Search Engine Optimisation

With so many Celebs finding a home on twitter (including @stephenfry @schofe @jasonbradbury @lancearmstrong @wossy and many others) I ask are these celebs becoming Twitter Whores?

Twitter Whore – A Twitter whore is a tweet (one who tweets) whom accumulates many thousands of followers in a short time, shows addiction through tweeting even when at work, and promotes their twitter (@name) at any time possible.

So lets examine some twitter geeks, tweetaholics and twitter whores….where do you fall?

Now being a geek, iv been using twitter since a few months after its birth and i’ve accumulated 1821 posts/updates, 552 people currently follow me, and I follow 976 (as of this moment). I class myself as a tweetaholic. @andykinsey

@StephenFry has been a member a few months has reached 1798 updates, 225K+ followers and he follows over 50K tweets himself. – He is a Twitter Whore!

@boagworld is a fantastic guy and runs headscape and the boagworld podcast. he has 5,930 tweets with 5300+ followers and follows 235, this man is clearly a TWITTER WHORE!

A little more geeky this time.
@LeoLaporte has been a long-time member, it was one of his netcasts at the twit network that introduced me to twitter. Leo has 1900 tweets, 90K+ followers and follows almost 700 himself. Leo also has several other twitter accounts with about the same ammount of numbers (though some repeats) – @LeoLaporte is a huge twitter whore!

I get to be even more of a geek now.
@THErealDVORAK (aka John C. Dvorak) a commentator on many subjects and often a guest on the @leolaporte netcast “This Week In Tech” (TWiT). he has 1,150 updates, 44K+ followers and follows 676 tweets himself. Dvorak …. a long time member of twitter is NOT a twitter whore, but rather a tweetaholic as myself.

So with this all in mind – admit you are a twitter whore and tell the world (dont forget to include your @name) – Enjoy

Twitter is one of the hottest debated topics in the web industry in general. However with more and more companies beginning to realise they need to work on SEO to maintain a web presence …. I ask the question “Is the value of a tweet (or twitter account) really going to help your SEO efforts?”

As with most web companies I do have a twitter (its both personal and business), Follow Me

Twitter is not a media I would advise you to use to drive traffic to your site (though it can if you have a large enough following), leave that to DiggIt, SlashDot and StumbleUpon. So why use twitter? Twitter is at the heart of Social Media / Networking, it is about building connections and relationships, growing your network of business contacts and communicating.

Spamming twitter with links, doesn’t achieve anything but you being unfollowed or not followed in the first place. Taking your time to research twitter and your niche in twitter will reap dividends. Just signing up and immediately thinking you will be successful (as with all social media) will never happen, it takes time and care.

Twitter is not an SEO tool but rather a networking tool, don’t mix them up.

So as @mattbee points out should you use twitter for seo and marketing.

[Edit - 22/2/09]In addition to the above I feel I should make it clear… I LOVE TWITTER! and I follow 100% of my followers – each contact I make is important and if a contact asks a question they get priority! and they can of course get a discount if they tell me their twitter name! [end edit]

After pondering what this article should be about, I began to write a list of things to cover (for everything in SEO). From this list it was clear I have covered a lot of what I wanted to when I first set out writing my blogs. However, I realised covering the points I have wanted has taken me a while, and more than this I saw that I had given lots of tips…but they are sometimes hidden away. So here is just 25 of those tips!

1. Content is King, quality over quantity. Keep it focused on your theme.
2. Links are vital, build a wide and varied back-linking network.
3. Do NOT be obsessed with PageRank, PR is only a part of the search ranking algorithms (even for google).
4. Fresh Content, impresses search engines and users!
5. Click Here links, are rubbish! link text should be informative.
6. Phrases NOT Words, focus on key phrases and not words (eg. “store” should be “manchester clothing store” )
7. Design for SEO, you sloud avoid 3rd party scripting where possible.
8. Use ALT tags, make your images search able too!
9. Use Title tag, rarely used in link this tag allows you to describe further what the anchor text starts.
10. Canonicalization Issues, decide whether to use www. or not and add a 301 to the other!
11. Homepage Links, ensure that every page of your site links to your homepage.
12. Broken Links, not only annoy users but also search engines, avoid them.
13. Do NOT use Frames, iFrames are not indexable by search engines, forget them.
14. Extensions do NOT matter, whether .html .php .aspx etc it doesn’t matter to a search engine.
15. Quality Backlinks, yes all links matter, but some more than others. Try to get authoritative links from your niche.
16. Natural Writing, is one thing a search engine wants. Write to the person not the search engine, don’t keyword stuff!
17. Ease of Use is Key, simple navigation and style is often better than showing off. For both the user and the search engine.
18. Link Love, if someone gives you a link ask if they want one back, if you see a site you like or could be of interest don’t be a link hogger, link out.
19. It takes Time, your seo efforts can seem empty, but practice makes perfect.
20. Be found Naturally, if you have time on your side let the search engines find you, don’t submit your site until you need too.
21. Use a Sitemap, help direct search engines around your site, it makes life easier.
22. Use robots.txt, tell search engines where they can visit, and also direct them to your sitemap.
23. Social Marketing, is a part of SEO… treat it like link love.
24. Analytics Packages, can give an indepth look at what people do on your site, this means you can target your audience better.
25. Validate Code, valid code makes your site easier to read for search engines, and means it will render correctly in as many browsers as possible.

It a well known fact to SEOs and content writers that link text (for internal links), otherwise known as the anchor text, is heavily used by Search Engines for ranking. The reason for this is that content writers know that to attract visitors to another page the anchor text must be meaningful. However, this anchor text cannot be used for the search results however, and therefore search engines use page titles for the search results “titles”.

The reason for this “titles” importance is that it has been shown in studies that users will look at the title of a search results in preference to the description of the page below.

The most commonly used title used by a search engine for its results pages is the Title Tag in the header of your code. However some sites or pages within sites simply do not have this tag, so this is a problem. Other problems include;  the title is incomplete (e.g. missing a keyword descriptor), it is too long, it has no relevance to the page, every page of the site is the same.

So what makes the “perfect” Web Page Title?

1.       Make it relevant – if your page is about your company then fine you should simply use your company name, but if a page is about a service give it the title of the service or if the page contains information on a key theme, use the key theme as your title. Clear and Concise communication of the page content is key. (oh and since you ask “about us” is not a useful title.)
Eg. This site uses the structure <page title> – <site name>

2.       Use correct Capitalisation – this is a commonly misunderstood idea. In simple terms you should use capitals in your titles to emphasise a certain word, for example most commonly the site brand name is capitalised. My advice is if you are not sure if you should use a capital or not, then don’t …putting capitals in the wrong place can often stop visitors from viewing your site from a search engine.
Imagine a search result : “ANDYKINSEY – SEARCH ENGINES” and another of :” AndyKinsey – Search Engines” which are you more likely to visit?

3.       Each page should have a unique title – no two pages should share a title.

4.       Home Pages are Special – Although you still must let the user know what is on your page you must also elevate your company / brand name, if only for web credibility. Doing this will also mean that at a glance in search results a person can find you through recognition.

5.       Length of title – Although in practice you can have a title of unlimited length this is of no use. Search engines will generally use 66 characters (Google) in search results, but SERP’s will still recognise the rest of your title. So perhaps use the first 66 chars for describing your page and mention your brand name thereafter could work for you. But i should add this doesn’t work for all sites for SEO, it can be just as damaging as useful if used incorrectly.

6.       Use of Keywords – if possible you should use a keyword or key theme in your title, however in describing what is on your page to make a title relevant you should already be doing this. My advice is not to keyword stuff your title… this will dilute any other SEO you perform.

7.       Grabbing Attention -  Ok so you’ve seen title that use brackets, colons, semi-colons, hyphens, asterisks and exclamation marks? Some people over do it eg.
((*(( Some Website Title – Brand Name ))*)) - This was a real web page title i have simply removed the words as to remove the identity.
My advice is keep it simple, Search Engine Optimisation – Webpage Titles – AK Designs
Do NOT use special characters, eg. the copyright symbol.
Do NOT use HTML tags such as the strong or emphasis tag.

In the world of Search Engine Optimisation you are likely to find the most commonly believed tip to getting top search ranks for websites is Keyword Density. However, getting this correct is important, but in your haste you may neglect a few things, one of which is your navigation.

Ok, so design can draw a number of visitors, but not many… and more likely than not they are just looking and will not pay your bills. You want the average person to visit your site and be impressed. There are generally 3 accepted methods of creating a navigation, these are: Flash*, JavaScript, CSS and HTML.

Flash

As with most objects on the internet created with Flash (or similar third party software), creating a navigation with Flash will cause problems for some users and search engines. Search Engines struggle to index anything that is not HTML or XHTML (whether this is strict or transitional), SERPs cannot follow links within flash or any other third party script. In addition to this you are limiting your audience by forcing them to use Flash Player**, regardless of if this is previously installed or not it will take more time to load the HTML or XHTML.

JavaScript

A fully JavaScript navigation has become the bane of my life as an SEO. Normally you will find the website owner loves the look of the navigation, how its shadowed, how it fades, and its overall feel. Although better than Flash, JavaScript is still hard to spider and therefore SERP are likely to give up. You need to remember you only get a limited time with a SERP, then it runs off to another site.

(X) HTML and CSS

Unlike the solutions above, HTML and CSS are the best way to go. Using the unordered list
< ul > element is the perfect solution to create any navigation (including drop down lists). You can even add a touch of external JavaScript to make it look nicer, if you wish.

In concluding, I advise you use only HTML and CSS with a little JavaScript. Never use Flash or any similar programs for navigation. And finally regardless of your navigation type, use a sitemap.

*Flash and Flash Player refer to Adobe Flash and Adobe Flash Player.