Web Design & SEO Blog, Inverness Blogs

Take Away’s from Matt Cutt’s Live Stream

Today, Matt Cutts from Google graced the world with a live stream from Google Webmaster Central Channel on You Tube.

During the live session which included a LOT of fun (including playing with a can of SPAM) the following points were taken away as useful to our readers:-

• You should not focus on keyword density – this is something that we in SEO have thought for some time, but it is just great to have this from Google’s mouth. Matt explained that it was more important to include your target keywords naturally in the content. Read your content out loud and see if it makes sense. If it does, then you should be fine.
• There is no real harm in having high quality link partners – the ‘reciprocal’ links page is not yet a dead concept, but focus on good hooks and quality content throughout your website.
• The Google +1 Button Will Have an Impact – Matt did not seem to want to be drawn on quite how much the +1 Button would impact rankings but said that in tests it does give a ‘strong signal’ for ranking.
• Tag Clouds: – you must decide if these will be helpful to your users. If you’re not careful these could be perceived as keyword stuffing. Therefore, use with care!
• Block Data: – if websites are blocking your URLs, these will eventually have an impact on your rankings. Presumably because it shows others think your content is not worth endorsing, so why should the big G?
• H1 Tags: – One H1 tag is sufficient. If you fill your page with H1′s it is likely to be less heavily weighted. As with everything don’t SPAM a technique, Google isn’t stupid.
• IP Address: – Yes Google, uses your IP address to deliver relevant content for that region. Ensure you put your address on the website and register with Google Places. If you need to target another region/country than the one you’re in then you’ll need to use these tools to do that.
• hCards: – if you’re trying to use hCards for reviews and local optimisation – put more work into XFN
• No Follow: – don’t NOFOLLOW your internal links, but do NOFOLLOW any external links you don’t trust or any links you paid for. Your own reputation can be affected by the places you link to – bear this in mind during your link building process.

Google Panda

• There are no manual exceptions to Panda – it is an algorithmic change only. The Panda algorithm will keep iterating. Google are constantly fighting low-quality content so although we’re on Panda 2, it will keep being worked on, without a doubt.
• Worry less about content farms and focus on providing content that users love. See what Google say about building high quality content
• Google works hard to stop others harming your site by pointing spammy links to your site.

Google Correlate

Interested to see which search terms have a similar correlation to others? Then check out Google Correlate. The Geographical correlation appears to be just the USA at the moment, but the tool can help with keyword research. Matt did remind everyone something that the guys at seoMoz have said for ages, but it’s good to be reminded – correlations is not causation – but correlation is helpful and interesting.

Conclusion

I had to take a client call while watching the video stream, so I did miss the end, but these are some helpful nuggets to take away. So go ahead and produce quality content, Webmasters!

Thanks for your attention.

Addendum

Half an hour or so after we posted this, Search Engine Land also released their summary – a few more pictures for those who are that way inclined. – Google’s Matt Cutts’ Live Webchat

In my last post on small business SEO, I looked at the main issues of on-site optimisation, getting a local listing and ensuring you get reviewed.

Today, I will look at the issues of competitors and link building.

What’s With All this Link Building Stuff?

No website exists in isolation, and if it does it will be difficult to rank well in the search engines. This means you need to connect your website to the outside world.

Technically, it is better for search engine to initially discover your website through another website that has linked to you. But in reality, you need to be indexed earlier than you’re likely to get your initial links.

Links are Google‘s main indicators as to how to rank your website. Why is this? A link from a website is a ‘vote’ for that website – the assumption being that the website owner(s) approve of your website. The basic principle being that ‘votes’ aids ranking.

Quality, Not Quantity – sort of

Any links you want to obtain for your website should be quality – i.e. from an authoritative source which reinforces what your business does or where it is. Getting involved in local community forums or industry Q&A websites can be so valuable for this.

Authority can measured using Google Pagerank (although per Google, this is not regularly updated) and SEOMoz’s metrics of MozRank, Domain Authority and Page Authority (easily trackable using this SEO Toolbar).

For a full discussion of PageRank and Page Authority, see here

So if you want to know whether a site is worth getting linked to you can use these two metrics. You need a good quantity of links, but you must get some authoritative sources.

Where’s Your Competitors Getting Their Juice?

A key element in improving your rankings through link building is to analyse your competitors link base. How do we look for this? There are a few avenues:-

Google’s LINK Command

Firstly you want to find out who ranks for the keyword you have chosen. Continuing the elephant theme from my previous post, let’s see who ranks highest for ‘Elephant Migration’.

So we can see that Seaworld.org holds first place (Not the most obvious, as elephants don’t swim). So how do we find out where their links are from? By using Google’s LINK command, it will tell you where they are linking from:-

Yahoo’s Site Explorer

Often assumed to be a more accurate gauge of links, Yahoo’s Site Explorer is an excellent way to view your website’s links and those of your competitors. You can also exclude links from that website’s subdomains to look for purely third-party credit.

Open Site Explorer

By far one of the best tools for assessing competitor links and authority is another tool by SEOMoz, Open Site Explorer. Let’s look at SeaWorld again.

This excellent tool shows us the total links and domains link to that website – and the authority ratings too. On top of that, we can see the authority of the pages that link to Sea World – very useful!

So What Happens Next?

Now you record all the great places your competitor(s) are linking from and see if you can request links from those places. They are not all going to be possible, but if you use a spreadsheet you can easily narrow down which sites you can target and ensure you do not re-request links. Maybe more to follow on this later.

It’s been a while since I’ve had an opportunity to write. Reasons being that the Web Design business has been crazily busy the last few months. And that’s a good thing.

The majority of my clients are small businesses – sole traders or small limited companies. Some a really experienced people in their field, but are just making their move in the on-line world. Some want a new website, some have just had a website commissioned but are in need of Search Engine Optimisation because ‘I can’t be found on Google’.

So I wanted to try and address some of the key issues that small businesses face when going online and maybe help some of you out.

Don’t Try to Do It All

SEO is comprised of many different factors. Here’s a few:-

• What you write on your website – stuff your human visitors will see
• What’s coded behind the visuals of your website
• How well your website’s information is structured and how it inter-links
• The speed of your website and therefore the proximity of your Website Hosting servers to your target visitors.
• Your ‘local’ listings – whether that’s Google Places or Bing Maps for example.
• The number and quality of the sites that link to your website and how they link to you.
• If you have Facebook likes and shares of your content.
• What the industry may be saying about you.
• Do you blog about relevant topics?

For the small business just stepping into this seeming quagmire of issues, it can be overwhelming. Apply this principle: Do something well or don’t do it at this stage.

Each of the above issues will need to be addressed for relevancy to your business, but SEO should be planned. We develop strategies for a reason.

However, because budget is an issue in small business, having a strategy will not only address the sanity of your SEO efforts, but also spread the time and financial cost of improving the flow of visitors to your website.

So where should you start?

Small Business SEO Step 1: Start at Home

What’s on the Site?
Start with your website. If you already have one you will need to gauge how well the content represents what you believe to be that page’s core topic. Ensure appropriate, contextual use of keywords within the text. Search engines don’t like SPAM so if your text seems nonsense to people, it will seem nonsense to Search Engines.

Link Structure
Links to other pages should contain words appropriate to the target page’s content. Phrases like ‘Click Here’ or ‘How about it?’ are not going to cut it. Even the archaic ‘Home’ link should be replaced with anything more descriptive. And ensure any pages that could usefully link to other parts of your website do so. That way you improve the user’s experience, decrease bounce rate and strengthen not only that page’s SEO but the overall site’s optimisation as well.

Cut the Rubbish
Time to remove anything that’s not quality content. This means even ‘Links Pages’ should be controlled and only useful to your visitors. If you want to give another site credit, why not do it justice with a proper embedded link in some useful content.

Small Business SEO Step 2: Get Local

Unless you’re a business with a National or Global market from the outset, then focussing on your local area and local competition is a must. Ensure you set up a Google Places Listing and fill it out as much as you can and optimise that listing.

Google’s algorithm includes your Local Listing, so don’t miss out.

Small Business SEO Step 3: Get Reviewed

When acting for SEO clients I find myself revealing an old principle: it costs more to obtain a new customer than to retain current ones. So keep your current clients or customers happy. And when they are ask them to post a review and rate your business, either on your new Google Places page or on other sites such as FreeIndex or Qype (no apologies fot he UK directories there). Do you know why these are great? If a customer reviews your business on these two (and others), Google Places will also feature those reviews – so you get two reviews for the price of one!.

And potential customers love happy existing customers as it gives them confidence when they come to you for your products or services.

Next Time..

In my next post I will address Link Building and Social Media but if we can help you any way to Get You Known on the Web then get in touch with us about web design or SEO – we specialise in custom web design because we know every client is unique and we love seeing new businesses take on the competition!