How to make a SEO friendly navigation bar

How do you make sure your navigation bar is optimised as much as possible without making it look it spammy?

The navigation menus are created to allow both the user and search engine spider to go through the different areas of the website. The navigation bar plays a plays crucial role in directing spiders to the site’s most important content and encouraging site visitors to visit the deeper levels of the site.

Here are five ways:

1. Avoid flash and JavaScript

Search engine spiders cannot crawl JavaScript generated menus, nor can they crawl Flash menus or Flash websites. They can crawl anchor text links, image links and image maps. Therefore all navigation should be in plain text or HTML and if any of the non crawl-able methods are used, alternative methods should be provided to allow search engine spiders to crawl and index the site. As there is a drop down menu, these should be built with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

2. Easy to access areas

The navigation bar should be easy to use and help visits find all relevant areas of the site. Do not overcomplicate things with keyword stuffed navigation drop down menus.

The ideal method is to embed the keyword phrases in the site navigation using plain hypertext anchor links. If image links are used, the ALT attribute should contain the keyword phrase. Google advises on using simple text links instead of relying only on complex navigation, drop-down menus or image navigation. Text links are indexed more easily by search engines.

3. Be consistent

Navigational links should be consistent throughout every page on the website. They should be in the same location with the same font, style and title. This helps users to find

4. Breadcrumbs

Use “breadcrumb” navigation. A breadcrumb is a row of internal links at the top or bottom of the page that allows visitors to navigate back quickly to a previous section or the root page. Many breadcrumbs have the most general page or root page as the first, left-most link and list the more specific sections to the right.

5. Keep it simple

It is important that the navigation is clean and there is no flash. It is not clear if the rotating images in the screen grabs are made out of flash. The number of clicks needed to access the key content pages should be kept to a minimum.

So there you go, a few pointers to get you on your way, so start building that site!

New changes to Google Algorithm – Panda update

Last week Google announced an update to its algorithm.

Please do not panic people. This is something that I am sure those in search would have seen coming. Google introduces the update by telling us that they want to give us – the people the most relevant search results and that this algorithm update has done just that. I myself wonder if it is because there was a lot of press that Blekko was delivering more relevant search results than Google which forced them into doing a bit more R&D (research and development) and pushing this update.

Panda Update

This update is pretty major in that Google say it is “a change that noticeably impacts 11.8% of our queries—and we wanted to let people know what’s going on.” They say the update will reduce the rankings for low quality sites which are low value for users. What Google didn’t say were the sites that would be affected. Another post I read, showed that the article sites would be the main losers. So for those that just focus on article writing as your link building strategy, it is time to get moving on to other things. Of course if you are a good seo person, you know you cannot focus on just one link building area, but sometimes are left with little choice if the client does not want to sign off alternative link building activities.

Google close off the announcement in the blog, by defending themselves against the amount of complaints they will get from site owners who see their rankings decrease (even if it is a good quality site). They say “we can’t make a major improvement without affecting rankings for many sites. It has to be that some sites will go up and some will go down. Google depends on the high-quality content created by wonderful websites around the world, and we do have a responsibility to encourage a healthy web ecosystem. Therefore, it is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded, and that’s exactly what this change does.”

Of course, as most updates, it is just in the US for now but will be coming across the pond sooner than we know it.

Read from the horses mouth: ie Google here

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/finding-more-high-quality-sites-in.html

Black vs White Hat SEO

What is black hat seo?

They are unethical techniques used to inflate your rankings in the search results. Using these techniques goes against Google, Bing and Yahoo and can also create poor user experiences.

Black Hat vs White Hat

Some examples of black hat seo techniques so you can spot and avoid them are:

* Keyword stuffing: This was one of the most well known black hat practices. People put long lists of keywords within the “keyword” meta tag of your site as well as cramming more keywords on the page without any relevant content.
* Hidden text: This involves putting lists of keywords in white text on a white background or black text on black background to get more search engine spiders to crawl the site.
*Buying links: This means purchasing links on other websites pointing back to your site in the hope of increasing traffic and rankings.

Why do people use black hat techniques?

They do work – people have seen an increase in the site’s rankings of the back of using the black hat seo.

But it is a short term gain as when the search engines find out, the site will be penalised. It really isn’t worth it.

I am sure you must have seen the case with JC Penney who were caught out buying links. They ended up ranking number one for a lot of terms ranging from “bedding” to “dresses”, a lot of terms they didn’t actually specialise in. Yes they are a department store, but ranking for “furniture” and “table cloths” does not quite fit with their product offering.

So now they have been caught out what next?
Well they now do not rank for these terms and have to deal with a bad lot of PR which means a lot of expensive advertising to recover the damage.

buy links = kicked out of Google = spend more on advertising
Not worth it.

Oh and despite denying they bought links, they fired their search agency SearchDex.

For more information, feel free to browse below:

http://searchengineland.com/the-jcpenney-situation-is-a-symptom-of-a-bigger-disease-65012

http://econsultancy.com/uk/blog/7168-j-c-penney-part-deux-look-at-our-high-quality-paid-links?utm_medium=email&utm_source=topic

Subdomain vs subfolder

There is often confusion in the seo world between subdomain and subfolders. This post shall explain the difference.

Root domain
This is the domain that you buy from the hosting company eg www.example.com or www.seojoblogs.com

Subdomain
This is a domain which is part of the root domain. eg uk.example.com

Subdirectories
Also called folders are separate sections of the root domain. For example www.example.com/blog

What does Google say?
Google has viewed subdomains in the past as completely separate entities from the primary domain. Google uses what it calls “host crowding” where it returns up to two results from a single domain on a search engine results page (SERP) (with the second one indented). As subdomains are treated as totally separate, a single domain could get more than two listings on a Google SERP, through its subdomains. However, in December 2007, Google made a change announcing that subdomains would be more closely associated with the primary domain — not to the point of being viewed as a subdirectory, but not so completely separate. You can see more about this on Matt Cutt’s blog

If you are building your blog on a subdomain so blog.example.com, it may not get any benefit from its root domain and any links you get will flow back to that subdomain and not to www.example.com. Therefore you should set up the blog as a subfolder www.example.com/blog and when you get any external links, it will flow back to the root domain.

Rand Fishkin goes into a lot of detail about subdomains vs subfolders.

When do you use a subdomain?

- If your blog is separate to your services or if your cms does not allow you to add blogging software to the root domain.
- If you already have two pages from your main domain ranking for a search term. Google will show a maximum of two URLs on a given search page but may show more for a root domain if there are multiple subdomains.
- If you have keyword you want to rank for and you are doing link building for that domain.

When do you use subfolders/subdirectories?
- If you want to organise your site into different sections with descriptive URLs. This is also an easy way to grow your site.
- Adding subfolders allows you to build your site and add new content in a search friendly way.
- It is easier to use subfolder than subdomains due to the url structure as it is all under one domain.

And finally, there are some companies that set up a completely separate site to their main site.
When should you use a microsite?
- If you have a brand new product or service that will be eventually sold off.
- If you do not want the product or service to be associated with your site.

Having a microsite is like starting from scratch. There is no trust, authority, ranking power so you will need to spend a lot of time building up trust and authority.

I hope this post has cleared up some of the confusion regarding subdomains vs subdirectories. If you have any comments or questions, please get in touch.

What is a feed?

According to Wikipedia, “a web feed (or news feed) is a data format used for providing users with frequently updated content.” So if you visit a site and click on the image below, you will receive updated content from that site. This means you do not need to go back to the site to check when they add new content.

RSS feed

What is RSS
RSS stands for “Really Simple Syndication” and is the technical format of a web feed. It is just one way for expressing feeds as XML. Another popular feed is Atom. Both feeds are made to be viewed for computers, but you can view them as plain text files.

Who uses feeds?
Most websites that have a lot of content. The BBC news, amazon, google, all big websites will allow users to subscribe to their feed. Smaller sites such as bloggers will also have feeds.

Can I publish my own feeds?
Yes of course you can. If you have a website you can have a feed on your site. Using a cms like wordpress, drupal or blogger, you can choose the theme that incorporates a feed and you will be publishing your feed automatically.

How do you get started with feeds?
To read the feeds, you have to use a news aggregator. One of them is Google Reader. You can go to one place daily and receive all the updates from the sites where you have subscribed to their feed. It is really simple and saves so much time.

There are also feed reader applications:

* NewsGator – FeedDemon 2.0
* NewsGator – Inbox for Microsoft Outlook
* NewsGator – NetNewsWire
* Firefox (via “Live Bookmarks” feature)

Online Services

* Google Reader
* NewsGator
(Online)
* My Yahoo!
* Bloglines
* Pageflakes
* Netvibes

Podcast Readers

* iTunes
* Juice
* Doppler
* FireAnt

So now that you have chosen you feedreader, go and visit your favourite sites and subscribe to their feeds by clicking on the image as shown above.

SEO Predictions 2011

What does 2011 bring for search?

1) Integration between ppc, seo and social media
This has been discussed last year but 2011 is the year where people are going to sit up and take note of the positive effects you can get from combining all three as a digital strategy. Once a client has tracking on their website, it is possible to see the visits from paid and natural and social sites. Cost savings can be made on paid search if the site is ranking well for some of those key terms. Regarding social media, blogger outreach content can be optimised by the seo team, if the blogger is going to write about a particular product, they might as well include a couple of links back to that site

SEO predictions for 2011

2) Local search
With the introduction of Google Places in September 2009 and then the merger of the local business centre in April last year, local search is going to play an even more important role in 2011. If you do not already use places for your business, then you should start now.

3) Mobile
People have been jumping on the mobile apps and mobile site bandwagon. Mobile will be increasingly important in 2011. However, webmasters and marketeers will have a better understanding of a mobile app vs a mobile site and how to make these “seo” friendly. To me, it is making your site readable on a mobile device and when someone is looking for your store, they should find it on their handset, which ties back into the second point above, local search

Here are a few seo predictions from the industry experts like Rand Fishkin

#1: Someone Proves (or a Search Engine Confirms) that Clicks/Visits Influence Rankings

I’m taking a chance on this one, but I’ve been hearing from more and more SEOs that there’s some correlation between earning clicks and moving up in the rankings. In 2011, we’ll get confirmation, either through testing or an admission from an engine that click-through-rate from the SERPs, visit count outside of search (or diversity of sources), or other usage-based data is in the ranking algorithm (or a method they use to help ID spam).

#2: Google Local/Maps Adds Filters and Sorting

The big reason Yelp is so much better than Google Maps/Local for finding a good local “place” isn’t just the reviews (which Google aggregates from Yelp anyway). It’s the filters that let me sort by features/pricing/proximity/open status/etc. Google’s been playing the silly game of forcing users to choose search queries to enable rough, imperfect filtering, but 2011 is going to see the search engine shift to a model that allows at least some important filters/feature-selection.

#3: Social Search Will Rise

There’s power in social media search, and Google/Bing’s efforts to date have been lackluster at best. I suspect in 2011, we’ll see the nascent beginning of search that leverages Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn connections to find results from your friends. It’s possible this will start niche-based only (search articles your friends have shared, ala Trunk.ly), but it could also be broader – possibly something from Facebook or Twitter themselves.

I am looking forward to SES London next month, when some of these predictions will be reinforced by other key speakers and industry experts. No one knows for sure what will happen in 2011, but based on the results from last year, we know there will be more developments in search and the fight between Google and Bing will continue.

What is a static IP address?

When people want to buy a domain and set up a blog on that URL, they will have to host the site somewhere.

You can choose to have either a static or shared IP address with your hosting provider. When I started my site, I was told that you need to have your own individual and static IP address if you want to rank high for key terms especially if you are in a competitive industry, however there is no conclusive evidence to prove this. People also talk about Shared IP Vs Dedicated IP but what exactly is this?

Shared IP
This is what you get by default from your hosting provider. It means there are many domains on the one IP eg 192.80.30.130. When a browser requests a page from that site inside that IP, the server will check the domain being requested and then serve that page.

Dedicated IP
When you buy your hosting solution, you can request to have a dedicated IP, which means your site will have a unique IP, not shared by any other sites.

So what are the disadavantages?

If you have a shared IP and if one of the sites sharing the IP gets a penalty for spam, link farming or adult content, then your website will also suffer the consequences. However this is rare and should be taken into consideration when purchasing your hosting package.
If you want a dedicated IP address, it costs more, not by much over the year, about thirty pounds, dependant on the package.

There is not one answer that says having a static rather than a shared IP address is any better. It does cost you more though to have your own static IP address. If you are going to have a big site and require a lot of storage, it is recommended to have a static IP address.

What is cloaking?

It is a black hat seo technique, where the content presented to the search engine spider is different to that presented to the user.

How does this happen?

The content is delivered based on the IP address or the User-Ageny HTTP header. When a user is identified as a search engine spider, then the server-side script delivers a different version of the webpage. This content is not present on a the visible page.

Cloakers won't be able to hide anymore

Why do people use cloaking?
They want to deceive the search engines to help boost the websites’ rankings for keywords.

What are the different forms of cloaking? (source: http://info.webtoolhub.com/kb-a24-what-is-cloaking-in-seo-types-of-cloaking-methods.aspx)

IP address Cloaking – presents different contents based on determining IP addresses. e.g. Search engines with certain IP addresses will be shown a one version of a web page and all other IP addresses will be shown another version.

User-Agent Cloaking – different versions of a website based on User-Agent are displayed. e.g. Search engines and/or users using different versions of web browsers are served with different contents of a web page.

HTTP_REFERER Header Cloaking – if a user is coming from a certain website (e.g. clicking a link from search results or a website) they will be presented a different version of a website based on the HTTP_REFERER header value.

HTTP Accept-Language Header Cloaking – may be used to show different versions of a website based on a users web browser language without letting them for an option of language selection.

JavaScript Cloaking – users with JavaScript enabled browsers are shown one version while users with JavaScript turned off (like search engines) are shown another version of a website.

Matt Cutts announced that Google are going to investigate more issues of cloaking on the first quarter of 2011. So cloakers, beware….

Tweet

Merry Christmas from seojoblogs

Hope you all have a great Christmas and a Happy New Year.

If you were good this year, you will get a visit from Santa. Google have even set up Google Earth so you can track Santa around the world. What a great idea. Google teamed up with Northern American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) to keep tabs on Santa Claus in real time. Google also said you can leave Father Christmas a voice message on his Google Voice Number.

This is such a neat idea from Google. I know they are always coming up with cool and funky things, but this has to top them. It makes the Santa Claus story more real even to those kids who feel they are tool old to believe in good old St Nick. How does it work I hear you say?

Well people can track Santa’s journey through a plugin for Google Earth Web Browser. The plugin can be downloaded by Windows users for Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox and Flock browsers. Mac users can do so, by downloading the plugin for Safari and Firefox.

Santa Claus is coming to town…..

Tweet

SEO Strategies

It is coming to the end of the year and it is time to review the seo work you have done for your business or for your client. It is really important to show results to your client. There are several ways to show the results:

Results on performance

Photo from flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/joel_r/5049218772/

1) Rankings
If you have done any optimisation on the page, then it is important to show the rankings before recommendations were implemented and those after.

2) Inbound links
Through the link building activities you have completed for your client or site, you should have seen an increase in the number of inbound links to the site. There is not one consistent place to see all the inbound links, Google webmaster tools, Yahoo Site Explorer and Seomoz Linkscape all give different results, but it is important to look at all three sources and record the number before linkbuilding has begun agains the end of year results

3) Percentage of natural search traffic
You are responsible for helping to increase the natural search traffic to a client’s website or your company’s site. You should be able to see an increase in the traffic from search engines through your google analytics or through your other traffic tools.

What you must always do is be honest with the client. Sometimes you will not always see a huge improvement in rankings and traffic and this may be due to the client unable to make those on page changes or sign off for link building activities. What you then need to do is be realistic when planning for 2011.

Tweet