People often forget to consider how and in what order they are serving up content when dealing with SEO. A logical site hierarchy and a thoughtful folder/sub-folder structure for site content is critical. Use of a strong sitemap, fairly shallow website depth, thoughtful keyword driven folder names, and a good linking strategy (including use of menus and context navigation) will drastically improve SEO and PageRank results. Let’s discuss each of these pieces in a bit more depth.

Sitemaps - Even if your website is one with thousands of pages, making a well-organized sitemap available from each page of your site ensures that every page on your website will be within just a few clicks away. This also means that these pages will be only a few crawling steps away for search engine spiders. In general, it is a best practice to make every page on your site reachable within just a few clicks.

Website Depth - When you run a search for the pages indexed on the Apple.com site by Google you can see there are over 7,000,000 results listed. Even with this immensely large number of pages, Apple does a great job of making every page available within just a few clicks of the mouse. In Apple’s sitemap, there nine available top-level headings under the About heading. However, once you arrive at Apple’s About section, you can see that it is not necessary to drill down further on the page to access anyone of these headings. Furthermore, each subheading under these top-level headings are available within just one additional click (all listed at the bottom of the page). The faster a user can get to each page, the easier it is for search engines to do the same.

Folder Names - For sites that use a content structure that matches their hierarchical folder directory structure ( i.e. – www.companyxyz.com/about/management rather than www.companyxyz.com/management), using keyword driven folder naming conventions is key. This allows for easy navigation of content in hierarchy driven sites. Furthermore, it affords a more keyword infused URL while allowing users to easily identify the location of the content they’re viewing. As a naming convention best practice, when multiple keywords are in any portion of your URL, use hyphens to separate these words rather than underscores.

Linking Strategy - The organization of your site and use of menus such as breadcrumbs will provide a strong internal linking structure. By providing a link to every top level section of your site from the homepage (via a top navigation menu, for example), not only do you pass along PageRank from your homepage to pages beneath it in the hierarchy, but you also provide automatic internal links that help users navigate your site with ease. For pages a bit deeper in your hierarchy, using breadcrumbs that display a backwards path from the current page to the homepage will accomplish this same effect. Wherever possible, use menus to improve site usability and navigation; doing so will automatically afford you some great internal link juice.

These are just a few things to consider when evaluating your site structure and how your organization is serving up its content. We recommend researching each of these pieces in more depth to consider what strategy is best for your organization. Remember, every SEO step you take should benefit your end-user. When you keep your users in mind, your SEO rewards will always follow close behind.

There is a lot of confusion about duplicate content and whether it is considered an SEO no-no. There are occassions where duplicate content is frowned upon; however, there are also situations in which duplicate content is appropriate and in which sites will not be penalized for offering the same content in multiple formats. Below we’ve outlined a few common situations in which duplicate content may come into question, and what you can do about it.

• Print versions – if you offer multiple formats of the same web page, such as PDFs or .txt outputs, you can guide search engines to crawl the preferred version of the page. Use your site’s robots.txt file to disallow crawling of these alternate formats.
• Multilingual content - If yours is a multilingual website, or one that presents the same content in a variety of languages, rest assured that the same content presented in different languages is not considered duplicate content. Check out their Webmaster Central Blog post that details this.
• Syndicating your own content - if syndicating your own web content, duplicate content is not an issue. However, we recommend including an absolute link back to your site as the original source of the content. If you syndicate content at the same time as it’s being published, other websites may pick up on the article (and be crawled) before Google crawls your own site. With the link back to your own site in the syndicated version, you can rest assured it will be credited to your own site.
• Syndication by external sites – once again, the best practice here is to include absolute link backs to your website as the source of the content. Google will try to identify the original source of content by checking items like which version was published first, etc. However, sometimes even Google makes mistakes. By including an absolute link back to your site you can make sure Google will have an easy time identifying you as the original source.
• Duplicate content within your site - sometimes it’s necessary to have the same block of content appearing in multiple places. To ensure the preferred version of a page is being crawled and served up, include the link to the preferred page in your sitemap file.

In most cases, duplicate content will not result in a penalty. Search engines such as Google have gotten very good at analyzing content and determining its purpose and source. As we always advise, the general best practice is to provide content and resources that help the end user of your site. If you keep this in mind, you will always include only the content, links, etc. that are necessary to guide your users in the right direction; and for this, you will be rewarded.

Working in SEO, a question we often get asked is “what KPIs should I use to track my efforts?” While key performance indicators used to measure success will vary based on the specific initiatives of each organization, we’ve outlined a few that we suggest all organizations measure:

1. Linkbacks – tracking the number of linkbacks to your site from other sites can provide valuable insight into several things– a) the value and quality of your content and b) the success of your own linking efforts. If your content is of value to people in your industry, you’ll notice that links to your content are building themselves. Imagine you’re writing a blog on ways to automate Twitter tweets. If you find a good article that discusses how to do so, you may link to it. Furthermore, if you find a good service for automating Twitter tweets, you may link to that as well. The goal here is to be providing content that gives other sites a reason to link to your content. If you’re just starting out and placing links for yourself, tracking linkbacks is a good way to measure how effectively you’re placing links for your own site. Yahoo Site Explorer is a great tool to get started with tracking inbound links.
2. SERP rankings – to measure your success in optimizing for specific keywords, we recommend tracking where you place in search engine results pages for particular terms. Start with something simple and set up a spreadsheet using Google Docs with each of your keywords listed in its own row. On a weekly or monthly basis, run a search for these terms (make sure you disable personalized search results by appending &pws=0 to the end of the search url) and track changes in search rank for each term. You can also download a host of tools to do this automatically, but if your starting with ten or so terms, doing the SEO grunt work yourself isn’t terribly cumbersome.
3. PageRank – your PageRank is Google’s way of determining the significance of your site based on its inbound links. If you’re using Firefox, the Live PageRank add-on is a great way to check up on your own site’s PageRank every time you visit. Once you’ve developed some PageRank authority, you can spread this SEO “juice” through the rest of your site using internal linking, which we will discuss more in an upcoming post.
4. Conversion Rates - it’s lovely if people are coming to your site as visitors and leaving after they get the information they need. However, if you’re offering this information without a means of capturing their data, the visit is of no use to you. If the pages of your site that come up in certain search results are relevant to that search term, you should have no problem converting site visitors into prospects. Using Google Analytics, you are able to set up goals, such as a form conversion, to measure the actions taken by visitors when arriving at your site. For example, if someone is searching for “SEO white paper” and they arrive at a landing page on your site that offers such an article, it should be a very easy process for he/she to fill out a quick form and for you in turn to capture his/her prospect data. Measuring conversion rates is key to assess the value of your current content.

These are just a few KPIs that every organization looking to track SEO efforts should keep in mind. Staying on top of your data is key and we recommend that you take a look at other goals specific to your organization to develop more specific KPIs.

Effective search engine optimization is not achieved in a few days, nor in a few weeks. Good SEO requires ongoing work and dedication and a constant evaluation of site content and usability. Below we’ve outlined a few points to help further your SEO momentum:

• Research – factors that influence SEO are constantly changing and there is a lot of “advice” out there that can be very misleading. Find sources that you trust and subscribe to their feeds. Stay on top of trends and changes in the industry.  We recommend starting with a few key industry leaders, such as SEOmoz, Google’s Webmaster Central Blog, and Search Engine Land.
• Practice – take knowledge you’ve gained through experience and couple that with industry research and best practices. Track changes you’re making to see which are having an effect. Remember that correlation does not always indicate causation. A/B and multivariate testing should be used to determine which content is most effective and which changes are having the most impact. Log your findings somewhere that enables you to keep them top of mind. We recommend synthesizing a list of efforts that are of the most benefit to your SEO strategy and continually implementing changes based on this list.
• Hard work – to maintain SEO momentum and develop a strategy that works for your organization, it requires dedication and hard work. As trite as this may sound, SEO success is dependent upon constant evaluation and targeted changes and updates to your site and strategy. Your competitors may have more money invested in their efforts, but SEO success really boils down to passion, dedication, and hard work. Pick at least one small item a day to evaluate or change, whether that’s your site navigation, number of clicks from point a to b, or tweaks to content.
• Engage your audience – wherever possible, find out what your stakeholders are wanting when they visit your website. Educational resources, better site structure or usability, and more platforms for user generated content and contributions often appear at the top of this list. Listen to your site visitors and give them what they want. Giving users a reason to come to your site and stay engaged is key in any effective SEO strategy. After all, if they’re looking for it, it’s likely that potential prospects that haven’t even found you are looking for it too.

These are just a few tips to help maintain your SEO momentum. Combining these ideas with your own, industry-relevant and innovative practices is certainly a step in the right SEO direction.

People have a tendency to stray away from things they fear. We loathe going to the doctor, even when we don’t feel well, for fear that we may find something wrong. The same is true with analytics data. Many people are scared to face their site’s data for fear that there will be so much work to be done that it’s not even worth a look. However, analytics data, as scary as it may be, provides the most insightful clues into the successes and failures of your current SEO strategy.

For example, if using Google Analytics, “traffic sources” data is extremely useful. Here you are able to analyze where your site traffic is coming from and where these sources can be improved. Let’s say a good majority of those finding your sites from natural search are using your company or product name to do so. While it’s great that you have some brand recognition going on here, generating traffic from people who already know about your company and product is not enough. What you should be focusing your efforts on is garnering traffic from those who haven’t yet heard about you. If you can boost traffic that finds you from natural search terms related to your industry, you’ve jumped a huge SEO hurdle.

Dig deeper into your keyword traffic data and take a look at some of the terminology searchers are using to find your site. Putting yourself in users’ shoes is key. At SEO State of Mind, we like to call this web empathy; and if you’re not familiar with phrases and terms searchers in your industry are using, you’re missing out on a gold mine of web traffic.

Even if only a few people each month are finding your site from a broader industry term, you may be well served by incorporating this term into your content more frequently. Doing so can result in better search rankings for these particular terms, and hence, increased site visits. This also ties back to our previous post on SEO keyword selection and optimization. Where it makes sense to do so, you should use your analytics data to incorporate keywords and phrases into your site content.

We will continue to chip away at pieces of the analytics interface and discuss how you can use this data to improve your current SEO strategy. Stay tuned!

There is tons of contradictory information out there on the Web regarding what to do to achieve successful SEO results. All too often, these sites ignore the discussion of what makes for bad search engine optimization. The following list are the five things not to do when approaching SEO:

1. Using hidden text- it is bad practice to hide text or links either by making the font color match the background or via the use of hidden text.
2. Keyword Stuffing – do not overload your page or metadata content with keywords. As we’ve previously discussed, using keywords in moderation (3-5% of body content) and when they’re of help to the user is key.
3. Non-search engine friendly URLs- using references such as “page-1″ in your URLs does not help your SEO efforts. Make sure to avoid general paths such as this and instead, use descriptive, hyphen-separated paths to your pages.
4. Shallow internal linking – links on your site should be used frequently and where they are of help to the user. Linking only to your homepage, for example, from your internal pages is an SEO no-no. You want to spread the SEO “juice” across your site by linking from pages with high levels of authority to relevant pages deep in your site hierarchy, and vise versa.
5. Non-hierarchical site structure – for company websites especially, it is imperative that your site is structured in a hierarchical manner in which certain pages are automatically deemed more important by their rank/placement amongst your website content. That is to say, if you have 3 products– product a, product b, and product c, these should all be housed beneath a “products” page/section, which should be housed beneath your homepage or another parent category that makes sense. Avoid placing less important content in a top level position on your website.

These are just five things (of many) to keep in mind when implementing an SEO strategy. In a future post, we will dig deeper into SEO no-nos and the damage that can be incurred if not adhering to SEO best practices.

Recently, Google made an important announcement affecting search engine optimization efforts everywhere—they will now include site speed as an official factor in their algorithm. To determine the significance of page load times for search users, Google intentionally slowed down search results page load times by 100-400 milliseconds and found that it had a “measurable impact on the number of searches per user of -0.2 to -0.6%.”¹ This demonstrates the importance of page load times for users. We all appreciate a fast site, but why should you take note of this new development?

Google’s algorithm uses 200 different factors to determine a site’s rank in search results, and specifically, its PageRank. PageRank is a proprietary ranking system used by Google to determine the importance or significance of a website, based mostly on the value of linkbacks to that website or page. Sites are ranked on a scale of 1-10, with 10 being the highest attainable PageRank. To stay competitive, sites are encouraged to garner valuable linkbacks to continually improve PageRank, and thus authority and rankings in search results.

However, site load time doesn’t only affect PageRank. It also affects rankings in search engine results for specific terms and keywords.  As we’ve mentioned in previous posts, the ultimate goal of search engine optimization, and the inherent focus of these efforts (shaped often by engines such as Google), is to improve the user experience. While those operating websites should definitely take a closer look at load times to stay competitive in the realm of SEO, they should also continue to focus on quality, relevancy, and making changes that enhance the user experience. Fewer than 1% of search queries will be impacted by this recent change in Google’s algorithm, and as Matt Cutts, Google employee notes, “Quality should still be the first and foremost concern [for site owners].”²

We encourage you to take a closer look at your site load times, but as Google recommends, to continue placing your SEO emphasis on the experience your users have when searching for terms relevant to your site and in the navigation of your site itself.

¹: www.searchengineland.com
²: Ibid

In an earlier SEO blog post, we discussed the need for building relevancy and correlation in your site’s web content.  It is important that before you do this, you identify the keywords for which you will be optimizing your web content. Once you’ve selected your keywords, they should be used in the page headers, titles, the first 100 words of body content, metadata, link anchor text, and if feasible, backlinks to your site.

Using the example from our previous post, if you’re selling vintage action hero figurines, imagine the increased significance in the eyes of search engines if this term is in your homepage header, title, URL, body content, metadata, and anchor text versus just appearing once in body content. The more you build correlation in page content around a particular term or set of terms, the more your pages become increasingly relevant for those search terms.

To prove this theory, we ran a search on Google for vintage action figures. The first result has “action figures” in its domain name (part of URL) and the terms action figures and vintage in the page title. It also uses these terms in its descriptive metadata. The second result has <h1> tags with vintage action figures and first and second paragraph content repeat this same term.

In addition, infusing your page content and metadata with terms that relate closely to your selected keywords (derivative terms) boosts page relevancy.   In the example above, including terms such as vintage toys, vintage action heroes, action hero figurines, and so on will help boost correlation.

We’ll delve more into content correlation as a facet of search engine optimization in an upcoming post.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a science, but it’s also a state of mind. Being effective at search engine optimization requires that you have a certain amount of web empathy. That is to say, it requires you constantly put yourself in a user’s shoes. There are countless questions that one must constantly ask one must ask him/herself to implement a successful SEO strategy. Below, we’ve outlined just a few questions to keep in mind when maintaining an SEO state of mind:

• What pain points are users facing that make them suitable for your product/service?
• What terms is he/she searching for to resolve these pain points?
• Once he/she finds you what information is he/she looking for to get questions answered?
• What educational information can you provide users with to answer these questions?
• What additional educational resources exist to which you can link users to further their understanding?
• How will you demonstrate your value?

These are just a few of the innumerable questions to ask yourself when optimizing your website for search engines. While fundamentally you are structuring content to rank well in search results, ultimately once he/she finds you, it is the user you are trying to help.

Over 90% of site visitors (click-throughs) from search engine results pages come from the first page of results. So how do you get there? How do you place competitively for the terms most important to your organization? The goal of this blog is to help those involved in web content creation to achieve improvement in competitive search rankings via Search Engine Optimization (SEO). While Google keeps the totality of its algorithm tightly under wraps, we will stay on top of information released from Google and other search engines to continue to evaluate which factors are most affecting search engine rankings.

For our first blog post, we will focus on how you should select the keywords for which to optimize your site content. Keep in mind that the best attitude to take when approaching search engine optimization is– if it helps your end user find what they’re looking for, you’re doing something right. Overwhelming numbers of links and keywords used repeatedly are not helpful to the average user. Use your keywords and the other SEO practices we suggest here with moderation and where it makes sense to do so.

Step 1 – Evaluate Keyword Density

Evaluating site keyword density is an important first step in the SEO process. The saturation of particular keywords in your website demonstrates your website’s theme and purpose to search engines, such as Google. To evaluate what Google is already interpreting as your theme, there are plenty of free keyword tools out there that will allow you to evaluate your density in usage. Using these keywords in relevant moderation is equally as important as using them frequently and where it makes sense. The general rule of thumb is that keywords used frequently across your site should make up approximately 3% of your web content for a 500 word article. In this example, you would repeat the keyword (or a derivative, close related term) no more than 15 times in one article.

Step 2 – Evaluate Competitor Keywords

After you’ve identified which keywords you’re using most frequently in your site content, it’s time to evaluate the usage, density, and market saturation of words used by your competitors. Using Google Analytics and Google’s Keyword Tool to accomplish this is especially helpful. This tool will find derivative keywords of the terms your content is already using, and will make suggestions for additional keywords to use. The tool also displays the market usage of these terms, or in other words, how many competitive organizations are using these terms in their site and ad content. For example, let’s say you sell vintage action hero figurines. While terms such as “vintage toys” and “action figures” are relevant to your organization, they are also highly used around the Web and will be difficult terms for which to improve search rankings immediately. However, if you begin optimizing your content for a more specific set of niche keywords that are more specific to your organization and less frequently used by competition, seeing nearly immediate improvement in rankings for these terms is fairly easy. Over time, your rank for more general derivative keywords will improve as well.

Step 3 – Begin Optimizing and Tweaking Web Content

Use the steps above to help you refine your web content. After eliminating general terms and replacing them with your more specific subset of keywords, you’re ready for the next step– building relevancy and correlation in your web content.