How do you know where the search volume is? How do you know which keywords you actually have a chance of ranking highly for? You get my point.

• 4. Ignoring The 'SEO Spine': I have just made 'SEO Spine' up. Impressive little term, eh? Ok - I will move on. By 'SEO Spine', I am referring to your on-page keyword targeting. Ideally, your page should have your target keyword in the URL, the title, the heading tag, and the content, creating a 'spine' (but don't over-do it and spam keywords). Can you see what I did there?

• 5. Images (only) For Navigation: The main search engines are still in kindergarten when it comes to reading text on images. They just aren't very good at it. So, you should not be using images for navigation because you wont receive the positive ranking score from your anchor text, (which can be very valuable).

• 6. Title Tag Suicide: Your title tag is the 'pocket dynamite' of your web page. There isn't a stronger signal of relevancy and Google loves to allocate bucket-loads of value to them. So, read this post about SEO and Title Tags now!

• 7. Unfriendly URL's: Although the search engines can index 'unfriendly' dynamic URL's these days, they still prefer the static versions of the same. I can tell you, for example, that Google certainly DOES prefer static URLs to their dynamic buddies . So, get rid of your "&," "?," and "="' symbols where possible and replace with keyword-rich static equivalents.

• 8. Poor Site Architecture: Your website should be as 'flat' as possible to minimise the number of clicks from your home page to any other page (without using a search box). If you have less than 10,000 pages then you should, ideally, be able to reach any other page within 3 clicks.

• 9. Sub-Domains Not Sub-Directories: Google has changed the way it looks at sub domains and so, these days, it is much more beneficial to add any additional content (e.g a blog or an ecommerce facility) in a sub-directory. Reading reference: SEO Sub-Domains

• 10. Link Building:  We love link building. However, it seems that many webmasters don't! A web page's inbound link profile is the most important signal to Google when determining a pages trust and authority, which in turn, helps determine rankinings.We all-too-often see either very few links, or the worst set of spammy links since spam was invented in the world, ever, ever, ever. You need to build quality links, and when you have finished, you need to build some more.

Looking for a competitive SEO and/or link building quote? Contact us now!

Webtistic

http://www.site.com/
http://www.site.com/index.html
http://site.com/
http://site.com/index.html

It is surprisingly common for websites to have at least 2, if not all 4 of these versions and sometimes there are even different links to the different home pages within the site itself. The solution to this is to first decide on which homepage to use, this should be the one with most external links to it. You then need to set up 301 redirects from the other pages to the chosen homepage. Then you need to make sure that any links on your site to the homepage are to the correct version.

This will channel all your link equity to the one page so search engines will place more value on your homepage and you may rank higher. This also applies to other pages you may have duplicates of, but from an SEO point of view, it won't matter as much as with the homepage.

Spending time researching which keywords to target for SEO purposes is imperative to the long-term success of any search marketing campaign, and yet it never fails to amaze me:

1. How few online businesses actually allocate time and resources to doing it
   
2. How misguided the research and subsequent results can be
   
3. How companies often ignore the 'goldmine' of existing data at their fingertips.

I would like to concentrate on (3).

We find that many of the companies who come to us for SEO advice and services have already embarked on some kind of Pay Per Click campaign, whether it be through Google Adwords or some of the other click providers. Adwords in particular gives the advertiser a wealth of information at keyword-level, including search volume, click through rates, the value of clicks and the earnings per click for individual keywords. So why not use this data and integrate it with your keyword research?

Essentially, keyword research should be used to identify viable target keywords based on:

• Search volume
  
• Relative competition
  
• Relevancy
  
• Commercial viability

Well a successful Adwords campaign can tell you the EXACT number of page views on the Google listings a search term will receive, and it enables you to spot and nurture the 'golden' keywords - those that convert and give you the greatest return.

So, use this data! Remember that keyword research and Pay Per Click data are not mutually-exclusive concepts and delve into those PPC stats to find the clues. It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes!

Google has made progress when it comes to reading text embedded within images,but it is still a fair way from mastering the art.

So, don't play the lottery when it comes to displaying text on images - display the basic image as a background, and replace the embedded text by floating html text over the top.

This will give Google very clear signals about the 'nature' of the image and will allow you to use anchor text targeting your keywords when displaying the link, increasing the fundamental value of the link.

This can make a big difference!

Both engines still use the number of exact match anchor text links as a very important factor when ranking pages, although it seems Bing is slightly more “naive” with Google placing more value on the quality of links. In both cases the diversity of links is much more important than the raw amount, meaning more links from the same domain produce less link equity compared to less links from multiple domains.

Bing does, though, have some interesting features that might set it aside from Google. For example, when users roll over results, Bing have added a website information preview box which can in itself be optimised to improve click through rates. It will comprise of the H1 tag, provided it is different from the title tag, the first paragraph of text, any contact information it can find and will even play a YouTube video on the page. This can be turned off with the addition of a meta tag.
There is also an option for social sharing, where you can, for example, click to share an image search via Facebook, Twitter or email.

Most of the data from the SEOmoz analysis gives a lot of useful information when it comes to SEO, so here is a brief summary of their findings:

• Both engines place high value upon having an exact match in the domain name, although hyphenated exact matches are considered to be less valuable.
• .com extensions perform better in the rankings than others, especially with Google.
• Having keywords in a sub domain is not as valuable as in the root domain, especially when it comes to Bing.
• Image alt attributes seem to play a part and are worth optimising for.
• The shorter the URL the better, especially with keyword-match domains
• Bing places additional value on a website's home page as compared to inner website pages. Google does this to a lesser extent.

There are other minor differences between the engines, such as Bing has slightly more accurate geolocation results and will even list local cinema times when you search for a film. You can ask Google to remove a site link, but cannot with Bing. Google Base is free to submit to, but Bing Shopping is paid submission only. You have to manually submit to Bing by email if you want to be included in their news.

In summary, you may have already known, or at least assumed some of that, but it is interesting to see how the Google and Bing ranking factors compare Something else worth knowing is that while Bing and Yahoo are merging, they will both remain as separate search engines with Yahoo simply using the Bing search engine data.

I hope you have found this useful!
 

So, I was approached this week by another well-known UK SEO company (who will rename nameless at this point - unless they ignore my request to be taken off their 'database') asking if we would like to buy links on behalf of our clients.

Now, as I explained, we do all of our link buidling in-house, but I let the salesman continue because I was interested in their 'techniques'.

Basically, this is what they do:

1. They contact website owners and basically buy (with the promise of 'free' SEO services) a hidden page from them where they place upto 25 links.

2. They then sell those 25 links either directly to 'private' link buyers or to SEO companies like our good selves at a wholesale rate.

Now, you may think that a link is a link is a link (repeat ad infinitum), but here is why these links should be avoided like the rat-flu:

1. The pages these links are placed on have no inbound links themselves (they are usually literally 'hidden') and so pass no link equity (or 'link juice)

2. I have done a teeny weeny bit of research and can tell you that despite their promises, these link pages are not closely themed to the links at all

3. Even 'Baldrick the turnip' can determine that these are paid links, with many of these pages al having links to the same websites (i.e identifying the link buyers)

So, if you fancy your site being penalised by the Big G, then sell your soul to the SEO-devil, but don't say I didn't warn you!

If you are doing this, you should replace those underscores with hyphens (the - symbol) as Google is able to separate hyphenated words far more easily, and apportion SEO score accordingly.

So, as an example, rather than:

yoursite.com/categories/monkey_food

You should use:

yoursite.com/categories/monkey-food

Further Reading: Dashes Vs Underscores

www.mattcutts.com/blog/site-speed/

So, with this in mind, why not have a race with your competitors? Just add upto 10 competing URL's into this tool, and make sure you win the gold medal (or at least get onto the podium).

www.iwebtool.com/speed_test

It all helps!

Online gift retailer ShinyShack are causing quite a stir with a very unusual gift idea; their new 'Perpetual Puppy' product, as seen here: Unusual Gifts

The basic premise is that you buy a real, living, wagging, woofing puppy aged 3-months, and then, when it reaches 9 months old, the purchaser has the option of trading the puppy in for a replacement 3-month old puppy. Customers are even rewarded with loyalty savings should they decide to opt for a replacement.

When asked, Tamer Shafik (MD of ShinyShack) defended the 'product' with the folowing quote:

“The real attraction of the Perpetual Puppy is that once the dog becomes too large, it can easily be replaced with another easily-manageable puppy. We believe this will help to lower the numbers of unwanted dogs in society due to people losing interest in their dogs, or due to an inability to handle the commitment that larger dogs require.”

Customers currently have the option of three breeds, the Yorkshire Terrier, the Basset Hound and the Chocolate Labrador, but the question remains as to how the reurned pooch's will be re-homed.

This is certainly likely to continue to be controversial, and so I will be keeping a close eye on the fallout it is bound to create.

Whatever next!?

Related Post: 10 Gift Ideas That Will Make Your Friends Hate You

Now the simple tip here is - don't panic!

When Google makes a change or a tweak, it has to apply that change to all of its numerous datacenters that serve the search results, and this can take time. Subsequently, the reults you are seeing may not be the results Google actually wants to display, so if your rankings suddenly drop, give them time to recover.

If, however, the results stay as they are for a few days or so, the bad news is that there is likely to have been a permanent change in the search algorithm, and so some work may be required.