Just Search | Search Engine Optimisation & Internet Marketing Journal

Improving your Site Index Rate

2008-11-20T16:43:39Z

A major feature of having a successful website is ensuring it is properly SEO-optimised. This ensures search engines pick up all the relevant information from the page, hopefully reducing the amount of ‘clutter’ or unwanted data. However, once you have an optimised website, there are a number of steps the continued progress of the website could take. One of these steps is to improve the frequency that your website is indexed by the likes of Google.

The most important concept search engines look at when deciding (it is automatically derived from each search engines unique algorithms) how often to return to a website is the regularity of changes and the significance of each change.

You could just simply decide to re-arrange the information in your website either manually or using scripts, but search engines can tell if the overall data is the same and are likely to discount these changes. Instead, the website should receive a stream of regular, yet original, content.

This is where content writing is useful, it ensures the information is sufficiently unique to be picked up as changes to a website, it adds new pages, which helps a page rank as well, and also helps to bring visitors in through the use of several other factors such as long tail keywords and interesting discussions.

Stefan Crowe
Creative Developer

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New tool released from Google to help advertisers

2008-11-19T17:32:05Z

Now you can find out what keywords you are potentially missing from your Adwords account thanks to Google’s new keyword tool called the Search Based Keyword Tool. It really is a fantastic addition to Google’s existing tools as it tells you what keywords are missing from your account based on search query data from a website.

This tool was revealed earlier in the year at the annual Google conference in Dublin. I got the chance to speak to a number of staff there about the tool and they basically explained that it is really good for advertisers as it is easy to spot keywords not currently bid on that could generate good ROI.

Probably more importantly there is the opportunity to use the tool for competitive analysis. Essentially it is possible to see data about keywords that relevant to any website on the internet.

Also within the tool is the possibility to show all keywords generated by category. So if the website you’re getting data from is an electrical retailer, for example, it is possible to get keyword data from specific product areas. This can be immensely useful for expanding your Adwords campaigns.

So why has Google released this tool now? Well one theory could be that we are coming up to Christmas and Google are hoping that we can get more keywords that convert and generate more money for advertisers and Google themselves as no doubt click costs will increase substantially.

Adam
PPC Consultant

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Moving and removing pages

2008-11-19T16:13:50Z

With the HTTP protocol, when a page is called from a client but not found, it is referred to as a 404 error message. For example, if you go to a made up page on the Just search site here, you will find our own custom 404 page which tells the client the page does not exist.

When search engines crawl your site they will index every available page they can find, but often you may rename or delete a page. Any page on your site which 404s will be removed from the search index and you will lose valuable rankings - after all, content is king! The best way to deal with this is to either create a custom 404 page or, if you have just moved or renamed the page, use a 301 redirect.

If you have only moved the page, you can use a 301 redirect which will tells all clients trying to access the missing page that it has permanently moved to a new location. 301 and 404 redirects are implemented in different ways depending on the server and type of server script you are using.
For more information on 404 pages you can read up on Googles enhanced 404 page.

Adrian Mursec - Natural SEO Programmer

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Increase Sales with Online/Offline Deals

2008-11-18T17:13:06Z

Christmas is just round the corner and at this time of year we need to ensure that sales are maximised.

Through using in store and online promotions you can capitalise on the extra holiday revenue. With the state of the economy as it is, all shoppers are looking for a bargain. Regardless whether you’re customer shops amongst the hustle and bustle of the high street or in their PJ’s; you need to ensure that you capture their business and give them the deal they are looking for.

One way of doing this is to use sales, promo codes and coupons. Coupons can be available online to be redeemed in store, in your ads to be redeemed in your e-commerce shop or in receipts to encourage future business. It is important for marketing purposes that they are readily available and easy to see and use.

Another way to go is to publish your coupons and promo codes on the Google Content Network, i.e. other popular sites. You could put together a dedicated content campaign especially for the Christmas season, which will allow you to segment budget and results.

To increase the sum of the sale, you could have tiered discount based offers where customers save a higher percent the more they buy. Therefore encourage them to spend more in your store!

Free delivery is another deal that can pull in customers and is an effective call to action in your PPC ads. Buyers don’t like hidden costs and learning of heavy shipping costs in the late stages of the transaction can push users to drop off, wasting traffic and therefore your PPC spend.

To gain repeat custom try incentive schemes, loyalty discounts and send promotional emails to previous customers. Basically make existing customers feel special through discount on further purchases. These can work in store and online, making the most of all new and existing customers.

Why not have offers to entice customers to buy now, through limited time offers and sales. Everybody is looking for a deal now so make sure your PPC campaign is geared up to capture their business before someone else does!

Tanasé Rivers

Paid Search Account Manager

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Simple Scripts that help aid your Word Press install

2008-11-18T17:00:27Z

Installing a blog or even migrating a Wordpress blog can be a time consuming task. There are times when you wish simple scripts were available to help you complete such tasks.
Bellow is a set of plug-ins that may help with installation, backing up data and so-forth.

Easy Word Press Install
Easy WP installer is a script that helps you quickly install Word Press with only FTP access. The script will download all the Word Press files for you so you don’t have to. This makes uploading a breeze because the only file you need to upload is 8kb of data. I’d have to say this is ideal for mobile users.

Database Backup
This should be used with any blog install. Instead of having the inconvenience of installing php MySQL Admin and then taking a back-up, this script will do it automatically. The only details needed to back up your blog are user, pass, db name and host.

If you do not have the db details it will automatically take this out of the config.php file for you.

Resetting your administrator password
Did your install not work correctly? Have you forgotten your admin password? Well the script emergency.php will easily reset it for you. The script will reset your password and then resend the details to the admin email address assigned.

S.Whiston, SEO Programmer

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Content can help your company survive the recession

2008-11-18T09:34:35Z

Everywhere we look, the media is talking about recession and how it is affecting businesses. At times like these, companies need to watch their expenditure and ensure their marketing budget is used wisely. Content can help your company survive.

By integrating articles and regular, fresh content into your website, it demonstrates to customers and visitors that you are an authentic company, that you have a regular presence and it encourages them to interact or make an enquiry with your company.

It is not likely that either you or your team have the inclination, the time and the necessary talent to do all of this work yourselves and so it is important to use experts who can do this on your behalf. Undoubtedly, you know your industry and business inside out and this needs to be translated into relevant content but this is difficult unless you know about search engine optimisation, have the dedication to do it regularly and have strong editorial skills.

The forthcoming recession, or the one that we are already in, depending on which newspaper you read, could be a tough downturn for our economy. Your marketing budget might be limited. Either way, you need to set in place an online marketing strategy to help connect you to quality traffic and prospects, and content is just one of the methods that should be used.

Lianne Wilkinson
Creative Advertising Manager

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Video Blogging

2008-11-17T13:42:44Z

Video blog, also known as a vlog, is a web blog in which the medium is video rather than text. Just like other blogs the content is made regularly and most of the time it is a combination of text, images and other metadata, hence they provide the user with a richer web experience. Most video bloggers believe that it allows for more natural expression as compared to a normal blog.

These days video blogging is becoming popular with bloggers and podcasters because new technologies (digital or mobile phone cameras) make it easy to produce images and videos rather than writing loads of text.

It is quite easy to post a video. You can capture video by using a digital camera and then simply upload it on a blog post. However, you can incorporate titles, edited clips and other media effects to enhance your message. Video blogging exemplifies the old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words. The only disadvantages or downsides of video blogging are bandwidth requirements and resources or equipment required to capture, store and distribute video. Also, a significant amount of time and money is required to do the video blogging.

Nadeem Hussain
SEO Programmer

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Pattern Matching with robots.txt

2008-11-14T17:26:21Z

The robots.txt file is a simple text file placed in the root directory of your site which offers specific instructions for how robots can access your site. The SEO implications of this are that you can restrict certain pages from being indexed helping to ensure that only relevant pages are made available to search engines and helping to retain PageRank on those pages. The robots.txt file uses three rules; User-agent (the robot the rules will apply to), Disallow (the URL that is to be blocked from the given robot) and Allow (the URL that the robot is allowed access too). Asides from blocking given URLS, pattern matching can be used to disallow access to any URL that, as you may of guessed, matches the pattern.

Matching a sequence of characters – This can be done through use of an asterisk (*) to block any directories or files that match the given text, for example the following rules will disallow the robots from any directory beginning with “admin”:

User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /admin*/

Blocking a URL containing a question mark – This is a useful technique when dealing with pages that are passing user submitted data through the URL. In the following example the rules disallow any page that contains a “?”:

User-agent: Googlebot
Disallow: /*?

Matching the end of a URL – This can be achieved through use of the “$” symbol. By placing this at the end of a URL you can specify that this rule applies to URLs that end here. Using the example of user submitted information being passed through the URL, the following rules can be used to ensure that any page containing information after the “?” to be disallowed, whilst pages with nothing after “?” to be allowed:

User-agent: Googlebot
Allow: /*?$
Disallow: /*?

Nick Price
SEO Programmer

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Content to Code Ratio - Through the eyes of SEO

2008-11-13T15:11:56Z

Many a time, I’ve been asked how the actual HTML code of a website affects the site’s SEO.

Can code affect rankings?

This in itself is a very large topic but I plan to mention some of the basics here today. I’ll separate this post into separate sections.

<div>s & CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)
Thousands of websites across the internet (especially those by beginners in the field) are coded using the old-school HTML tags: <table>, <td>, <tr>, <font> etc. This will result in a lot more code for your site than you need. Using CSS and <div>s in the right way can reduce the amount of code to a minimum. This said, what’s the point? There are a few reasons really…
1. Page Size
  By reducing the size of the page, this will allow your site to load faster and thus enable search spiders to run through and index your code quicker. An equally important advantage is shown by looking at this from a usability point of view. Research shows that users don’t like to wait too long for a site to load and so, by reducing the size of a page to a minimum, users will be able to view your site more quickly, thus reducing the chances of the user leaving.
2. Content to Code Ratio
  The major search engines are becoming smarter by the day. It has been noticed by top SEOs that search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN love a higher content to code ratio. What does this mean? Minimum code. They like to see most code away from the site in external files, leaving the site simple and clean to both users and search spiders.
Website Accessibility
Another advantage of minimising code usage is accessibility. In the past, this was limited to those users who used to use screen readers but now, it’s different.

Technology is advancing exponentially and thus, more and more people are using hand help devices to browse the web. This was mostly limited to those devices which run Windows Mobile but we now have the popular iPhone and the newly released G1 - a phone from Google.

By using CSS, you can make it so that users coming to your site via a hand held device will see your website in a friendlier manner - as will those using a computer or notebook.

Although this point doesn’t have a major affect on SEO at the moment, you can be sure that it will in the future…
Cross Browser Compatibility
Again, not directly related to SEO. If you ask any half-professional web designer and developer where he/she spends most of their time designing a site - I can almost guarantee that it’s in making the site friendly across all browsers.

The simplest way to ensure that your site will be compatible across all major browsers is to code in CSS and <div>s. It has literally become a must now, due to the number of browsers appearing (like the recent Google Chrome)
Code Validation
Using the methods outlined above, you can be sure that you will be left with no or at least minimal validation errors and although validating your code does not have a major impact on SEO, it adds to it. By taking care of the pennies, you can be sure your pounds will stay safe.

There is a lot more I can mention but due to the limitation of time, I will stop here. Feel free to add to this in the comments.

Ahmed Bhula
SEO Programmer

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Interesting content, not SEO content

2008-11-13T11:01:37Z

When it comes to adding regular content to your website, you need to realise the difference between SEO content and regular, unique, interesting content. They are very different, and have different aims, objectives and outcomes.

SEO content is text using your keywords that is written specifically to focus on a select few keywords relevant to your site in order to tell Google what your site is about. If Google doesn’t know what your site is about it can’t categorise it, it doesn’t know where to put it or what relevance to assign it.

Regular content however isn’t SEO content. It’s not about filling your pages with keywords. If you shoehorn your keywords into every article or page that is added to your website you may as well be adding reams upon reams of spam to your site. This will not help your rankings, it will not help your users and it will not help your business.

Regular content is about interesting content, newsworthy content and searchable content. By having this type of text added to your site you’re giving Google a reason to come back and index your site more regularly. You’re giving your users, your customers, and people who have never heard of your site before, a new way to find you in Google because you’ll rank for far more search phrases than you ever would through conventional SEO.

Yes SEO is important. Without SEO your website may be severely hindered, and Google won’t know what your site is all about. However, with content your website has the added advantage of giving Google just what it wants too.

What do we mean by this?

Simple. Google makes money by advertising, so the more people who use Google, the more money Google makes. Google has become the most used search engine on the Internet, not by offering freebies for users like Microsoft, or by becoming a magazine portal like Yahoo!, but by returning the most relevant results to a user’s query. People use Google because they know that when they do, they’ll find the answers for what they’re looking for. Google works.

By adding unique, interesting, fresh and relevant content to your website, about your industry, you’re adding the sort of content that Google wants to offer its users. You’re becoming a website that Google wants to return at the top of the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

Make your website what Google wants to see, add content… not SEO content, unique, interesting and relevant content.

Darren
Senior Creative Developer

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