Category Archives: SEO Tips

Posted by RobOusbey

Links. We often talk about why we want them and how to get them, but today I’d like to go back to basics and look at the constituent parts of the HTML code behind them. This is definitely a post for the new SEO, or web-developer looking to expand their experience, but even experienced search marketers may want to comment the nuances of some parts of the humble anchor tag’s attributes.

Here’s a couple of example links; the first is a link to the White House’s website, the other is to Distilled’s new US website.

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Posted by mgalecki

This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

A SHORT INTRODUCTION…

We all know that the search engine robots more frequently visit popular pages, i.e. those that have the largest number of incoming links, both internal and external ones. The architecture of a website is usually correlated with the popularity of these pages expressed by number of backlinks:

• Home page has the most backlinks,
• 1st (e.g. product categories), 2nd & 3rd level pages obtain less links,
• finally the least important are deep pages (with articles, classified ads, product pages, etc).

The above mentioned “importance” of web pages versus the web site architecture has been illustrated in one of the Rand’s posts titled "Diagrams for Solving Crawl Priority & Indexation Issues":

Important pages tend to have a different priority of indexation, and this was also presented very nicely by Rand:

Purple spots are those with the highest number of external links. As it can be seen, the pages which are close, take some of the popularity and they pass part of it further (pink spots). All the other spots stand for pages that are too far from the entrance points of search engine robots, which means that the chance of their indexation is much smaller.

In case of classified websites, which contain a lot of content, the above diagram should include subsequent category listing or search results pages. They are obviously less important than the main category pages, but their indexing additionally influences the indexation of their components – ad details pages. This is particularly important when the listing starts with so called premium ads, which change less often than standard classifieds.

BEFORE THE TEST…

Having this theoretical information, we have decided to see how it is like in practice. We have analyzed a website of http://www.morusek.pl (with animals and pets related classifieds from Poland) which has a total number of indexed pages exceeding 100,000. Using the combination of "site" and "inurl" queries we checked what is the number of indexed pages with a list of classifieds (in Polish “ogloszenia”): http://www.google.pl/search?q=site%3Awww.morusek.pl+inurl%3A%22%2F0%2F%22+inurl%3Aogloszenia

The initial results were the following:

To continue the analysis, we excluded the first pages, as the numbers here are influenced by existence of some category pages with no classifieds at the moment, but which are indexable (there are crawlable links in the menu). In addition, to verify the effectiveness of the "site" query, we took into account a number of pages reported by Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) under "Internal Links". The results were as follows:

WHAT’S IMPORTANT TO KNOW?

The first conclusion is obviously that the higher the page number is, the less probability that the page will be indexed. Secondly, while the actual numbers of GWT and “site” queries vary a lot, the trends (slopes) are almost the same. On average, the chance that the robot will crawl to the next page of search results decreases by 1,2-1,3% per page.

It is also interesting that, according to Google Webmaster Tools, pages from 2 to 4 have a good indexation ratio which later decreases dramatically at the fifth position. For example, for sites with number 4 the level of indexation is 60%, while for pages number 15 it falls below 30% (according to Google Webmaster Tools), or 40% (for the command “site” in Google). This is due to the fact that Googlebots have a much longer way to reach the appropriate link in case of the latter (a link to page 15 first appears on page 12), while there are direct links to pages 2, 3 and 4 on the first pages of search listings (see below):

THE SUBJECT OF THE TEST: INTRODUCING MORE LINKS

We decided to test what would be the changes in indexation ratios if we introduced more links to subsequent ad listings pages. On the first page of each category we added links to the 5th, 10th and 15th pages as show on the picture below:

After a month we tested the changes. Due to inaccurate results returned by the command “site” in Google (number of indexed pages seemed to be greater than the actual number of them) we present data from Google Webmaster Tools (internal links) only:

THE RESULTS

The graph clearly shows us that indexation of pages that were added to the listing on the first page is much higher after the change (pages: 5th, 10th and 15th), and actually equals the indexation of pages 2, 3 and 4.

However, the increase in indexation of pages directly linked from the home page did not affect the indexation of the neighbouring pages. For example, we can see a huge increase for page 10, but there is no change for pages 9 and 11. The conclusion is that for Googlebots these pages are too far from the points of entry. Only category pages for main region have incoming links. To index page 9 of the intersection of categories and regions, the robots would have to go the following path:

1. main category page (entry point),
2. category page + region (first page of results),
3. category page + region (tenth page of results),
4. category page + region (page 9  of the results).

What makes it even worse, not all the category pages have incoming links.

THE CONCLUSIONS

For classifieds or e-commerce websites, the conclusion is that the more pages linked in the listing, the greater the chance that they will be indexed. In general, it is clear that the farther from the point of entry (external link), the less chance that the page will be indexed. Therefore, it is advisable not to create sites with a very deep structure and to remember that the pages far from the points of entry should be additionally linked to (for example as "similar products", "see also", "related categories", etc.).

Looking at the chart we can see yet another change – a slight decrease in indexation of pages 2, 3 and 4. This can be either because there are new pages added recently and they have not been indexed yet (when the number of ads in a certain category has started to exceed the space on the first page), or due to increase in the number of outcoming links on the first page. I would rather bet the first explanation, because in fact the new links were added to a small percentage of pages. There are only 400 fifth pages (so the links to fifth pages were placed on 0,5% of all the first pages). Pages 10 and 15 are even less numerous.

Introduction of additional links has not increased the level of indexation of classifieds, however I suppose that the rate of change was simply too small to affect their indexation. Moreover, the indexation of ads of Morusek.pl exceeded already 80% when the experiment started. Such changes can produce a visible increase in the number of indexed pages in case of sites where the rate of change is much higher and the level of indexation of classifieds or products – lower.

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Posted by great scott!

Will Critchlow of Distilled (who recently took over SEOmoz’s consulting business) is back in Whiteboard studios to help Rand discuss how to Choose an SEO consultant–or any consultant for that matter.

Whether you’re a consultant yourself, you frequently work with consultants, or you’re thinking of outsourcing some work for the very first time, you’ll find this week’s video worthwhile.  Knowing beforehand how the engagement needs to be structured, what you expect to get, where to find good recommendations and/or sources of consultants, and how to determine whether they have the skills and expertise you require are all critical steps to a successful and relationship (and making sure you get what you paid for). Join Rand and Will as they help you figure out how to get the best results for your consulting dollar.

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Keyword research is one of the primary things in SEO, and as all of us know, there are a set of keyword research tools that we all have been using for years. I personally feel that the keyword research area is the most important one in terms of laying your foundations for SEO, and unfortunately, [...]

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Posted by randfish

I ran across this survey data eMarketer released last week and my heart sank:

This first chart looks innocent enough. It’s when you look at the next one (from the same report) that things get ugly:

As a CEO, an SEO, a web marketer and a participant in social media, this drives me absolutely crazy. The very last item on the list is "conversions, ROI, etc." If your pulse isn’t pounding, you might need to cut back on the pharmaceuticals.

Absolutely nothing in the analytics world should trump conversions and ROI for "senior marketers" or anyone else who cares about the success of a company. If you’re thinking in terms of time on site or unique page views as primary metrics – metrics you’d describe in a survey as being those you’re "most interested in" – there’s a big problem. The web as a medium is designed to let you capture data beyond number of viewers or engagement level. It lets you track return visits and actions and build sophisticated models that predict what activities will drive up revenue and earnings in the most cost-effective ways. Why let it go to waste?

This report from Forrester suggests that the spend on web marketing has a lot of growth, and social media in particular is poised for exceptional CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate). But, I’m tremendously concerned that if marketers obsess over metrics like time on site, unique page views and CTR, they’ll miss out on the real opportunity of all these channels.

ROI should be the ultimate metric – it should be the most important thing on every marketer’s mind for every project and every channel. I’ll grant that prioritizing the projects and investments that have the highest return is challenging, and even the best do it imperfectly. What worries me is that there are marketers who may be taking their cues not from the great analytics data suggesting that, although first-time visits from social media may have low value, over time, they can drive greater brand engagement, predict higher rates of repeat visits and eventually become buyers and brand evangelists, but from the onslaught of press coverage and media attention around social networks.

If you’re taking your clues about where to spend your marketing budget from the media, rather than experiments and data, get ready for disappointment. Likewise, if you’re measuring the wrong thing, you’ll never know the right place to spend those dollars.

The beauty of online channels like SEO, landing page testing, conversion rate optimization, email marketing and, yes, social media is that the data tells a story we can read. So long as we’re willing to hear the message, we can draw the connections to find the traffic sources that cost less and earn more. We can invest in those until the ROI from them diminishes to a point where other channels become viable. But only if we’re paying attention to the metrics that matter.

There have been tools, data and experienced professionals in this field, fighting these fights for over a decade now. Tragically, it seems that we’re in for a long slog.

p.s. We’ve filled up about 600/1,000 spots for Thursday’s PRO webinar on SEO Analytics – feel free to join in

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Posted by MichaelC

It’s a well-known fact in the SEO world that Google shows enormous favoritism in its rankings to domain names that contain one or more of the keywords being searched for. If your domain name is a close match to the search keywords all glued together, it’s as easy as fishing with dynamite to get on page 1 of the SERPs for that search phrase. While some (like me) might argue (like, against Rand) that it’s a flaw in the algorithm, it’s not a bug–Google deliberately favors this kind of match. If the search is a company name, well the reasoning why [that phrase] .com should rank #1 is obvious…and for everything else, well…it’s pretty reasonable for Google to presume that a site named, for example, www.lightbulbs.com is probably pretty much about light bulbs. Whether it’s the BEST site for light bulbs is of course another story.

The net result of the world realizing that Google works this way is pretty predictable: mass buying of keyword-rich domains, and trying to turn those into top rankings and monster-sized site traffic. We’re seeing three tactics here:

1. 301 redirection of keyword-rich domains
2. content-rich doorway pages on those domains
3. moving existing sites onto those domains

Before we dive into each of these in detail, let me throw out an example to help make all the details make sense. Apologies in advance to whoever actually owns these domains–y’all can just relax and think of this as just a free citation to help your local search

Example: let’s say your company is "xyzsignals.com", you sell cell phone repeaters, boosters, antennas, etc.

• page 1 of the SERPs for "cell phone repeaters" is dominated by domains with those words in the domain name
• being the devious and knowledgeable SEO that you are, you buy these domains: www.cellphonerepeatersystems.com, www.cellphoneboostersystems.com, www.cellphoneantennasystems.com

FYI, it’s not necessary to add hyphens between your keywords; search for "web hosting" and see how well the non-hyphen versions rank. Also, hyphenated domains may be a red flag as many spammy domains have been built this way over the past few years.

OK, first up to bat: the quickie: buying the domains and 301′ing them to your site.

You buy these existing domains–perhaps they already have a bunch of juicy links to them. You HTTP 301 redirect everything from those sites to your main site, www.xyzsignals.com. Cool, right? Free link juice, immediately!

Not so fast…Google’s ahead of you on this, and is looking for people who do this purely for SEO benefit. Matt Cutts is pretty clear on this in this video.

If you buy a domain, and immediately change the owning organization name, address, technical and admin contacts, etc., you can pretty much count on getting busted on this. At best, the sandbox….at worst, penalties.

If you’re clever about it (I can’t really tell you what to do, it’s black-hat, but it’s bloody obvious!) and avoid getting spotted as a domain buyer, keep in mind also that you’ll likely have to move the domain to some new servers, which may in itself be a signal (when combined with registrar info changes) that the domain is no longer owned by the same organization, and perhaps past links shouldn’t be counted as votes and hence flow PR.

Let’s say you’re smarter than the average bear, and get past that….what can you expect in terms of SEO results? Well, you’re not going to see the keyword-rich domains in the SERPs, you’ll see your own site. And you might think about the conversion effect of showing an URL with the phrase that matches the search phrase, versus showing your company name. My guess (and experience) would lead me to say that www.cellphoneantennasystems.com will get more attention from the searcher (hence clicks) than xyzsystems.com, presuming of course they searched for "cell phone antennas".

As well, there’s some thought in the SEO community that the juice passed via 301s may decay over time anyway.

Lastly, let’s say you’re going all out and have bought 20-odd sites, each matching a target search phrase. Will Google spot a pattern if you redirect 20+ sites all to your 1 principal domain? If not today, probably soon…

On to Door Number Two: Content-Rich Doorway Pages

For each of the keyword-rich domains you’ve bought, you build light content, with a link/call to action that sends users off to the main site. The idea:

• the doorway domains will rank well
• users will click on them in the SERPs as the URL and title both will closely match their query phrase
• users will click the link on the doorway page to get to the main site

Most likely you will make it visually obvious to the user that the two domains are the same company (despite different URLs); the more black-hat approach is to make the doorway page appear to be a "review" site that recommends the main site, but of course, I wouldn’t suggest such nonsense here.

The concern about buying the domain and changing the registrar info (and hosting ) all at once applies here as well. Tread softly….and slowly.

Once out of the sandbox (if you fall in at all), the doorway domains will rank really well for the key phrase, with proper on-page SEO and very light link-building needed.

So, is this black-hat? ask yourself: is there any reason to do this (for the human user) OTHER than search ranking? Does it honestly add value? Will it be detected automatically? Probably not….but…

If you’re very successful at this, your competitors are likely to notice; you should BET on one of them submitting a manual spam report to Google; think about how you’re going to explain to a Google engineer that you are doing this for some reason other than search rankings trickery.

A Beige-Hat Suggestion: if you go this direction, choose your main products and build a real site for each that offers Wikipedia-like information on each class of product, so that what you have is a generally useful resource for someone looking to buy a product like what you’re selling; then, be upfront and put a "sponsored by" link to the section of your site that focuses on that product class on each page of the site; as well, a link on each page in the text to that same section.

You might create a mini site for each of those products, and talk about the pros and cons of the various types of each. Let’s say on one page you’re talking about the roof-mounted directional antennas – you could say on that page "At XYZ Signals, our most popular roof-mounted directional antennas are the ACME 3 antennas" and link both "roof-mounted directional antennas" and "ACME 3 antennas" to your main page for ACME 3 antennas.

Last, but not least: buying a keyword-rich domain and moving your entire site

This move isn’t for the light-of-heart, even though it’s pretty white-hat. You’re still going to have issues with the sandbox, and to avoid this, need to execute this tactic over several months. Danny wrote a great post with all the details on how to move a domain a little while ago.

Consider putting up some light content on the new sites and watch the SERPs for a month or so to be sure the new sites are not sandboxed. Then, move all of the pages from your original site over, and 301 each page to the exact corresponding page on the new site EXCEPT the home page.

Retain your original domain and use it for a "corporate info" site; link to it from the new domain and vice-versa.

Finally, use the backlinks analysis from Open Site Explorer to find the important sites that link to the old site, and ask them to update their links to point to the new sites.

Technorati Tags

keyword rich domains, buying domains, seo tactics

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