Required Reading for Web Professionals – February
Google changes it’s search algorithm more than 200 times a year. Your blog changes its content every day. You must stay on top of the game. Do so by reading these:
4 Terrific Tools for Creating Business Web Forms
via Mashable! by Matt Silverman on 2/17/10
Killer Google AdWords Guide for Affiliates
via SEO Book.com – Learn. Rank. Dominate. by Aaron Wall on 2/16/10
Comparing SEO Business Models
via SEO Book.com – Learn. Rank. Dominate. by Aaron Wall on 2/16/10
3 Simple Tips for Effortless Writing
via Write to Done by Mary Jaksch on 1/21/10
Build Ecosystems for Your Content
via chrisbrogan.com by chrisbrogan on 2/11/10
A Step by Step 15 Minute SEO Audit (A Sample from SEO Secrets)
via SEOmoz Daily SEO Blog by Danny Dover on 2/10/10
Poll: 60% of Google AdSense Publishers Say Earnings Down
via Search Engine Roundtable by barry@rustybrick.com (Barry Schwartz) on 2/17/10
Maximizing ROI: The Wrong Game
via Search Engine Land: News About Search Engines & Search Marketing by George Michie on 2/15/10
Creating and Managing a WordPress Website
Michael Gray has documented a fantastic SEO-based process for creating and managing a Wordpress website. If you’re in the business of building or managing a website, or are interested in learning how the smartest webmaster’s do it, I highly recommend reading his post here.
Bluehat SEO – Cycle Sites create a Media Umbrella
Effective online marketing requires an omnipresence that’s difficult to create without a personal broadcast media umbrella. Whether that media umbrella is one of blogroll’s and linklove or a controlled media umbrella of dozens of domains registered under Godaddy, it is a prerequisite to have an umbrella in your bag.
BlueHatSeo calls the blue ocean of a personal media umbrella creating cycle sites. Very informative stuff. Must read for SEOs and Internet Marketers out there. Check out BlueHatSEO’s recent article on Keyword Spinning to get started.
Search Engine Optimization Does Not Happen Naturally
I’ve heard from many people that Search Engine Optimization will happen naturally for any site. People have told me that everything placed on the web will get indexed and ranked in Google over time.
None of that is true.
Search Engine Optimization Does NOT Happen Naturally.
The source of the confusion: Google indexes almost all sites. Indexing isn’t optimization.
Google indexes all the sites it crawls. If a site|page specifically tells Google not to index that site|page (by using a noindex Meta tag, or robots.txt file) then Google won’t include that site|page in it’s SERPs. The thing is, just because your site|page is indexed by Google doesn’t mean it’s optimized to rank highly on Google. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the art|science of getting your site|page to rank high on Google (and other SEs).
SEO requires optimization of your site’s content. That process doesn’t happen naturally. To explain, let’s first look at how search engines work:
- The search engine locates a site through direct URL submission or by following links from already indexed sites
- The search engine scans the content of the site and the search engine’s ’spider’ crawls the site, following links from one page to the next and back again. What content ’spider’ crawls is now indexed by the search engine
- The search engine monitors the site’s relevancy of content and keywords, as well as the site’s popularity (how many incoming links there are from other trusted sites)
- The search engine adds the site to the index, and using a proprietary algorithm ranks the site for specific keywords and keyword phrases
- When the end user searches the on the search engine for these phrases and keywords, the search engine returns a list of relevant sites – ranking the more optimized (a.k.a. “obviously relevant”) higher than the less optimized (a.k.a “sites with a fuzzy signal”).
This process can sometimes take months sometimes; sometimes it can take a day. As you can see, the process that Search Engine’s use to rank a pages content depends a great deal on what keywords are emphasized on the site, the context of those keywords among the other keywords on the site, incoming links from other sites, and link structure. Sometimes, sites just weren’t built in a way that Search Engines prefer. This is not to say that those sites aren’t rad or highly interactive. They are just not going to be ranked high by Search Engines. Essentially those sites are “search engine pessimized” even though they might be “interactivity optimized” (like agency sites built entirely out of Flash).
Google is Manmade. Nothing Happens Naturally. Including SEO.
The few big things, and all the little things that cause search engines to rank your site higher than others add up to Search Engine Optimization. There are two kinds of SEO: onpage SEO and offpage SEO. Onpage SEO includes things like making sure that your URLs, your navigation and link text all match the terms in your keyword strategy. Offpage SEO includes a variety of things, but emphasizes link building (getting on topic links, getting off topic links, high authority links, and ensuring your anchor text is mixed up but relevant). Speaking from experience, these onpage and offpage tasks are really an art and a science. Understanding how they’re done most effectively requires a body of knowledge that the average web developer just doesn’t have, much less the average business owner. Further, since these specialized tasks are just that (specialized tasks), they require specialized labor. Specifically, a creative professional (a.k.a. “knowledge worker“) familiar with SEO.
Next time someone tells you that Search Engine Optimization will happen naturally for their site|page, be sure to point them here. Particularly because of the onpage SEO factors, search engine optimization has to be worked into a site from the beginning for that site to serve most effectively. Delaying onpage SEO delays one’s site from bringing in the highest ROI possible. Not optimizing your web site costs you money every second it isn’t being optimized (or costs you traffic if it isn’t a web-based business [my non-optimized site GlennRaps.com is a good example (I'm trying to keep traffic low while it's being built)]).
Final thought: The Internet is manmade. Google is manmade. Nothing on either happens naturally. Except humans working.
What are your thoughts? Any stories of low rankings from an assumption of natural optimization of your site? Any words of wisdom? Please leave a comment below.
Related articles:
- A Quick Look At MSN Optimization (content123.com)
- SEO For Google – How To Get Search Engine Success (content123.com)
- Necessity Of Search Engine Optimization (content123.com)
- Search Engine Marketing: Why Is It So Crucial? (content123.com)
- 12 Things You Really Should Know About SEO (content123.com)
- Keywords in Anchor Text Produce SEO Power (wordsellinc.com)
Subfolder or Subdomain for your Corporate Blog?
If you’re in the lucky enough position to initiate, design, and|or develop your company’s blog, you’ll eventually be faced with a pressing question:
Should your corporate blog be set up under a subfolder or subdomain?
We at Qmania we were faced with the decision to establish the subdomain blog.qmania.com or create the subfolder qmania.com/blog. We chose to go with blog.qmania.com. Many of our peers and our web 2.0 leaders made the same decision: blog.boorah.com, blog.kelseygroup.com, http://blog.pandora.com, blog.plaxo.com. Yelp even created separate subdomains for their community blogs and their internal blogs: communityblog.yelp.com and officialblog.yelp.com.
So why all the separation? Can’t we all just get along under one domain?
The reason for the subdomains? Well, I’m not entirely sure about the reasoning at Boorah, Kelsey Group, Pandora, Plaxo, and Yelp though I’m sure their decision making process went along the same lines as ours. At Qmania, we recognized the opportunity to create something more measurable with the subdomain. Since the services we provide at Qmania are fundamentally different than the topics we’d cover on the blog; and since the architecture of the blog is fundamentally different than the architecture of our primary service; the only way to properly test and measure SEO performance of either entity was to separate them at birth. Independent results in SEO performance arise with the separation of content across multiple subdomains, although aesthetically the look and feel remains the same between the entities.
Smart readers will ask whether or not the same effect would happen with a perfectly siloed subfolder. Wouldn’t content under the subfolder /blog pump and concentrate SEO juice like the subdomain? I’m here to tell you the answer is yes… and no. Yes, a subfolder can optimize content to the same level of performance as a subdomain (with perfect siloing). No, the subfolder would not pump SEO juice like the subdomain because the subfolder’s performance in driving organic traffic is dependent upon the domain’s performance in driving organic traffic. And since sometimes there are other pertinent reasons for not optimizing an entire domain, it’s a bad idea to make the performance of something meant to be optimized dependent on something which may or may not be.
The benefit of choosing a subdomain over a subfolder is independent, measurable performance. The benefit of choosing a subfolder over a subdomain is improving the overall authority of the domain. Choose a subdomain first. Get it fully optimized. Then decide over moving to a subfolder or keeping your subdomain on the grind.
The benefit of setting up a subdomain is independent, measurable optimization of both the content on that subdomain and the content on the domain itself, since the content that would be siloed in the subfolder would effect the optimization of the content outside the folder. If its a must to move to a subfolder from a subdomain (for branding purposes, or redefinition of your domain [to avoid a slap]), you can always 301 redirect all the pages on your subdomain blog to fresh pages on your subfolder blog. I’d recommend doing this only after you’re sure your domain is fully optimized, your blog architecture is fully optimized, and you understand how to silo subfolders to retain SEO juice. A 301 redirect will cause a short dip in organic traffic for a few weeks, but afterward all your rankings built from your subdomain will point to your subfolder — which ultimately improves the authority of your whole domain.
In other words, always start with a subdomain for loosely related content (like a corporate blog). Allow it to rank organically. After its optimized and brings in tons of traffic, you can either change it to a subfolder (if certain requirements are met) or keep it growing on a subdomain. As an important note, compete displays all traffic to domains and subdomains as an aggregate, so to the outside world, you’ll see no loss in traffic to your domain if setting up a subdomain for your corporate blog.
Webmasters of the world, what do you think? Have you ever had to decide between a subfolder and subdomain? How did you choose?
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