DIY SEO Tips & Tactics

A sort-of-beginners-guide to on-site and on-page seo FAQ.

I think you could read these (about 30) tips about search engine optimisation and go away and create a successful site. I deliberately steered clear of things that might be a bit gray, and I assume you’ve done your keyword research – I might go into that shortly.

I just wanted to stay largely on-site seo for the duration of the tutorial, and lay down real seo advice you could use. I knocked them out with no little planning – so forgive me if the advice is a bit all over the place. I will be checking the information again, after a break. 

What Is The Best Title Tag For Google SEO?

This is just my preference, backed up with observations I’ve made over the last few years I’ve learned / practiced seo. This is the stuff people ask me on a daily basis at my seo company – What Is The Best Title Tag For Google?

<title>What Is The Best Title Tag For Google?</title>

Title Tag Best Practices

For me, a perfect title tag in Google is;

• Highly relevant to the page it refers to, the page title is often used by Google as the title of a link in search engine results pages.
• The “crown” of a keyword targeted article with important keyword featuring AT LEAST ONCE.
• Probably 5-12 words, but ideally under the 70 characters limit (character counter), so the full title appears in Google SERPS (search engine results pages) but it depends on the page content. I usually like to keep to 8 words, but I do mix this up a little. I have had success with longer titles…. much longer titles. Google will INDEX perhaps 1000s of characters in a title… but know one knows exactly how many characters Google will actually count as a TITLE. It is a very hard thing to try to isolate accurately.
• Some pages do well with a call to action – one which reflects exactly a searcher’s intent (e.g. to learn something, or buy something, or hire something. Remember this is your hook in search engines, and there is a lot of competing pages out there!
• The perfect title tag on a page is unique to other pages on the site.
• I like to make sure my keywords feature as early as possible in a title tag but the important thing is to have important keywords in your title tag SOMEWHERE!
• For me, when SEO is more important than branding, the company name goes at the end of the tag, and I use a variety of dividers to separate as no one way performs best.
• I like to think I write titles for search engines and humans.
• Know that Google tweaks everything regularly – why not what the perfect title keys off? So MIX it up…
• Don’t obsess! Natural is probably better, and will only get better as engines evolve.
• Generally speaking, the more domain trust/authority your SITE has in Google, the easier it is for a new page to rank for something. So bear that in mind.
• Also bear in mind, in 2011, the html title element you choose for your page, might not be what Google chooses to include in your SERP snippet. The search snippet is very much QUERY dependant these days – which Google choosing what it thinks is the most relevant title for your search snippet, and it can use information from your page or in links to that page to create a very different SERP snippet title. For example, your home page title might be different than your title tag, but so also might your internal pages title tags be different in Google.

Note;

When you write a page title, you have a chance right at the beginning of the page to tell Google if this is a spam site or a quality site – such as – have you repeated the keyword 4 times or only once? I think title tags, like everything else, should probably be as simple as possible too, with the keyword once and perhaps a related term if possible.

I think its fair to surmise Google might treat title tags (actually, ‘title elements’) on more authoritative domains differently than on new sites, too, that is, as with other things, more trusted domains might get away with more spammy titles, but from a user point of view and with searcher intent (and Google’s commitment to this) at the forefront, I’d try to keep things as simple and looking as human-generated and unique as possible.

I’m certainly cleaning up the way I write my titles all the time. How do you do it?

Ahh, a bastian of crap and unethical search engine optimisation companies – the meta-keywords tag! How many crap seo companies mention cleaning and optimising this tag in their presentations? Companies that waste time on these waste clients money.

<meta name="Keywords" content="seo, search engine optimisation, optimization" /

I have one piece of advice with the meta keyword tag, which like the title tag, goes in the head section of your web page, forget about them.

If you are relying on meta-keyword optimisation to rank for terms, your dead in the water. From what I see, Google + Bing ignores meta keywords - or at least places no weight in them to rank pages. Yahoo may read them, but really, a seo has more important things to worry about than this nonsense.

What about other search engines that use them? Hang on while I submit my site to those 75,000 engines first lol

Yes, 10 years ago search engines liked looking at your meta-keywords (those were the days!). I’ve seen OPs in forums ponder which is the best way to write these tags – with commas, with spaces, limiting to how many characters….

Forget about meta-keyword tags – they are a pointless waste of time and bandwidth. Could probably save a rain-forest with the bandwidth costs we save if everybody removed their keyword tags

I’ll be removing most of mine shortly to do my bit for the environment, and I certainly don’t waste valuable client time putting them in new sites. Even (maybe especially) if I can auto-generate them.

Tin Foil Hat Time

So you have a new site….. you fill your home page meta tags with the 20 keywords you want to rank for – hey, that’s what optimisation is all about, isn’t it?

You’ve just told Google by the third line of text what to sandbox you for And wasn’t meta name=”Keywords” originally for words that weren’t actually on the page that would help classify the document? Sometimes competitors might use the information in your keywords to determine what you are trying to rank for, too….

I had better take this tin foil hat off because now I am thinking if everybody removed them and stopped abusing Google would probably start looking at them but that’s the way of things in search engines.

Ignore them. Not even a ‘second order’ effect, in my opinion – and that’s all this is, remember.

Like the title element and unlike the meta keywords tag, this one is important, both from a human and search engine perspective.

<meta name="Description" content="Get your site on the first page of Google,
Yahoo and Bing too, using simple seo. Call us on 0845 094 0839. A company based in Scotland." />

Forget whether or not to put your keyword in it, make it relevant to a searcher and write it for humans, not search engines. If you want to have this 20 word snippet which accurately describes the page you have optimised for one or two keyword phrases when people use Google to search, make sure the keyword is in there.

I must say, I normally do include the keyword in the description as this usually gets it in your serp snippet, but I think it would be a fair guess to think more trusted sites would benefit more from any boost a keyword in the meta description tag might have, than an untrusted site would.

Google looks at the description but there is debate whether it actually uses the description tag to rank sites. I think they might at some level, but again, a very weak signal. I certainly don’t know of an example that clearly shows a meta description helping a page rank.

Some times, I will ask a question with my titles, and answer it in the description, sometimes I will just give a hint;

It’s also very important in my opinion to have unique title tags and unique meta descriptions on every page on your site. It’s a preference of mine, but I don’t generally autogenerate descriptions with my cms of choice either – normally I’ll elect to remove the tag entirely before I do this, and my pages still do well (and Google generally pulls a decent snippet out on it’s own which you can then go back and optimise for serps .

Tin Foil Hat Time

Sometimes I think if your titles are spammy, your keywords are spammy, and your meta description is spammy, Google might stop right there – even they probably will want to save bandwidth at some time

Putting a keyword in the description won’t take a crap site to number 1 or raise you 50 spots in a competitive niche – so why optimise for a search engine when you can optimise for a human? – I think that is much more valuable, especially if you are in the mix already – that is – on page one for your keyword.

So, the meta description tag is important in Google, Yahoo and Bing and every other engine listing – very important to get it right. Make it for humans.

Oh and by the way – Google seems to truncate anything over 160 characters in the meta description. actually, might be just under 160 now, so keep meta descriptions to about 155 characters to be safe)

OK – So I’ve theorised about the Title Element, the Meta Description Tag and the pointless (IMO) Meta Keywords tag.

The only other Meta Tag I am interested in, generally, is when I am trying to control which pages (at a page level) are indexed, or which external links are to be counted by Google as links – useful to stay within their guidelines in some cases. The Robots Meta Tag;

<meta name="robots" content="index, nofollow" />

I use the above meta tag and instructions to tell Google to index the page but not to count any links on the page going to EXTERNAL sites (EDIT nofollow on al links on the page!) . There are various instructions you can utilise but remember Google by default will index and follow links, so need to include that as a command – you can leave the robots meta out completely and probably should if you don’t have a clue.

Valid values for the “CONTENT” attribute are: “INDEX“, “NOINDEX“, “FOLLOW“, “NOFOLLOW“. Pretty self explanatory – If you want to find out more about this tag, visit http://www.robotstxt.org/meta.htm

I’ve included the robots meta tag as this is one of only 3 meta tags / head elements I am interested in when it comes to Google. But it is for the Head Section, generally, for me.

1. Title Element – Important – Unique
2. Meta Description (optional but advisable in most cases) – Unique
3. Robots Meta Tag (optional) – Be Careful

These tips are part of our no FUD on site optimisation tips July – one seo tip a day, but only the stuff you can actually use and should be considering on your site.

These tags go in the HEAD section of a HTML page and represent the only tags for Google I care about. Everything else is quite unnecessary and very well pointless (for Google optimisation, anyway).

If you are interested in using methods like on-page robots instructions and the robots.txt file to control which pages get indexed by Google and how Google treats them, Sebastian knows a lot more than me

I can’t find any definitive proof online that says you need to use Heading Tags (H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6) or that they improve rankings in Google, and I have seen pages do well in Google without them – but I do use them, especially the H1 tag on the page. For me it’s another piece of a perfect page, in the traditional sense, and I try to build a site for Google and humans.

<h1>The Hobo SEO Company, Scotland</h1>

I still generally only use one <h1> heading tag in my keyword targeted pages – I believe this is the way the W3C intended it be used – and ensure they appear at the top of a page and written with my main keywords or keyword phrases incorporated. I have never experienced any problems using CSS to control the appearance of the heading tags making them larger or smaller.

I use as many H2 – H6 as is necessary depending on the size of the page, but generally I use H1, H2 & H3. You can see here how to use header tags properly.

How many words in the H1 Tag? As many as I think is sensible – as short and snappy as possible usually. Aaron Wall at SEOBook recommends not making your h1 tags the exact same as your page titles, although I personally have never seen a problem with this on a quality site. I also discovered Google will use your Header tags as page titles at some level if your title element is malformed.

As always be sure to make your heading tags highly relevant to the content on that page and not too spammy, either.

Part of our July on-site / on page seo tutorial (K9)

I get asked this all the time – how much text do you put on a page to rank for a certain keyword? Well, as in so much of SEO theory and strategy, there is no optimal amount of text per page.

Instead of thinking about the quantity of the text think more about the quality of the content on the page. optimise this with searcher intent in mind. We ll that’s how I do it.

I don’t subscribe that you need a minimum amount of words or text to rank in Google. I have seen pages with 50 words out rank pages with 100, 250, 500 or 1000 words. Then again I have seen pages with no text rank on nothing but inbound links or other ‘strategy’.

At the moment, I prefer long pages and a lot of text, still focused on a few related keywords and keyphrases to a page. Useful for long tail keyphrases and easier to explore related terms. (K9)

Every site is different. Some pages can get away with 50 words because of a good link profile and the domain it is hosted on. For me the important thing is to make a page relevant to a user search. I don’t care how many words I achieve this with and often I need to experiment on a site I am unfamiliar with. After a while, you get an idea how much text you need to use to get a page on a certain domain into Google.

For instance, this page might be relevant to a search for;

• How many words on the page for Google?
• How many words to rank in Google?
• How many words and characters on the page for SEO?
• How many words on the page for Yahoo?
• How many words on the page for MSN?
• What is the optimal amount of text on a page for search engines?

OK so I cheated a bit there, and normally I would take more time to work these questions into the text – but hopefully you get my drift.

There is no optimal number of words on a page for placement in Google. Every website is different from what I can see. Don’t worry too much about word count if your content is original and informative.

• Character Counter Tool

(K9) The short answer to this is – no. There is no one-size-fits-all keyword density, no optimal percentage.

I do not subscribe to the idea that there is a certain percent of keywords per 1000 words of text to get a page to number 1 in Google. Search engines are not that easy although the key to success in many fields is simple seo.

I write natural page copy where possible always focused on the keyterms – I never calculate density in order to identify the best % – there are way too many other things to work on. Hey, I have looked, a long time ago

If it looks natural, it’s ok with me. Normally I will try and get related terms in the page, and if I have 5 paragraphs, I might have the keyword in 4 or 5 of those as long as it doesn’t look like I stuffed them in there.

I think optimal keyword density is a bit of a myth these days, although there are many who disagree. Crazy stuff. I think the page I just linked to is the longest page on the internet debunking keyword density.

I’ll lay down my thoughts on internal link optimisation later in this seo tutorial, but onpage, I link internal to relevant pages in my site all the time.

I silo any relevance or trust mainly though links in text content and secondary menu systems and between pages that are relevant in context to one another.

I don’t worry about perfect silo’ing techniques any more, and don’t worry about whether or not I should link to one category from another, as I think the ‘boost’ many proclaim is minimal on the size of sites I manage.

Sometimes I will ensure 10 pages link to 1 page in a theme, and not reciprocate this link. Other times, I will. it depends on the PR google juice I have to play with and again, if it feels right in the circumstance to do so, or the size of the site and how deep I am in the structure.

There’s no set method I find works for every site, other than to link to related internal pages often and where appropriate – it’s where I find some creativity.

Sticking firmly in on page seo territory, I regularly link out to other quality relevant pages on other websites where possible and where a human would find it valuable.

I don’t link out to other sites from homepage. I want all the PR residing in the home page to be shared only with my internal pages. I don’t like out to other sites from my category pages either, for the same reason.

I link to other relevant sites (a deep link where possible) from individual pages and I do it often, usually. I don’t worry about link equity or PR leak because I control it on a page to page level.

This works for me, it allows me to share the link equity I have with other sites while ensuring it is not at the expense of pages on my own domain. It may even help get me into a ‘neighbourhood’ of relevant sites, especially when some of those start linking back to my site.

Linking out to other sites, especially using a blog, also helps tell others that might be interested in your content that your page is ‘here’. Try it.

Generally I wont link out to sites using the exact keyword /phrase I am targeting, but I will be considerate, and usually try and link out to a site using keywords these bloggers / site owners would appreciate.

For instance, if i was linking to Andy I might use the term niche marketing, Lyndon I might use link bait training, for Jim it might be link building company. I try to be considerate when I have the time as anchor text in external links is ultra important and really does have an impact on rankings for these guys – and me.

I can’t even say this word properly – Canonicalization. Does your site have canonicalization problems?

Perhaps, but probably not critical. Simply put, http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/ can be treated by Google as a different url than http://hobo-web.co.uk/ even though it’s the same page, and it can get even more complicated. It’s thought Pagerank and Google Juice can be diluted if Google gets confused about your URLS and speaking simply you don’t want this PR diluted (in seo theory).

That’s why many, including myself, redirect non-www to www (or vice versa) if the site is on a linux/apache server (in the htaccess file -

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^hobo-web.co.uk [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/$1 [L,R=301]

Basically you are redirecting all the Google juice to one url.

Do you need to do this? Of course not. As standard these days, I do however. It keeps it simple, when optimising for Google. It should be noted, it’s incredibly important not to mix the two types of www/non-www on site when linking your own internal pages!

Google can handle most sites no problem even without this measure being taken, and it’s certainly no magic bullet implementing this canonicalization fix. On it’s own I see little boost. I am not an expert when it comes server side, of course, so I would love to hear other views.

In my experience it depends on the type of site. Are people linking to your site other than you?

If there are a lot of people linking to you, I would implement it. Imagine you have 10 links from relatively untrusted sites with the www and all of a sudden you get a link from a trusted site without the www (non www) – that’s when you might not get the most out of a link, it’s thought.

Another one not to obsess about – I survived years without it (although I did ensure I did not mix it up on site), and anyway, your host needs to support this sort of thing – and many low cost host do not. Interesting to note however Google asks you which one to pick in Google Webmaster Tools.

NOTE: Alt Tags are counted by Google, but I would be careful over optimizing them. I’ve seen a lot of websites penalized for this (I think!).

Don’t optimise your ALT tags (or rather, attributes) JUST for Google!

Use ALT tags (attributes) for descriptive text that helps visitors – and keep them unique where possible, like you do with your titles and meta descriptions. Sure, throw your keyword in there if you want once or twice.

Don’t obsess. Don’t optimise your ALT tags just for Google – do it for humans, for accessibility and usability.

And remember – even if, like me most days, you can’t be bothered with ALT tags, at least put a blank one in so people with screen readers can enjoy your page.

Update 17/11/08 – Picked This Up At SERoundtable about Alt Tags:

JohnMu from Google: alt attribute should be used to describe the image. So if you have an image of a big blue pineapple chair you should use the alt tag that best describes it, which is alt=”big blue pineapple chair.” title attribute should be used when the image is a hyperlink to a specific page. The title attribute should contain information about what will happen when you click on the image. For example, if the image will get larger, it should read something like, title=”View a larger version of the big blue pineapple chair image.”

Barry continues with a quote:

As the Googlebot does not see the images directly, we generally concentrate on the information provided in the “alt” attribute. Feel free to supplement the “alt” attribute with “title” and other attributes if they provide value to your users!So for example, if you have an image of a puppy (these seem popular at the moment ) playing with a ball, you could use something like “My puppy Betsy playing with a bowling ball” as the alt-attribute for the image. If you also have a link around the image, pointing a large version of the same photo, you could use “View this image in high-resolution” as the title attribute for the link.

Clean URLS (or search engine friendly urls) are just that – easy to read, simple. You do not need clean urls in a site architecture for Google to spider a site successfully (Update 23/9/08 – apparently confirmed by Google), although I do use clean urls as a default these days, and have done so for years.

Is there a massive difference in Google when you use clean urls?

No, in my experience it’s very much a second or third order effect, perhaps even less, if used on it’s own. EDIT: Recent observations I have made seem to indicate they might be more valuable in 2010.

The thinking is that you might get a boost in Google SERPS if your URLS are clean – because you are using keywords in the actual page name instead of a parameter or ID number. Google might reward the page some sort of relevance because of the actual file / page name.

On it’s own, this boost, in my experience is virtually non-detectable. Where this benefit is slightly detectable is when people (say in forums) link to your site with the url as the link. Then it is fair to say you do get a boost because keywords are in the actual anchor text link to your site, and I believe this is the case, but again, that depends on the quality of the page linking to your site – ie if Google trusts it and it passes Page Rank (!) and anchor text relevance. And of course, you’ll need citable content on that site of yours.

Sometimes I will remove the stop-words from a url and leave the important keywords as the page title because a lot of forums garble a url to shorten it.

I configure urls the following way;

1. www.hobo-web.co.uk/?p=292 — is automatically changed by the CMS using url rewrite to
2. www.hobo-web.co.uk/websites-clean-search-engine-friendly-urls/ — which I then break down to something like
3. www.hobo-web.co.uk/search-engine-friendly-urls/

It should be remembered it is thought although Googlebot can crawl sites with dynamic URLs, it is assumed by many webmasters there is a greater risk that it will give up if the urls are deemed not important and contain multiple variables and session IDs (theory).

As standard, I use clean URLS where possible on new sites these days, and try to keep the URLS as simple as possible and do not obsess about it. That’s my aim at all times when I seo – simplicity.

Be aware though – Google does look at keywords in the URL even in a granular level. Having a keyword in your URL might be the difference between your site ranking and not – check out

• Does Google Count A Keyword In The URI (Filename) When Ranking A Page?

As I mentioned in the ALT Tag seo tip, some seo proclaim putting your keywords in bold or putting your keywords in italics is a benefit in terms of search engine optimizing a page – as if they are working their way through a check list.

It’s impossible to test this, and I think these days, Google might be using this to identify what to derank a site for, not promote it in SERPS.

I use bold or italics these days specifically for users. Only if it’s natural or this is really what I want to emphasise!

Don’t tell Google what to sandbox you for that easily! I’m currently cleaning up the Hobo blog to reflect this, too.

I’ve been meaning, maybe forgetting, to pint out in these posts I think Google treats every website differently to others in some respect. That is, more trusted sites might get treated differently than untrusted sites.

2c.

This is another one of those areas in SEO or website development that you shouldn’t be concerned about. My advice would be to keep it consistent.

Which Is Better? – Absolute Or Relative URLS?

I prefer absolute urls. That’s just a preference. Google doesn’t care so neither do I, really. I have just gotten into the habit of using absolute urls.

• What is an absolute URL? Example – http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/search-engine-optimisation/
• What is a relative URL? Example – /search-engine-optimisation.htm

Relative just means relative to the document the link is on. Move that page to another site and it won’t work. With an absolute URL, it would work.

Another one to forget about. Sometimes I use directories and sometimes I use files. I have not been able to determine if there is any actual benefit to using either.

I prefer files like .html when I am building a new site from scratch, as they are the ultimate end of the line for search engines as I visualise things – whereas a folder is a collection area, wether you have other files apart from the index or not. I think it takes more to get a folder trusted than an individual file and I guess this sways me to use files on mosts websites we design, though that’s the first time I have really thought about it. Once folders are trusted, it’s 6 or half a dozen.

Folders can be treated differently than files in my experience. Some folders if you don’t linkbuild or incorporate into the site archiecture properly can be trusted less than other folder in your site or ignored entirely. Folders seem to take a little bit longer to get indexed by Google than straight files in some cases.

People talk about trusted domains but they don’t mention or don’t know not all the domain has the same amount of trust. Google treats some folders….. differently. Probably dependent on where links are coming from – is this folder starved of links when the rest of the site has hundreds? Google might take a while to get to know it.

Some say don’t go beyond 4 levels of folders. I haven’t experienced too many issues, but you never know.

Google hates everything Microsoft does so avoid ASP lol

Google doesn’t care. As long as it renders as a browser compatitible document, it appears Google can read it these days.

I prefer php these days even with flat documents as it is easir to add server side code to that document if I want to add some sort of function to the site.

Does Google rank a page higher because of valid code? The short answer is no, even though I tested it on a small scale test with different results.

Google doesn’t care if your page is valid html and valid css. This is clear – check any top ten results in Google and you will probably see that most contain invalid HTML or CSS. I love creating accessible websites but they are a bit of a pain to manage when you have multiple authors or developers on a site.

If your site is so badly designed with a lot of invalid code even Google and browsers cannot read it, then you have a problem.

Where possible, if commissioning a new website, demand at least minimum accessibility compliance on a site (there are three levels of priority to meet), and aim for valid html and css. Actually this is the law in some countries although you would not know it, and be prepared to put a bit of work in to keep your rating.

Valid HTML and CSS are a pillar of best practice website optimisation, not strictly search engine optimisation (SEO). It is one form of optimisation Google will not penalise you for.

Where can you test the accessibility of your website – Cynthia Says – http://www.contentquality.com/ – not for the faint hearted!

Addition – I will be following W3C recommendations that actually help seo;

Hypertext links. Use text that makes sense when read out of context. W3C Top Ten Accessibility Tips

I’ve not got any proof this actually happens, but I do it. Rather than tell Google via a 404 or some other command that this page isn’t here any more, I have no problem permanently redirecting a page to a relatively similar page to pool any link power that page might have, or even redirect it server side to the home page.

My general rule of thumb is to make sure the information (and keywords) are contained in the new page – stay on the safe side.

Most already know the power of a 301 (wonder why that page is sorta disliked by Google ) and how you can use it to power even totally unrelated pages to the top of Google for a time – sometimes a very long time.

Google seems to think server side redirects are OK – so I use them.

You can change the focus of a redirect but that’s a bit black hat for me and can be abused – I don’t really talk about that sort of thing on this blog. But it’s worth knowing – you need to keep these redirects in place in your htaccess file.

Redirecting multiple old pages to one new page – works for me, if the information is there on the new page that ranked the old page

I am always on the look for duplicate content issues. I think I have seen -50 positions for nothing more than a lot of duplicate content although I am looking into other possible issues. Generally speaking, Google will identify the best pages on your site if you have a decent on-site architecture. It’s usually pretty decent at this but it totally depends on where you are linkbuilding to within the site and how your site navigation is put together.

Don’t invite duplicate content issues. I don’t consider it a penalty you receive in general for duplicate content – you’re just not getting the most benefit. You’re website content isn’t being what it could be – a contender.

But this should be common sense. Google wants and rewards original content. Google doesn’t like duplicate content, and it’s a footprint of most spam sites. You don’t want to look anything like a spam site.

The more you can make it look a human built every page on a page by page basis with content that doesn’t appear exactly in other areas of the site – the more Google will like it. Google does not like automation when it comes to building a website, that’s for clear. (Unique titles, meta descriptions, keyword tags, content.)

I don’t mind Category duplicate content – as with WordPress – it can even help sometimes to spread PR and theme a site. But I generally wouldn’t have tags and categories, for instance.

I’m not that bothered with ‘themeing’ at this point to recommend silo’ing your content or no-indexing your categories. If I am not theming enough with proper content and mini-silo’ing to related pages from this page and to this page I should go home. Most sites in my opinion don’t need to silo their content – the scope of the content is just not that broad.

Keep in mind Google won’t thank you for spidering a calendar folder with 10,000 blank pages on it – why would they. They may even algorythmically tick you off.

PS – Duplicate content found on other sites? Now that’s a totally diferent problem.

UPDATED: See Google Advice on Duplicate Content.

The best piece of advice I ever read about creating a website / optimising a website was years ago:

make sure all your pages link to at least one other in your site

This advice is still sound today and the most important piece of advice out there in my opinion. Yes it’s so simple it’s stupid.

Check your pages for broken links. Seriously, broken links are a waste of link power and could hurt your site, drastically in some cases. Google is a link based search engine – if your links are broken and your site is chock full of 404s you might not be at the races.

Here’s the second best piece of advice in my opinion seeing as we are just about talking about website architecture;

link to your important pages often internally, with varying anchor text in the navigation and in page text content

…. especially if you do not have a lot of Pagerank to begin with!

What is a xml sitemap and do I need one to ‘seo’ my site for Google?

(The XML Sitemap protocol) has wide adoption, including support from Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft

No. You do not need a XML Sitemap to optimise a site for Google, again, if you have a sensible navigation system.

A XML Sitemap is a method by which you can help a search engine, including Google, find & index all the pages on your site. Sometimes useful for very large sites, perhaps if the content chases often, but still not necessary if you have a good navigation system.

1. Make sure all your pages link to at least one other in your site
2. Link to your important pages often, with varying anchor text, in the navigation and in page text content

Remember Google needs links to find all the pages on your site.

Sitemaps are an easy way for webmasters to inform search engines about pages on their sites that are available for crawling. In its simplest form, a Sitemap is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL (when it was last updated, how often it usually changes, and how important it is, relative to other URLs in the site) so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site.

I don’t use xml sitemaps that much at all, as I am confident I can get all my pages indexed via links on the website and via RSS feed if I am blogging. I would however suggest you use a ‘website’ sitemap – a list of the important pages on your site.

Some CMS can auto-generate xml sitemaps, and Google does ask you submit a site map in webmaster tools, but I still don’t. If you want to find out more go to http://www.sitemaps.org/

I prefer to manually define my important pages by links, and ‘old – style’ getting my pages indexed via links from other websites. I also recognise not all websites are the same.

You can make a xml site online at http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ if you decide they are for you.

I’m certainly no authority on sitemaps – perhaps anyone else with any experience of them can add something…?

Adding rel=”nofollow” to a link effectively stops a link being a link, as far as Google is concerned. This means the link does not count as a vote, does not pass page rank, nor topical relevance(!). For instance, most blog comments are nofollow links, unlike this blog;

<a href="http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/" rel="nofollow">Hobo</a>

There are a lot of people who argue every single thing about nofollow and PR. That nofollow links pass PR, that you cannot sculpt page rank because you cannot see it. I think nofollow is as Google says effectively a non-link – and I think you can sculpt PR, just not ‘accurately’ lol.

You can certainly control PR on a granular level (page by page in this case) – ie which page gets available Google PR.

Some think, if that’s the case, you can sculpt Pagerank, and channel page rank to important pages in a site. For instance – adding nofollow to your contact page, or disclaimer, or privacy policy. I’m attempting to get to the end of this series before I mention Pagerank, as it really is not something you should be that concerned about. You get page rank by building links to your site – PR is a by product. Just get links.

I think it was Matt Cutts from Google who said (paraphrasing);

1. Yes, it’s ok to do this
2. Yes, it can have a ‘second order effect’ (cryptic as usual)

I tested it, and as far as I am concerned, on a 300 page site at least, any visible benefit is microscopic.

Unlike some of the White Hat Shock Troops, I have no problem using it, but I would prefer to keep it to a minimum, and, old school, sculpt PR by having an intelligent navigation system.

As I said, I have no problem using it. It’s up to you. And Matt Cutts was telling the truth – it’s very much a second order effect, if not less.

I am using it on the Hobo site at the moment, although most of it will be going shortly. I will be keeping the nofollow link on my home page, to ensure the link back to my home page is a keyword. Just old habit really. (ED THat’s long gone too because it doesn’t work like that)

Nofollow can be a ‘complicated’ construct, depending on who you are listening to. I go into it more in the article;

• http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/sculpt-pagerank-nofollow/

If you have never heard of Rel=”nofollow” before, probably best to forget about it – but I thought it best to touch on it

Does the second anchor text link on a page count?

One of the more interesting discussions in the seo community of late has been trying to determine which links Google counts as links on pages on your site. Some say the link Google finds higher in the code, is the link Google will ‘count’, if there are two links on a page going to the same page.

Update – I tested this recently with the post Google Counts The First Internal Link.

For example (and I am talking internal here – if you took a page and I placed two links on it, both going to the same page? (OK – hardly scientific, but you should get the idea). Will Google only ‘count’ the first link? Or will it read the anchor txt of both links, and give my page the benefit of the text in both links especially if the anchor text is different in both links? Will Google ignore the second link?

What is interesting to me is that knowing this leaves you with a question. If your navigation aray has your main pages linked to in it, perhaps your links in content are being ignored, or at least, not valued.

I think links in body text are invaluable. Does that mean placing the navigation below the copy to get a wide and varied internal anchor text to a page?

Perhaps.

Here’s some more on the topic;

1. You May Be Screwing Yourself With Hyperlinked Headers
   
2. Single Source Page Link Test Using Multiple Links With Varying Anchor Text
3. Results of Google Experimentation – Only the First Anchor Text Counts
4. Debunked: Only The 1st Anchor Text Counts With Google
5. Google counting only the first link to a domain – rebunked

As I said, I think this is one of the more interesting talks in seo at the moment and perhaps Google works differently with internal links as opposed to external; links to other websites.

I think quite possibly this could change day to day if Google pressed a button, but I optimise a site thinking that only the first link will count – based on what I monitor although I am testing this – and actually, I usually only link once from page to page on client sites, unless it’s useful for visitors.

I’ve mentioned this before. Onsite, one of the most important things you can do, is link to important pages often. I used a ‘links-are-lasers‘ analogy last year which I still use today.

1. Links Are Lasers
2. Linking To A Page Heats Up A Page
3. Pages Get Hot Or Cold Depending On Number & Quality Of The Links To It
4. Cold Pages Don’t Rank For Sh*t
5. Hot Pages Rank!

In the diagram above, this is how I optimise sites. I focus on the main pages in the structure, the pages we need to rank at any one time (esp on a new site). I make sure I link to these pages more than any other – and it appears, by doing so, Google does see these as important pages on my site.

You can achieve this with secondary navigation arrays and links in content, but I would err on the safe side, and vary your anchor text as much as possible. And don’t just link for linking sake.

Remember, links from other websites also heat up pages. Make sure you link to other relevant pages from these hot pages, to spread the heat throughout the site.

I’d go one step further and say link to your important pages from your home page.

1. Optimize A Website Structure
2. SEO Heat Analogy