What Not To Do In Website Search Engine Optimisation

Google has a VERY basic organic search engine optimisation starter guide pdf for webmasters, which they use internally:

Although this guide won’t tell you any secrets that’ll automatically rank your site first for queries in Google (sorry!), following the best practices outlined below will make it easier for search engines to both crawl and index your content. Google

It is still worth a read, even if it is VERY basic, best practice search engine optimisation for your site.

No search engine will EVER tell you what actual keywords to put on your site to improve your rankings or get more converting organic traffic – and in Google – that’s the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT thing you want to know!

If you want a bigger pdf – try my free SEO ebook.

It’s been downloaded by tens of thousands of webmasters and I update it every year or so.

Here’s a list of what Google tells you to avoid in the document;

1. choosing a title that has no relation to the content on the page
2. using default or vague titles like “Untitled” or “New Page 1″
3. using a single title tag across all of your site’s pages or a large group of pages
4. using extremely lengthy titles that are unhelpful to users
5. stuffing unneeded keywords in your title tags
6. writing a meta description tag that has no relation to the content on the page
7. using generic descriptions like “This is a webpage” or “Page about baseball
   cards”
8. filling the description with only keywords
9. copy and pasting the entire content of the document into the description meta tag
10. using a single description meta tag across all of your site’s pages or a large group of pages
11. using lengthy URLs with unnecessary parameters and session IDs
12. choosing generic page names like “page1.html”
13. using excessive keywords like “baseball-cards-baseball-cards-baseball-cards.htm”
14. having deep nesting of subdirectories like “…/dir1/dir2/dir3/dir4/dir5/dir6/
    page.html”
15. using directory names that have no relation to the content in them
16. having pages from subdomains and the root directory (e.g. “domain.com/
    page.htm” and “sub.domain.com/page.htm”) access the same content
17. Mixing www. and non-www. versions of URLs in your internal linking structure
18. using odd capitalization of URLs (many users expect lower-case URLs and remember them better)
19. creating complex webs of navigation links, e.g. linking every page on your site to every other page
20. going overboard with slicing and dicing your content (it takes twenty clicks to get to deep content)
21. having a navigation based entirely on drop-down menus, images, or animations (many, but not all, search engines can discover such links on a site, but if a user can reach all pages on a site via normal text links, this will improve the accessibility of your site)
22. letting your HTML sitemap page become out of date with broken links
23. creating an HTML sitemap that simply lists pages without organising them, for example by subject (Edit Shaun – Safe to say especially for larger sites)
24. allowing your 404 pages to be indexed in search engines (make sure that your webserver is configured to give a 404 HTTP status code when non-existent pages are requested)
25. providing only a vague message like “Not found”, “404″, or no 404 page at all
26. using a design for your 404 pages that isn’t consistent with the rest of your site
27. writing sloppy text with many spelling and grammatical mistakes
28. embedding text in images for textual content (users may want to copy and
    paste the text and search engines can’t read it)
29. dumping large amounts of text on varying topics onto a page without paragraph, subheading, or layout separation
30. rehashing (or even copying) existing content that will bring little extra value to users

Pretty straight forward stuff but sometimes it’s the simple stuff that often gets overlooked. Of course, you put the above together with Google Guidelines for webmasters.

Search engine optimization is often about making small modifications to parts of your website. When viewed individually, these changes might seem like incremental improvements, but when combined with other optimizations, they could have a noticeable impact on your site’s user experience and performance in organic search results.

Don’t make these simple but dangerous mistakes…..

1. Avoid duplicating content on your site found on other sites. Yes, Google likes content, but it *usually* needs to be well linked to, unique and original to get you to the top!
2. Don’t hide text on your website. Google may eventually remove you from the SERPs.
3. Don’t buy 1000 links and think “that will get me to the top!”. Google likes natural link growth and often frowns on mass link buying.
4. Don’t get everybody to link to you using the same “anchor text” or link phrase. This could flag you as a ‘rank modifier’. You don’t want that.
5. Don’t chase Google PR by chasing 100′s of links. Think quality of links….not quantity.
6. Don’t buy many keyword rich domains, fill them with similar content and link them to your site. This is lazy and dangerous and could see you ignored or worse banned from Google. It might have worked yesterday but it sure does not work today without some grief from Google.
7. Do not constantly change your site pages names or site navigation without remembering to employ redirects. This just screws you up in any search engine.
8. Do not build a site with a JavaScript navigation that Google, Yahoo and Bing cannot crawl.
9. Do not link to everybody who asks you for reciprocal links. Only link out to quality sites you feel can be trusted.

Article published on http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/

A Non-Technical Google SEO Strategy

Here are some final thoughts:

• Use common sense – Google is a search engine – it is looking for pages to give searchers results, 90% of its users are looking for information. Google itself WANTS the organic results full of information. Almost all websites will link to relevant information content so content rich websites get a lot of links – especially quality links. Google ranks websites with a lot of links (especially quality links) at he top of its search engines so the obvious thing you need to do is ADD A LOT INFORMATIVE CONTENT TO YOUR WEBSITE.
• I think ranking in organic listings is a lot about trusted links making trusted pages rank, making trusted links making trusted pages rank ad nauseam for various keywords. Some pages can pass trust to another site; some pages cannot. Some links can. Some cannot. Some links are trusted to pass ranking ability to another page. Some are not. YOU NEED LINKS FROM TRUSTED PAGES IF YOU WANT TO RANK AND AVOID PENALTIES & FILTERS.
• Google engineers are building an AI – but it’s all based on simple human desires to make something happen or indeed to prevent something. You can work with Google engineers or against them. They need to make money for Google but unfortunately for them they need to make the best search engine in the world for us humans as part of the deal. Build a site that takes advantage of this. What is a Google engineer trying to do with an algorithm? I always remember it was an idea first before it was an algorithm. What was that idea? Think like a Google engineers and give Google what it wants. What is Google trying to give its users? Align with that. What does Google not want to give its users? Don’t look anything like that. THINK LIKE A GOOGLE ENGINEER & BUILD A SITE THEY WANT TO GIVE TOP RANKINGS.
• Google is a links-based search engine. Google doesn’t need content to rank pages but it needs content to give to users. Google needs to find content and it finds content by following links just like you do when clicking on a link. So you need first to make sure you tell the world about your site so other sites link to yours. Don’t worry about reciprocating to more powerful sites or even real sites – I think this adds to your domain authority – which is better to have than ranking for just a few narrow key terms.
• Everything has limits. Google has limits. What are they? How would you go about observing them or even testing, breaking them or benefiting from them or being penalised by them? It’s not a lab setting – you can’t test much if anything, 100% accurately, but you can hypothesise based on the sensible approach bearing in mind what a Google engineer would do, and what you would do if Google were yours.
• The best way for Google to keep rankings secret ultimately is to have a randomness – or, at least, a randomness on the surface, as it is presented to users of Google – to it while keeping somethings stable – surely the easiest way for it to prevent a curious optimiser finding out how it works. Well, I think that. And I think this randomness manifests itself in many ways. What will work for some sites might not necessarily work for your sites – not the same anyway. Perhaps no two sites are the same (the conditions are different for a start for any two sites).
• Google may play dice with the Google multi-verse so be aware of that. It uses multiple results and rotates them and serves different results to different machines and browsers even on the same computer. Google results are constantly shifting – some pages rank at the top constantly because they are giving Google what it wants in some areas or they might just have a greater number and diversity of more trusted links than your do.
• Google has a long memory when it comes to links and pages and associations for you site – perhaps an infinite memory profile of your site. Perhaps it can forgive but never forget. Perhaps it can forget too, just like us, and so previous penalties or bans can be lifted. I think (depending on the site because Google can work out if you have a blog or an e-commerce site) Google probably also looks at different history versions of particular pages even on single sites WHAT RELATIONSHIP DO YOU WANT TO HAVE WITH GOOGLE? Onsite, don’t try to fool Google – we’re not smart enough. Be squeaky clean on-site and make Google think twice about bumping you for discrepancies in your link profile.
• Earn Google’s trust. Most of our more lucrative accounts come from referrals from clients who trust us. Before clients told them of us, they didn’t know about us. Ok, they might have heard about us from people, in turn, they didn’t trust that much. Upon the clients testimonial, the referral now trusts us a lot more. These referrals automatically trust us to some extent. That trust grows when we deliver. The referral now trusts us very much. But it’s an uphill struggle from that point on to continue to deliver that trust and earn even more trust because you don’t want to dip in trust – it’s nice to get even more and more trusted. Google works the the same way as this human emotion, and search engines have tried for years to deliver a trusted set of sites based on human desire and searcher intent. MAKE FRIENDS WITH GOOGLE
• Don’t break Google’s trust – if your friend betrays you, depending on what they’ve done, they’ve lost trust. Sometimes that trust has been lost altogether. If you do something Google doesn’t like manipulate it in a way it doesn’t want, you will lose trust, and in some cases, lose all trust (in some areas). For instance, your pages might be able to rank, but your links might not be trusted enough to vouch for another site. DON’T FALL OUT WITH GOOGLE OVER SOMETHING STUPID
• YOU NEED TO MAKE MORE FRIENDS AND ESPECIALLY THOSE WHO ARE FRIENDS WITH GOOGLE.
• When Google trusts you it’s because you’ve earned its trust to help it carry out what it needs to carry out in the quickest and most profitable way. You’ve helped Google achieve its goals. It trusts you and it will reward you by listing your contribution in order of the sites it trusts the most. It will list friends it trusts the most who it knows to be educated in a particular area at the top of these areas. IF GOOGLE TRUSTS YOU IT WILL LET YOUR PAGES RANK AND IN TURN, VOUCH FOR OTHER PAGES, or ‘FRIENDS’, GOOGLE MIGHT WANT INFORMATION ON.
• Google is fooled and manipulated just like you can but it will  kick you in the gonads if you break this trust – as I probably would. Treat Google as you would have it treat you.
• Be fast.

REMEMBER IT TAKES TIME TO BUILD TRUST…. AND THAT IS PROBABLY ONE OF THE REASONS WHY GOOGLE is pushing the need to be ‘trusted’ as a ranking modifier.

I, of course, might be reading far too much into Google, TRUST and the TIME Google wants us to wait for things to happen on their end….but consider trust to be a psychological emotion Google is trying to emulate using algorithms based on human ideas.

If you do all the above, you’ll get more and more traffic from Google over time.

If you want to rank for specific keywords in very competitive niches, you’ll need to be a big brand, be picked out by big brands (and linked to), or buy links to fake that trust, or get spammy with it in an intelligent way you won’t get caught. Easier said, than done.

I suppose Google is open to the con just as any human is if it’s based on human traits….

Article published on http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/

How Fast Should Your Website Download?

‘Site Speed’, we are told by Google in the above video, is a ranking factor. But as with any factor Google confirms is a ranking signal, it’s usually a small, ‘nuanced’ one.

A fast site is a good user experience (UX), and a satisfying UX leads to higher conversions.

How fast your website loads is a critical – but often completely ignored – element in any online business – and that includes search marketing and search engine optimisation.

Very slow sites are a bad user experience – and Google is all about GOOD UX these days.

How Much is ‘Website Speed’ a Google Ranking Factor?

‘How much is a very slow site a negative ranking factor’ is a more useful interpretation of the claim that ‘website speed is a Google ranking factor‘.

First – for I have witnessed VERY slow websites of 10 seconds and more negatively impacted in Google, and second, from statements made by Googlers:

We do say we have a small factor in there for pages that are really slow to load where we take that into account. John Mueller, GOOGLE

Google might crawl your site slower if you have a slow site. And that’s bad – especially if you are adding new content or making changes to it.

We’re seeing an extremely high response-time for requests made to your site (at times, over 2 seconds to fetch a single URL). This has resulted in us severely limiting the number of URLs we’ll crawl from your site.John Mueller, GOOGLE

John specifically said 2 seconds disrupts CRAWLING activity, not RANKING ability, but you get the picture.

How Fast Should Your Website Load in 2016?

Recent research is hard to find, but would indicate as fast as possible.

Article published on http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/

Keep It Simple, Stupid

Don’t Build Your Site With Flash or HTML Frames.

Well… not entirely in Flash, and especially not if you know very little about the ever improving accessibility of Flash.

Flash is a propriety plug-in created by Macromedia to infuse (albeit) fantastically rich media for your websites. The W3C advises you avoid the use of such proprietary technology to construct an entire site. Instead, build your site with CSS and HTML ensuring everyone, including search engine robots, can sample your website content. Then, if required, you can embed media files such as Flash in the HTML of your website.

Flash, in the hands of an inexperienced designer, can cause all types of problems at the moment, especially with:

• Accessibility
• Search Engines
• Users not having the Plug-In
• Large Download Times

Flash doesn’t even work at all on some devices, like the Apple iPhone. Note that Google sometimes highlights if your site is not mobile friendly on some devices. And on the subject of mobile-friendly websites – note that Google has alerted the webmaster community that mobile friendliness will be a search engine ranking factor in 2016.

Starting April 21 (2015), we will be expanding our use of mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal. This change will affect mobile searches in all languages worldwide and will have a significant impact in our search results. Consequently, users will find it easier to get relevant, high-quality search results that are optimized for their devices. GOOGLE

Html5 is the preferred option over Flash these days, for most designers. A site built entirely in Flash could cause an unsatisfactory user experience, and could affect your rankings, and especially in mobile search results. For similar accessibility and user satisfaction reasons, I would also say don’t build a site with website frames.

As in any form of design, don’t try and re-invent the wheel when simple solutions suffice. The KISS philosophy has been around since the dawn of design.

KISS does not mean boring web pages. You can create stunning sites with smashing graphics – but you should build these sites using simple techniques – HTML & CSS, for instance. If you are new to web design, avoid things like Flash and JavaScript, especially for elements like scrolling news tickers, etc. These elements work fine for TV – but only cause problems for website visitors.

Keep layouts and navigation arrays consistent and simple too. Don’t spend time, effort and money (especially if you work in a professional environment) designing fancy navigation menus if, for example, your new website is an information site.

Same with website optimisation – keep your documents well structured and keep your page Title Elements and text content relevant, use Headings tags sensibly and try and avoid leaving too much of a footprint – whatever you are up to.

Article published on http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/

EXAMPLE: Adding Schema.org Markup to Your Footer

You can take your information you have from above and transform it with Schema.org mark-up to give even more accurate information to search engines.

From this….

<div>
    <p> © Copyright 2006-2016 Hobo-Web LTD, Company No. SC299002 | VAT No. 880 5135 26 <br>
    The Stables, 24 Patrick Street, Greenock, PA16 8NB, Scotland, UK | TEL: 0845 094 0839 | FAX: 0845 868 8946<br>
    Business hours are 09.00 a.m. to 17.00 p.m. Monday to Friday - Local Time is <span id="time">9:44:36</span> (GMT)
    </p>
</div>

…to this.

<div>
    <div itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/LocalBusiness">
    © Copyright 2006-2016 <span itemprop="name">Hobo-Web LTD</span>
        <div itemprop="address" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/PostalAddress">
            ADDRESS:
                <span itemprop="streetAddress">24 Patrick Street</span>,
                <span itemprop="addressLocality">Greenock</span>,
                <span itemprop="addressRegion">Scotland</span>,
                <span itemprop="postalCode">PA16 8NB</span>,
                <span itemprop="addressCountry">GB</span> |
                TEL: <span itemprop="telephone">0845 094 0839</span> |
                FAX: <span itemprop="faxNumber">0845 868 8946</span> |
                EMAIL: <a href="mailto:info@hobo-web.co.uk" itemprop="email">info@hobo-web.co.uk</a>.
        </div>
    
        <span itemprop="geo" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/GeoCoordinates">
            <meta itemprop="latitude" content="55.9520367">
            <meta itemprop="longitude" content="-4.7667952">
        </span>
    
        <span>Company No. SC299002</span> |
        VAT No.<span itemprop="vatID">880 5135 26</span> |
        Business hours are <time itemprop="openingHours" datetime="Mo,Tu,We,Th,Fr 09:00-17:00">09.00 a.m. to 17.00 p.m. Monday to Friday</time>
        Local Time is <span id="time">9:46:20</span> (GMT)

 </div>
    
        <span class="rating-desc" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/Product">
            <span itemprop="name">Hobo Web SEO Services</span>
            <span itemprop="aggregateRating" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/AggregateRating"> Rated <span itemprop="ratingValue">4.8</span> / 5 based on <span itemprop="reviewCount">6</span> reviews. | <a class="ratings" href="https://plus.google.com/b/113802450121722957804/113802450121722957804/about/p/pub?review=1">Review Us</a> </span>
        </span>
</div>

Tip: Note the code near the end of the above example, if you are wondering how to get yellow star ratings in Google results pages.

I got yellow stars in Google within a few days of adding the code to my website template – directly linking my site to information Google already has about my business.

Also – you can modify that link to plus.google.com to link directly to your REVIEWS page on Google Plus to encourage people to review your business.

Now you can have a website footer that helps your business comply with UK Law, is more usable, automatically updates the copyright notice year – and helps your website stick out in Google SERPs.

Article published on http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/

Dynamic PHP Copyright Notice in WordPress

Now that your site complies with the Act – you’ll want to ensure your website never looks obviously out of date.

While you are editing your footer – ensure your copyright notice is dynamic and will change year to year – automatically.

It’s simple to display a dynamic date in your footer in WordPress, for instance, so you never need to change your copyright notice on your blog when the year changes.

This little bit of code will display the current year. Just add it in your theme’s footer.php and you can forget about making sure you don’t look stupid or give the impression your site is out of date and unused, at the beginning of every year.

&copy; Copyright 2004 - <?php echo date("Y") ?>

A simple and elegant PHP copyright notice for WordPress blogs.

Article published on http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/

Rich Snippets

Rich Snippets and Schema Markup can be intimidating if you are new to them – but important data about your business can be very simply added to your site by sensible optimisation of any website footer.

This is easy to implement.

An optimised website footer can comply with law, may help search engines and can help usability and improve conversions.

Properly optimised your website footer can also help you make your search snippet stand out in Google results pages:

If you are a business in the UK – your website needs to meet the legal requirements necessary to comply with the UK Companies Act 2007. It’s easy just to incorporate this required information into your footer.

Companies in the UK must include certain regulatory information on their websites and in their email footers …… or they will breach the Companies Act and risk a fine. OUTLAW

Here’s what you need to know regarding website and email footers to comply with the UK Companies Act (with our information in bold);

———————————-

1. The Company Name –
   Hobo Web
2. Physical geographic address (A P.O. Box is unlikely to suffice as a geographic address; but a registered office address would – If the business is a company, the registered office address must be included.)
   Hobo-Web LTD,
   The Stables,
   24 Patrick Street,
   Greenock
   PA16 8NB
   Scotland
   UK
3. the company’s registration number should be given and, under the Companies Act, the place of registration should be stated (e.g.
   Hobo Web Limited is a company registered in Scotland with company number SC299002
4. email address of the company (It is not sufficient to include a ‘contact us’ form without also providing an email address and geographic address somewhere easily accessible on the site)
   info@hobo-web.co.uk
5. The name of the organisation with which the customer is contracting must be given. This might differ from the trading name. Any such difference should be explained
   hobo-web.co.uk is the trading name / style of Hobo Web Limited.
6. If your business has a VAT number, it should be stated even if the website is not being used for e-commerce transactions.
   VAT No. 880 5135 26
7. Prices on the website must be clear and unambiguous. Also, state whether prices are inclusive of tax and delivery costs.
   All Hobo Web prices stated in email or on the website EXCLUDE VAT

———————————-

The above information does not need to feature on every page, more on a clearly accessible page. However – with Google Quality Raters rating web pages on quality based on Expertise, Authority and Trust (see my recent making high-quality websites post) – ANY signal you can send to an algorithm or human reviewer’s eyes that you are a legitimate business is probably a sensible move at this time (if you have nothing to hide, of course).

Note: If the business is a member of a trade or professional association, membership details, including any registration number, should be provided. Consider also the Distance Selling Regulations, which contain other information requirements for online businesses that sell to consumers (B2C, as opposed to B2B, sales).

Although we display most if not all of this information on email and website footers, I thought it would be handy to gather this information clearly on one page and explain why it’s there – and wrap it all up in a (hopefully) informative post.

Article published on http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/

Do I Need A Google XML Sitemap For My Website?

What is an 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, technically, need an XML Sitemap to optimise a site for Google if you have a sensible navigation system that Google can crawl and index easily.

HOWEVER – in 2016 – you should have a Content Management System that produces one as a best practice – and you should submit that sitemap to Google in Google Webmaster Tools. Again – best practice.

Google has said very recently XML and RSS are still a very useful discovery method for them to pick out recently updated content on your site.

An XML Sitemap is a file on your server with which you can help Google easily crawl & index all the pages on your site. This is evidently useful for very large sites that publish lots of new content or updates content regularly.

Your web pages will still get into search results without an XML sitemap if Google can find them by crawling your website if you:

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 if you want best results)

Remember – Google needs links to find all the pages on your site, and links spread Pagerank, that help pages rank – so an XML sitemap is not quite a substitute for a great website architecture.

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.

Most modern CMS auto-generate XML sitemaps and Google does ask you submit a site-map in webmaster tools, and I do these days.

I prefer to define manually my important pages by links and depth of content, but an XML sitemap is a best practice in 2016 for most sites.

Article published on http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/