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Many eCommerce websites, especially the product pages, have flaws when it comes to SEO best practices. This then makes it tricky to compete for exceptional search engine rankings.

Below are some simple product page tips which can really make a difference, these aren’t by any means special techniques, just best practices to follow, especially with all the recent Google updates, notably, Panda and Penguin.

1. Write unique product descriptions

When the Panda update was launched early 2011, many ecommerce sites were hit due to duplicate product descriptions. The description refers to the on-page information about the product.

Typically many sites were lifting content from the main seller’s website. An example of this would be lifting the information about a certain TV from the manufacture website.

My advice would be to write unique and user focused product descriptions – that way you won’t get caught up in any duplicate content updates, which Google doesn’t approve of any way, and you’ll also stand out from the crowd when customers are shopping online.

2. Optimise product images

Having great product images can really sell a product, but there are certain things you should be doing to your images:

• Resize images correctly, especially thumbnail images so they load fast
• Optimise images so the file sizes are smaller, and again, load faster
• Add ALT text to all images; these need to be descriptive, but only include 3-5 words (and don’t keyword stuff)
• Add captions to accompany the image, this is another great way to include vital product information and unique content

3. Use META tags wisely

Time and time again, I see META titles and descriptions which are not unique, not written very and don’t really represent the page. I can appreciate writing hundreds, if not thousands, of product META details would be a massive task. In my opinion META counts for at least 20% of on-page SEO, so it’s important.

My advice would be to use a reserve breadcrumb trail as the META title, most ecommerce platforms will have a plug-in, widget or function where you can do this and will include the product name, category and brand name or will be fully customisable.

With reference to the description tag, if you can’t commit the time to write unique META descriptions, leave this blank and let Google select the best piece of text from the on-page content, this would be far better than duplicating the description across hundreds of pages.

4. Include customer reviews

Something which Amazon has done very well is the ability for customers to leave reviews about products on the relevant page.

By doing this you are covering a few SEO methods:

• Content is being updated on a regular basis (Google loves content freshness)
• The product review will be unique, thus adding more unique content to the page
• I’ve know doubt the content will also include relevant keywords within the copy, thus helping the on-page even more

There are many benefits to doing this and I highly respect what Amazon have done with there on-page SEO and helping their customers.

5. Website structure and URLs

One thing I’ve talked about a lot is website structure and URLs, this is massively important and can really help with the user’s journey and experience, not forgetting the search engines love well structure websites.

Let’s say we are shopping for a wardrobe, a journey through a site should be:

Home > Furniture > Bedroom > Wardrobes

So the URL will be something like the below:

http://www.domain.co.uk/furnture/bedroom/wordrobes

The above is perfect and has the all important keywords included, plus it’s short, easy to remember and not keyword stuffed.

One company that does a great job of this is Renault, there on-page SEO, in my opinion, is fantastic, check out this URL:

http://www.renault.co.uk/cars/range/clio.aspx

Look how short and specific it is and they haven’t stuffed the keywords into the URL.

and finally…

Do you have any ecommerce tips or advice? Leave your comments below.

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Over the past few weeks I’ve seen an increase in emails to myself asking certain questions like:

• Why has my traffic dropped?
• Why have my rankings dropped?

If you haven’t already heard, the penguin has been let loose!

Official announced as the Webspam Update on the 24th April 2012, it was quickly renamed ‘Penguin’, following on from the Panda Update last year.

Matt Cutts wrote a post about the update here, in this post he wrote:

“In the next few days, we’re launching an important algorithm change targeted at webspam. The change will decrease rankings for sites that we believe are violating Google’s existing quality guidelines. We’ve always targeted webspam in our rankings, and this algorithm represents another improvement in our efforts to reduce webspam and promote high quality content.”

So in a nutshell, they are cleaning up the web (again) so the search engine results are of a better quality for the user.

One thing to note in the quoted text above is the mention of ‘quality guidelines’; below I’ve listed my top 10 tips to make sure you are adhering to these.

1. Avoid hidden text

This doesn’t mean you can’t use cleaver jQuery functions, just make sure the user can access this text in a natural way either via a button or text link.

2. Avoiding cloaking

This is when the user and search engines might see two different pieces of information, more on this here.

3. Write quality content

If you have a blog or news section, make sure the content is quality and of value, the same applies to standard web pages. All web copy has to be user focused, not plagiarised and reads well.

4. Avoid mirroring other sites

If you have a well established website, don’t just mirror (or duplicate) this on another domain, it will look very spammy and could potential harm both sites.

5. Avoid paid links

It may seem tempting to buy the odd link from relevant sources, but avoid it at all costs! Buying and selling is a big no, no. The only paid link I would suggest is one from the Yahoo Directory (http://dir.yahoo.com/)

6. Get social

Social media is becoming one of the most important parts of SEO, join Twitter, create a Facebook page, promote your videos on YouTube, and establish a presence on Google+. These will form an important part to your online presence and success.

7. Avoid low level article marketing

Creating press releases and using the correct channels to do this is fine, but distributing a piece of content across 100′s of article sites is spammy, and we’ve not even considered webmaster who will copy and paste the text onto there own site.

8. Build links naturally

Something which I mentioned so many times, use social channels, local business directories, connect with others on forums and let them spread the word about you – if you want to know more, this guide I wrote might help.

9. Avoid cookie cutter pages

Something which I’ve not talked about much on my blog; these are pages specifically for search engines that have identical pieces of content on, with the odd one or two words changed.

10. Don’t keyword stuff

I still see this everyday, a piece of web copy which doesn’t read well and littered with exact phrases/keywords. Use  synonyms, topic modelling or latent dirichlet allocation, you can read more here.

Do you have any ‘Penguin’ SEO tips? Leave your comments below.

Recently they have uploaded some new and useful videos which are well worth a watch. These aren’t necessarily for people in SEO or online marketing, new people can learn a lot to.

Topics include:

• Content
• Web spam
• PageRank
• Google human raters
• and much more…

Give them all a watch, they will definitely help:

Do you have any questions or comments? Leave your feedback below.

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A question which has cropped up a few times over the past 12 months is:

“How many links should I gain / build a day, a week, a month, etc?”

So there are a few different scenarios with this:

• New websites
• Website that are more than one year old
• Websites with stop/start link building campaigns

But… all of these need two things:

• Start small and build to a manageable monthly level
• Consistency

When a new site is launched, you need to give Google time to find the site and familiarise itself with all the new content, images, structure and the like.

To send out good signals, you should really do the following:

• Submit a sitemap in Google Webmaster Tools
• Gain a few trusted links from social platforms
• Add content slowly
• Wait!

Most people new to SEO, read guides around link building and some go crazy and build loads of links, typically from poor sources.

Ask yourself this, a new site goes live and it all of a sudden gains 100+ links – does this look natural? No! With a new site you need to do this slowly and gradually, otherwise, it just looks spammy and unnatural.

Even when sites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and many other social platforms launched – do you think these gained millions of links in a day? The simple answer is ‘no’ and over time these sites have become trusted and there link profiles have grown and grown – thus making them an authority.

To give you an example, Facebook, which launched in 2004, has 22,046,842,010 backlinks according to Majestic SEO (accurate to April 2012).

My advice would be to build links for a new site starting with 20 high quality links a month and build this up over time, eventually you may get to around 100 links per month after 9 – 12 months. At this point, keep it consistent, and only chase the quality and relevant links.

You really can’t rush link building; again, it will just look unnatural…

On the other hand, if users and customers start sharing your site, news, blog posts, etc socially, this looks natural, its highly unlikely that you could game the system with 50 different social shares.

Websites that are old or have had a facelift typically can go more aggressive, maybe start with 30 links a month and build this up to 100 links a month after 6 months. Google will recognise that the site has been around for a while and will trust the domain a little more than a new website.

If you continue to stop start on a link building campaign, I’d say not to worry to much. Try and keep a consistence, don’t go for a blast of links one month and only a couple of links a few months later. Try and maintain a manageable amount every time, i.e. 20 – 30 links per month.

Below is a video from Matt Cutts covering the same topic, notice how he talks about organic links from Twitter, Facebook, Digg and to gain backlinks naturally?

Do you have thoughts around this? Leave your comments below.

Below I’ve listed my top 15 tweets from April 2012 which you may find useful:

1. Perfecting On-Page Optimization for Ecommerce Websites | SEOmoz http://t.co/fxCyn9j4 via @SEOmoz

2. Google Webmaster Tools Adds 90 Days of Search Query Data, Drops 3 Features by @JSRampton http://t.co/e24HtzDj via @sewatch

3. Google AdWords Updates Keyword Tool and Traffic Estimator #WebProNews http://t.co/8qZwTdTy

4. Google Penguin Update Recovery Tips & Advicehttp://t.co/wbHheZ6x via @sengineland

5. Negative SEO: Myths, Realities, and Precautions – Whiteboard Friday | SEOmoz http://t.co/Wmc3Wjb5 via @SEOmoz

6. Google Over Optimization Launched, Google Names It Webspam Algorithm http://t.co/3DzAep35 via @rustybrick

7. 9 Pro Tips for Developing a Killer Internal Link Structure by @BostonSEO http://t.co/pnfUMsJc via @sewatch

8. Can’t Find The Old Version Of Google Analytics? Check The Footer http://t.co/6klkHR6S via @rustybrick

9. AdWords To Automatically Match For Misspellings, Other Variants http://t.co/3uiAzXdf via @sengineland

10. Putting the Social Back into Social Media: 40 Ways to Build a Loyal Audience http://t.co/3gsm79aJ via @copyblogger

11. Pinterest: An Introductory Guide for Marketers by @cliquekaila http://t.co/18o2azXo via @sewatch

12. Microsoft-Yahoo Ad Transition Wrapping Up In UK, Ireland & France http://t.co/aYe8Lyhr via @sengineland

13. Google Help Video On Google Places Rankings & More http://t.co/2yRcYU1u via @rustybrick

14. An SEO’s Guide to Video Hosting and Embedding | SEOmoz http://t.co/ORrCnUMM via @SEOmoz

15. Google Sending Warnings About “Artificial” Or “Unnatural” Links http://t.co/PBdbrBZ8 via @sengineland

Have you seen any digital marketing news worth mentioning? Leave your comments and links below.

(Twitter image from Icon Finder and was created by DailyOverview.com)

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A new and interesting question has been submitted which is:

“Why do some agencies charge £50 per month for SEO and others charge £1,000+ per month - what’s the difference / actual cost?”

This is a great question and something which I felt compelled to answer.

Over the years I’ve been asked about how SEO pricing works, some do this on a time level, others on a management level and so on. Personally, I believe pricing works around all of the below areas:

• Client management
• Time required
• Marketing activities and strategy
• Business niche
• Keywords (amount and difficulty)
• Business objectives and goals
• Return on investment

Whilst £50 a month may sound attractive (and cheap!), what are you really getting for this?

As I’ve demonstrated time and time again, SEO is a long term strategy (just look at the amount of link building methods there are), you can’t just turn it on like Google Adwords. Time (potential a lot of it) is required, a good strategy is required, methods and practices need to be spot on, an understanding of the business is needed – could you get all of this for £50 a month?

You may have come across agencies that charge a minimum of £1,000 a month, you’re paying for a premium service, much like you would on the high-street, but you know what to expect.

Freelancer vs. Agency…

Some of you may think a freelancer will be a cheaper option, sometimes it is, but in some cases it isn’t, the work required with SEO isn’t just a flick of a switch, its time, an understanding and everything else mentioned above.

Spinning the question around…

When talking about SEO pricing and costs, I always turn the question around and  I ask “what would I get from you for £50 a month?”, this is normally greeted with a smile or laugh along with the simple reply “I see your point”.

So how do I find the right supplier for me?

You need to shop around, talk to agencies, freelancers, the community, ask questions and look for certain signs. If you have a small budget, start small but don’t compromise when it comes to the quality of service, it could harm you in the long run and ultimately, you get what you pay for.

The point is…

I guess the point I’m getting at it is don’t be put off by the higher price for SEO, the return on investment could far exceed your expectations if done right and with the right supplier.

One site you may be on is LinkedIn which can be used on many levels. I must stress that by doing these techniques, you won’t all of a sudden appear number one in Google, but these tips can add that little something extra to your overall SEO strategy and backlink profile.

1. Complete your profile:

Much like a Google Places listing, having a complete profile is very beneficial. As we all know, Google likes content, and content around links is an influencer. If you talk / explain at length what you have done in previous roles, current role, highlight keywords (specialities) and so on, these will impact the links you include in your profile – more on this later.

2. Vanity URL:

Like Facebook, Twitter and many other social profiles, you can have a vanity LinkedIn URL, typically your name is a good strategy (especially around search engine reputation management), but if this isn’t available, don’t be to concerned about adding keywords in – just don’t over do it!

3. Job Title and location:

As mentioned above, content is king and your job title can add to this, within your job title you may have your core target keywords for your website, example – designer, marketing and so on. Including your location will help also. Google will look at these on-page factors and consider these around any web links you may have, similar to point one.

4. Specialities:

Treat this element like a blogs keyword tagging system, include all the relevant keywords to you, your skills and your job - again, content is key and focusing your profile to specific areas is crucial.

5. Customise your profile links (company, blog, RSS):

Hubspot have done a great video around this, but in a nutshell you can add good anchor to your links:

Do you have any LinkedIn SEO tips? Leave your comments below.

(LinkedIn icon from Icon Finder)

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One of the most important tasks with SEO is link building, something which I’ve written a lot about (you can view all the link building posts here).

As I’ve mentioned before, gaining backlinks from different mediums and channels is crucial, especially when you are chasing tough keywords and the competition are dominating rankings.

Over the years, it has been widely disputed that links from .edu and .gov domains carry more weight, authority and trust than others domains like .com, .co.uk and .org.

So what are .edu and .gov domains…

More about .edu domains from Wikipedia:

“domain is intended for accredited post-secondary educational U.S. institutions”

More about .gov domains from Wikipedia:

“The name is derived from government, indicating its restricted use by government entities in the United States”

As you can see, these are aimed at the US market, the UK versions are .ac.uk and .gov.uk.

The proof…

I’ve two points around this:

1) JohnMu had this to say on a Google Groups post (you can read the post here):

In general, I would like to add that no, backlinks from .EDU domains generally do not get “additional credibility from Google.” Because of that, the whole topic of working especially hard to talk webmasters of these domains into linking to your sites seems a bit problematic.

2) I’ve achieved genuine links from .edu and .gov.uk domains. And I can confirm that I didn’t see any extra boosts within the Google rankings.

My thoughts around the above…

Specifically looking at point 2, achieving these links are difficult and take time, but can be done. I have a few thoughts around why a ranking increase wasn’t seen:

• The link was placed on a page three levels deep in the site
• Google might consider these outbound links unnatural based on the domain extension as these domain extensions aren’t typically for commercial use

Personally, the time and effort to achieve these types of genuine links, even if its just one, really devalues this method along with my comments above.

But, I’ve seen packages selling 100 .gov and .edu backlinks?

Whilst the package may look genuine, it isn’t! There are a few blog platforms out there that use .gov or .edu domains but there trust and authority, in my opinion, isn’t the same as typical websites that use these extensions.

Typically a genuine .gov or .edu website will have thousands , if not millions, of backlinks. Take ‘The White House’ (http://www.whitehouse.gov/), this has over 50 million backlinks according to Majestic SEO. Something which a standard blog would never achieve.

Also, if you all of a sudden got 100 links from .edu and .gov domains, would this look natural? No – something which will probably result in a warning or penalty from Google.

Below I’ve listed my top 15 tweets from the past month which you may find useful:

1. Google Analytics Blog: Measure your website’s performance with improved Site Speed reports: http://t.co/TJIdcZtY

2. Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Video about pagination with rel=“next” and rel=“pr… http://t.co/LbMwHFzc

3. Unnatural Link Warnings and Blog Networks | SEOmoz http://t.co/Gj3NQHnQ via @SEOmoz

4. Creating an Editorial Calendar for Content Marketing http://t.co/KAtL0OeQ via @distilled

5. Please Help: Take + Share the 2012 SEOmoz Industry Survey | SEOmoz http://t.co/4jxN9Raj via @SEOmoz

6. Killer Landing Pages: 3 Examples of Landing Pages that Convert by @ebarak http://t.co/zYAGkRhN via @sewatch

7. Matt Cutts: Google Update To Target Overly SEO’ed Web Sites In Upcoming Weeks http://t.co/bGL0fICY via @rustybrick

8. SEO & Personalization: An Evolving Relationship by @JoshuaCMcCoy http://t.co/gYFyYB4F via @sewatch

9. Got a Social Media Strategy? the BBC do… http://t.co/V419lTMz via @searchmartin

10. Inside Search: Video! The search quality meeting, uncut (annotated): http://t.co/Z2dhQ4ql

11. Link Building Tools We Use at Distilled | SEOmoz http://t.co/RKXaPCPG via @SEOmoz

12. Mobile SEO: Managing Googlebot & Your Mobile Sites by @stonetemple http://t.co/RWac3FEk via @sewatch

13. @randfish: Next time someone say search/SEO is dead, use http://t.co/ETUHN5jS to prove ‘em wrong

14. Google Sending Notifications Of Low-Quality Pages Or Panda? http://t.co/HmNqHL7S via @rustybrick

15. Local Results, Link Evaluation & Freshness Signals Top Google’s February Search Updates by @DannyNMIGoodwin http://t.co/DcUBrkzz – @sewatch

Have you seen any digital marketing news worth mentioning? Leave your comments and links below.

(Twitter image from Icon Finder and was created by Artdesigner.lv)

Wikipedia defines Google Alerts as follows:

“Google Alerts is content change detection and notification service, offered by the search engine company Google, that automatically notifies users when new content from news, web, blogs, video and/or discussion groups matches a set of search terms selected by the user and stored by the Google Alerts service.”

Below I’ve listed 3 areas when Google Alerts may come in handy and present you with invaluable data:

1. Competitor Analysis

This can be a great way to ‘track how’ and ‘learn what’ your competitors are doing in terms of link building, social media and PR coverage. As I’ve mentioned before, copying what your competitors do isn’t advised, this method is designed to give you ideas how to push your own site forward.

2. Website Mentions

From a social media point-of-view, Google Alerts can do a great job as a simple tool. From an SEO perspective, if your website is mentioned on a forum, blog or another website, you may want to visit these websites and thank the webmaster, blogger or person that mentioned you – this can be a great way to build relationships with like minded web people.

3. Backlink Opportunities

If you track certain keywords which are relevant to your business, you may find new opportunities where you can post a well structured or helpful response. Let’s say you run a pet company, one of your keywords might be dog collars; setup an alert for the phrase ‘dog collars’. From there, visit the site and see if you can leave a response, this may result in a really good and relevant backlink and best case scenario would be you make a sale from it.

and finally…

Here are a few suggested areas you may want to setup using Google Alerts:

• Your name
• Company name
• Domain name
• Primary keywords
• Secondary keywords
• Competitors names

Do you use ‘Google Alerts’ in a different way? Please leave your comments below.

(Flickr: Image Credit: Robert Scoble on Flickr - CC Licensed)

In my opinion SEOmoz and Google do a fantastic job of this and here are some videos which are worth a watch.

Topics covered in the below videos include:

• General SEO check list
• Local SEO check list
• Google Authorship
• Common SEO mistakes
• and much more…

If you don’t already do so, subscribe to the SEOmoz and Google Webmaster Central feeds here and here.

Do you have any SEO videos you would recommend? Leave your comments and links to the videos below.

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Following on from my free and very popular SEO friendly website template I created last year (which can be found here). I’ve decided to revisit this again and do an updated version.

Like version 1, version 2 consists of the following with newer features:

• Homepage
• About page
• Services page
• Testimonials page
• Portfolio page
• News page
• Contact page
• Images folder
• External cascading style sheet
• Social icons for easy integration
• New colour scheme
• Drop shadow integration

Below is a screenshot of the free template:

Within the template, you’ll need to update the following:

• Update the title tag
• Update the meta description
• Update the meta keywords
• Update the ALT text
• Update the sitemaps
• Update the logo
• Update the image panel
• Update the company name in the footer

Within the code, there are notes to make things easier to identify and everything is easier editable.

To download the new SEO friendly website template, click here.

Other notes:

• The social icons are by http://picons.me/ and were downloaded via http://www.iconfinder.com.
• To generate a HTML sitemap, XML sitemap, URL List and RSS Feed, use http://www.xml-sitemaps.com.
• To edit the template, I’d recommend W3C’s editor Amaya.

As we discovered in my popular link building guide, social media is a very powerful and effective tool. In this post Paul talks about his recommend tools, top tips and he also shares his thoughts around social media marketing.

1. Paul, tell us a little about yourself and how you got into all things web, social media and the like?

Well I’ve been in retail management for over 10 years and involved in marketing for the last couple. Social media, specifically for business, has always been a passion. I’ve been involved with creating and distributing content of various kinds for a few years now and recently set up Social Colleague less than a year ago, which allows me to combine all my work experience from various fields.

“there is a social media platform for your company”

2. Social media has been the big buzz word for some time now, why should companies adopt it as a marketing strategy?

This question still continues to be asked by many new business owners, both web’ based and bricks and mortar. Whilst most are starting to understand the potential social media has, we’ve only really reached the point in the past couple of years whereby it’s the norm rather than new! When asked this question, the answer can be different for different businesses. Depending on your product, service, location or business size there is a social media platform for your company which can allow you to engage with your customers, gain new ones and improve your brands reputation.

3. You’ve probably had people say Facebook, Twitter etc wouldn’t work for their business, what would you say to that?

I would say, I’m amazed the diversity of clients we have had at Social Colleague. From Tea wholesalers, business forums, carpet cleaning companies, application developers and chess piece producers. Every single one of those clients has gained in some way from their presence using social media. Ranging from building influence in their chosen field, engaging with clients and customers to promotion new product lines and competitions, it is important to remember social media should not always be about sales.

“not all are focused on simply selling to your customers”

4. Would you agree that certain social platforms are more ideal for B2B or B2C, if so, which ones and why?

I think it’s fairly well known that LinkedIn is regarded as possibly the most successful B2B social media platform there is right now. So yes, without a doubt. Not all are focused on simply selling to your customers.

5. What are your thoughts on Google+ as a social media tool and will it really compete with the likes of Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter?

Contrary to popular belief, I don’t believe they are trying to compete with any of the aforementioned social networks. Yes, they clearly have features and tools which combine some of the most popular aspects of Twitter and Facebook in particular, but I’m of the opinion their goal is to harness the power of social media to continue to push search forward. I see it almost as a way of Google saying, “social media is going to play a huge part in the future of our algorithms so why should we both promotion Facebook and Twitter, let’s build out own”.

6. Are there any tools you would recommend, free or paid, to help manage social presences?

Without a shadow of a doubt, HootSuite is the most useful tool out there, a simple dashboard which will allow you to manage multiple social networks and blogs at once. From one simple station. There are free and premium versions and we use it for nearly all our clients. It really is a must.

“it’s important that when you start using social media that you have a strategy”

7. What 3 tips would you give to business owners or companies about to use social media as a strategy?

Great question. The answer is actually part of the question. It’s important that when you start using social media that you have a strategy. Think about what you’re doing, spend some time deciding what you want to achieve and give yourself a realistic time frame in which you want to achieve this. Social media will gobble your time unless you know what you want to get out if it.

8. What are the 3 biggest mistakes you can make using social media and how can you avoid them?

1. Ignoring negative comments is a common mistake, you should turn them to your favour and interact with anyone choosing to criticise your product or service. Show your audience you are professional and willing to listen to your customers.

2. Spreading yourself (or your company) too thinly is a common mistake. Pick 3 social media platforms and focus on these, if you feel confident you can always add more over time.

3. Don’t assume simply by registering on a social network, you will gain a following instantly. Unless you are a celebrity or large organisation, this is simply unrealistic to say the least.

“Twitter, in my opinion, is the customer service social network”

9. What are your top 3 social media platforms to use and why?

Right now it would have to be (and in no particular order), Pinterest, Twitter and Facebook.

Facebook is in the ‘hearts and minds’ of millions, its place is at the top of the table and I can’t see it changing for a while. Your potential audience is huge.

Twitter, in my opinion, is the customer service social network. It’s fast and simple, easy for both customers and companies to praise and complain. It would be difficult to see Twitter changing this in the future.

Pinterest – much has been made of this very visual social bookmarking sites rise to popularity in the past few months. If your company sells visual products or services, this is extremely powerful. One of our clients experienced a 400% increase in daily traffic simply by pinning the right images from their site at the right time.

10. So tell us about your company ‘Social Colleague’, what you guys do, offer, etc?

Well, we’re providing affordable and cost effective solutions to business owners who want to out source part or all of their social media activity. We pride ourselves on building honest and transparent relationships with our clients. Whilst we are happy to continue growing, we also want to provide the best possible service to each of our clients, so anyone choosing to work with us will be happy to know we’ll dedicate quality chunks of time to your project. We offer services such as content creation and blog management, custom WordPress design, campaign management and more. One of our most popular packages right now is Twitter management.

Note: I couldn’t finish this post without saying a massive “thank you” to Paul for taking the time out and answering my questions. To find out more about Paul and his company, visit Social Colleague today.

Something which you may or may not have seen is PDFs ranking within Google results.

Try doing a simple Google search for ‘SEO Guide’. The first result is a PDF document.

Now, some of you may be thinking why aren’t there more PDF documents within results? I’d simply suggest PDFs are typically recognised as downloadable documents, so why would you link to it? You’re more than likely to link to the page where the PDF can be found for future reference.

So should I avoid using PDFs? Simple answer is ‘no’, utilise these as another method for rankings and below are 5 simple tips you should follow:

1. Filename

Much like a webpage, a good PDF document name is essential – over the Xmas period I noticed many pubs and hotels with PDF menu downloads and some of the names were shocking – I think the best was a long string of number!

Simply writing the hotel name and occasion would be far better, example: theredlionpub-xmas2011.pdf.

2. Content & text based PDF

Content, content, content – it’s still the king and PDFs can be the queen to webpages. Again like a website, for PDFs to be effective the content has to be unique, well written and user focused. Simply copying content from a webpage will not work and will be classed as duplicate copy.

Also, some PDF converters will flatten the document so the content can’t be read – from a search / webpage point-of-view, this would be the equivalent to a blank web page – pointless! Make sure the PDF is text based.

3. Filesize

Filesizes will play apart in two forms:

• Google considers the speed of a document, i.e. webpage, PDF
• Users won’t wait around for a document to load

If you have a PDF that’s 10MB in size with different elements and images, a user isn’t going to wait around and wait for the PDF to load – you’ve 8 seconds to sell!

Also, why would Google want to rank a webpage / documents that’s slow loading, remember this was a factor with the Google Caffeine update.

4. Document properties

Once the PDF document has been created, right click and select properties. You’ll then be taken to the following window where you can fill out further details.

Treat this like you META data – we know how powerful that can be! Give descriptive details but don’t keyword stuff.

5. Backlinks

I mentioned earlier that users probably wouldn’t naturally link to PDFs but it doesn’t stop you using these as a page to link build against – PDFs can rank really well and can give you another link building option, especially when targeting longer tail keywords.

Do you have any PDF SEO tips? Leave your comments below.

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META keywords, SEO, does Google still use it, how many keywords should I include… so many questions around this tag; so let’s solve it once and for all.

So what is it?

Wikipedia defines the tag as follows:

The keywords attribute was popularized by search engines such as Infoseek and AltaVista in 1995, and its popularity quickly grew until it became one of the most commonly used meta elements. You can read more here.

What does it look like?

Below is an example of the META keywords tag:

<meta name=”keywords” content=”meta keywords, tag, on-page”/>

Do the search engines still use it?

Very simple answer, Google doesn’t! Here is a video by Matt Cutts talking about the META keywords tag:

But, Bing, which also powers Yahoo, does use this tag as a signal. Bing’s Senior Product Manager, Duane Forrester, had this to say:

I’ll make this statement: meta keywords is a signal. One of roughly a thousand we analyze. Getting it right is a nice perk for us, but won’t rock your world. Abusing meta keywords can hurt you.

Here’s a video from SEOmoz which Duane Forrester who explains a little more:

My views on the META keywords tag…

I’ve deliberated time and time again about whether or not to stop using the META keywords tag, and I can honest say I still use it and optimise it to match page content.

Whilst I know it doesn’t do anything for Google, Bing still uses it and whilst this search engine still delivers traffic, all be it very low, I’ll continue to stick with it – but it’s certainly at the bottom of the pile when it comes to SEO.

How do you correctly format them?

Having used this tag for many years, I’ve found, even when Google used this tag, 3 – 5 keywords or phrases within it works best. Also its important to do all the terms in lower case and divided with a comma and space.

Even in 2012 I’m still seeing websites stuff this tag with 20+ keyword variations – this is just crazy and looks spammy!

Final thoughts…

Whilst the number one search engine Google doesn’t use this tag as a ranking signal, I still feel it’s important to cover all of your bases and get the most you can out of a webpage, even if its just 0.5% and for Bing to look at.

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I was recently asked what my thoughts were around “offsetting competitors’ backlinks” – or in other words, copying what your competitors are doing.

As an SEO, one of the first things I and many other SEOs do is review the backlink profiles for competitors’ websites and review things such as anchor text, link source, relevance and so. But, looking at the longevity of link building and how this may be viewed by the search engines, it could actually cause more harm than good.

Point 1) It looks unnatural…

Google and the other search engines use backlinks as just one of their ranking signals, links work like votes. Apart from being able to see all these backlinks, they can also see how fast you may be achieving these links and how they stack up against familiarly websites.

Whilst it may work for a very short period of time, Google will undoubtedly devalue these links and potentially penalise your website, as this type of link acquisition looks unnatural.

Point 2) Walk before you can run…

With any link building campaign, you need to start out somewhere; typically this involves research and full back link analysis. Simply copying your competitors may see quick results – but then what?

Your competitors have already done the above (research and analysis) and they’ll know the places to gain good links. They’ll always be one step ahead of your website and ultimately will rank better than you – and this doesn’t consider point 1 above.

Point 3) Google may be tipped off…

Whilst it’s something I’ve never done and would do, other SEOs may and will report competitor sites to Google.

Once this has happened Google will be forced to act based on the information provided and this then could result in a penalty or the links being devalued.

So what should I do about link building?

I’d always advise reviewing what competitors are doing but ultimately, you need to find the best sources and link opportunities, yes there will probably be a cross over with some back links, but this is normal.

I’ve a few golden rules with link building which I’ve also found to work well:

• Build links with a natural pattern
• Gain links from many different sources
• Use social as your primary link building tool
• Trading links is pointless

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Another great SEO question around site structure:

“I’m currently redesigning my website – the old structure of the website was www.domain.co.uk/product/index.html.  The new files are basically the same, but index.php. Am I best having them top level rather than in a subfolder?  So www.domain.co.uk/product.php? Will it make a difference?

On a similar note, I’ve seen sites where extensions aren’t used/visible at all – is this done with code in an .htaccess and is it of benefit too?”

Great question – in a nutshell you need to structure the site correctly and consider scaling/website growth.

Having everything in the root is basically a flat line, left to right, having a hierarchy of folders and sections looks more natural and in my opinion the search spiders will prefer this.

As an example, here is how I’d build a site:

— Domain (root)
—— Service Page (folder)
——— Service Information Page (folder)

Look at this URL – www.autotrader.co.uk/carmakes/renault/clio – the end part (Clio) is a journey for the spiders and all the pages flow from one to another – very user friendly which Google likes and I’ve found to be the best method from an SEO point-of-view for some time now.

With reference to extensions, take the following URL: http://www.davecain.co.uk/about/. You can access it via two methods:

• http://www.davecain.co.uk/about/
• http://www.davecain.co.uk/about/index.php

I typically suggest sites are built folders within folders. Within each folder you may have index.php or index.html etc and then it’s down to you which you link to internally and externally. To avoid indexing issues I always use the canonical tag as this defines which page to rank. Google defines the canonical tag as follows

“If your site has identical or vastly similar content that’s accessible through multiple URLs, this format provides you with more control over the URL returned in search results. It also helps to make sure that properties such as link popularity are consolidated to your preferred version.”

And lastly, I’ve never seen much difference with extensions (i.e .html) but as I’ve said before I like to keep URLs short, easy to remember and clean.

Below is a video by Matt Cutts who also talks about site architecture:

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A long standing debate is whether or not hypens in domains are a good thing or a bad thing.

Below is an example of two alternatives:

http://www.yourcompanyname.co.uk or http://www.your-company-name.co.uk.

So what do the experts say?

Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz recently answered this question:

Do search engines read URLs as separate words? Are dashes in URLs SEO friendlier? www. ThisURL .com vs www.This-URL.com?

99% of the time, they do. But be careful if you make up words. For example, SEOmoz itself may not get the benefit of having “SEO” in the domain name, because “moz” isn’t a word. Likewise, something like “Everywhereist” might not rank for “Everywhere” because the engines interpret “ist” as part of the word, not a separate one. However, if you have a domain like “greetingcards.com” that will certainly be seen as the words “greeting” and “cards”.

Matt McGee wrote about hyphens and underscores in URLs on Search Engine Land and commented:

The same advice that has applied for years still applies today: If you’re just starting on a new website, use dashes if you plan to place keywords in your URLs. Those keywords might provide a minor signal of what the page is about and help a wee bit with rankings. But if you have an existing website that’s already doing well in Google and Bing – pages are indexed, you’re getting quality natural search traffic, etc. – don’t switch from underscore-based URLs to dashes. The potential problems from changing URLs might be worse than the potential gains from having dashes rather than underscores in your URLs.

So what about inner pages and folders?

Matt Cutts, part of the Google Webspam Team, did this great video on the subject:

You can view this video on YouTube, click here.

My view on hyphens in domains and pages/folders

Starting with domains, I’ve used both hyphenated and non-hyphenated domains for SEO projects and I have to say that I’ve found domains without hyphens do perform slightly better.

I’ve also found that domains with more than one hyphen struggle, for example 2 or 3 hyphens in the domain name. One project I worked saw a domain with 2 hyphens take twice as long to rank well compared to a domain with one hyphen both targeting the same niche.

Also you’ve got to consider, which are easier to remember? Look at some of the great websites: Google, BBC, Facebook, Twitter, Digg, WordPress etc, none of these sites have hyphens in the domain name.

With reference to pages and folder names, I don’t see hyphens being a problem from a user or search point of view and I typically split all words in pages and folder names with hyphens every time.

A few golden rules I try and stick to…

• I always try and go for a short domain name over a long domain.
• I try and avoid hyphens in domains where possible
• I avoid purchasing domains with common words like – and, it, the, what, who etc.
• I always try to keep a full URL string less than 66 charaters, example – look at the URL for this page, it’s 46 charaters long.

“I’m running a website with the Webmaster Tool geo-location set to United States – but it was by mistake. I’m getting better rankings in Google.com compared to Google.co.uk and I’ve now set the country to United Kingdom.

I want to know will it affect the rankings on Google.co.uk, if yes, how long will it take and/or what should I do to achieve better ranking in Google.co.uk?”

Google wrote a post around the above question, below is the information:

The Set Geographic Target tool in Webmaster Tools lets you associate your site with a specific region. We’ve heard a lot of questions from webmasters about how to use the tool, and here Webmaster Trends Analyst Susan Moskwa explains how it works and when to use it.

I’ve written about targeting different countries in a previous post and how Webmaster Tools can help.

Geotargeting (gTLD) – Geotargeting a domain name via Google Webmaster Tools, is a great alternative over ccTLD. Domain extensions such as .com, .net and .org are considered geographically neutral.

gTLD doamins which are treated neutral are as follows:

• .aero
• .biz
• .cat
• .com
• .coop
• .edu
• .gov
• .info
• .int
• .jobs
• .net
• .mil
• .mobi
• .museum
• .name
• .net
• .org
• .pro
• .tel
• .travel

Even the following are treated along the same lines as gTLDs

• .eu
• .asia

Country Code Top-Level Domain (ccTLD) – When targeting a specific country, from my experience, purchasing and using a country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is one of the best strategies. If you are targeting Spain, the best ccTLD would be .es.

My advice when it comes to targeting the correct search engine language would be to use the correct domain name extension above all else. If you have a neutral domain name, geotargeting in Google Webmaster Tools can help Google identify the target search engine for your website.

I’d suspect, once you have defined the correct geo-location in Google Webmaster Tools it will take between 1-3 months to starting seeing results, but that doesn’t consider any on-page or off-page SEO tactics like link building, content and so on.

To read more about search engine optimisation for different languages, countries and search engines, click here.

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Another great SEO question has been submitted which is:

“What is a ‘link wheel’ and do they help with link building?”

Another great question and Wikipedia defines a ‘link wheel’ as follows:

“Link wheel is a widely used internet marketing strategy. The basic idea of link wheels is to create a pattern of links which flow from one website to another which would finally link to a targeted website requiring promotion.

Link wheels fall under the category of search engine optimization, however, when social media sites are used to create the link flow the link wheel strategy becomes social media marketing. According to experts, link wheels have maximum effectiveness when the social media sites are used.”

Here is an example link wheel (Image from Wikipedia):

As you can see from the image above, links to the main site are 4 levels deep.

If you take just a few link building techniques from my link building guide, you’ll be able to see how you can build link layers aka a link wheel, example:

1. All your social networks link to your website
2. Forums may link to your social networks
3. Press release may link to your profile on business networks

The above is just a very small example, as you can see you’ll building layers between different types of websites which ultimately link back to you main company / business website.

Isn’t this a blackhat SEO technique?

If it’s done correctly, then no. Like any off-page SEO technique, they can all be done wrong. If you were to setup 100 blogs with content that links back to you with no layers, whilst technically a link wheel, would look spammy, not user friendly and would probably result in a penalty.

Do you use it as a technique?

Simple answer, yes! I recently did this for one of my clients, using a combination of the following:

• Main website
• YouTube
• Twitter
• Established off-site blog
• Profiles on local business websites
• Niche forum profile

I created layers like the above example and within 5 days they had jumped from page 2, position 17 to page 1, position 6th for a local term in a competitive city.

and finally…

The golden rule with any link building activity is to make the process look natural and relevant. For example, linking from a PR article to a business profile makes sense as it will probably have the contact details, map directions and possible reviews about the business.