Omar Kattan

Archive for the ‘SEO Tips’ Category

Ever since Google dropped a bombshell on webmasters attempting to sculpt pagerank (control link juice flow using the nofollow attribute),  SEOs have been trying to figure out ways to achieve the same results via other means.

 Some of the percieved successful methods to sculpt pagerank include:

• Hiding/Redirecting links in Javascript (Potentially excludes up to 4% of search engine users)
• Embedding links in Flash (Google can now find links in Flash and you can potentially exclude up to 7% of users)
• Cloaking Links (against search engine guidelines)

The above methods are more risky and far more labour intensive than URL consolidation which I will discuss below:

The idea behind URL consolidation is to consolidate all pages on your site that are unimportant for driving traffic into one.

An example of such pages are  ”utility pages” such as T&C’s, Privacy Policy, etc under one URL instead of each having it’s own. 

In order to allow users to link to specific sections of the newly combined Utilities page, you can use the hashtag “#” to create seperate links to each of the sections of the page.

The same idea can be implemented for other pages on your site including the about us section, the advertising section and even blog comments and paginated pages.

Using URL consolidation has officially become the new pagerank sculpting, jump on the bandwagon, if you haven’t already!

QDF is a term used to describe the thought process behind Google’s results for certain search queries’ ”deserving” of fresh and regularly updated content.

QDF is Google’s way of ensuring that its users get the most up to date results for certain search queries such as a breaking news event, a major new product launch a topic that always seems to be in the news or a famous celebrity who’s recently been in the news.

In all the QDF results above, Google has tailored its algorithm to serve not only traditional search results but also News, Video, images, and more recently, in the Gaza example, Twitter search results! 

In one of his weekly White Board Fridays, Rand Fishkin described QDF in Layman’s terms and gave a great example of how to leverage it for SEO for a brand new product launch (the launch of Dell Adamo is the example he gives).  Enjoy!

vimeo Direkt

One of the SEO arguments out there is the detrimental effect of outbound links on “link juice” and PageRank dilution. While not completely inaccurate this is somewhat of a myth that requires further explaination.

Outbound links are links pointing from your website to external sites. Over time, as your website becomes more popular (more and more sites linking to it) this popularity embodies itself in a term we call “Link Juice”.  How you distribute that juice within your site is crucial to the overall success of your ranking efforts.

Logic says, if you’ve worked hard to increase your link popularity (Link Juice) then why would you want to distribute your hard earned work to other sites for free?  The answer…You don’t unless…the sites you’re linking to are authoritative ones that add value to your user’s search needs.

One solution to stop leakage of  link juice to external sites is to add the “nofollow” attribute to your outbound link, however here is why I don’t recommend doing so for external sites relevant to your niche.

1) By adding nofollow to a relevant external link, you’re telling search engines that the page you’re referencing is not important and therefore do not follow it, this is in complete contradiction to what you should be telling search engines, and that is, I’m an authority on my niche and the links to external sites I reference on my site are important enough for me to link to and pass on my popularity.

2) Google’s algorythm (based around the concept of “PageRank”) was concieved around the idea that sites with more authoritative links pointing to them recieve more “PageRank” so by adding “nofollow” to authoritative sites related to your niche, you’re actually tampering with Google’s formula of ranking sites according to popularity and authority, do you really want to tamper?

3) If your site gets known for using nofollows on all it’s links, other sites will be less likely to link back to you. No one wants that, unless you’re the Wikipedia

Examples of links you should “nofollow”:

• a link to the analytics company embedded within your code and shows up across the entire site. 

• a link found in the footer of your site that shows up across the whole site (such as a link to a sister site)

• an internal  link to your t&c’s page or similar pages found in the footer and linked to from every page on your site. 

To sum up, and in a nutshell.. using the “nofollow” attribute on outbound links should be exercised with caution, and the basic rule of thumb, only nofollow links that are irrelevant to your niche.

Link baiting is a powerful strategy to build one way links from relevant sites and improve a site’s overall popularity.  How do you go about baiting links?  Here are a few steps to follow in order to conduct a powerful linkbait campaign.

• Arrange a brainstorm session that includes various people from your organisation including marketing, IT, creative agency reps and last but not least, your SEO.

• List the various categories within the target audience of your website.  An example of this could be Young parent with kids, Young parents without kids, etc.

• Brainstorm which digital properties they use in their day to day life.  An example of this would be, young parents might use parenting forums and Yahoo Answers for advice, YouTube and Flickr for entertainment, Facebook to stay in touch with friends and family and Google News for keeping up with the latest news.

• Map out digital properties to each of your target audience groups.

• Now spend some time thinking about all the digital assets your website has.  Examples include and email database, content, videos, images, interviews, a microsite, etc..

• Finally, end the brainstorm session by thinking about ways to use your digital assets in ways that will make them work harder and inline with your audience mapping mentioned above.

A great example of a company that has done this perfectly is the Guardian Newspaper.  The guardian created a widget, the Guardian Chalkboard. 

It’s an online application which has data from the past three years for every premiership football match, as well as info about tackles, passes, shots, throw-ins, etc for every single player.  The application allows you to draw virtual chalkboards and compare matches and players. 

A fantastic linkbait to attract links from football websites and to garner more loyal Guardian readers!

They say Content is King, well Linkbait is the Ace in the hole! 

Google Webmaster Tools is a free service provided by Google which allows webmasters to have an insider’s view on how Google views a website.   Google Webmaster Tools also provides webmasters with a commnication channel with Google to provide them with info such as reporting spam in the Google index, reporting paid links (eg by competitiors ) and most crucially,  submitting a site reconsideration request  (if your site has been penalised by Google!)

Setting up a Google webmaster tools account is very easy, follow these simple steps: 

• Go to https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/

• If you don’t have a Google account, sign up for one, if you do, login

• In the dashboard, add your site’s URL

• Next, verify your site. You can do this by uploading an empty HTML file (name of file provided by Google),  you need to upload the file to the root of your site (where the home index page lies). Another way to verify your site with Google is by adding a meta tag into your site’s homepage (tag provided by Google). 

• Once you’ve uploaded the verification file, go back to Google and click “Verify”

Using the Data provided by Google Webmaster Tools

Now that you’re recieving this valuable data, you will need to analyse it and use it to improve your site’s performance in Google’s search index.  Here are a few tips to get you started:

• Tell Google about your XML file.  This will allow Google to find all the pages within your site.  If you don’t know how to create an xml file, Google provides tutorial as well as software suggestions for XML file creation.

• Setup Robots.txt. Go to Tools (left hand nav) and analyse your robots.txt file.  If you don’t have one, you can create an empty one by opening up an empty notepad page and saving it as “robots.txt” and then upload it to the root of your site (where home index lies).  Google allows you to test various instructions in your robots.txt.

• Analyse your meta data.  Go to “Diagnostics” >> “Content Analysis” and check for duplicate title and meta descriptions tags.  Also check for long and short tags.

• In the same section, check to see if Google had problems crawling your site (web/mobile crawl).

• Under “Tools” you can remove URLs from the Google index as well as enhance your custom 404 (page not found) code.

Other valuable data in Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster tools provides you with lots of valuable data and insights within the interface includes:

• Top keywords on your site

• Top linked pages (internal and external)

• Sitelinks (If your site has “site links, the expanded listing in Google results) you are able to control what pages show up by removing the ones your don’t want appearing.

• Top search queries (by impression and click through rate)

• Web Crawl stats

• RSS feed subscriber stats (you need to a have a Feedburner account for this to work)

That’s about it folks.  Its worth noting that both Yahoo ad MSN also offer similar services for webmasters.  Let me know if you have any questions…