Here is an example of a navigation in its most basic form. Hub level 1 filters into hub level 2. Hub level 2 filters into hub level 3. Each of the lower levels support the higher levels from a linking perspective. The lines are indicative of potential cross linking relationships, the implementation of which would be assessed on a site by site basis.

Search Engine Optimization and Navigation

By creating clear paths to access internal pages of a website we are benefiting the site in the following ways:

• Making the site easier for users to navigate
• Making the site easier for search engines to navigate
• Bringing exposure to deeper pages within the site
• Helping rankings

This task is absolutely vital, especially in the case of large websites. Perhaps Steve Krug  put it best in his book Don’t Make me Think, an excellent introductory book on website usability, when he pointed out that a user can be on your website and have no idea how large the site is. This is much different than in the physical world where, many times, you know how large a store is before you step in the door. With good navigational linking a user and a search engine will breeze through department after department of your website without a thought on the site’s size or complexities. The goal here is to the make the experience effortless. Almost as if you are gliding from page to page with clear signs at every turn pointing you in the direction of your goal. Or on a content based site, simply allowing you to loose track of time and enjoy the entertainment.

As search engine optimization and usability experts, we often find that a website’s navigation can be simplified. By doing this, and creating a hierarchy of content supporting specific sections, we are improving navigation. But we are also creating a relationship which supports the sites linking, an absolutely critical component of SEO.

Ultimately, refinement of your navigation benefits the amount of pages Google and other search engines can locate on your site, allows you to increase your rankings, enhances your sites usability and improves your bottom-line. When you are creating your navigation, or refining an old one, make sure to take your time. In addition, consider the main keywords you are targeting to determine traffic and hub value. Following that, think to yourself, what path makes the most sense to find this information. In addition, consider what common themes run through your site. This will allow you to accurately determine the correct paths and which links you would like to promote at the top of your navigation hierarchy.

Links pointing internally from the home page and globally on your website play a large role in your SEO success. Make sure your site makes sense from a usability and keyword traffic perspective and you will be a step ahead of many websites online.

Have a question or comment about search engine optimization and/or navigation? Add it below or contact SEO Inc.

Don't Pray that your Website Appears in Directories, Just Follow this Simple Advice!

Before we get into it, let me just address a question I’m sure most of you have: “Are directories still worth submitting to?” Amongst the sea of free-for-all, mostly useless directories that have been devalued by the search engines, there are still a few out there that one should submit to. Places such as dir.yahoo.com and business.com, for example, are still worth the time and money to include your site in. Submitting to directories can improve your search engine optimization, it just has to be the right directories and information has to be submitted in a particular manner.

The submission process itself is straight forward, but we want to eliminate any possibility of rejection as well as choose the best fit page for our site. With this in mind, here are some things to look out for when submitting your site to these directories.

Always Follow the Guidelines

Directories that have a manual review process usually have a list of guidelines they want followed. If you don’t pay attention to these, your submission runs the risk of being rejected (and since most of the worthwhile directories don’t refund the submission fee, we definitely want to avoid this). Some common rules are only using your official site name for your titles, not repeating your title in the description, no caps in the description, and so forth.

Another one I see appearing often is that directories ask that you don’t use promotional language in the description to try and sell a product and/or service. Avoid using terms such as “best” or “number one”, or “100% guaranteed to fix 99% of your problems”.

Choose the Best Category

This sounds simple enough, right? You should know exactly the type of business you are in. Directories are really nothing but a collection of categories that are fairly homogenized throughout, but for the most part only at the top level. Not every directory will have the same categories and sub-categories, so you’ll have to manually find the best fit sub-category for the particular directory you are submitting to. In fact, most directories ask you to be very specific; going to the bottom-most subcategory for your submission instead of using the general category.

For example, if you have a “Wilderness Therapy” site, you would use:

http://botw.org/top/Health/Mental_Health/Child_and_Adolescent/Treatment/Programs_and_Services/Outdoor_Programs/

Instead of the more generic:

http://botw.org/top/Health/Mental_Health/Child_and_Adolescent/Treatment/Programs_and_Services/

Directory Domain Age

Search engines have trust issues. The age of the domain name plays a part in how high (or low) of a confidence score the search engines give to a particular site. The older the site, in theory, the higher trust the search engines confer. I believe this is very true with directories; a lot of over-night companies (we’ll call them newbies) will put up low quality directories very quickly and are usually out to make a quick buck with their inclusion fees. They end up being poorly made sites with very few categories and submissions to show for.

Older directories that have proven themselves by having higher editorial standards and submission criteria, properly maintained categories, and more inbound links accumulated over time, are much preferred. An easy way to check age is by using a Domain Age Tool

Number of Outbound Links on Page

This is something you can’t always control but if you have a couple of choices on your best fit inclusion page, choose the one with the lesser number of outbound links. You don’t want your listing to be stuck on page 99 of an over-saturated category. With each sub-category page usually being so far removed from the home page, we want to get as much link juice out of our efforts as possible.

Submitting to even just a handful of the high profile directories should still be a part of your SEO efforts, but it is a time consuming task. If you don’t have the time and are looking for someone else to do it for you, make sure you get someone reputable and knowledgeable (i.e. not a newbie) to do this for you. I happen to know just the people that can not only undertake this tedious task, but also has a range of other link building services to offer.

Point Search Engines in the Right Direction with an Optimal URL Structure

Of course it is usually best to keep your URL stable and unchanged once it is created, but sometimes change is necessary when not properly optimized in the initial setup. Improving your site’s URLs to be more SEO- and user-friendly can greatly benefit search engine ranking and click-through rates, but be careful—if done improperly, you may face a significant decrease in ranking that could take a long time to recover from. Here, are some search engine optimization tips for URL optimization, as well as what to look out for and avoid.

Dynamic vs. Static URL

The first step is to consider changing your URL structure from dynamic to static. URLs with characters like “=”, “&” and “?” are not only difficult to read for search engines (leading to indexing problems), but also for users who are more likely to follow a link indicating what content the URL leads to.

Another problem is that dynamic URLs are often indexed in a variety of ways that can cause duplicate content issues and decrease link value. For example, if you have multiple pages with dynamic URLs that are identical until deep in the URL, search engines will often stop reading the URL once it reaches a symbol such as the “?”. Now the search engines see multiple pages but thinks they are all the same, moving on before reaching what indicates that the pages are different.  Changing your URLs to a static structure will ensure proper indexing, while preserving link value, with one unique URL for each page on your site.

Though it is sometimes best to leave the URL alone (especially if it’s ranking well), changing dynamic URLs to static URLs is almost always necessary. But of course, there’s more to it.

Make the Change Useful

It’s one thing to upgrade to a static URL, but to make the change without making it more meaningful to your audience will cut your growth short. For example, the URL http://example.com/product tells the audience very little about the content on the page. Including keywords to actually describe what your customers will find on the ‘product’ page will make your link much more valuable to users and increase click-through rates.

Incorporating page-related keyword phrases to the URL will also support SEO efforts, but be cautious of stuffing and follow a limit of less than 10 keywords (eliminating “in”, “the”, “of”, etc.). Also, while keeping URLs short and descriptive, separating multiple keywords with dashes (hyphen) will make them more SEO-friendly as search engines can better understand the individual keywords of the URL structure.

Redirect to New URL

Once the new SEO- and user-friendly URL is live, it’s important to put in place a 301 redirect to let search engines know that the URL location has permanently changed. Because 301 redirected pages do lose some of their link value, you should be prepared for a drop in rankings whenever a URL’s structure is changed. But by redirecting all of the old URLs to the newly optimized URLs, the accumulated link value will not be wasted on a 404 error page.

To expedite the recovery process of gaining back link value, invite the search engines to come crawl your new site by updating and resubmitting your XML sitemap. Rather than waiting for search engines to find the new URL, providing an updated sitemap can improve site rankings by getting your site re-indexed more quickly. The sooner, the better in this case!

One of the final and most time consuming steps of URL optimization is to now update the internal links on your site to lead visitors to the new URL. Even though a 301 redirect was setup, it’s definitely worth the time and energy to update these links in order to preserve internal link value and avoid confusing and losing visitors.

More on Search Engine Optimization and URLS

Matt Cutts Talks about URLs and Search Engine Optimization

Click the link about to read a blog by Matt Cutts on URLs and search engine optimization or simply watch the video below!

Final Note

In the end, whether or not it’s a good idea to optimize your URL to be more SEO- and user-friendly is at your discretion. If your site is already ranking well, you may be better off letting it be. In essence, these guidelines can be very useful, but it’s important to consider these changes with case-by-case perspective. If you’re really not sure, consult a qualified search engine optimization specialist before making risky changes.

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Show up on the map with Local SEO

5 simple things you can do rank better for local search

Local SEO has been a mystery for many traditional Search Engine Optimization experts over the years when compared with traditional SEO.  Local search results are rarely the same as organic results. There is, however, among local SEO experts some clear consensus on how businesses can optimize their listings to rank well in local search results.  In June, David Mihm published his 3^rd volume report entitled Local Search Ranking Factors.  In this comprehensive report, local SEO experts evaluated more than 50 factors that are thought to have varying impact on local search rankings.  These factors are in many ways polar opposites compared to the factors that drive traditional SEO.  In this post I will highlight five of the most important local SEO factors that every local business should implement to start seeing positive local search ranking improvements.

1. Claiming your place page or local listing

Yes, surprisingly, just the very act of claiming your local listing from the search results appears to have the local search engine optimization expert consensus as the most important factor for ranking well.  Local SEO experts insist that until you claim your place page or local listing you have little to no control as to how your business will rank.

2. Consistency

Consistency is a huge factor with local SEO.  If Google or any of the other search engines continuously find conflicting information about your local business, how can they justify ranking your site high?  This local SEO factor makes sense.  If searchers can’t find your correct location or your phone number then why should your business rank high in local search results?  Get your listing info accurate and make sure your address is correct across your website. Ask that inaccurate info be removed from third party sites on the web.

3.  Citations

Citations are comparable to links in Organic SEO.  In local search engine optimization you have to understand that the search engines don’t put a lot of weight in what you say about yourself.  Local search is driven by what others are saying about you.  Are you a Sushi Restaurant that everybody gets food poisoning at?  Chances are that you will be ranked low compared to other Sushi Restaurants where people enjoy eating.  If you know you offer local goods or services that your customers appreciate, ask them to write a positive review on a site like Yelp.com or Citysearch.com.  The more of these positive reviews you receive from your customers on a variety of sites, the more you will see a positive impact on your local rankings.

4. Categories

Though traditional organic search is primarily driven by keywords, local SEO is driven by categories.  It appears to be extremely important to the search engines that you choose the correct category to list your business in.  Some would go as far as saying that once you choose to put your business in the wrong category, you have severely crippled your potential to rank high for your targeted keywords.  Don’t just pick a category at first glance, spend the time honing in on a category that accurately reflects your business.  Getting this simple local SEO practice right from the start can save you lots of hassles in the future when you refine your local search engine optimization.

5. City Specific

This one is a no brainer in many ways, but it must be said.  The location of your business factors heavily into how you will be ranked in local search.  If Google sees you as being 200 miles away from where the searcher is searching, can they in all fairness show your business as a local search result? So be sure to set your expectations properly with local SEO.  You can’t expect your hair salon in San Diego to rank under Los Angeles hair salons. If you desire for business to rank high for locations that aren’t technically local you might want to consider optimizing your website using traditional SEO practices.

Addressing all five of these local SEO factors thoroughly should have your business on its way to significant local business listings ranking improvements. These improvements will not only increase your internet traffic, but also your foot traffic.

Does Size Matter to Search?

Ahh the age old question – is bigger better?  Well, I’m not going to touch that one; however, I will address whether the size of a website is a factor in building search engine authority?  Although it is well documented that search engines favor websites that provide a large amount of quality content, the idea that a large number of pages alone will benefit your search engine optimization efforts is only a popular myth.   Size only matters when used properly.  Empty pages with no authority are of no help to SEO. 

What is important to size and search is creating as many quality authoritative pages as possible.  Some of the keys to building page authority are:

1) Building quality inbound links

2) Creating effective internal pathways to your pages

3) Providing quality unique content on each important page of your website    

External Linking – Size and Search 

The single most important and effective way to capitalize on the size of your website and build page authority is to have a large amount of quality inbound links to each of your pages.  Therefore, a standing page with no inbound links will not be seen as authoritative in the eyes of the search engines and the extra pages or size will not help with rankings.  On the other hand, when a page is being linked to by multiple Internet properties it will be seen as authoritative, increasing the size of your website with authoritative pages.  The authoritative page can either rank itself for top keywords or transfer the “link authority” to other important pages on your website.

Given the incredible amount of information and competing techniques that can be found on the Internet and argued about in forums regarding link building strategies, I will not go into detail here.  However, in summary, the best way to increase your external link popularity is through engaging your audience via social media marketing and optimized press releases. While there are many other methods of promotion, the main goal is to establish yourself as an authority in your industry and generate an online buzz that will attract organic links.  These links allow your pages to be indexed and found on the search results.  When it comes to size and search it is really all about page authority.

Internal Linking – Size and Search

The size of your website is of no consequence if the search engines cannot access/find/index your internal pages.  Thus, you must create effective internal pathways for the search engines to access your internal pages.  Your homepage carries the greatest amount of authority with the search engines.  The further your internal pages are away from the homepage the less authority those pages will have.  Ideally the most important internal pages will be linked directly from your homepage.  This can be done through links directly from the global navigation, via footer links, in content hyperlinks or other methods.

Unique Content – Size and Search

Search Engines do not care how large your website is if you are not providing quality information for your users.  Search engines exist for the sole purpose of provided users with relevant results for their keyword searches.  Web pages leveraging keyword-rich unique content tend to rank higher.  Thus, content remains king in SEO.  As such, it is essential your most important internal pages have keyword rich unique content championing the theme of that page.   Creation of this copy can become a cumbersome project for large websites with lots of pages.  However, it is a must, as a page with no content or duplicate content has little chance to rank or be indexed by the search engines.  A professional SEO copywriting service can certainly help manage a large copywriting project.  Of course the more pages you have with quality content that is useful to your users the better.  More content allows the opportunity to target more keywords and to provide improved internal linking.  Thus, with respect to size and seo, bigger is better with respect to quality content but not simply due to size alone.

In summary, size and SEO only matters when you know what to do with the size your website is packing.

Have an opinion about size and search? Leave a comment below!

Add NoFollow Links & Enjoy that Delicious Link Juice, Mmm...

1. The popular search engine optimization nofollow HTML attribute is the solution to what many believed to be a huge problem in the blogging community. In early 2005, Google’s Matt Cutts and blogger Jason Shellen designed the rel=“nofollow” attribute to assume the responsibility of stopping spammy blog comments made primarily to boost the link popularity of the person leaving the comment.

Here’s how it works: by adding rel=“nofollow” to a hyperlink, a page signals that the hyperlink’s destination should not be ranked by search engines. The search engines see the nofollow tag in an HTML link but do not follow it, nor do they allocate link popularity to the destination page. Though many squabble about its effectiveness at stopping comment spam, the idea is that spammers will stop posting if the search engines stop giving page ranking credit.

2. Most SEO strategists recognize and embrace the nofollow attribute for its undeniable influence on authoritative link building and page ranking. Just as external sites linking to a company’s website provide “link juice” (page ranking credit) and assist with search engine ranking of the receiving site, outbound links from the company linking to other sites release “link juice” and assist their websites to rank in the search results. 

In essence, the more links a business  has pointing to their URL, and the fewer links pointing away from their URL, the better.  With Google, Yahoo!, and MSN Search all agreeing to abide by the link relationship attribute, it only makes sense for company websites to preserve as much “link juice” as possible by adding the nofollow attribute to outbound links.

So, adding the rel=“nofollow” attribute to your website’s links can limit erroneous comments with ulterior motives from cluttering your site, while preserving the “link juice” you’ve earned.

If you’re still leery about the nofollow HTML attribute, understand that it is a necessary and effective strategy of most SEO consulting services. Kudos to those already onboard!

Have questions or comments about nofollow links? Add them below!

Content Network Ads are only part of the marketing puzzle

Where are your ads showing? Are your pay per click campaigns made up of text ads that run only on the search networks? If so, you are probably missing out on a large portion of your target audience as part of your search engine optimization.

Recently, I was on Facebook and saw an ad for a surfing glove. The ad was relevant to what I was interested in at the time (illustrating the importance of social media) and it had a very engaging picture and call to action. As a result, I bought a pair of gloves. After telling my friends on Facebook about how much I liked them, I realized how effective that ad was. First, there was absolutely no way I would have looked for the gloves on a search engine because I didn’t even know they existed. Second, I rarely click on display ads. This one really spoke to me. And finally, I enjoyed the experience and product enough that I shared it with friends.

As Gareth Owen at SearchEngineWatch.com put it- “Think about it — when was the last time you bought something online simply by searching for it and going straight to a site to buy it?”

People use search engines as means to an end. All of the action is going on at the actual sites themselves. They find out about products and services on sites. They compare prices and discuss the advantages and disadvantages on social media sites. After some time, they may go back to the search engine to search with the intent to buy. Then they buy on a site. Through this process, they will run into ads on the search network, but they are spending most of their time on the content network.

Content Network ads may seem very hit or miss. Websites can be too cluttered as it is; text ads and even unappealing display ads can get lost in the confusion. However, successful campaigns will have eye-catching, engaging ads. Google Adwords lets put ads on sites or certain kind of sites with the Content Placement option. Advertisers have to step it up by creating ads that are visually pleasing, have a clear call to action, and find ways to have consumers engage with one another. I have found that campaigns include every acceptable size and format of display ads are successful.

The internet will continue to integrate the online experience for users across what were once considered separate areas. By using the content network and unique display ads that point to relevant pages, advertisers can access this untapped market.

What do you think about the importance and application of content networks?

The Challenge
Every good social media campaign needs to have a challenge. For instance, maybe you want your fans/followers to upload a photo of themselves or create a video stating why they should win the prize. The challenge is what you request from the community/contestants in order to play the game.

The Rules
Every good social media campaign needs to have rules. What must occur for this to be a legitimate and reputable business marketing campaign? Do you need to make sure the content being submitted is clean? Should the video be a certain length? Does the video need to be created within a certain budget? Do you have to live in the United States to enter? Make sure these things are laid out before you announce the project. I always make it a rule that the user has to follow you on Twitter or be a fan on Facebook to play the game; this is a great way to build your community base. This idea also ties into the benefit section mentioned below.

The Benefit for the Campaign Creator
When creating the campaign it is important to make sure it will have a quantifiable, positive ROI for the campaign creator. Before the campaign is created ask yourself, is the payoff worth the effort? If it is not you need to rethink your campaign, if it is then start firing off those press releases, T.V. commercials and web ads, because it’s game on!

The Benefit for the Contestants
Let’s face it, no one is going to pay any attention to your social campaign if there is nothing in it for them. For instance, if you are only handing out $10 worth of goods in exchange for someone submitting a video then you are most likely not going to get many submissions. Make sure the benefit for the contestants is worthwhile. As with everything in this world, you get what you give. The same concept applies to social media, and search engine optimization for that matter…

The Promotional Strategy
No one will notice your campaign if you do not promote it. The key to making any good campaign pay off is to promote, promote, promote!! I cannot stress this enough. If you do not promote your campaign it will fall flat. Make sure you are doing everything you need to get the word out. And when you are creating your advertising budget for the campaign make sure you tie it back into your ROI. The amount you are paying for promotion, campaign costs and all other expenses should not exceed the projected benefit, as with any good investment.

Summary
Social media campaigns are a lot of fun to run; they also take a lot of work. Make sure you thoroughly consider all of the elements of the campaign before you engage. Also, make sure the campaign will provide your company with a valuable return.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what the perfect organic web presence looks like. With this in mind, I have created this brief image. I’m sorry to say that it is not perfect, but it is pretty close for a general representation.

As you can see, everything should be filtered through your blog. This gives you the opportunity to produce new content, add new keywords and have another high ranking URL extension.

Once that piece of content has been created it can be repurposed for article sites, posted on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. When you create a YouTube video it should be added to your blog and commented on, keeping in mind all best blogging practices, cross linking, keywords, etc.

When you publish a piece of content it goes out to your RSS feed subscribers. That feed is then automatically populated on sites which are set to publish your feed. This automatically gives you an inbound link with your article title as the keywords.

The blog content also gives you something to put in your eNewsletters. Plus, you can always issue press releases about the information in your blog or on your site to stimulate linking.

All in all the blog is your hub. It is the center of your content creation and SEO existence. But there is much more to it then that. There are some many things you can do to have all of these entities ranking first page for branded search terms. That is where SEO Inc. comes in.

Have ideas on the perfect web presence? Add them below!