Scotland SEO Blog

WordPress has released a new update to their popular blogging tool and thousands have downloaded and installed the latest release. Why not? There are not many software programs that come free of charge with unlimited updates. It also helps to be the number one blogging tool in use at present.

It does, however, raise the issue of whether or not to update the moment a new release arrives on your doorstep. There are many bloggers who upgrade immediately. There are some who never seem to upgrade. And there are those who upgrade when they get around to it. There are also those who are cautious and prefer to let the dust settle before jumping in with an upgrade.

The latter may be the smart ones. Although only available for just over a week, WordPress have already announced that a minor upgrade is on the way to fix several issues from the current upgrade. We have jumped to version 2.8 and straight away to 2.8.1.

If you are using a blog for business purposes then playing the waiting game can often be the wisest move. New releases often have issues that could have serious effects on your SEO efforts. More importantly, some of the previous updates have had serious security problems that have required one or more patches to fix. If you upgrade immediately then you could be leaving your blog open to several serious consequences.

Don’t get me wrong, WordPress is one of the best blogging tools around and this is not meant to be derogatory in any way. However, when it comes to an important business blog, wait until the dust has settled and any patches or minor updates issued, before jumping and upgrading your software. When is comes to most forms of business software, wait and review feedback before upgrading - your data is too important to lose, and that includes your business blog.

Moderating comments can be a real pain in the proverbial, however, if you don’t, the pain could be greater. Blogs are fairly well covered with anti spam tools like Akismet but like everything in life, it is not perfect. If a comment happens to sneak past Akismet or any of the other anti-spam tools you use, you may not notice it, or its effect, for quite sometime.

SEOGadget reported a sudden and unexplained drop in search traffic which was only resolved once a couple of very spammy comments had been removed. What is interesting in this situation is that although the comments linked to some fairly doubtful sites (sex related), the links were nofollowed.

We know that Google does follow nofollow links, even if it doesn’t pass any rank or count them as actual links. In theory, the nofollow tells Google “I don’t trust this link” so the nofollowed link should not have been the problem (at least not if Google is telling the truth about not placing any authority on nofollow links). From this, it could be assumed that the text that was used in the comment had caused the problem.

The reason, while interesting, is not the issue here. The issue is that those comments got through the spam controls put in place. Comment moderation is one tactic that in 99% of cases, cannot be bypassed.

When moderating comments, there are two issues that need to be addressed. Are the comments themselves in anyway doubtful and do they link to spammy or doubtful sites. Answer yes to either of these then delete the comments completely.

Comment moderation is time consuming and can be a hassle. However, trying to find why a page has suddenly dropped from the top of the search results can be an even bigger hassle. Find the time and cut off the comments before they harm your site.

On a side note, if you read through the post on SEOGadget, one thing should strike you. The use of Google Analytics was a huge help in trying to find why they had lost so much traffic. For a web analytics tool that is free, it can certainly provide a lot of useful SEO information and save a lot of time when trying to track problems.

Implementing SEO programs on a website can be a time consuming affair when you first start and for webmasters their site is, well, just their site. By this I mean, the site is just one entity. This is often the first basic mistake that many webmasters make.

In reality, your site is made up of many entities. For the search engines, your site as a whole doesn’t exist - at least not when it comes to search results. Your site is made up of pages and they are the entities that search engines care about. If you use secure pages, in other words you use the https: rather that the straightforward http:, then you may need to double check on several issues - one of which could be duplicate content.

For most websites, once you have incorporated a secure area in your site, the https: usage can connect with all pages - this includes the non-secure area. In other words, if your home page is http://yoursitenamehere.com and you have a secure section, your site’s home page can also then be accessed using https://yoursitenamehere.com.

Duplicate content is not supposed to be a big issue these days. That is still debatable with some experts swearing it still has a negative effect whilst others insist it has no effect at all. Whilst I don’t believe it is a big issue now, it doesn’t hurt to insure the right pages appear in the search engine results.

The easiest way to control this is by using a nofollow into all of your secure pages. This of course means your secure content will not be indexed. For most sites, the secure section deals with payments so not having it indexed is not a problem.

If those pages have been indexed, either go to, or create, a Google Webmaster Tools account. From there you can send in a request to have unwanted pages removed from the index. From that point on your secure pages should never appear in the search results and you should never have any SEO problems related to duplicate content.

The aim of a search engine optimization program is to get your pages indexed by the search engines as quickly as possible. Once they have been indexed they can start to climb the search engine results page ladder. For some webmasters, getting their pages indexed is not always the problem, it is keeping them in the index that is a problem.

Former Googler Vanessa Fox has some tips on this topic published in both text and video format on WebProNews. Her tips and comments make interesting viewing/reading and make a lot of sense. Her tips and comments, in a nutshell are:

A traffic problem is not necessarily a ranking problem - it could be a crawl problem

This is true, although if your pages are not being crawled and indexed then they are not being ranked. However, her point is that a drop in traffic may be a case of losing search rank, it could be your pages have dropped out of the index altogether. There are any number of crawl issues, but one that she hasn’t covered is that of access - if your server is down too often then your pages will drop out of the index.

Organize your pages into categories

A well planned site should have its pages organized into categories. However, Ms Fox goes one step further and suggests you analyze your site on a category basis rather than on a page basis. This makes a lot of sense. If you have one or two categories that are working well and one that isn’t, you can either work harder on the category that isn’t working for you, or drop it altogether.

Manage the search engines crawl efficiency

Search engines won’t spend all day crawling your whole site. Help them out by using appropriate links to your most important pages. You can also use the nofollow attribute to stop the search engines from crawling unnecessary pages. When the search engine visits, get it to crawl the best pages first.

Create comprehensive canonical .xml sitemaps for each categories

This is interesting. Having a sitemap for each category can certainly help the search engines crawl your site. By creating a general sitemap index file you can tell the search engines which categories have their own sitemap and where it is. You can also use Webmaster Tools to assess each category.

Make sure you have a problem before you start to make repairs

This is the least thought of tip when people try to assess what has gone wrong. You can search everywhere for problems, apply tweaks here and there, make changes and generally go gray looking for a problem when all along it is just a simple crawl problem. Don’t make assumptions, check the above points first.

These are not the only areas to look at, and search engine crawling is only one part of a bigger picture. If your pages are not ranking well, if at all, the you need to look at a wide range of variables. This checklist is a good place to start if you’re trying to determine why your pages are not being indexed in the search engines.

I know it is a long title but it is an interesting SEO concept that is worth discussing. It’s a bit like the chicken and the egg - which comes first, content to satisfy the reader or content that gets you ranked so that you get visitors to read your content?

If that concept has troubled you at all and left you wondering which direction to take - the answer is fairly straightforward. I know, you are waiting for me to say neither, but I wont. Content for your reader has to be your primary concern. What about SEO, I hear you say? That is also an easy one to answer.

Let me go back to square one. You are writing content for a reason and that reason should, in the first instance, be for your readers. They are potential customers, subscribers, or just regular visitors. It all depends on your site’s overall aim. With that in mind, they have to be your primary focus. You have to take everything from the perspective that search engines could all die tomorrow - where will that leave you?

Visitors to your site come from a lot of different sources - this is particularly true if your SEO program is working for you, and you undertake some social marketing. Okay, you don’t rank highly in the search results - traffic can be found elsewhere. However, all is not lost. Let’s now get you ranked in the search results with that killer content.

Remember, I said to write primarily for your readers. Now that you have that killer copy - think of the search engines. Can I adjust the title to include a keyword? Can the first paragraph include a keyword - likewise the rest of the content? Don’t overdo it. In fact, having a keyword in the title along with the first and last paragraph is a great start. Try a few variations within the content and you are giving your search engine optimization chances a real boost.

The simple inclusion of a picture, image or graphic that is, of course, keyword optimized using alt and title tags can also help.

What have you done? You have written content for your readers first. You have then optimized the content for the search engines whilst still leaving your content basically intact. Create killer content for your readers and leave the SEO as the final act. It’s a sure-fire winner in the long run!

Authority is one of those mysterious factors that search engines such as Google measure when ranking web pages. I don’t want to go into what makes up ‘authority’, however I think one way you can improve your credibility, and with it your authority, is to ensure your content has been edited.

It can be difficult editing your own content, but not impossible. One of the best ways to edit your own content is to simply leave it - walk away from it, and come back 8, 12 or even 24 hours later. You will be surprised at how many spelling, grammatical or punctuation mistakes you find. You will also come across passages of text that are either superfluous, or just don’t deliver the message the way you intended it.

One of the best ways to edit your content is to have someone else read it and point out the errors they find. Another set of eyes can often pick out the errors, errors that you can look at a hundred times and still miss.

Editing your content prior to publication is important when it comes to credibility. That content is representing you so if there is poor spelling, grammar, or punctuation, the reader will transfer that poor image of the content directly onto your business. This then extends down the line. Who wants to link to a page that is full of errors, or is difficult to read? Webmasters, when they link to other pages, want to do so as a benefit to their readers - if they link to a poor site, that reflects on them.

I would also suggest that periodically you go back and edit some of your old content. This is particularly important for pages that are ranking well and receiving a lot of traffic directly - often known as a landing page. If the content is outdated then that too could also reflect poorly on your site. Keeping that information up to date, or at least providing a clear link to an up to date version of the content shows your visitors you are professional and you stay in control of your web site.

Good quality content that has perfect (or as near perfect as possible) spelling and grammar creates a positive image in the eyes of the reader. This helps to keep them on the page and gives them confidence to move onto other pages. This can help to reduce bounce rates whilst providing content that others will happily link to - improved content leads to improved credibility, which ultimately equates to improved authority - all because you spent an extra few minutes editing the content prior to publishing.

Chris Crum has a post on SmallBusinessNewz that is spot on - business blogs only work if you use them. Like I said - he is spot on. However, you can take it one step further - blogging will only work if your heart is in it.

It’s fairly obvious in a way. You could have all the best intentions in the world and start a blog to promote your business. If you only write a dozen or so posts then leave it - the only benefit you may get is the few links you created. Otherwise, the blog is a waste of space. It could also harm your business if potential customers come across it and see that nothing has been done for months.

I said your heart had to be in it - and if it does otherwise, it shows. If you start a blog for the sake of having a blog and don’t give it any sort of direction or write content that is useful then you may as well not have the blog.

Blogging can be one of the easiest and cheapest ways to promote your business, promote your products, and to interact with your customers (and potential customers). Writing from the heart doesn’t mean getting soppy - is is more a case of giving the impression your readers are important and the information you are supplying is important. As Chris writes:

It can inspire trust and keep the public informed about your business activities. However, it’s only going to be a great tool if it is maintained.

Using blogs to promote businesses is now a widely recognized strategy within the SEO industry. For many business professionals, maintaining a blog can be a real distraction. However, it doesn’t have to be. If you employ staff, they can be given the job of supplying content. You can also hire professional writers to supply content - in fact, you can hire a professional blog service to look after every aspect of your blog and you would be surprised at how inexpensive they can be.

Blogging is an important tool for any business that has an online presence - but only if it is used and only if it is used right. Properly designed and updated frequently, you will find that business blogs can not only be valuable SEO tools, but they can also be great marketing tools and lead to increased sales and customer satisfaction.

In the past, if you decided to move your site to a new domain you really had a battle on your hands. The general solution was to implement a host of redirects from the old domain to the new one. This will not be a problem now - you can tell Google of the change and let them handle the redirects.

The redirects will only be in force for 180 days (six months), which, according to Google, is plenty of time for the pages to rank independently of the old domain. Google have labeled the tool the ‘Change of Address’ tool and it is a fairly straightforward process. The tool is accessed through the Webmaster Tools interface.

Once you log in, there are two steps that need to be addressed. The first is to ensure the old domain is registered and claimed. The second is to add and verify the new domain name within Webmaster tools.

You may wonder if it is the tool is safe to use. According to Google’s article,

The change of address tool is safe, because only verified site owners can use it.

Once both domains are verified within Google you can simply follow the prompt to instigate the
‘change of address’. I do urge a little caution when using this tool. It will redirect the old to the new but only within Google’s search results.

Google is not the only search engine around so your site may disappear altogether on the Yahoo! or MSN (Bing) search results pages. You will need to work hard on your optimization efforts on the new domain to give yourself a chance of ranking in those search results.

Changing domains can be a risky business so if you are not sure how to proceed then call in an expert that works with domain names. If you try to do it yourself you run the risk of destroying all your hard work and being back at square one.

If you’re a new webmaster and you’re wondering what SEO is and how you should get started then get off to a good start simply by visiting our pages. However, if you want to get a good head start you may want to first check out what the search engines themselves consider to be appropriate search engine optimization strategies.

Google have thousands of fact sheets to help webmasters and one set that you can download is their Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide. This is by no means a complete guide to SEO but as the name suggests, it is a starter guide and it does contain some very useful information. In fact, I would recommend that even experienced webmasters should check it out just to ensure they have all the bases covered.

Earlier this month, Google announced that the guide was now available in 40 languages - enough to cover around 98% of the global Internet audience. In theory, everyone should be doing the basics exactly the same. Of course, theory doesn’t always turn into practical standards some are better theorists than others.

As a starter, it does its job. However, be aware that it is written from Google’s perspective and Google is not the only player in town. Once you have downloaded the guide and read it through, by all means implement the strategies mentioned. However, come back here to pick up some of the methods used to add to those ‘basics’.

There are many sites that offer advice on SEO and most don’t mind being asked questions to clarify information published on their sites. Whilst SEO contains many different factors to get ranked - as you see when you read the Google guide - it all starts with good content, a good selection of keywords, and a combination of internal and external links.

Grab the guide from Google, give it a good read and start to implement the strategies it suggests. Overtime you can then start tweaking your pages with some of the more advanced SEO strategies that we cover here from time to time.

The time is rapidly approaching, if it’s not here already, for web masters to look beyond traditional branding and marketing streams. Certainly, when it comes to building sources of traffic, the long used and abused search engine optimization strategies are becoming tired.

Social marketing is the latest trend and it can be quite successful. It can also be extremely frustrating. You can spend hours, weeks or even months building a profile on a site like Facebook only to have it pulled because you breach some obscure rule.

Traditional branding marketing methods still work well. Banner advertising doesn’t deliver much in the way of clicks but it does work well for branding. This is particularly true if your banner is clever and catches the eye.

For many online businesses, email marketing is still proving to be successful. The key to a successful email marketing campaign is communication rather bombardment. Newsletters that provide helpful information are often appreciated by those on your lists. If there is a little marketing at the same time, believe it or not the recipients expect it, so long as its not overdone.

There is a wide variety of marketing options available. I haven’t even scratched the surface yet since there is the world of offline marketing, blogging, pay-per-click and affiliate marketing available as options. These are not all ‘marketing’ in the true sense, however, every time you expose you business, your brand, or your product, you are undertaking some form of marketing.

To be successful now, you need to find a mix of these methods that works best for your business. What works well for one may not work well for another. Some products are well served with pay-per-click advertising - for others the opposite is true.

Search engines are not the be all and end all of marketing and traffic building. Find the right mix and you will find that variety is, indeed, the spice of life - or in this case, the key to successful branding and marketing.