Ask me Anything - Search Engine Optimization Expert

[africanos23]

I know most people here are probably programmers or beginners in web design etc. Something very important when designing websites should be implementing SEO (search engine optimization) best practices. Be this on and/or off page.

It's good to have a "nice" looking website but with no actual visitors your hard work will never get noticed.

I created this ongoing SEO thread to help novices and have discussions with advanced users alike to get more out of there websites and also discuss general SEO questions or opinions.

I have knowledge in quite a few industries (media, software, services, ecommerce) hopefully I can also help you out.

Ask me anything SEO related

 

[africanos23]

Cool stuff - deffinitely an area I need to do more research on.

In your opinion, what would your "top 3 rules" be?

And if you're a beginner at web design, what you be your top 3 "easy to do" recommendations?

It's kind of hard to pinpoint only 3 things for SEO but here are a few things that might be beneficial for a newbie:

a) Using a mainstream community supported platform (no wonder I always use Wordpress). You can find just about anything from plugins to code tweaks. This should make your life a lot easier or you're going to need an inhouse/paid developer for each small detail.

b) Get the site structure right from the start. Categorization etc Don't go to wide from the start as you will have a harder time ranking. Be the best in your small little niche and then leverage that to grow in to more competitive-relevant niches.

c) Creating valuable content (linkable assets) and reaching out to prospect influencers.

Easy to do :

a) Read this on page checklist guide, this should cover everything about technical aspects https://moz.com/blog/technical-site-audit-for-2015
b) Hook up webmastertools to give you an idea on how google "feels" about your site.
c) Look at what "big" competitors are doing and why (reverse engineer). See where they're promoting their content,where they are getting links from and how you can become better at whatever your market/niche is.

I can get into a lot of detail about every single aspect (generic question I guess thats why) but this should suffice for now. If you have any specific questions please ask.

 

[africanos23]

In regard to this point, if you are having a major site overhaul and there is no way that the structure will stay the same is there any way to minimise the effects on these sorts of changes.

You will need to log the old urls and 301 redirect to the relevant pages/categories/posts.

a) check which pages are receiving the most traffic from Google analytics (these usually have more links) note the top 50-100 etc performers down.(this is just incase you miss anything)

b) use screaming frog to grab all urls and use excel to log old link to new link and then redirect 1 by 1.

I've completely redesigned old sites from one platform to another with zero loss in traffic. If it's a very big site, the structures are usually similar and an htaccess 301 redirect rule can be used.

Google will catch up eventually but you don't want to lose link power that is getting your site up there in the top results.

 

[africanos23]

Page titles, key words and descriptions are often the most basic form of optimisation, but I have found getting these right can have the biggest impact with very little work. What is the first thing you look to change when asked to help someone improve their rankings?

Each market is different (example ecommerce website vs publication) but have similar characteristics in terms of the three mentioned on-page optimisation "tricks"

Page Titles :
For blog posts - informational articles
I use a Headline analyzer - http://www.aminstitute.com/headline/ (Emotional Marketing Value Headline Analyzer)
anything above 40 is very very good in terms of getting social media traction and/or getting better CTR (click through rates in organic search)

Which one would you click through to if you found these on page 1 ?

Title 1
Make Windows Load Faster
Title 2
9 Ways To Make Windows Load 50% Faster

For product pages I try to add the UVP (unique value proposition).

For the current ecommerce website I part-own I am testing

Ships FREE : XXX Product

Descriptions :

Blog Posts - This should include the main keyword/keywords in a small intro

Product Pages - UVP (unique value proposition)
Discover our "XXX product" with free shipping returns etc etc etc

This is relatively easy to change on big batches of similar pages like product pages if your using Wordpress for example and Yoast SEO. There's template variables you can use for automation (%%title%% %%date%% etc etc).

The keyword is usually the product model and manufacturer here

Keywords:

a) Use google adwords keyword planner

solid state drive - 60500 searches a month
ssd - 550000 searches a month

drill down accordingly from here

- type your keyword into google and see what pops up (sometimes the actual word is not present but something else)

- you can also understand the user intent (if wikipedia and informational sites are coming up thats probably what your article should be like, if its a list make yours similar etc etc)


b) If you know your market well enough you know it's specific technical jargon (this should really help)


SSD will NOT be your page title something like

Best SSD drives for 2016 would, and if it's big (1000 words+) and you add specific market jargon in the post itself you will also rank for similar and relevant keywords you didn't target.

 

[africanos23]

Is that your blog in the link there mate?

No, I don't do SEO blogs at all.

 

[africanos23]

How important is https to SERPS. Sure I read somewhere that all things being equal google will rank a secure site more highly. Curious as to your experiences with this?

Zero to none as I have both sites with http and https. A case study shows that 25% of all ranked websites on their tracked keywords have HTTPs.

In the past few weeks Google seems to be indexing all HTTPS urls by default. (as mentioned on some SEO blogs)

If you don't need to have a secure site (example only publish content and run adsense) there's no need.

This isn't just a search engine thing, it's also useful for customer assurance and trust in your website. People like to see SSL these days, it's been drummed into their brains for years.

True especially when purchasing something. If a site hasn't got SSL on checkout there's no chance I would enter my VISA details.

 

[africanos23]

How would you go about Optomising SEO for Static websites?

Optimising SEO for static sites is no different to dynamic ones.

Static as in non dynamic pages or static as in not updating content ?

 

[africanos23]

Thanks for the reply.
I mean link not updating content.
So for example a plumber wants a website that offers his services etc so basic pages would be home about services contact_us ( which would all be content thats set once and forgot about) - How would that work?

Then scenario 2 they add a portfolio page which they add work that they have done but only very occasionally

You will be looking more into local SEO for something like a plumber

here is something to have a glance at :

https://moz.com/blog/ultimate-local-seo-audit

 

[africanos23]

What does (not provided) mean in Google Analytics?

Means Google doesn't want you to know the keyword from their search results.

You can actually go into webmastertools > search traffic > search analytics and found out the keywords.

i run a cleaning company and we have a nice decent website getting better every week with little tweaks, extra pages we feel the customer may want to read, blog etc. i know that in reality even with myself unless i used a company, i'd never feel the need to share someone's site like mine. It'd have to be something like say i had a builder and they created a beautiful bathroom, i may share this on fb and maybe link to who did it.

in the past i used to hear about how you should submit articles to article websites, make comments on blogs and link to your website, but these tips seem to have died off now and always felt spammy and unnatural any way.

if a customer does share a link it'll most likely be through facebook, and more likely to our facebook page, so not really doing much from seo.

what ways could we create links to our site? 1 way is we hope to create interesting articles that would one day be shared, but how do we go about letting people know these articles even exists? should we let local news businesses know of a great article we just did comparing xy and z, or perhaps good deals? I feel the only way to get links is to either pay or do what feels like spam

The best option is not to create links but get your content noticed (content marketing) and get people to link to you (link earning) because your value proposition or content is the best on the web (or first).

Content marketing sometimes needs a bit of a push, an example would be to find a relevant resource or website and pitch them your great content. For some niches it's easier (like publications) for others it's tough but can be done.

Sometimes when I'm stuck I go through competitors and reverse engineer the good content marketing. I go through their whole link profile and pick up the gems I can do myself. This though is time consuming but usually worth it even if you only get 1 strong link.

Would you approach a new website/domain differently to one that has been online for sometime? Even if you were developing (or a new website had been developed) onto the existing domain?

If there are differences, what would they be?

Depends what you mean by new and existing. If the existing site has nothing ( basically just a website that has been online ) it's similar. If the website has been online for a few years and is "rocking" it in sales or views etc you may need to plan out differently.

It's a case by case thing so no definitive answers without seeing what they/you have done to the website. Some sites need more/better content, some need links, some need better onpage seo or CRO. Usually sites vary a lot in these areas.

It all comes down to what you need more sales, or leads or more traffic etc

How do you know if SEO is 'done' if you follow guidelines? Is it just a waiting game?

It's never done, but it's a waiting game in general. You have to define the goal of each change so you can track if you are getting results.

 

[africanos23]

Here is an interesting one, I've just had to take a job for a local company on their media team. They are a UK wide company.

the sole purpose of which is to publish 2000 blog posts with 'location specific blog posts' in the next 100 days in order to get them to the top of google without needing pay per click. Looking at their website it seems that a lot of them are the same blog post with different locations in them.

Surely this will be picked up by google and they will end up being penalised for this?

Su

If the posts are anything over 20% of duplicate content good luck

20% btw is my rough estimate and even that much would need an extremely special case for 2000 blog posts.

Churn and burn is the term for websites like that.

 

[africanos23]

so where i've done the following...

http://www.mayercleaning.co.uk/services/oven-cleaning/woking.php
http://www.mayercleaning.co.uk/services/oven-cleaning/guildford.php
http://www.mayercleaning.co.uk/services/oven-cleaning/walton-on-thames.php

etc, where you can see the only difference is the town name in the title, h1 tag, and a few times on the page, however all the content that is the exact same, is this not going to do any good for seo? how much would i need to have unique on each page?

Its thin and duplicate content.

They will probably never rank in a million years.

Seriously talk with the Company and tell them they are going to have trouble in the future.

 

[africanos23]

ok i've spoke with myself and wondered then what better way to do it would be? I don't mind going through and changing the content for each page to be some what unique (though it will take it's sweet ass time), but how much would the required amount be?

There's no exact required amount, does it help the user ? Is it content that isn't available everywhere or somewhere else?

As a user type your selected keyword in google and see what pops up. The first results are what users prefer.

 

[africanos23]

anyone any basic up to date booklets I can print off that covers how google rank websites?

I had a great one from Tim McCloud over at TMC from a workshop I attended through Cheshire website but I can't find it now

I just need something simple and to the point that covers the 3 methods Google use to rank sites so I can show it to the new boss and hopefully we can go to creating an informative site over one rammed with duplicate content.

(And getting them to read through moz.com is asking too much)

http://backlinko.com/google-ranking-factors

This is probably the most jam packed one..

 

[africanos23]

Any good links for seo resources online? Seo checking websites?

They aren't very accurate but I use these :

similarweb.com
siteliner.com

Best resources IMO are quicksprout.com and backlinko.com

 

[africanos23]

There is a website I'm interested in, but it looks like it has been blacklisted by google. Nothing linked at all etc, even though the site has been active since 1995.

Can it be unblocked or once gone is it gone?

does it come up for a site:website.com search in google ?

If you are sure it's blacklisted don't touch it get a new domain with a new rep, its near impossible to "unblock" it.

 

[africanos23]

Something I've been wondering, how important these days are H1,H2 tags etc? Ive played around with a few ready made Html templates from Themeforest recently, some stunning looking ones which appear to be very well coded but when you look through the code itself some of them have no H1 or H2 tags, and maybe only a handful of H3 tags?

H1 tags are a must. H2 onwards can be used inside posts or pages with <h2></h2> etc, so not a biggy imo.

You can custom code everything relatively easily, but do you trust a theme developer that doesn't even know the basics of SEO ?

 

[africanos23]

Fair point!

So what would be involved in changing say an already present H3 tag into an H1 tag? Is it as simple as amending the code and substituting a number 3 for a 1?

Yes and no.

The H1 tag is only used for the page title (1 element)

"Ask me Anything - Search Engine Optimization Expert"

This is the H1 and should only be present once...

For wordpress your page.php / single.php is where you can edit this.

 

[africanos23]

Interesting you mention backlinko. I've been following Brian Dean's free stuff for a little while. He comes across really well and I'm tempted to buy in to his SEO That Works 2. Have you any experience of his paid-for material?

I guess paid for material would be similar to what quicksprout did (with Brian) in their video series.

Not bad but all depends on what level you are at ATM.

 

[africanos23]

Hey m8 - I'm looking at redesigning a website for a friend. His current site for his small business was completed about 6-8 years ago and is looking very dated. He wants a refresh of it to bring it up to date with aesthetics and standards compliance (current site isn't responsive at all).

Now, the thing is that for maybe 4 or 5 different key phrases, his site is ranking on page 1 of Google and varying between the top 3 or 4 results. Naturally we would like this to continue. I intended leaving the email side of the domain with his current hosting provider and planned simply on pointing the domain at my nameservers. But what I'm unsure of is will have any impact or bearing on the current excellent search ranking he has achieved over the past few years?

Thanks.

You can preserve rankings if you 301 redirect the pages to the relevant ones without changing the structure.

You can find articles like this to help you out

https://moz.com/blog/how-to-avoid-an-seo-disaster-when-changing-your-website

Checklists are pretty good just in case you forget about something.

 

[africanos23]

I guess the main question is, how do you rank as a small site starting out. Sure you can design the website, and pay for advertising but how can you get a decent ranking (without spamming)? It's impossible to create a 'viral/excellent' guide to launch your site... lets be realistic.

All guides etc I read seem to state months to see if it has an effect, I am not expecting instant as soon as a post is published results... but who can wait 6 months to see if what was written in an article ranks?

Plus, Google Analytics doesn't seem to track for a new site - keep getting referral spam (.ru etc) so how can you realistically track traffic?

Shame this area of the forum isn't more active.

You can rank in less than a month for low-mid volume terms pretty easily with a few tricks (nothing blackhat btw).

For referral spam use filters in GA or htaccess rules.