From the category archives:

SEO

Site Speed – The Next Ranking Factor

by Ken on November 17, 2009

in SEO

Matt Cutts said something interesting, in an interview the other day. He said that there is some lobbying going on, to introduce an additional factor into Google’s algorithm; site speed.

Why?

Well it’s simple really. Think about it, if a web-page loads too slow, the surfers will most likely hit their back button and no page is loaded, and of course, no ads either. However, I do not think that you will need to purchase dual geo distributed servers and dedicated bandwidth, just yet, if ever. My best guess is that Google will not implant site speed into their algo, not as an important factor anyway.

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SEO Myth: Google PageRank

by Ken on September 12, 2009

in SEO

Google Pagerank

In a previous post, I said that I would address Google’s PageRank and sort it out for you; what it really is and not is.

It’s PageRank, not SiteRank.

Google calculates your PageRank by looking at the quality and amount of back links, to a particular page. Since many people only link to the main page of a domain, it will also get the highest rank, of all your pages.

However, it is possible that a subpage of your blog can outrank its main page, as well.

Let’s say that you write a truly striking post on how to cure a terrible illness, and both CNN PR 8 and Wikipedia PR 9, would link to that post from their main page, then you can be certain that your post would outrank your main page.

Therefore, when it comes to blog commenting and SEO, you should look at the PR of a particular post, not just the main page, to increase your chances of getting some PR juice out of it.

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The Two SEO Tools You’ll Ever Need

by Ken on January 6, 2009

in SEO

SEO, short for Search Engine Optimization, means that you optimize your page in such a way that it helps the search engines, knowing what it’s all about. SEO has changed and will always continue to change, over time.

I remember how it was back in 1997, when SEO was to mixture a bit with your meta tags and placing keywords on top of your page, to get good rankings. After that, words such as keyword density, title tags, etc. was of huge importance, to achieve high rankings.

However, now things have changed, to the better, and today you’ll only need two SEO tools, to get great results in Google and the other search engines.

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SEO Myth: Google SandBox

by Ken on January 1, 2009

in SEO

Google Sandbox Effect

The first post for this new year at Chew The Web is the start of a post series, about common myths around SEO. I thought that I would start off by write about a myth that has been around a long time, the Google Sandbox.

First a quick note about SEO, though. I have read and practice a fair share of SEO, over the years and one thing I have learned, is that the best way of learning SEO is by trial and error. You will gain much more knowledge and experience with SEO if you start experimenting yourself, until you get the results you’d want.

OK, lets head back to the Google Sandbox effect now. The Google SandBox refers to a gigantic sandbox that is placed right outside the Googleplex at Mountain View in California, where all webmasters that would like to be within Google’s search index, must play for a couple of days, so that Google knows that you get along with other webmasters. You can purchase tickets and see available spots to the sandbox at a special page over at Google. Sure sounds likely, doesn’t it?
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How To Spot SEO Friendly WP Themes

by Ken on December 29, 2008

in SEO, WordPress

Lately, I have been browsing around for a new fresh theme for Chew The Web, I have encountered several creators of premium WordPress Themes, that claims that their themes are SEO friendly. Which sounds reasonable, since they actually charge, a fee for their themes and you shouldn’t ask for less either, especially since WordPress is pretty SEO friendly straight out of the box.

Now, I understand that SEO has a broad spectrum and that it means different things, depending on who you ask. However, If nothing else, you should at least require that a premium  theme manage to keep the duplicate content issue, to a minimum.

The duplicate content issue, means that the same content appears at several different URL’s. This might cause your site to be devalued or even penalized, in the search engines. Google is pretty good to spot this and usually, when Google finds duplicate content, they choose the version that they think, represent the content best. This could however, be at a location that you doesn’t want to be ranked high in, like the printer-friendly version of your article, instead of the one with your ads or affiliate links. Not quite what you wanted, right?!

OK, how can you determine if you and the designer have the same references, when it comes to SEO? If the designer offers a live demo of the theme, examine it carefully, and click around to see how the content is presented. One thing that would tell if the designer knows something about SEO, is to click on the different archives, tags and categories links.

Now, you wouldn’t want the posts to be shown in full here, preferable only the title with a link to the single post page, should be visible. The next best thing is just to show a short snippet, also called an excerpt, of your posts.

Surprisingly, some of the premium theme designers, seems to have missed the duplicated content issue and doesn’t have a clue of what I’m talking about, when I contact them about it. Some don’t even reply at all, which is a good sign that you might want to look for another designer.

Now, if you already have bought a theme or have a free one, which displays your posts in full on your archives, tags and categories pages, you should know that this is easy to fix. Here is how it’s done:

First, click on the Appearance title in the left sidebar in your Dashboard and then on the Editor link, see image below.

Now you will see a text editor and your theme files to the right, see image below.

Theme files

Click on the Archives (archive.php) link. This will bring up the file that is responsible for how your archives, tags and categories pages are displayed. Now look for the following line,

<?php while (have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>

This is the start of the ‘loop’ which will fetch all relevant posts, from your WordPress database. Somewhere beneath that line, you’ll find,

<?php the_content(‘Read more…’); ?>

This is the line of code that tells WordPress to display the full post, which isn’t something we want on this type of page. Your code could look a bit different from the one showed above, however the tag the_content will surely be there.

Now, edit your code and replace the tag the_content with the tag the_excerpt
Your code should now look similar to the one below,

<?php the_excerpt(); ?>

Save your file. Done!

By using the tag the_excerpt(), you have told WordPress to just show a short summary of your post, which is just what we want. Just a note, in some themes you must also edit the files tag.php and category.php in the same way as above.

If you would like to read more about how WordPress works and the tags that is available visit, http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags, for a full list and detailed explanation of what they can do for your blog.

Back to topic now, if you hire a WordPress designer or buys a premium theme, you shouldn’t be forced to mixture with the code, the designer should have done that for you, period! Luckily, you now know how to see if a designer know anything about SEO, before you decide to approach him or her, to create your premium theme.

Also, I will post some sites that provides real SEO friendly premium themes, in a couple of days.

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Easy SEO That Works

by Ken on November 15, 2008

in SEO

You have probably read tons of posts, on how to get more traffic from Google, just by learning some kind of cool SEO technique. Techniques that often include, keyword density, meta tags, content placement, duplicated content, outside links, etc. However, there is one SEO technique that has worked very well for me and that one does not include any advance SEO mumbo jumbo.

I have also found out why this simple SEO method works. Think about, what is the core of Google? I would guess, to provide fresh and relevant results to its users. Not, to provide outdated and irrelevant results. Sounds rather healthy, don’t you think? What would happen if Google suddenly would start to give their user’s bad search results? Well, they would start to loose visitors and probably a bandwagon of cash every other second, too. My best guess is that Google wouldn’t let that happen, not in the first place anyway.

If we think logical, what will Google need to keep a tight grip of their money? Well, it’s simple, sites with a constantly flow of new and relevant content, which they can present to the people that are searching for it. They do not need sites that are just pure spam and has achieved their rankings by some questionable SEO technique.

So, is there some way we could take advantage of this? What would happen if we just gave Google and the other search engines what they really want, instead of trying to spam our way to the top, would that work?

Of course, it would. By frequently adding fresh content to your site, that are relevant to your niche, you give them what they’ll need, to continue making more money, which is the important thing here, and often every other place too. Follow the money and you’ll will get the results, in one way or another.

By starting, adding unique content, on a daily basis, Google (and the other search engines as well) will find it out and since they are in constant need for sites like that, you will start notice some big changes in your rankings.

I have tried it out and it worked very well for me. I took a site that I haven’t touched for a while and that it didn’t get much attention from the search engines, what so ever. I started adding content to it every day and tracked its performance with Google Analytics. The first week, nothing much happened, more than that Google bot visited my site once and grabbed the index page. So, after the first week, none of my new pages where inside Google. However, the week after that, things started to move. Suddenly I noticed that I started to get traffic to one of my new pages and that they where also included in Google.

After three weeks, my new pages where included in Google just a couple of hours after I uploaded them, and I also started to receive traffic from Yahoo. Also, my rank for my main keyword phrase, went from nowhere to be found, to page 3 in Google and page 2 in Yahoo. The only thing, I did, was to add fresh unique content, nothing else. I didn’t use any ordinary or strange SEO technique, I even leaved out the meta tags, keyword and description. I just added fresh content, that was relevant to that site’s niche. I should also mention that I only used human generated content that I had produced myself, not some PLR or rewritten stuff.

It wasn’t harder than that, just keep adding more and more content to your site or blog and you will soon notice that your traffic stats will start grow and so will your CTR, too. Now, of course, if you have a site about MP3 players and start adding content about dating, chances are that your site will rank poorly for both niches. So keep it straight and simple, is my advice and don’t forget to use those SEO techniques that Google tells you to do.

To sum things up, give Google what it want and Google will give you what you want, the traffic!

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