One of the biggest problems the SEO Pirate comes across when optimising websites is canonicalisation. Canonicalisation is a duplication problems. Canonicalisation occurs when a website is able to be accessed via both www.XXX.com and XXX.com, in severe cases this can cause the search engines to effectively index two identical copies of a website. Canonicalisation is a serious SEO issue that is often overlooked during the web development process of a website.
As you know, Google may penalise you if there are other websites that have the same content as you do or you have the same content on several pages of your website. By not being aware of this issue, many websites are potentially damaging their positions in search engines by failing to avoid canonicalisation of their websites url. Canonicalisation will have a negative impact on your search engine rankings, because linking websites may use different url paths to your homepage, which means that www.XXX.com and XXX.com will accumulate their own PageRank or TrustRank level.
To get around canonicalisation, the most effective way is to use the 301 redirect to the www.XXX.com version of your website. In some cases this might not be possible so here you can use the rel=canonical tag. If that fails try using Google Webmaster Tools to set the preferred domain to www.XXX.com.
Tuesday, 24 November 2009
Friday, 20 November 2009
The Future of Social Media
As Part of the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts (NESTA) Silicon Valley comes to the UK event programme, NESTA got a series of guests to discussed the future impact of social media.
The guest speakers included Stephen Fry; Biz Stone (Founder and Chief Executive of Twitter) and Reid Hoffman, (Founder and Chief Executive of LinkedIn).
The program runs for over an hour but is well worth watching.
www.nesta.org.uk/assets/features/social_media_with_stephen_fry
The guest speakers included Stephen Fry; Biz Stone (Founder and Chief Executive of Twitter) and Reid Hoffman, (Founder and Chief Executive of LinkedIn).
The program runs for over an hour but is well worth watching.
www.nesta.org.uk/assets/features/social_media_with_stephen_fry
The SEO Pirate on Twitter
Follow the SEO Pirate on Twitter to get even more information and tips on search engine optimisation ( SEO ), search marketing, link building, online marketing and general ranks about the world.
http://twitter.com/SEO_Pirate
Thursday, 19 November 2009
DIY SEO
The SEO Pirate has recently just brought a new ship that needed a lot of work done on it to add to my fleet of ships. To be honest I – the legendary SEO Pirate - have been drinking too much grog and watching too many ship development programs on that’s picture box they call TV. I felt that I could easily fix up a run-down ship and make some gold coins from it.
My plan was to do most of the work myself to try to cut corners and save money. This way I would get maximum return with minimal investment. Simple logic hey, how hard could it be? Surely with a little bit of research on the web and in text books, several visits to DIY shops and some serious elbow grease I could be have myself a little treasure chest.
Many business owners take this view also when it comes to SEO. They feel the can just do the SEO themselves (DIY SEO). With the vast number of books, websites and forums available to them and by utilizing their existing resources they can optimise their own website. The SEO Pirate agrees that most people out there can do just about anything they set their minds to; so I have no doubt they could do SEO themselves.
But, and this is a big but, DIY does not always have the desired effect; in fact it can make things ten times worst. This advice comes from bitter experience; I have come to learn that I was not born to yield a hammer and a drill. OK my experience is based on my poor skills as a bidding ship developer but the lessons learned and the mistakes made can be applied to SEO. I personally think I should stick to being a Pirate, that’s what I’m good at.
To do SEO yourself on your website may seem like a good idea that will save money, but the truth of the matter is that unless you are an expert in this field you may actually end up doing more harm than good. The search engines, Google in particular, are extremely sensitive when it comes to white hat and black hat SEO techniques and one slight mistake may cause your website to be permanently blacklisted and condemned to Davy Jones’ locker at he bottom of the ocean.
Let’s be honest if our car breaks down, do we roll up our sleeves, pop the bonnet and do it ourselves? If there is a leak in our sinks, do we go out and buy a book on plumbing. How about if you pulled a muscle in your back and you needed physical therapy, would you “just do it yourself?” Probably not?? Well I hope not??? So then why do companies try to design and market their website themselves? The reality is that we all pay for things all the time that we could do ourselves. The reason most of us do this is because we don’t have the time to do it. By paying for the service we can almost guarantee it is done correctly and in a faster time.
Knowledge initially of this specialized field of online marketing will need to be acquired which again will take up a lot of time for research. Books on the subject and SEO commercial software tools will need to be purchased. SEO software tools are essential pieces of software for an effective SEO campaign and will allow companies to analyze their website traffic, research keywords and track their ranking and links to your site.
These pieces of software vary in cost but don’t come cheap. Additionally to do SEO yourself, a company will need to have an intimate knowledge of their website, how it works, the HTML code and possibly any scripting languages that the website uses, like PHP.
We all have busy schedules; especially swashbuckling company directors, so we have just touched upon one of the main reasons why DIY SEO is such a hard task to undertake. There just isn’t enough time in the day to manage staff, respond to enquires, write business reports, send out quotes and manage your financial accounts.
Time is money so can you afford to spare some of your precious time to an ongoing and ever developing SEO campaign. You have to really consider how valuable your time is worth. By spending your time doing SEO means you can’t be doing other things – like running your business in general – so you could actually be losing money by doing the job yourself. Money is a renewable resource… but once you’ve spent your time, there’s no way to get it back.
If you feel that you do have the time and enough website expertise then you may be willing to put in the time and try doing it yourself. If that is the case then the SEO Pirate says gets cracking on an SEO campaign for your website.
However the SEO Pirate has a caveat here which is the fact that just because you CAN do SEO yourself doesn’t always mean you SHOULD do it. SEO is a specialist online marketing technique and attempting to do it could delay the inevitable and allow your competition to gain an edge on you.
The SEO Pirate would like to just point out that no matter how good you think you are at SEO an SEO firm will always be able to do a better job. A fact that runs true in most industries; a professional job is superior to that of an amateurs. However ultimately the choice is yours to make but I would have to feed myself to the sharks if I didn’t strongly recommend you use a specialist SEO company.
My plan was to do most of the work myself to try to cut corners and save money. This way I would get maximum return with minimal investment. Simple logic hey, how hard could it be? Surely with a little bit of research on the web and in text books, several visits to DIY shops and some serious elbow grease I could be have myself a little treasure chest.
Many business owners take this view also when it comes to SEO. They feel the can just do the SEO themselves (DIY SEO). With the vast number of books, websites and forums available to them and by utilizing their existing resources they can optimise their own website. The SEO Pirate agrees that most people out there can do just about anything they set their minds to; so I have no doubt they could do SEO themselves.
But, and this is a big but, DIY does not always have the desired effect; in fact it can make things ten times worst. This advice comes from bitter experience; I have come to learn that I was not born to yield a hammer and a drill. OK my experience is based on my poor skills as a bidding ship developer but the lessons learned and the mistakes made can be applied to SEO. I personally think I should stick to being a Pirate, that’s what I’m good at.
To do SEO yourself on your website may seem like a good idea that will save money, but the truth of the matter is that unless you are an expert in this field you may actually end up doing more harm than good. The search engines, Google in particular, are extremely sensitive when it comes to white hat and black hat SEO techniques and one slight mistake may cause your website to be permanently blacklisted and condemned to Davy Jones’ locker at he bottom of the ocean.
Let’s be honest if our car breaks down, do we roll up our sleeves, pop the bonnet and do it ourselves? If there is a leak in our sinks, do we go out and buy a book on plumbing. How about if you pulled a muscle in your back and you needed physical therapy, would you “just do it yourself?” Probably not?? Well I hope not??? So then why do companies try to design and market their website themselves? The reality is that we all pay for things all the time that we could do ourselves. The reason most of us do this is because we don’t have the time to do it. By paying for the service we can almost guarantee it is done correctly and in a faster time.
Knowledge initially of this specialized field of online marketing will need to be acquired which again will take up a lot of time for research. Books on the subject and SEO commercial software tools will need to be purchased. SEO software tools are essential pieces of software for an effective SEO campaign and will allow companies to analyze their website traffic, research keywords and track their ranking and links to your site.
These pieces of software vary in cost but don’t come cheap. Additionally to do SEO yourself, a company will need to have an intimate knowledge of their website, how it works, the HTML code and possibly any scripting languages that the website uses, like PHP.
We all have busy schedules; especially swashbuckling company directors, so we have just touched upon one of the main reasons why DIY SEO is such a hard task to undertake. There just isn’t enough time in the day to manage staff, respond to enquires, write business reports, send out quotes and manage your financial accounts.
Time is money so can you afford to spare some of your precious time to an ongoing and ever developing SEO campaign. You have to really consider how valuable your time is worth. By spending your time doing SEO means you can’t be doing other things – like running your business in general – so you could actually be losing money by doing the job yourself. Money is a renewable resource… but once you’ve spent your time, there’s no way to get it back.
If you feel that you do have the time and enough website expertise then you may be willing to put in the time and try doing it yourself. If that is the case then the SEO Pirate says gets cracking on an SEO campaign for your website.
However the SEO Pirate has a caveat here which is the fact that just because you CAN do SEO yourself doesn’t always mean you SHOULD do it. SEO is a specialist online marketing technique and attempting to do it could delay the inevitable and allow your competition to gain an edge on you.
The SEO Pirate would like to just point out that no matter how good you think you are at SEO an SEO firm will always be able to do a better job. A fact that runs true in most industries; a professional job is superior to that of an amateurs. However ultimately the choice is yours to make but I would have to feed myself to the sharks if I didn’t strongly recommend you use a specialist SEO company.
Link Building for SEO
Captain Google still sees link building as the best and most effective SEO method that can help a website rank highly in the search engine results pages (SERP's).
Link building is a natural SEO technique that involves researching, requesting, and submitting links from external websites with the intention of increasing a webpage's position in the search engines.
The SEO Pirate believes that link building is the critical element in achieving a good natural search engine position. On a basic level, the more quality backlinks you can get to link to your website, the higher your website will rank in the search engines. Link building is that important in SEO that the SEO Pirate will go so far as to stick his neck out and say it is virtually about 70% of the entire SEO process and if i am wrong you can make me walk the plank.
In the mind of the SEO Pirate its only logical that the search engines take the number of links pointing to a particular website into account when ranking these websites in their index. A link to any website is seen by serach engines as a vote of confidence toowards that web site. It's a simple concept really the more votes you have the higher a serach engine will place you in its search engine results pages (SERP's).
There are hundreds of ways to build links to a website. The key to link building is quality and relevance. The quality of the backlink depends on the content of a particular website which is linking to your website and its PageRank. One of the most significant factors in determining the quality of a link is its relevancy to your website.
Do not let Captain Black Hat take over your link building campaign and encourage you to use link farms or employ huge link exchange programs. Make sure you do your link building naturally and ethically. You don’t want to generate 100 links in a day, whats natural about that?? If you listern to Captain Black Hat and his unethical black Hat SEO link building techniques then your website could be penalized by the search engines and you will be placed in davy jones locker, never to be found by the internet community again! A lost ship at the bottom of the ocean.
One of the main reasons why many website owners are the hunt for some shortcut options to link building or erroneous black hat link building methods to increase there serach engines positions is becasue most of them do not have the time and the endurance to carry out a genuine link building campaign.
To promote your website you MUST only use ethical SEO link building techniques. The SEO Pirate has to be very clear about this in terms of link building. Please Please Please only use ethical SEO link building techniques. Also the more link building that you can carry out, the more your website will move up the search engine rankings for you targeted keywords.
Link building can be a time consuming and at times tedious process. However it is a necessary evil if you want to have a successful website. If you feel you need to indulge in a link building campaign for your website (and trust me you do) then don’t go out there and start buying links from companies. Use a professional SEO agency to carry out an ethical SEO link building campaign on your behalf. The SEO Pirate recommends using this online marketing company.
Wednesday, 18 November 2009
Tips to Help You Search Better
If you need to search the seven seas for something then the SEO Pirate suggests listerning to Buccaneer Matt Cutts tips on better methods of using the search engines to find exactly what you require. Take it away me Hearty!!!!!
Google still rules the seas of search
According to a search report by comScore, in September of this year (2009) Google had 65.4% of the search market, Yahoo 18.0% and Bing continues to rise with 9.9%. An interesting fact that has come out of this is that Yahoo is actually slowly losing a piece of its share. Both Google and Bing have taken a even part of this share.
The SEO Pirate is showing you this just to explain to you lily-livered website owners out there why us SEO consultants always target Google (and talk about them mainly) in our SEO campaigns. Until Bing and/or Yahoo step up there game, Captin Google will continue to rule the seas of search.
Tuesday, 17 November 2009
The Future of Google and the Internet
Google CEO and chairman Eric Schmidt was recently interviewed about the future of the internet. Speaking at the Gartner Symposium in Orlando. Mr Schmidt claimed that in five years time the internet will be a "radically different" place.
Mr Schmidt said the future of search will be real-time information and the speed of the internet will become much faster as well. He said the internet will be largely dominated by social media content.
Schmidt goes on to say that the internet will shift more towards user-generated information and that learning to rank this content will be the ‘challenge of the age’.
Its a long interview but the SEO Pirate feels it will be well worth watching.
Happy viewing me hearties!
Mr Schmidt said the future of search will be real-time information and the speed of the internet will become much faster as well. He said the internet will be largely dominated by social media content.
Schmidt goes on to say that the internet will shift more towards user-generated information and that learning to rank this content will be the ‘challenge of the age’.
Its a long interview but the SEO Pirate feels it will be well worth watching.
Happy viewing me hearties!
The Potential Pitfalls of Ecommerce
In recent years SEO Pirate has witnessed a massive growth in the use of e-commerce by both consumers and businesses. However i want you all website owners to be aware that trading your products and services online using an ecommerce online shop does not always guarantee success.
To have a successful ecommerce online shop generally revolves around driving the right traffic and making shopping easy and secure for customers. This sounds as simple enough concept but you would be surprised how many online ecommerce vendors are getting it completely wrong. Now I’m sure there are many problems specific to all most companies out there that develop their own ecommerce solutions. However there are some common problems and pitfalls which e-commerce website owners can face.
Lack of Planning
By fully understanding what you want to achieve, setting clear goals and not rushing a ecommerce design and continued development means you can lower chances of any issues in the future.
Lack of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
People feel that an ecommerce online shop is much like running a retail store on a Main Street. Once they build the shop and open the doors the business will naturally come because people will see the shop and visit it. However just because you know about your website does not mean that others are aware of it or will even be able to naturally find it on their own. SEO Pirate knows that people use search engines to fine websites so if your website is not ranked highly in the search engines then you will not receive a steady flow of passing trade. You need to consider how well you website if optimised form the very beginning to make sure that people can find you.
Poor Website Navigation
Once they have found your website visitors want to be able to get to the product or information they require in as little steps as possible and with the less effort on there part. Having poor navigation on your website is like driving a car without a map through an area that you’ve never visited before. Unless you have an incredible aptitude for finding your way around, you’re going to get lost.
Make you navigation easy, clear and simple to use otherwise not only will visitors have difficult finding their way around, but they will become extremely frustrated and leave. In a recent Harris Interactive survey 40% of the people questioned cited that poor navigation was the biggest complaint about ecommerce websites they had visited online.
Poor Content
The quality of the content on a website will create an immediate impression and also ensure that customers keep returning. Ensure text is easy to read, clear and provides accurate information. Customers will be put off by out-of-date or incorrect information. People expect the content of website to constantly be changing so that it isn’t static and dull. Fresh content is also great for search engine indexing.
Online Shopping Problems
Once the visitors decide to buy from you, the checkout procedure must be as seamless, quick and simple as possible. It is estimated that around 75% do not complete the shopping cart process because of slow or unclear checkout processes. Also make it plainly obvious for the visitors how they buy form your website. Don't make visitors search for a checkout button, or use icons that are difficult to interpret. Use strong calls to action and clear directions to make the purchase as easy as possible.
More than a decade into e-commerce, online consumers have become increasingly savvy and will not put up with experiences that do not live up to our expectations. Any companies doing business online must pay attention to their customers’ needs and experiences during the buying process to help them to succeed.
If you can eliminate the common pitfalls of ecommerce then you will be able to retain more customers on your website, increasing both customer loyalty and profits. If a website owner does take this advice on board then the SEO Pirate encourages all employees to mutiny and make them walk the plank!
If you would like an ecommerce website developed or you would like your current ecommerce website optimised and marketed online more effectively then please contact WPM Internet.
Ahoy there SEO lovers the SEO Pirate has Arrived
Arr, me hearty SEO information seekers,Welcome to the SEO Pirates very first venture into how i can help you find some internet Booty from using my very special SEO treasure map of information.
With this new insightful blog this gallant SEO Pirate plans to be swashbucklin' and carousin' on the good ship SEO to help you tackle the high seas of Search Marketing.
I plan to help all you Landlubbers, Scallywags, Gentlemen o' fortune, Buccaneers, Mutineers, Lasses and Wenchs all the of pieces o' eight you can get your hands on from using Search Marketing.
And shiver me timbers i also promise to stop talking in this silly Pirate voice
Yo-ho-ho man the sails and lets set sail
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)