Articles Tagged ‘robots.txt’

Destroying Your SEO Efforts – Top 10

Over the past few months I have made an effort to be positive and tell the world of Website Owners about how to achieve Great SEO Results. However, it isn’t always a bed of roses I am sorry to say. Below is my Top 10 List of actions which can cause your SEO to fail.

1. – Relying on Meta Tags – This has to be number one because its effectiveness has reduced month on month for the past few years. Don’t get me wrong, they are still important … just not for the same reasons they used to be.
Although opinion is spread about the keywords tag and it’s use, for those in doubt use them, and even if not in doubt still use them, some search engines still rely on them!
As for the Description tag is an important tag because although not used directly to improve your search rank, it is used in search results by most search engines, along with the page title, to give the search engine user and idea of what can be found on a specific page.

2. – Purchasing Links – Please do not think by this I mean you should not advertise or sponsor another site for the means of traffic, what I am meaning is that buying links within text on a website should be thought about carefully for the following reasons (this is not an exhaustive list):

  • Search Engines have things called spiders/robots. As well as reporting back about your site and it’s content they also report back on certain areas and keywords found such as “Ad”, “Advert” and “Sponsor” etc.  It is believed that any links surrounding this will have no effect and will not be used for any kind of search engine ranking system.
  • Google accepts report of paid linking (as do other search engines) and all reports are passed on to thier team of experts.
  • Google has a large team in Asia who’s specific task is to look for (and at) paid linking, flagging any possible paid links, making it useless for the purpose of SEO (though this isn’t to say they do not drive traffic to your site).
  • If a search engine finds that you are amongst the thousands always paying for links, a part of the pattern which they search for to show such a thing up they can and will ban your site, either on a permanent or temporary basis.
  • Get only Meaningful Links

3. – Keyword Stuffing - This can be one of the most damaging aspects of content for a website. Spiders will report back on keyword density (amongst other things). If your site is found to have a density of above 15% it will be considered that you are keyword stuffing. Your site will then be reviewed and possibly face the same banning issues as for paid links. However if your site has a density of over 30% you are likely to face an immediate ban. The ideal density is around 7%.

4. – Invisible Text – This is text which a user cannot see, but a search engine can. It is normally hidden -9999px off a page or is disguised by being the same colour as the background. In truth this is easy to spot not least because if you perform such a (black hat) trick, you are likely to never have made a website and therefore perform the action directly in the code. However, even if its hidden in external CSS you can be certain this will have be spidered, meaning search engines know your site layout and will now look out for the attribute id’s and class names that may standout.

5. – Duplicate Content – This is normally done in one of three ways. Duplicate Websites this is normally where a company has 2 websites for the same selling purpose but with different marketing strategies. Doorway Pages / Links this is where two or more sites by the same company have “covert links” between themselves, this is to say one “about us” page may lead to the information on another site. Blog NOPP this is where a blog post does not use Old Post Promotion techniques (such as link backs with excerpts) but rather copies the whole post (making it appear like a new post), its quite easy to find two pages exactly the same on a site for a search engine.

(more…)

15 Days Til New Year!!!!

With just 15 days left until the New Year I thought I would give you yet another list!!! This time not quite so harsh to follow. Doing just one of these a day (maybe two or three if you want a day off) is the simple way to improve your search rank.

  1. Create meaningful title tags for each page
  2. Make use of the description meta tag
  3. Make use of the keywords meta tag
  4. Try to implement SEO URL’s
  5. Improve your navigation (make your site easy to follow)
  6. Use keywords for both internal and external linking
  7. Improve use of header tags
  8. Use Alt tags for images
  9. Can you shave bytes from your images? if so do it
  10. Use your robots.txt file effectively
  11. Beware of using rel=”nofollow” links
  12. Use social networks effectively
  13. Use effective call to actions
  14. Create good copy
  15. Promote your site where possible – but be responsible

The keen eyed amongst you will have noticed I have previously covered all of these topics at www.andykinsey.com in the past few months. 

Articles Tagged ‘robots.txt’

Destroying Your SEO Efforts – Top 10

Over the past few months I have made an effort to be positive and tell the world of Website Owners about how to achieve Great SEO Results. However, it isn’t always a bed of roses I am sorry to say. Below is my Top 10 List of actions which can cause your SEO to fail.

1. – Relying on Meta Tags – This has to be number one because its effectiveness has reduced month on month for the past few years. Don’t get me wrong, they are still important … just not for the same reasons they used to be.
Although opinion is spread about the keywords tag and it’s use, for those in doubt use them, and even if not in doubt still use them, some search engines still rely on them!
As for the Description tag is an important tag because although not used directly to improve your search rank, it is used in search results by most search engines, along with the page title, to give the search engine user and idea of what can be found on a specific page.

2. – Purchasing Links – Please do not think by this I mean you should not advertise or sponsor another site for the means of traffic, what I am meaning is that buying links within text on a website should be thought about carefully for the following reasons (this is not an exhaustive list):

  • Search Engines have things called spiders/robots. As well as reporting back about your site and it’s content they also report back on certain areas and keywords found such as “Ad”, “Advert” and “Sponsor” etc.  It is believed that any links surrounding this will have no effect and will not be used for any kind of search engine ranking system.
  • Google accepts report of paid linking (as do other search engines) and all reports are passed on to thier team of experts.
  • Google has a large team in Asia who’s specific task is to look for (and at) paid linking, flagging any possible paid links, making it useless for the purpose of SEO (though this isn’t to say they do not drive traffic to your site).
  • If a search engine finds that you are amongst the thousands always paying for links, a part of the pattern which they search for to show such a thing up they can and will ban your site, either on a permanent or temporary basis.
  • Get only Meaningful Links

3. – Keyword Stuffing - This can be one of the most damaging aspects of content for a website. Spiders will report back on keyword density (amongst other things). If your site is found to have a density of above 15% it will be considered that you are keyword stuffing. Your site will then be reviewed and possibly face the same banning issues as for paid links. However if your site has a density of over 30% you are likely to face an immediate ban. The ideal density is around 7%.

4. – Invisible Text – This is text which a user cannot see, but a search engine can. It is normally hidden -9999px off a page or is disguised by being the same colour as the background. In truth this is easy to spot not least because if you perform such a (black hat) trick, you are likely to never have made a website and therefore perform the action directly in the code. However, even if its hidden in external CSS you can be certain this will have be spidered, meaning search engines know your site layout and will now look out for the attribute id’s and class names that may standout.

5. – Duplicate Content – This is normally done in one of three ways. Duplicate Websites this is normally where a company has 2 websites for the same selling purpose but with different marketing strategies. Doorway Pages / Links this is where two or more sites by the same company have “covert links” between themselves, this is to say one “about us” page may lead to the information on another site. Blog NOPP this is where a blog post does not use Old Post Promotion techniques (such as link backs with excerpts) but rather copies the whole post (making it appear like a new post), its quite easy to find two pages exactly the same on a site for a search engine.

(more…)

15 Days Til New Year!!!!

With just 15 days left until the New Year I thought I would give you yet another list!!! This time not quite so harsh to follow. Doing just one of these a day (maybe two or three if you want a day off) is the simple way to improve your search rank.

  1. Create meaningful title tags for each page
  2. Make use of the description meta tag
  3. Make use of the keywords meta tag
  4. Try to implement SEO URL’s
  5. Improve your navigation (make your site easy to follow)
  6. Use keywords for both internal and external linking
  7. Improve use of header tags
  8. Use Alt tags for images
  9. Can you shave bytes from your images? if so do it
  10. Use your robots.txt file effectively
  11. Beware of using rel=”nofollow” links
  12. Use social networks effectively
  13. Use effective call to actions
  14. Create good copy
  15. Promote your site where possible – but be responsible

The keen eyed amongst you will have noticed I have previously covered all of these topics at www.andykinsey.com in the past few months.