Has Your Site Disappeared From Google?

In the Unofficial SEO Blog Navneet Kaushal shows Adam Lasnik's view of supplemental results in Google.

Some people had thought that Google was penalising pages by moving them to the supplemental results index. So that they disappeared from the main search results.

Adam suggests that Google is not penalising sites but moving those that don't have many links to the supplemental index.

Personally I'd rather stay in the main index please! But it does come down to getting those all important links from "good" sites.

I'll discuss what "good sites" means in due course. If  people show an interest in the subject.

The bottom line? Get more links into your web site!

 

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What You Get From Business Trade Shows

In the midst of loads of work and my car having to be looked at by the AA twice, needing a new coil, new spark plugs and new HT leads I went to the B2B exhibition at GMEX in Manchester on Wednesday.

I had intended going on the Thursday too but things had got silly busy by that point so there was no way I could justifyCartoon - Jim Symcox it.

I did enjoy the exhibition and had my portrait done, or at least a cartoon of me.

Was the conference worthwhile?

I got to see Jacqueline Gold interviewed by Greater Manchester Chamber of Conference. So yes.

I also met a few good contacts. Two of whom we should be able to do some good business with...

Time will tell.

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Does Your Web Site Make These 6 SEO Mistakes?

You've seen the search engine optimization tips...

Now here are some common mistakes!

  1. Not using the H1 tags for headings.  The search engines give more weight to words or phrases that are emphasised because they reckon they're more important on that web site. Therefore they're likely to be what the searcher is looking for.
  2. Using images for buttons. Search engines can't read images so the button text can't be used for optimization.
  3. Pages that aren't linked to the home page. Without a link it's unlikely that the search engine spider will find the pages.
  4. Images without alt text labels. If you don't put an alt text label for an image people who use spoken browsers won't know what the image is and also it wont be indexed in the search engines either.
  5. Using the same Title tag for every page. Search engines use the title tag to check whether keywords they're searching for are at all relevant to that page.
  6. Assuming which keywords to optimize your web pages for. You need to know which words get searched on using a keyword checker such as Good Keywords or the Overture keywords checker

Mistake 6 is especially relevant to business owners or those who've been in a particular business sector for a long time.

Why?

Because they know everything about their industry, their products and their competitors products.

But they rarely know what keywords people are using during their searches on the Internet.

I once made the mistake of thinking the keywords a business owner was using were those used by his target market.

Wrong!

Well, not completely wrong, but it did mean I had to do a lot more work to include the correct keywords.

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Are Your Web Pages Making These Mistakes?

Search engine optimization is great for getting traffic to your web site.

What if your page had something on that annoys your visitor?

In a survey carried out in July 2005 Taylor Nelson Sofres (TNS) asked shoppers the things they found most annoying.

The survey discovered the following items that people found extremely annoying:

  • Those pop-up ads (83.8% of people surveyed)
  • needing to install software to use the site (72%)
  • non-working links (66.2%)
  • Required to register/log on before viewing the site (61.1%)
  • Pages that load slowly (57.3%)
  • out-dated content (56.5%)
  • hard to navigate (55.4%)
  • poor site search tool (52.4%)
  • Little or no contact information (50.2%)
  • back button unavailable (49%)
  • Use of too much flash and animation (41.5%)
  • text that moves (33.5%)
  • audio playing automatically(30.1%)
  • poor appearance (28.3%)

While these "mistakes" or irritations don't do much for Search engine optimization they do stop users from using or bookmarking sites.

And after all being number 1 on Google doesn't count for anything if they don't use your site when they get to it does it?


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Can Subdomains Help With SEO?

A domain name that contains one or more of your major keywords is going to get better ranking than using a domain name without your keywords in it.

However, a further refinement is to look at using sub-domains.

For example rather than using a single domain structure like:

your.site/advertising
your.site/pressroom
your.site/optimization

You could use subdomains, for example:

advertising.your.site
pressroom.your.site
optimization.your.site

This is a current discussion over at Search Engine Watch.

I recommend using subdomains when you have substantial unique content for each subdomain so they're really almost mini web sites on their own.

Otherwise I would tend to use the initial single domain structure and make sure that all pages are accessible from the home page with 2 clicks. That usually means creating a site map and placing its link on every page.

As noted at Search Engine Watch there may be good marketing reasons for you to decide to use subdomains. So review the need for subdomains as part of your initial web site creation and review strategy. 


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Top 5 Tips For Blog SEO

I've been talking about how a blog (associated with your own web domain) can really help your web site in the search result rankings.

Certainly my other blog Power Packed Business Growth proves that with a post on top 25 marketing sites. Where I show that originally my Alexa ranking (how popular a site is) was 5,422,486 and now my rank is 863,344.

(Note: Today it is 667,571 - so it's continuing to improve.)

The 5 Top SEO Tips For Blogs

So what are the top tips for making your blog search engine optimisation strategy help your site succeed? They include my favourites:

  1. Post interesting content that your target clients want to read. This seems a no-brainer but believe me you can see some absolute drivel if you want!
  2. Make sure you set up a target for the number of posts per week because Google loves fresh content. It may be 1,2,3 or 7, or more posts per week. Just be sure that it's often enough but not so often people unsubscribe in droves.
  3. Allow time to comment on other related blogs. That way if your comment is interesting, insightful or helpful people are encouraged to look at your blog. In addition you're creating a link back to your own blog.
  4. Allow comments on your blog. That way when people leave comments you get a dialogue . That can encourage other people to read the post too and link back to it. Make sure you moderate comments, otherwise you could get stupid or spam comments.
  5. Write articles that link to your blog. Again if they're interesting people look up your blog and may link to it themselves.

Allow Blog Subscribers

Finally, a sixth bonus tip, make sure your reader can subscribe to your blog with RSS or email. I use Feedburner for RSS and email and I'm extremely happy with the way it works.

Feedburner allows people to read your posts without visiting your blog and if they like what they see they can comment on it in their own blog. Usually blog etiquette means people provide a link back to the original content.

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Copywriting Gem Discovered!

I just had to let you know Gary Bencivenga has shot another copywriting bullet that is a must read for anyone writing copy.

Copy on the Internet or offline.

This one's about the second most important element in any copy you write.

Yet it's often something that clients don't even think about.

Sometimes I think Gary may be the coolest guy on the planet after all. Read his bullet and prosper and find out how you can be different to many businesses who don't use this important point.

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