SEO Blog


Hotel SEO checklist for hotels and guest houses (2023)


This paid-for SEO checklist in Google sheets is designed to be all website managers need to edit a Hotel website to align with Google’s webmaster guidelines and so rank optimally in Google. Know that if you do not follow these guidelines, your website is demoted in Google search results.

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Get Remote SEO Management For Your Website Development Team


I can help you develop an SEO strategy and manage your SEO team as they implement it. Contact me for more information.

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Free SEO Ebook PDF Download


Students of Google SEO can download the Hobo Web free SEO Ebook.

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What is a nofollow link?


Google recommends you ‘qualify outbound links’ using the link attribute ‘nofollow’: Use rel=”sponsored” or rel=”nofollow” for paid links. Use rel=”ugc” or rel=”nofollow” for user generated content links. Use nofollow on widgets, themes and infographic links. Don’t use nofollow on every external link on your website. Don’t use nofollow on internal links.

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Google Advice; How To Deal With Out Of Stock Items


Return a 404 if the product is permanently out of stock. Return a 200 if the product is temporarily out of stock. Return a 301 to equivalent content if the product is expired but you have reason to preserve SEO Benefits.

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How to get Google to crawl and index your website quickly


Make sure Google can crawl your website, index and rank all your primary pages by only serving Googlebot high-quality, user friendly and fast loading pages to index.

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How to change domain names & keep rankings in Google


You can keep your rankings your old site has earned and transfer them to your new site when you migrate from one domain to another. Sometimes this can be complicated, sometimes not.

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What is the best keyword density percentage for SEO?


Many SEO experts have agreed for over a decade there is no single best keyword density to rank high in Google or Bing. Optimal keyword density differs from page to page, phrase to phrase. Write naturally and include the keyword phrase once or twice on-page. Avoid demotion in Google by avoiding repeating keyword phrases in text content. Focus on creating high-quality engaging content instead.

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Best practices for meta description & other meta tags


This is a beginners guide to writing effective meta tags for Google SEO. By Shaun Anderson, an author with 20 years experience of Google SEO.

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What Is Keyword Stuffing (Irrelevant Keywords)?


QUOTE: “Keyword Stuffed” Main Content Pages may be created to lure search engines and users by repeating keywords over and over again, sometimes in unnatural and unhelpful ways. Such pages are created using words likely to be contained in queries issued by users. Keyword stuffing can range from mildly annoying to users, to complete gibberish. Pages created with the intent of luring search engines and users, rather than providing meaningful MC to help users, should be rated Lowest.” Google Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines 2017

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Review: How To Do An SEO Audit With SEMRush FAST (Beginners Guide)


How to do an seo audit quickly and simply with SEMRush.

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How To Do Keyword Research FAST in 2022


Keyword research is one of the most important aspects of SEO. But do you know what makes it so significant? Or how to do it? Or which tools to use? This post is a guide for beginners.

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Duplicate Content SEO


Only add unique hand-written content to your web pages. Don’t add content to your pages that is found verbatim on other pages on the web. Do not ‘spin’ text on pages on your site. Don’t create thin-pages with little value add to users. Implement the rel=”canonical” link element on all pages.

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How To Check Where A Website Ranked Historically In Google For Important Keywords


If you want to check where a website ranked in the past for important keywords, there really is only one option that’s worth exploring.

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How To Use Sitebulb Website Crawler Site Auditor To Manage Onsite SEO


A review and walkthrough of a new website crawler tool that helps you manage your seo efforts.

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Google Ranking Factors & Quality Rating Criteria


For students of SEO, a collection of my notes on potential Google ranking factors and quality rating signals.

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Factual SEO: Is Google Censoring Negative Searches about Hillary Clinton?


Is Google censoring autocomplete suggestions for Hillary Clinton?

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Top 100 Advertising Agencies Based On SEO Performance


I’ve focused on surfacing the top advertising agency sites in the world, based on search engine marketing and social media signals – the top ad agencies in the world based on SEO performance.

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Why I Do SEO The Way I Do It


Many new into SEO today think old school seo was spam. Today’s narrative encourages them to think like that. I do miss that old style seo which – of course – was a lot simpler to deploy. I miss the cavalier approach to seo, and the quick results to be had from it. There was fun to […]

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REDDIT USERS: How Do You Rank Top In Google?


Hobo got talked about on the front page of Reddit yesterday. Which was nice. I try to answer some questions in this post.

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Unobtrusive pop-ups


If you are a WordPress site owner, designer, or developer looking to maximize the number of leads from your website using pop-ups, this plugin is for you.

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How To Increase Google Pagerank?


Google probably uses an updated version of Pagerank like the reasonable surfer and Trusted Seeds approach. Pagerank is a measure of the popularity of a resource on the web. The simple, most practical answer to increasing Google Pagerank is to get prominent, natural links on authoritative websites in your niche.

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How To Export More Than 5000 Rows in Google Analytics


You CAN NO LONGER display and export more than 5000 rows in Google Analytics. You used to be able to, using the hack I list below: When you select 5000 rows you will have a URL like this https://www.google.com/analytics/web/?hl=en-GB&pli=1#report/trafficsources-organic/a12346448w43910105p43958149/%3F_u.date00%3D20110101%26_u.date01%3D20130410%26explorer-table.plotKeys%3D%5B%5D%26explorer-table.rowStart%3D0%26explorer-table.rowCount%3D5000/ …once you could just change that last number from 5000 at the end of that URL […]

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Google Analytics Cookies & EU Privacy Directive


Worried about the new EU Privacy directive, cookies and what it means for Google Analytics on your website? There’s been some new clarification from the UK Government. “We talked about cookies (how could we not?) but we didn’t get hung up on them – other relevant technologies e.g. HTML5 Local Storage and web beacons came up […]

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Put A Ding In The Universe – Steve Jobs Quote


QUOTE:”I want to put a ding in the universe.” Steve Jobs, 1981; Source – New York Times, 2011 What Does Ding mean?: QUOTE “Make a ringing sound” OR “(North American English) to cause slight damage” Oxford English Dictionary, 2020

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How To Get To The Top Of Google Search Results


You’ll need: To follow Google Webmaster SEO Quality Guidelines. A website reputation for publishing original, useful and relevant content. A satisfying user-friendly page experience for visitors from search. A fast, responsive, easy-to-edit mobile-friendly website. A sensible user-friendly website architecture. High-quality prominent natural links from other websites.

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Inverclyde MP David Cairns On Twitter


Politician & MP for Inverclyde David Cairns recently visited the Hobo offices for a few hours, and during that time I pointed out to him something called Twitter. Since then, I see him in my stream clearly engaging with folks via his Twitter account, so I asked him a few questions about Social Media’s impact […]

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Blogging Strategy


How do you run a blog to get the most SEO benefit? I explore the basics of it in this blogging guide for beginners.

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A Website Design & Development Project Checklist For Beginners


AS seen in Smashing Magazine! A free web design an development project plan and checklist for designers and clients.

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Atlantis Google Earth Coordinates


Did Google find Atlantis? It’s being reported around the web today that Google Earth has found Atlantis :) Here’s the co-ordinates to find Atlantis with Google Earth; coordinates: 31 15’15.53N, 24 15’30.53W (600 miles west of Morocco, deep in the Atlantic Ocean) The man from the sun says yes but the man from Google says […]

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How To Get Started In Social Media in 4 Steps


1. Figure Out What You Want To Get Out Of Social Media. 2. Create Your Profiles. 3. Learn The Community Rules. 4. Become An Active Part Of That Community. Enjoy It.

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Robots.txt Best Practices For Beginners


A robots.txt file is a file on your webserver used to control bots like Googlebot, Google’s web crawler. You can use it to block Google and Bing from crawling parts of your site.

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Don’t Use Website Frames To Design & Build Your Site


If you are serious about organic search engine optimisation, forget about using, or optimising frames and read up on the latest guidelines for SEO.

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UK Government Access Keys Standard For Websites


Do not use access keys. The access key attribute, introduced in HTML4.0, is intended to provide keyboard shortcuts in that they provide an alternative form of navigation. This addition allows users with limited physical capabilities to navigate the organisation’s website more easily. There are some drawbacks with website access keys, for example: functionality depends on […]

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How to design websites for blindness, deaf, disability & dyslexia


How to design your website for users with disabilities.

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Does Google Prefer Valid HTML?


No. While Google recommends we use W3C validation, Google doesn’t rank valid html and css pages above invalid pages. If Google can crawl and render a page Google will rank the page appropriately based on how relevant it is to the query. Invalid HTML can on the other hand can cause search engines problems.

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