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Will a blog boost my website’s search performance?

Friday, September 3rd, 2010

Blogging is yet another way in which you can build links to your website. So theoretically, yes, a blog will boost your search performance. The more links you have to your website the better your website’s search performance will be. And, the better your search performance, the higher your website will rank in Google’s search results for your desired keyword or keyword phrase.

Set up a Blog

There are two different ways in which you can set up a blog. It is recommended that you do both:

1. Host a blog on your own private server.

- Regularly updating the content on your website’s blog will ensure that the search engine spiders continue to visit your site.

2. Use other websites that allow you to create free blogs on their servers.

- Examples of these include blog.co.uk and wordpress.com. These particular websites are frequently used by millions of internet users from all over the world. Therefore, Google recognises that they are both important and popular which results in them achieving a Page rank of at least 5/10.

- On these blog websites you can add your own posts with links back to your site.

- You can gain a large amount of targeted traffic through the blog’s own internal search.

- Bookmark your blog posts: this will boost their Google Page rank.

Fundamentally you must have a wide variety of links to your website. In regards to blogs specifically, create many of them, and on different blog hosting websites.

Depending on competition, using blogs alone can get you the traffic that you are looking for. However to do even better in SEO we recommend that your website have many different link sources. To find out more about other ways of link building take a look at some more of KPI’s blog articles.

Tags: blog, blogging, Google, google page rank, link building, links, search engine optimisation, search performance, SEO
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How are Google combating ‘Black-Hat’ tactics?

Monday, August 23rd, 2010

What are black hat tactics?

Black-hat tactics are ways of achieving high rankings in the search engines with underground techniques; they cheat the search engines into believing that their website is more important than it actually is.

Examples of these include:

- Off-topic link exchanges

- Exact match domain names and few poor quality links

- Link farms (where operators create/buy old domains and convert them into bad quality one-page sites for link building)

Do they work?

Black hat tactics do not work out well in the long run. As much as they may help the website in the short-term, it is likely that they will get caught out by Google eventually. A legitimate website that has been built through hard work, real links, good content and effective marketing strategies will always be valued better by the search engines. It is better to be fair and avoid the ‘cheating’ techniques rather than worrying that your website may be penalised or banned.

Google’s attitude to spam

Recently it seems that Google’s Web Spam team has paid less attention to combating black hat tactics than in any previous years; the bad quality directories and the off-topic link exchanges have made a comeback since their shutdowns in 2007-8.

So why have Google’s methods of combating web spam got worse rather than better?

1. The Web Spam team may be less capable now than they once were: the internet is getting bigger and bigger, more and more complex, and demand in search is getting even higher. Therefore, the constant increase in web users may be proving too much for Google to handle.

2. Often Google will let spam pass while they develop a new algorithm to defeat the new layer of spam (such as link manipulation.) However this seems unlikely: this is perhaps the longest time that Google has gone without releasing an update for this. They did release the May-Day algorithm, but this had only small impact on website’s search performance – it did not target link manipulation.

3. Link manipulation and web spam have got more and more common: there are a large number of good quality websites that also use black-hat tactics. Consequently, Google cannot penalize a technique or sites using it without reducing the quality of their index.

Tags: black hat tactics, black hat techniques, Google, link exchange, link farm, link manipulation, off topic link exchange, search engine optimisation, SEO
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May Day Algorithm: Penalty or Update?

Monday, August 9th, 2010

The May Day Algorithm was a change made to Google’s ranking algorithm.

Initially, it was viewed as a penalty. This was because the new change meant that some websites lost 90% of their traffic from Google for keyword phrases with long tail keywords (three or more keywords). One website affected by the new algorithm was a 13 year old site with a Google PageRank of 7 and 400,000 backlinks. Obviously this was a very well established website – so why did it begin to lose traffic?

Identifying keyword phrases requires a lot of computing power and a lot of memory. Before the new algorithm was introduced, Google says that it guessed the most appropriate pages for long keyword phrases based on other signals and keywords on the indexed pages. The new change in the algorithm has given Google the computing power to index long tail keywords on web pages more accurately, instead of using other simpler keywords on the page.

So, if words don’t appear in the right order in keyword phrases, the web pages must be edited. The new algorithm will not get listed for a mixture of the keyword phrases – it will only get listed for the keyword phrase order that you’ve written.

So, is the May Day Algorithm a way of penalising websites, or will it boost websites’ search performance in the long run?

Tags: Google, keyword, keyword phrases, long tailed keywords, may day algorithm, ranking algorithm, search engine optimisation, search engine performance, search performance, SEO
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How do I make sure that the search engines list my most important web pages?

Monday, August 9th, 2010

If you want to achieve good results from the search engines, then your most important web pages must achieve higher rankings in the search results. How can this be done? The main factor the search engines depend on is the structure of your website’s links. By following a few simple rules, your most important web pages will receive the most visits.

Link to the important pages

The most important pages of your website should be easily accessible to the web user, with as few clicks as possible from your home page. The fewer clicks needed, the more important that web page is.
Use clear and specific links on your website. You should give specific links to the most important pages of your website, not just the generic website address.
If you want a certain page of your website to be found from a certain keyword, then links from other pages of your website should contain that particular keyword. It doesn’t necessarily mean that the linked web page will be listed for that keyword but it increases the relevancy of the page for the keyword.

Exclude the unimportant pages

Get rid of broken links on your website. Check for 404 not found errors and redirect these old links to the most appropriate pages.
Use the nofollow attribute. The search engine robots will not follow links with a nofollow attribute as they are classed as unimportant.
Use the robots.txt file or the robots meta tag to exclude duplicate or irrelevant pages from indexing.

If search engines don’t have to go through the unimportant pages of your website, then the other pages with more importance will get more attention. The fewer links on a page, the more important a single link to another page will be.

Tags: Google, keywords, linkbuilding, links, search engine optimisation, search engine robots, search engines, SEO
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How do you avoid negative comments about your company appearing on Google’s Page One?

Monday, August 9th, 2010

No matter what you do, it is inevitable that some customers will not be satisfied with your company’s services. This may lead to them writing negative comments about your company on their blogs or on other websites. In addition, your competitors may write fake comments about your website as a way of damaging your company’s reputation.

The only way to circumvent this issue is to find out what caused the customer’s initial upset. If it is genuine negative feedback from a past customer, then ask them what the problem was and how it could be resolved. You could also send the webmaster a polite email requesting that the negative comment be removed.

Promote good reviews

If the webmasters do not cooperate, then you must promote web pages listing positive comments about your company:

Build links to these websites from your own. The more links there are to pages with positive reviews, the more chance these pages have of appearing higher in the search engines.
Use social bookmarking websites. If you bookmark websites with positive reviews on Digg or Delicious for example, the more chance these websites have of being listed higher on Google.
Request testimonials; then create a page on your website where you submit the good testimonials. You could also request that they submit their testimonials to common review sites like consumerreview.com or epinions.com.
Write articles about your company to boost your search performance on websites like aboutus.org or you could even attempt an entry into Wikipedia. As these two websites are both highly regarded, you will have a better chance of these pages being discovered by search engine users. If you do this, along with other SEO methods (http://www.kpib.co.uk/blog/?p=18) your company’s website will be listed first on Google rather than the websites with the bad reviews.

Tags: articles, blogs, delicious, digg, links, negative comments, negative feedback, search engine optimisation, SEO, testimonials
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How do I make sure that my SEO is effective?

Friday, July 16th, 2010

There are many different factors to work on in order to ensure that SEO is effective. It is a difficult process; one minor error affects the entire website’s search performance. However by following a few simple rules, this situation is easily avoidable:

Hidden errors

A website often contains unnecessary errors that prevent the search engine spiders from crawling it.

- The web server should return a ‘200 OK’ code when visited by the spiders; if an error code is returned it will not be indexed.

- The HTML code must be error free; some HTML errors can prevent your site from being indexed.

Images and Flash animation

The main content of a website should be shown through text. Although images and flash animation improve the website’s appearance, search engine spiders do not understand them. Additionally, flash does not work on the new Apple software (Ipads and Iphones).

Content

Avoid including articles or affiliate links that can be found on other websites. A website’s content should be distinctive and trustworthy; if you know a lot about a particular topic, write detailed facts about it. This will make the spiders believe that your website is the best place to visit for information on that topic.

Site planning

The site’s architecture should be carefully planned. If there are a group of web pages that are all related, it shows the search engines that the website is more than just a random collection of web pages.

Keywords

Top listings in Google are achieved by using specific and effective keywords.

- Longer keywords are more search engine friendly. Specificity is crucial; specific keywords direct more potential customers to your website.

- Shorter keywords are less likely to direct a potential customer, and are far more competitive.

Link building

Back links guarantee a high search engine rank. Links have a great deal of impact, and the more targeted the link, the better.

SEO: Search Engine Optimisation

Search Engine Spider: A computer program deployed by the search engines to collect data from the internet.

Keyword: A word or phrase associated with your company that web users type into the search engines.

Back links: Links that web users make to your website from other websites.

Tags: back links, effective seo, Google, keywords, linkbuilding, search engine marketing, search engine optimisation, search engine rank, search engine spiders, search performance, SEO
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It takes time to optimise your Search performance

Friday, July 16th, 2010

SEO takes time and commitment to achieve top listings on the major search engines. Many webmasters still believe that they will be on Page one immediately after submitting their website to Google. It may have worked in the past, but it does not work anymore. The search engines spend time updating their index by discovering the website and its links.

Website content must be updated on a regular basis. Regular updates show that the website is important. If the content is interesting to the targeted audience, then users will build links to the website. This is the only real way to help search engine performance with links. The fundamental rule is: the easier it is to get the link, the less it influences the website’s ranking.

Website content must contain relevant and specific keywords. These particular keywords can be discovered by running short term PPC ad campaigns. These campaigns track conversions and find out which keywords are searched for the most. The most effective keywords help the website appear higher in the listings which attracts more customers. It is better for the website to use less competitive keywords before incorporating more competitive keywords. During this process, Google will deem the website trustworthy. This is essential; without the search engines’ trust the website will not do well in the rankings.

Glossary of Terms

SEO: Search Engine Optimisation

Keyword: A word or phrase associated with your company that web users type into the search engines.

PPC: Pay Per Click

Tags: Google, keywords, pay per click, pay per click campaigns, ppc, ppc ad campaigns, search engine optimisation, search engine performance, SEO
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Will web page speed become a more important ranking factor?

Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009

Google’s Matt Cutts recently suggested that Google may soon pay more attention to the speed of a web page in their ranking algorithm; Google seems to believe that faster websites in the search results make the searching experience better.

What can you do to make your web pages faster?

Choose a reliable web hosting company that has fast connections to the Internet. Your web site should be hosted on a web server that is be easy to reach and has a good level of availability (up time).

In addition to choosing a fast web host, the following will make your web pages faster:

Combine external JavaScript code files into one file; the fewer files the web server has to serve, the faster your web pages will load.
Compress your JavaScript code to make the JavaScript file smaller.
Combine external CSS files into one file and compress your CSS files to make the CSS file smaller.
Enable gZip compression if your web server supports it; your web hosting compaqny may have yo do this for you.
Try to keep the number of images on your website to a minimum and compress your images. Most image tools allow you to choose the compression rate when saving an image for the web.
Put tracking codes and other JavaScript snippets at the end of your web pages.
Analyse your web pages to get an idea of the speed of your website and compare your website to the websites of your competitors.

Is it a good idea to use the loading time in the ranking algorithm?

Fast loading web pages are good for search users, but using the web page loading time in the search results ranking algorithm could cause problems for smaller businesses:

Businesses will be forced to choose faster and perhaps more expensive web hosting providers if they want to be found high up in the search results.
Businesses with a low income or from a country with slow Internet connections won’t be able to compete.
The big websites will get bigger and the small websites will get smaller.

Health Warning: the role of the page loading time in Google’s ranking algorithm isn’t clear yet so the above points are speculative.

It is always a good idea to optimise the loading time of your web pages, regardless of the effect of loading time on your search results rankings. The faster your web pages load, the more visitors to your website are likely to see the contents of your pages.

Web surfers are impatient people; the average web surfer expects immediate results. That is enough reason for your website to be fast loading.

Don’t overlook making sure your web pages also contain clearly arranged content that is easy to read. You should assess the readability of your web pages; you can even calculate a Flesch/Kincaid readability score, the higher the score, the more difficult your web pages are to read.

Tags: page speed
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KPI Web Design SEO

Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Will a blog boost my website’s search performance?

How are Google combating ‘Black-Hat’ tactics?

May Day Algorithm: Penalty or Update?

How do I make sure that the search engines list my most important web pages?

How do you avoid negative comments about your company appearing on Google’s Page One?

How do I make sure that my SEO is effective?

It takes time to optimise your Search performance

Will web page speed become a more important ranking factor?

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