No-followed links are sometimes seen as worthless for SEO. We need authoritative, keyword-rich inbound links at all times, and a link which does not pass any link equity or “juice” is often considered inconsequential. This post explores the role of the no-followed link and why marketers are foolish to disregard them.
No-follow is an attribute that can be assigned to a link, which instructs search engines that the hyperlink should not contribute towards page authority and rankings. No-followed links are the easiest to get; the type of links you can submit manually in the form of a forum post, blog or social network status update or share. No-follow is often used to preserve authority, or “link juice” on a website.
Welcome to the wonderful world of multilingual SEO, where the right words get the right results! At SiteVisibility I have had the opportunity to deliver multilingual campaigns for a number of our clients, and I would like to share with you the true challenges that it presents.
Clients look to expand their customer base by offering their services and products in different markets. This means that the content and text surrounding these products needs to be targeted in those specific languages.
Saying that is the easy part, doing it is another matter. The process of constructing multilingual content is a combination of two worlds; accurate and native quality translation, as well as best practise SEO tactics. The phrase ‘simple translation is not enough’ resonates loudly within multilingual SEO.
Keyword research clearly needs to be adapted, requiring a different thought process:
What am I looking for? How is this translated? Is this term used? Is there a more relevant term? And is the English term more commonly used? Here is a quick example of why you should never be tempted to use an automated translator Read on
Local search can be very important. We often talk about online marketing as a way of reaching global markets, but for many businesses effective local optimisation can be the best way to find new sources of traffic and income. There have been recent changes to the appearance of Google Places search results, and this post looks at a few of the key parts of local search optimisation.
Getting Included
To be included in Google Places there should be a contact page onsite. This should include full contact names, addresses, phone numbers, fax numbers, email addresses etc. It is also advisable to add this information to site footers. Read on
There have been some interesting developments around keyword research this month, namely that Google are no longer providing search data from users logged into Google. The change has a serious impact on the data available for SEOs to make important decisions about keyword strategy. I could write a whole blog post about it, but I think Blogstorm and SEObook probably did a better job than I can.
Keyword research underpins SEO campaigns, but both the tools and software which we use and our approach conducting this research is always changing. Seeking certain user behaviour, looking for local or multilingual search variations, or unique ways of interpreting and analysing the data all calls for a bespoke approach. There’s more than one way to skin a cat – what a horrible saying that is.
Javascript is the most popular dynamic scripting language on the internet, and is responsible for some of the internet’s more advanced web applications. Javascript can help pack a lot of information into dynamic menu systems, and is commonly used on ecommerce sites to create large navigational menus, processing forms and submitting orders. SEOs sometimes warned against the use of javascript, claiming that it increases the code bloat of a website as well as inhibiting search engines from reading and indexing the keyword rich content contained within the code.
Search engines can’t always read javascript – sometimes it can be coded in a way which hides keywords, anchor text and links from the search engines, so why do we see so many large e-commerce sites with this type of javascript navigation? Largely because ecommerce site’s wouldn’t be able to handle some of the more complex operations such as sending and receiving data to a database without interfering with the look and behaviour of the website.
In this instalment of the ABC’s of SEO, I wanted to hit on a few subjects around international SEO. Increasingly businesses are looking to tap into foreign markets and search is obviously a very powerful way of doing just that.
Do Google Favour Local Domain Suffixes?
There was a conversation recently in our LinkedIn Discussion Group about domain suffixes and their effect on rankings. Colin asked whether having a foreign domain such as .co (registered in Colombia) makes it more difficult to climb search engine results pages in the UK. Google will prioritise relevant domain suffixes, but there are many other ranking factors. Look around, international sites can still rank really well. Some businesses really benefit from having these bespoke URLs, such as bit.ly or del.icio.us.
Having local domain suffixes is generally thought of as best practise, but there are other things to consider to maximise your performance. Google also score geographical relevance by checking where the server of a website is based, so it could be worth ensuring that this is the country in question. Additionally, a geographic location for a site can be specified on Webmaster Tools.
This post outlines the most important HTML elements for SEO. So even if you don’t know any html at all, hopefully by the end of reading this you will be able to check whether you are optimising all the main tags that Google will be looking at.
The Title tags
are the first tags that a spider looks for when arriving on your page. This is the most important html element to place your keywords. Here you need to put your most important keywords for the page eg:
<title>SEO Services Company | SEO Search | Digital Marketing & PPC Agency </title>
You don’t need to include your company name here because you are likely to be optimising this throughout your site without even trying. So rather than wasting characters it is more important to get the most competitive and the most relevant keywords here.
Well call it synchronicity or opportunism, but the day I come to write my blog post about grammar in SEO, is the day on which Matt Cutts, Google’s content overlord, published a video about the correlation between good spelling and page rank. But there are a variety of good reason why grammar is important for SEO.
Keywords
I think that an interest in words, punctuation and grammar can really help an SEO when thinking of keyword synonyms, acronyms, misspellings and such. It’s the same eye for detail which can help you to use those keywords and phrases naturally and correctly within copy.
Audiences
Working in search, it’s sometimes too easy to forget that content is for readers. We spend so much time trying to manipulate search results with highly targeted content, sometimes we risk sacrificing quality for exposure. When creating a website, the written word is the most popular way of communicating, and making it clear, concise and sensical should be paramount.
Search Engines
The Matt Cutts video admits that despite the correlation between good spelling and grammar and high page rank, they are not currently being used as “direct signals”. It will probably be quite tricky to give a website score based on its spelling and grammar, but he has indicated that it is something he would support. Google have admitted that they use testers to manually score sites’ quality, asking questions like “Would you trust this site with your credit card?”, so it is possible that a site can be penalised for poor grammar.
Posted by Matt in ABC's of SEO on September 2nd, 2011 0 Comments
With Facebook becoming a true behemoth of the online world, businesses are taking a wider view of how to utilise it for biggest impact. This will usually take the form of business pages and, in conjunction with Twitter, will be used to engage with customers. However, Facebook also has another trick up its sleeve: Pay-Per-Click advertising. Whilst this could be considered analogous to Google’s display network (sites that have agreed to display Google AdWords ads alongside content deemed to be relevant by Google), there are several key differences that, when utilised properly, make Facebook’s offering a much more powerful option.
Image Credit: jscreationzs
These differences are predominantly within the targeting options available. Facebook holds a huge amount of information on us all, this includes but is not limited to; location, marital status, interests and education information. Whilst on their own there is nothing particularly special here, once these characteristics start to be combined they can be used to define some really interesting marketing segments. Read on
It’s surprising how many companies ignore the value of email marketing, not only for selling a product or service or sending out a valued message, but more importantly, the value it holds for brand awareness. Email marketing can generate significant growth in brand equity, your reputation, and general awareness of your company and what you have to offer.
There are lots of different types of emails, ranging from short, single call to action emails known as postcards, to sales emails, newsletters and press releases. The trick is to choose the right email for the right campaign, then send it to the right people.
The great thing about email marketing is that you don’t need a huge budget. These days you don’t even really need to know html or be a designer – lots of online companies and services offer templates and wizards to help you write and send your campaigns. They also offer monitoring services so you can see who is opening your emails and who is clicking on what.
However, as easy as it is to create and send an email, it’s just as easy to end up straight in someone’s junk folder, so what are the tricks to a successful email campaign? We’ve put together a quick list of 13 “dos and don’ts” (why not, we aren’t superstitious) to make sure your email is the best it can be.
