Search Engine Optimisation

Getting links from other websites and directories is relatively easy. Or so you would think given that if you do a search in Google for links to a website (links:http://andykinsey.com) you will normally see hundreds if not thousands of results. But are these links really doing a website any favours? Are they really helping the search ranking of a website or particular web page? Answer….. No.

So, now I hear you ask the inevitable question “Andy, I thought getting links helps though?”

Well yes it does, but the links have to be relevant to your site. If you have a technology site/blog linked from a website about cats there is no real reference or weight as for the reasoning (most the time). However if you have created the site this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t include your link in the footer! However, if you have a link from another site that is about technology then it will carry more weight in the rankings. Add to this that search engines will only give you ranking / authority if another meaningful and related site does. So getting a million links at a rank of 0 will mean nothing to 3 or 4 of rank 7 or above…. seems odd? Well no not really, this is to stop link farming and also to stop the larger mini-webs (read more about mini webs here (see below)). However this isn’t to say that links from smaller sites are a waste of time, indeed it is sometimes these sites which deliver more traffic.

So what are Mini Webs?

Honestly there are several variations some more effective than others, and some totally black hat! So be careful, is all I will say. Mini Webs are in essence a series of microsites, this means they are smaller sites which have content and are part of a larger site or series of sites. Getting a mini web to work is easier said than done. You need to make smaller websites which have relative content to your site, but NOT duplicate! It needs to have its own value, after a few months you should have a search ranking of some kind (or a web authority and belief from a search engine that you have longevity). It is at this point you link to your site, don’t just delete the micro site because one day it may become larger and more popular than the large site you originally wanted traffic to go. Make sure your link is place prominently and is surrounded by relative wording and that your link isn’t just a www.andykinsey.com style but rather “SEO Blog” (use keywords from your site if possible!).
Want to know more about writing effective links??? Visit back next week!!! Or save yourself the journey and Subscribe Today (you can even get the posts sent to your inbox!!!)

This blog has been written to hopefully help everyone who reads my blogs. Below I answer a number of FAQ’s, these are sent to me on a regular basis (normally hourly!) so I thought I would help us all a little and answer these SEO FAQ’s here and now

Q. Do I really need Search Engine Optimisation?

A. In short, yes and no. Ok, so there is no real answer, SEO is something of a hit and miss for most people, there are certain things that will help a lot, certain things that will hurt more. However, for the most part most SEO is a natural occurrance -when you write content it should flow naturally and it will naturally theme itself and this will aid your SEO, do NOT try and keyword stuff or record keyword density.

Q. What are “robots”, “spiders” and “crawlers”?

A. These are little programmes used by search engines to look at the content of your site, these are the indexing tools of SE’s. The best way to think of these is as blind users they can’t see your styling, images or anything like this, they just see your content, and some of that is sketchy!!! My advice is not to write for these programmes but rather write for your end users.

Q. Are Meta Tags important?

A. Although I understand the view of many SEO companies and individuals, my answer is still yes. Well in the main part anyway. Some tags are more important than others, but not always for SEO reasons.
Athough not strictly a meta tag, the Title Tag is one of the biggest SEO tools you will find anywhere on or off site. It should have keywords near the front not your company branding unless it is a specific page about your company!
Keywords / Phrases – no more than 10 is my general advice, and they should differ for different pages according to relevance on the page.
Description – now this is the tricky one. the description has nothing to do with SEO, you’re not ranked from it nor does it count really towards your SEO worth. However it is what most search engines show along with your page title on the search results pages, getting this right can mean a visitor and/or conversion but get it wrong and people will just ignore your site.

Q. From Launch how long till we are indexed?

A. While there is no definitive answer, it is generally accepted that within 2-12 weeks you will be indexed to some extent. However there are ways of speeding this up, and they aren’t black hat!!! …I know I said this was to save time and effort but you will need to email me to find out what this trick is, it also works for getting your site re-indexed admin*at*andykinsey.com or leave a comment below.

Q. Do AK Designs offer any guarantee on SEO work?

A. Whilst we do not offer a guarantee*, we do offer money back if we do not meet the specification we set out in our contracts with our clients. This means that if at the end of a contract or during any “milestone” during a contract we are not on target you will get a proportion of your money back, just to say sorry. We offer this because we know we can achieve what we set out in our contracts and more often than not exceed anything we and our clients originally expect.

If you have any questions please leave them as comments below and I will answer them.

After many conversations with many people, a lot of whom read this Blog (hello there). I have decided to write a brief post on the top 5 lessons I have learnt whilst being a SEO practitioner.

So what are these Search Engine Optimising lessons?

• Creating multiple pages of the same content, or copying content from another site (dupe content) means search engines can and will ignore you!
• Patience is a virtue, so although you update daily remember your one of billions of pages that is indexed daily.
• All links need to work, if not for the users then for search engines, they dislike broken links an awful lot.
• The importance of headings should never be under estimated.
• Ensure you have a sitemap and that it is updated on a regular basis.

Want to know more, why not look back over my previous postings about SEO or contact me admin*at*andykinsey.com

Further Postings at AndyKinsey.com:
At the moment we are very busy and so our schedule of posting has slipped somewhat, please allow for some extra time in our postings. Want to get the latest post but not sure when to check back? subscribe to the feed, select how you want to receive the feed (through feedburner) and hey presto your away

During 2005 Myspace gained more visitors and users than Google Wikipedia. With other SN’s like Facebook and Twitter, this trend has continued until the present day. Currently Social Networks such as StumbleUpon, Delicious, Reddit, and most notably Digg, are top of the ranks.

but Even with evidence of this being quite clear, why use them? Well to be clear about this, Social Networking is a tool which can drive extreme amounts of traffic to your site, for example from a single stumble not long ago this site recieved over 1000 visitors, I have seen with my own eyes how SN can create extreme traffic in a matter of minutes to a site.

Still not convinced? Well all I can say is try it!

Go and Digg your site, Stumble It, Reddit, Flurk It and more, leave links of Facebook, Myspace, LinkedIn and more. Watch the number of visitors grow and grow, enjoy the success of this. However, thats not all you need to do, you need to convert your traffic, if you have an accessible site, you avoid jargon and your layout is clean this should be fairly easy.

Make It Easy – Making SN easy is something of importance if its not easy to share your site by SN or email then people won’t do this. Use a site such as addthis.com or search SE’s for similar tools, all you do is copy code and your away. Quick, Simple and easy for users.

Social Media Optimising (SMO) – This refers to the methods by which through Social Media / Networking you can get high volumes of visitors. SMO is mainly for “dynamic” sites whom get update on a regular basis, such as a blog. SMO is all about how you go about getting popularity, which sites you use, which social sites you target, and if you are targeting the correct audience.
For Example, digg is rather general and SE’s know this, so if your a technology blog don’t bother so much with this, why not use SlashDot or Technorati

Final section of Appendix B, “at last” I hear you say. Well if you didn’t or even if you did, take a deep breath keep reading and enjoy the fact there is an Appendix C and D in the pipeline. These are about Social Networking and also how to make your blog SEO friendly.

Dealing with Images is something of great importance, ok it won’t mean your site’s page rank is altered for the worse if you don’t but get it correct and SE’s appreciate this. As could the average user, if not those with a disability. Control your images and make your site accessible.

Images – So how do you make your image both SEO friendly and Accessible? Well its quite simple really, alter your image size, not dimensions but file size, the smaller the better normally, though don’t skimp on appearance. Since a monitor can only display 72DPI (normally) this is what definition you should use for image, software such as “MS Image Manager” or more often used for webdesign “Adobe Fireworks” will alter this for you if it is at a higher resolution.
Secondly, use alt tags, these exist for a reason, to make your site accessible. But going further than this Alt tags are read by SE’s and for Google in particular this means its image robot (though other SE’s may have one). It is because SE’s are blind they see your alt tags, with this in mind you should use keywords if possible as alt tags. Also because you give them an alt tag you will get linked from image engines like Google images (http://images.google.com). When linking an image you may want to consider using the “title” tag to allow SE’s and users to see where they are going.

Other Content – This section contains information on 3rd party content, such as Flash, SilverLight and PDF’s amongst other such content.
Such content as flash and pdf’s are often frowned upon by SEO experts, but with recent improvements to SE’s indexing power there is no reason for this. Especially for the likes of Google and Yahoo whome have worked alongside Adobe to make both formats accessible to SE’s. It has also come to light that MSN Live has started to index these, but also has the power to read its own SilverLight. However with exception of SilverLight and MSN, for flash (at least) you should consider that although indexing power is increasing for these it is not the best, and more over you are making work for a SE’s robot that only has a finite time to look for information, you should be making it easier.
So whilst I personally won’t be using such 3rd party content on my site’s at this moment, I would feel fairly confident if i created a simple flash file google could index it.
In terms of PDF’s all major SE’s can no index these quite well, though not perfectly, help it out by giving headers, and images titles. Much as you would a webpage.

Next Blog – SEO Tips – Appendix C
Will contain information about social networking and its mysterious powers.

This post is the second part of appendix b, concerning itself with Copy. And in particular copy Writing and Editing. There will be one further section of appendix b.
Copy is special, this is to say that getting your copy wrote and edited correctly is of paramount importance. Get this correct and your in the door, put simply visitors will stay on your site for longer, will find better content and link to you, they will share your site and SE’s will pick up on this. In addtion to this good copy can mean SE’s will index your site correctly and understand what your site is about.

Copy Writing
Your website (or blog) should be written for both humans and robots (Search Engines). You need to keep enough lovely keywords in there for Search Engine robots (so they escape back to thier home and help your ranking). However you also need to maintain contact with your normal visitor and give them the real content they want. Remember SE’s are important, but they dont carry the cash cards.

Visitors – You have ONLY around 8 to 17 seconds the capture the attention of your visitors, so whilst images and the such are all good and well, your textual content must be to the point and concise. It must be readable and easy to follow, it should not use jargon, and if it does link out to a website with explanation (you dont have to explain it and it wont effect your ranking). Simply tell your visitors what your products are, why they should choose them and how to get them, be short and sweet, do not beat around the bush.
SEO Copy Writing to AK Designs is something of great importance, we pride outselves on the fact we can offer some of the best copy skills around, giving your site all it needs to succeed not only with visitors but also those pesky search engines.

Search Engine Robots (SER’s) – SER’s are a bit special interms of copy writing, but the concepts are simple. All you need to do is get your balance correct. (as with everything seo balance is everything). You must balance your keyword population / ratio between 5 and 10% and not keyword stuff, but whilst doing this you must keep the attention of your visitor, so be careful!
SER’s are looking for these keywords, your heading tags, your emphasis and strong tagging, clean source code and links on your page. But they are also looking for trends between pages, and between websites. Another key factor for SE’s are your links, you should never link with a “click here” or “more info” or even “read more” all links for both SEO and accessibility should be as descriptive as possible (for example “our work” or “AK Designs”). You must also be careful not to Keyword stuff this is very much Black Hat as is duplicate content.

Copy Editing
So you’ve hundreds of pages, sit back relax enjoy they day. But wait you find that certain pages like “FAQ’s” and your “about” page have hundreds of possible keywords (i’ve seen almost 400 in some cases!). This needs sorting surely? Well, yes. However instead of simply changing your keywords look at the copy, this is what needs ammending you should nothave the need for this many keywords, you shouldn’t even have more than 10 keywords! So rewrite the page!
but how? Well in simple terms, take what you have, half it and then half it again. Plan your content and then cut it down, give only the detail a customer could want, not what you want to give them. Don’t leave them with any questions except “can you help me?” or “I have a project…”.
Also from a visitor POV you should have a continuous writing style, you should not change from one style to another in a matter of sentences, this will leave any visitor dizzy and confused. continuity means people will visit again, make something easy to read and you will be handsomely repaid by visitors. In addtion to this, you should use “call to action” links, this is to say your links should be of the copy like “find out more about….” or “learn more about ….” or “contact us now for …”.

And thats it for copy, its not complicated at all, you just have to get the balance of entertaining the purse and the Search Engine.

In Appendix B.3

• Images
• Other Content

Appendix B is in three parts, this is due to the level of detail I wish to supply and also because I wish to keep these blog posts of a “sensible” size. This hopefully means you can digest information I give.

Although in general terms page content is about the whole page, in this section I will deal with the structure of a page and not “making it look pretty”. (This will be dealt with in the next series of posts after SEO). This is because in essence all search engines can be compared to a Blind User. If you want to see what this looks like you’ve several options. You can either download the web dev toolbar for firefox, and remove all CSS and images, or try a text browser such as Lynx. Also despite the opinion of some developers if you design for this “blind” user (the robot) as well as the “average” user you are making your site accessible.

Page / Site  Structure
When developing or redeveloping a website/application choosing the correct structure of a site or page is off paramount importance. You should look at structure from a worms-eye view, this is to say from code upwards. But first take a look outside the box, draw yourself flow diagrams, tree diagrams and ensure you know how you want your site to work. Then simplify this. The more simple the easier your site is to use, is there an extra step in a process you don’t truly need. if so take it out, not only will this help your users, but also from an SEO point-of-view (POV), because things will be easier to get to, and so indexed sooner. When creating your site structure there is one thing to remember. Balance.

In a tree diagram for example this would mean having a similar number of crossing links on a page, you would have balanced sections fo your site with what should ammount to the same ammount of “useful” information in them and a similar number of pages. So if your tree diagram has 17 links from your “about” section and 2 from your “services” section, maybe its time to reconsider? …. This isn’t true however for blogs, although if you use catagories correctly it can be applied here too.

Following this process (and having itterated a few times) you should now look at the coding, and in particualr your style of coding. Use of semantic coding, obieding by guidelines of w3c and use of external css means that your site will be accessible to both people and SE’s.

Q -“Are there anyways of making structure easier once a site has been created? I dont want a full redevelopment.” – Client A

A – In Short, Yes. Although best results are achieved through a full redevelopment in this case, you can use SEO URL’s to adjust your links. Through use of .htaccess files you can cause a url to change, an example of this is this blog, which produces (without .ht) http://andykinsey.com/blog?id=99 but with .ht this becomes http://andykinsey.com/blogname/year – it may seem odd to not just have a title, but adding the year gives some concurrency and means blog titles / adjustments and additions can be added at a later point with the same title.
A site i have found useful for this is YourHtmlSource

Headings
Headings are something that you may think have no relevancy in your design, you just list H1 as a the site title and use other headers here and here….. well no this isn’t really how it works.
Although you should use H tags to describe headers and sub-headers etc. This should not be taken as described above but rather using a lesser header for the site title and a more important and higher ranked header for the page titles. The reasons for this are fairly clear, if you list something as H1 it shows its the most important factor of the page h2 being the second and so on. But doesn’t H1 show larger than H2 etc? …well yes by default but by using CSS this can be overcome, and SE’s will still see the most important factor of a page. So look carefully at your page and how it is laid out, can you put the H1 tag in a better place, if “yes” you will start to win the battle with google. If “no” your simply not looking in the right place.
For more Details see our premium content.

Next Time:

• Copy Writing
• Copy Editing