Coaching For Success
Posts tagged Business SEO
Use Yahoo! Clues To Discover Search Trends
Dec 6th
Knowing what people are searching for, the keywords they’re using, the search volume, etc., are important aspects of search engine optimisation (SEO) for any internet business. Up until recently there haven’t been too many tools that could be used to measure trends when it comes to search terms, other than Google Trends.
Discover Trending Information
That is, until now. Yahoo! has decided to delve into its massive database to provide a tool that not only supplies search trend data, but enhances it and takes it to a new level. Say “Hello” to Yahoo! Clues, Yahoo!’s new web based tool that can be used to explore trends in a visually appealing and interesting way. Using this tool allows you to discover trending information and then make comparisons using the data you just discovered.
Many Interesting Features
Not only does Yahoo! Clues provide search volume charts but it does so much more in addition, including displaying maps, demographic graphs and even searches related to a demographic group. In fact Yahoo! Clues is so all-encompassing it makes Google Trends look like child’s play by comparison.
Apart from the aforementioned, other interesting features include a time filter, which allows data to be filtered for 1, 7 or 30 days, comparison of two terms and various categories of information, including location, gender and income.
There’s More To Come
Yahoo! is working on more search tools, including a feature they’re tentatively calling “Search Flow”, which looks at search patterns and attempts to predict the next search term following on from a previously entered search query. You’ll also be able to see “related searches”, which will be a boon when it comes to search engine optimisation (SEO), which will go beyond “Search Flow” by providing related search terms commonly used across the entirety of Yahoo! Search.
Yahoo! Clues looks like it will be an excellent tool all around, especially the new “Search Flow” feature, which will provide data based on concrete evidence rather than mere guesswork. The only thing that might improve it is to provide trends for more than 30 days, preferably up to a full year. This will provide internet marketers with another fine tool to add to their arsenal to provide additional search engine optimisation (SEO) ammunition.
For help with all your search engine optimisation (SEO) needs, contact a UK internet marketing consultant, who will get your internet business web site optimised for success across all search engines.
What The Heck is SEO URL Canonicalization Anyway?
Sep 9th
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a vast process encompassing many techniques. These techniques can be employed in activities ranging from content development to website design and different methods to increase link popularity. Today’s post looks at URL canonicalization, what it is? Its effect and how to deal with it so it does not adversely effect the whole of your SEO efforts for your internet business.
What is URL Canonicalization
In basic terms Canonicalization is a search engine process which helps it to pick the best url when there are several choices, and it usually refers to home pages. URL canonicalization in essense is a process of standardising the URLs of your website. There are many non standard URL’s which can redirect a potential viewer of your site to the same webpage for example http://abc1.com will do the same job of directing a potential site vistor to http://www.abc1.com as the potential vistor who types in the full address inclusive of the www.
When this happens the popularity of that page becomes divided among multiple URLs. This because even though both URLs go to the same place search engines do not see them as the same address which is why the popularity of your page can be divided. A site’s Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) can be badly hit by this often missed mistake as search engines do not count such URLs as one and same while judging a page’s ranking on the basis of the number of backlinks a site has. Canonicalization will pick the best URL when there are several choices.
Consistant usage of your preferred domain
One of the ways to achieve unified Canonicalization is to use the same URL throughout your web content. For example, either use http://ab1c.com/ or http://www.abc1.com/; but use one of them consistently. Using only one format helps you to standardise your backlinks also, do not be tempted into the www. V the non www hostname arguement and remove either as this will remove the whole domain from search engines and could take upto another six months before reinclusion into search results.
You may not be able to control the formats used by affiliate websites who backlink to your website but if you are approaching them then you should submit links in the format which you have chosen as your internet business standard. If you follow your standards then there are less chances of duplicate postings of your links.
Specifying a canonical URL in HTML code
You can specify which URL you prefer to use as a canonical URL, for search engines, in your html code. For example: To specify a canonical link to the page ‘http://www.abc1.com’, create a
element as follows:
‘
You can now simply copy this link into the section of all non-canonical versions of the page, such as http://www.abc1.com/index.php’. The search engines will treat the two pages as ‘http://www.abc1.com’and will decide the page ranks accordingly.
Adding 301 redirect
The other way of maintaining the URL Canonicalization is to redirect the URLs, which are in multiple formats, to one and same page using ’301 redirect’. A ’301 redirect’ can be achieved by using a set of command lines in your ‘.htaccess file’. For example: To redirect a ‘http://abc1.com’ to ‘http://www.abc1.com’, you can use code like the following:
“RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %(HTTP_HOST) ^abc1.com( where abc1 represents your domain name)
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.abc1.com/$1 [R=301,L]”
This command will tell the search engine to treat all the URLs as one and the same (which in the above case is ‘http://www.abc1.com’). This way, you can ensure that backlinks from other websites also add to your page rankings irrespective of their URL formats. Adding a 301 redirect can be an especially good idea if your site changes often like when you have dynamic content or you have regularly updated content in blogs.
The methods mentioned above are more important from a technical perspective, However their knowledge is necessary if you are managing the Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) of your website. You should not ignore these little SEO tips but instead try to understand and apply them to your internet business to maximise its potential.
6 Top SEO Myths Dispelled
Jul 6th
There is a lot of info out there online, some great some not so good. Online just like life there are folk tales, myths (no Dragons 
) that never seems to go away and in some instances have gained such momentum that some swear it is the truth. This post seeks to dispell some of the common SEO myths in the pursuit of clarity for the already information overloaded internet business owner. In reverse order:
Myth #6 – JavaScript links cannot be crawled
This is not really true Google and many other top search engines now go out of there way to spider JavaScript-based links and pass PR through them. If you are attempting to hide pages from being crawled, you will have to format links that you don’t want crawled for PageRank in a much more complicated way using iframe elements or generate them with JavaScript that is defined off the page. Remember to disallow the /iframe, iframe source file or .js file in your robots.txt file.
Myth #5 – 404 pages are significant to your SEO
Ok this one just keeps coming back like bad Freddie Kruger movies, Yes it is important but it will not help your SEO. Usability is important for all sites but this is not SEO, a search engine will stop when they get a 404 whether there is anything on the page or not so basically does PageRank and any link benefits attached to the page.
Myth #4 – XML sitemaps help improve site rankings
XML site maps like 404 pages are really for usability, for that purpose do create them. Many people would say they are important to SEO as it might help you get your site indexed which has merit, however for the effort you put in it will not improve your sites rankings or increase keyword relevance and does not pass PR.
Myth #3 – Being W3C compliant aids SEO
This one is always interesting as in the pursuit of a good site, we do believe your site should be compliant, however it seems at odds with search engine providers logic to only list pages based on compliance rather than relevance and hence give a PageRank according to that sites compliance. Providers such as Google are more likely to consider on-page factors, link importance and link relevance. This may not be the case for mobile web users as in that instance it would make more sense to make the results shown based on friendliness of the pages using valid XHTML documents.
Myth #2 – there is an ideal keyword density
This one is a biggy as lots of SEO tools claim the ability to determine what keyword density should be used on a landing page. This software will usually look for sites ranking well for a keyword/phrase and average the density of those pages to give you a score. Many of the tools do not take into consideration off-page factors which may well increase the pages popularity. It is best to keep your keyword density around 2 – 3% although there is no particular percentage that you should target.
Drum roll please
Myth #1 – Duplicate content will get you penalized
This is the biggest myth out there in SEO and is the most misunderstood issue. Many SEO articles and people will say that duplicate content can hinder your rank and get you penalised.
Don’t get me wrong here it is not really a good thing to have duplicate content and it could potentially hurt your rank, however it is not that simple. Anyone writing content knows how hard it can be to write a totally original piece as so much information on many topics is already out there. Unique (i.e not found in that format) content is best but really this is a grey area.
When Search Engines find pages with the same content they will attempt to find the original source using factors like PageRank, domain age and trust, the site determined to be the original source will then get the SEO benefits from the content. Basically leaving the duplicate content site owner with no ranking or being indexed in supplementary pages essentially making the content of no use to the that site owner.
Only in extreme cases like whole sites or parts of whole site duplication (cloning) will your site be penalised and or removed from search engines.
Really this problem is easy to avoid as there are many article twisters/spinners out there; most are free, that will allow you/ help you rewrite the duplicate content. Equally sites like copyscape.com can also help you ensure that your content is as unique as possible.
Hopefully this post will help business owners put aside some of the myths so they can continue to build a successful business without worrying too much about the SEO myths whilst concentrating on the real job of Search Engine Optimisation.
1 Tip and 3 Steps to Better Business SEO
Jun 23rd
The Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) process starts with choosing the right landing page for your keyword to ensure that you try to rank well for that keyword. Many people get this wrong. What they attempt to do is start with the keyword and then choose the page it should land on after, if they even both to do this at all, worst still is the belief that optimising only the homepage for your site will be enough.
It is important to choose your landing page for a specific keyword first as then you help Google and other search engines find you and rank you in most cases quicker and higher than you would normally be if you had chosen the incorrect landing page. Basically you need to find a way to quickly see what Google sees as relevant, so the tips i am going to give you next will help.
To help you choose the right landing page from your business website for a particular keyword use the Google search engine and type in the follow search term query :site:yourwebsite.com keyword phrase, i.e. Site:theinternetbusinesscoach.co.uk business coaching.
This Example Shows The Results of Site Query Function in Google
You will see results like those in the image on your right, ignore the paid results in yellow. The pages listed from your site are pages that Google considers to be relevant for the keyword you have chosen. Once you have chosen the correct landing page for the keyword you can then begin the task of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Below is a brief guide of the three steps of optimising your business website.
Step One – Optimise your chosen landing page – this is known as on page/site SEO.
Always use your keyword in the Title Tag (no longer than 70 characters), in your Meta Description (end within 156 characters). Also use your keyword in your h1 tag if you have one, in the page’s text-based body content at least twice. On pages with more than 500 words make sure that your keyword density is at least 2% and evenly distributed throughout the landing page.
Step Two – Internal Off-Page SEO
This is where you look for additional pages on your site that can be optimised for the same keyword. Again go back to all the pages you have found in the site query we did early to help you, once you have chosen these pages you need to maximise the link
relevance sent to the landing page by using your keyword in that page’ Title and Meta Description. Next you need to ensure you use the keyword within the non-hyperlinked body content, and then hyperlinking at least one instance of the keyword phrase to the main landing page you have just optimised.
Vary your anchor text going to your main landing page by using small variations in the keyword you have used to maximise the number of internal links to the main landing page i.e. an example of variation in a term is the word coach; you could use coaches or coaching as variations. If you wish you can create more pages to help support your main landing page if you wish.
Step Three – External Off-Page SEO (Link Building)
This is the big one that people chase and many do first rather than last because this way you get the desired effect from your on page optimisation. This step is probably the toughest of the three as you have to determine how to make your content more link fiendly to other sites in order to develop natural links. This is where research of your competition will help you to determine who to link to and how to best get them to link to you, remember however that quantity is not the same as quality,it is far better to have ten high quality links to your site than one hundred poor quality ones, look for sites that deal with the topic for your main landing page’ keyword.
Hopefully this one tip and three steps will help you improve your business’ on and off page Search Engine Optimisation. If you like this article please share or link to us using do follow and put a credit back to http://www.theinternetbusinesscoach.co.uk/blog
A Little SEO Goes A Long Way
Jun 11th
Websites are a great way to promote your business. They can reach millions of people within a click with little cost. As a website owner you desire the maximum possible visitors you can get to view your website. The quickest possible way to make your unknown webpage visible among the millions of other web sites online is to get to the top of search engine results lists somewhere on that first page preferable in the top five (not including the paid ads).
This is known as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Some people think it is a matter of luck getting their site to this position, some Internet Marketing people will tell you that there is some special art to getting there, however this is not true all you need do is learn some of the techniques of ‘Search Engine Optimisation’ which can help you achieve it.
The SEO Building Blocks
SEO-Definition and Importance
SEO is the process of building content for your site in such a way that it improves the probability of getting it listed in the maximum amount of search engines for relevant searches for your content area. You can do this through ‘Keyword Enrichment’, which is using the words, which are used frequently by your target audience with relevance to your business area. The importance of SEO lies in the fact that the basic purpose of building a website is to get people visiting it, no matter how beautiful or creative it is or not as the case maybe.
‘Starting SEO’
You begin building a website by identifying its basic objective or the goal. The goal must state what you want people to do on your website. You may intend to put lots of information about your products, you may want people to join your business network or you may want to sell products online. Whatever your intention is, you have to be clear about it and on the basis of that you will offer some value to your visitors.
‘Offering value to your visitors’
If you don’t provide what your visitors are looking for then your basic purpose fails. So, you must know what people want from your website and what exactly you can offer to match their needs. Even if they don’t find much use for the information, give them an option to ‘like’ your information so as to indicate that you have gained their interest. You can always ask them to put some comments along with their email address, which can help you in expanding your customer database as well as improving the information you offer on your site. The content may contain articles, e-books, a report, discussion topics, a newsletter, an infomercial etc., but it must be in line with the customers’ needs.
‘Continuous improvement‘
Once you get visits on your site you should make the effort to continuously update the content of the site. The latest happenings relevant to your business must be published from time to time. Even the user interface of the site must be changed so that visitors feel refreshed each time the visit the site. If you have gained sufficient traffic on the website, then you can even showcase your product for selling purpose. Features like online payment, online order booking etc. must be there to facilitate the customers.
Always remember, once you create an exhaustive and possibly beautiful website (beauty is not always necessary as some very ugly sites do extremely well), you automatically get the advantage of viral marketing which is great SEO. As the number of visits on your webpages increase, your SEO efforts automatically help you get closer to the top of organic search engine results and gain more prominence.
Keeping such simple things in mind and designing a website for your business will fetch you unexpectedly good results. The power of Internet can be a boost to your business if you learn how to tap its potential in the proper way. SEO helps in guiding you to tap that potential.
