Rob PattersonSEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION Archives

SPIDERING: The Amazing Fundamentals of SEO

10/30/2014 | By Rob Patterson, SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

Today, Google is the most popular search engine. But years ago, there were many search engines competing for consumers, so how did Google win the search engine war? The short answer is that they were simply better at connecting users with more pertinent results. They focused on the end user and this is the foundation of how they still operate today. But specifically how do search engines find the information from your web page and figure out how to rank you among those who are looking for your site? Google, and other search engines, use a process called “spidering” because it crawls over the web and indexes information that it finds and puts it in a database. This allows the search engine to provide users with the specific information they are looking for quickly. And as you may have guessed, there are specific ways to optimize your website so that search engines can easily find the relevant information that they need in order to properly index your site. Read on to learn more about spidering and the amazing fundamentals of search engine optimization.

If you’ve been following my blogs, you know that search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website. Increasing organic ranking results come from a combination of both on-site and off-site tactics. On-site optimization pertains to what you can do on the actual website pages and off-site tactics pertain to external factors, such as attracting inbound links. An internet “bot” enables spidering to happen and it is basically a piece of software that crawls over the billions of web pages at a much faster rate than what is possible by a human. This bot goes by many names including, web crawler, web spider, web scutter, automatic indexer, and Google calls theirs “Googlebot.” In addition to crawling along your site, these spiders also follow links from one page to the next, so this is one of the reasons why relevant links to your site are so critical to gaining higher organic results.

While there are a number of off-site tactics you can do to attract inbound links, this blog is focused on on-site (or on-page) optimization best practices. Getting down a precise, targeted list of keywords is the first step in conquering on-site SEO. These words are very important because they tell the spiders what your site is all about. To begin, brainstorm a list of keywords that your consumer might type in to find you. So if you sell shoes, you may want to write down terms like sneakers, high heels, pumps, boots, etc. Once you have this list, its time to hone in on the ones that will most likely drive the right type of traffic to your site. These words should be relevant to your business, frequently searched terms, and not overused by your competition. Then you are ready to use Google’s AdWords Keyword Planner to do some basic analysis and implement your final choices into the tactics below.

Please note that you will need to have access to the code or use a content management system (CMS), such as WordPress, in order to execute the following.

TITLES

Each page on the web has an official title, which is located in the HTML code. This often will show up at the top of a browser and is arguably the single most important element that greatly impacts your on-site SEO. Search engines pay a lot of attention to titles because they often summarize the page. It tells both search engines and users how relevant your site is for a particular topic. This is also referred to as a meta title. See example below of the location of a title.

META DESCRIPTION

A meta description is the summary or snippet of information that appears below the link of a search result. The objective is to entice viewers to click on your link, so it should be descriptive and use relevant keywords. Without an optimized meta description, search engines will simply pull text from your content, so it is important to clearly write your own description that summarizes what you want to say and to attract the right audience. See example below of how this may look when it shows up on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).

URL STRUCTURE

Keep your URL, or web address, structure organized and easy to read. Words are much more beneficial when it comes to a web spider reading your information over just numbers. For instance, if you are searching for information about shoes, a URL with the structure of www.example.com/shoes is easier for your search engine to read than a number like www.example.com/87372. And use a hyphen if it helps with the clarity of the URL, such as www.example.com/red-shoes (vs. redshoes). If it is easy for a human to read, then it will be easy for the Googlebot to read.

H TAG (OR HEADING TAG)

There are six heading tags, and H1, which is used as the main heading of a web page, is the most important. These tags are part of HTML code and they have brackets around either side of your title. They are displayed in code as such: <h1>Web Page Title</h1>. On the website, this code translates to the largest size font. While H1’s influence has diminished over time, it is still an important factor. Always use an H1 tag at the top of your page and if you have a lot of copy or a long blog (that is 1,500 words or longer), use sub-category headers (between H2 and H6) so it is easier for the people who visit your site to read the information. And, of course, use the keywords where appropriate in these headers.

IMAGES

Using images within your website is a smart idea because it makes your site more appealing and helps support your points. In addition, when you place a picture, be sure to describe it in the label, and in the alt text. Alt text allows a person who is impaired, such as a person who is blind, to be able to listen to a description so they know what the picture is all about. Another benefit is, since search engines cannot really “view” images like humans, by adding a specific title and alt text description, it tells the spiders the content of the image. If you have a picture of red shoes, label it red-shoes.jpg and also use a similar description in the alt text of this image.

INTERNAL LINKING

Often times, people think that the only links that count are those from other websites. Even though these links are important, linking between the pages of your site is a necessity. This makes it easy for visitors to navigate around and find your content on the site. Plus, it ensures your site gets properly spidered so that the search engine finds all your pages in conjunction with your relevant keywords.

While there are many tactics, these are among the most important ones so that Google, and other search engines, will properly spider your site. If you continually create new high quality content, attract relevant links through off-site tactics and implement the on-site efforts described above, you will be on your way to mastering the amazing fundamentals of Search Engine Optimization.

If you enjoyed this post, I encourage you to write a comment, like it, or share it with your network. You can also select one of these hyperlinks to follow me on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest.

Want to learn more about search engine optimization? Check out the following resources, where I obtained some of the above information: What is SEO / Search Engine Optimization?, #TBT: Why Google Won the Search Engine War, Most Important Technical On-Page SEO Elements, How to Write an Effective Meta Description, In 2014, How Important Is an H1 Tag for SEO? and Using Keyword Planner To Get Keyword Ideas and Traffic Estimates.

THE BIG BLOG THEORY: The Formula To Improve Your SEO

10/23/2014 | By Rob Patterson, CONTENT MARKETING,SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION

If you run a business, I probably do not need to convince you how important it is to be visible when your customer is trying to find you online. While many people recognize the importance of showing up when your consumer looks for you in a search engine, not everyone knows how to actually do it. Most people who have a website for their business most likely have heard of search engine optimization (SEO) and they might even be familiar with some of the tactics, but what if I told you that creating a blog with high quality content is one of the most important things you can do to become visible online? It’s true. If you create a high quality blog with the objective of providing your readers with helpful information that will attract inbound links, you will rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). This is what I call “The Big Blog Theory”. If you read on, you will learn how you can implement this theory to benefit your company or brand.

Most people know by now that a search engine, like Google, is a website that you use to help you find information on the World Wide Web. While there are a few different search engines, Google is by far the largest, and for the purposes of this blog, I will focus on Google. When you type in what you are looking for in the “search” section in Google, you get a list of results based on the terms that you’ve input. These are your search engine results pages or simply organic search results and the higher that you are on this list, the easier it is for your target to find your company or brand. While you cannot pay to rank higher on this list, you can do various search engine optimization tactics to help you rank higher.

So you may be thinking, what does this all have to do with blogging? As mentioned in my previous blog called “About A Blog”, when you add content to your site through blog posts, you should think of it as a magnet. And the more quality information you put into your blog, the bigger the magnet gets to attract more traffic. The more people that see it, the more inbound links, or backlinks, you will earn, meaning those who want to link to your site to reference your content. When you have high quality links, Google perceives you to have more authority and in turn, rewards you with higher organic search results. Basically, Google sees these relevant links as a recommendation. It used to be the more inbound links that you had, the higher ranking you received, but over the years Google has changed their algorithm hundreds of times to combat people who were trying to manipulate the system and what is most important now (after the Google Penguin algorithm update) is the relevancy of the inbound link, meaning that the link is from a related website.

While there are a lot of things you can do to optimize your blog posts, the most important thing to keep in mind is your audience. Ask yourself what does my audience want to know? What value can I provide that will help them? Your objective is to make your content so good that your readers want to “share” it with their network and “attract” them to link to your blog.

Here is what you need to do in order to create a blog that is beneficial to your target and will improve your organic rankings.

BE AUTHENTIC

SEO used to be about writing content that was rich in keywords, but Google’s new algorithm is smarter. Previously, you had to incorporate certain words in your body copy many times in order to rank higher, but the new algorithm uses latent semantic indexing, which means it identifies patterns in the relationship between terms and concepts. It now knows that the term “corporate” is similar to “business” so you no longer need to be robotic and repeat a word a 100 times. So instead of filling your blog full of keywords for the sake of upping your ranking, write about topics that the reader wants to learn about. If people are leaving quickly, or bouncing from your site, your ranking will be lowered accordingly. Please note that keywords are still important when it comes to on-page optimization, which is a topic that will be covered in my next blog.

BE UNIQUE

Create a user experience like no one else can offer. Your goal is to create a blog with information that cannot be found on other blogs. How are you going to attract readers and inbound links if you provide the same information as everyone else? I know that it is sometimes challenging and certainly you may be writing about similar topics once in a while, but find a new spin on it to say it in a different way. In addition, Google does not like duplicate content and since the Panda update, they consider duplicated information (along with misspelling and factual errors) as “poor content”, which gets penalized from ranking well.

BE APPEALING

If Google’s algorithm is all about the reader, then it makes sense that if the user experience is better for the reader of your blog, then you will rank higher. Believe it or not, search engine algorithms take into consideration if the design is visually appealing and easy to use and understand. For instance is it easy to find the author, title and publish date? And are your previous posts curated by category? In addition, people are using their mobile devices more than ever to browse the Internet, so the blog on your site should be easy to read on your phone. By using a responsive design, your website “responds” and conforms to whatever device you are using. If it is not mobile-friendly and easy to read on your device, many users will bounce quickly, which will hurt your rankings. According to Google, 79% of users who don’t like what they find on a mobile site will actually look for the information they need on another site.

BE SHARABLE

Your goal is to create content that is high quality and shareable, so make it easy for your readers to share your blog. On your blog page, you should include social media sharing buttons, such as for LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. The easier it is for the reader to share the information, the more likely they will do it. And a more sharable blog tells the search engines that it is a quality piece of content.

It is important to note that getting high organic search rankings requires time and it can take anywhere from several months to a year. The main takeaway is that if your blog provides helpful information to the reader, it is also good for Google. If you consistently update your blog with high quality content that attracts relevant inbound links, your organic search results will increase and you can make “The Big Blog Theory” work for you.

Want to learn more about how a blog can provide helpful information to its readers, attract inbound links, and increase your organic rankings? Check out the following resources, where I obtained some of the above information: Want to Dominate Organic Search? How Blogging Can Help, 7 Obsolete SEO Tactics You’re Wasting Your Time On, 5 Ways Google Is Changing SEO and the book SEO Made Easy by E. Bailyn.

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