SEO Tips For Internet Marketers

By Jill Whalen

This week I asked my social media followers:

++Do you change URLs for SEO purposes if they're not currently using keywords but are being indexed fine?++

Here's how they responded:

Twitter

Daveminchala: If page has poor or no search traffic or visibility, I'll do it. If it already performs decently well, I'll optimize somewhere else.

Kenjansen: I did do that and my rankings went even higher after 6 to 8 weeks. New high ranking on all 9 pages I changed. 2 weeks of severe pain, though.

Markkennedysem: If the page has lots of links pointing to it or authority, I wouldn't. 301 may not pass all of the link value. If not, I would.

Phixed: I haven't done that for years. Once indexed, linked to and ranking properly, I leave as is whenever possible.

Helenculshaw: No! No need to fix what's not broken, when there are usually much bigger issues to worry about!

Carolinelbell: If there's value for user and/or rankings then maybe. Pros & cons list needed.

Dasnsandy: Yes, I do change 'em.

LesFaber: I would. And would also do a 301-redirect for the Old URL.

Parthasarthi197: If the page is indexed, I would not like to change the URL only to include the keyword in URL.

Webtones: Only if I feel users will increase click through, seeing the keyword as a call to action. Rarely if ever for the bots.

Nilaye10: Turning an indexed URL into a keyword-rich URL should only be done if site technology warrants a complete URL transformation.

Google+

Shawn Warren: I have.

Hershel Miller: Absolutely; getting them reindexed is straightforward enough.

Craig Fifield: On my sites--sure. On a client's site it should be weighed against the technical hurdles. Also, keep the competition in mind--if you are going to outrank everyone anyway, the change might not be worth it.

Dave Winget: I'd say do it provided you know how to 301 correctly. It's only going to help.

Aaron Hassen: Include keywords, yes. Then redirect your old ones.

Larry Chrzan: Usually I don't change URLs if there's no good reason to do so. At the point where I'm doing a website re-design for a client, the question always comes up.

Rajesh Kumar: If we are looking for organic traffic, indexing smoothly, robot friendly and if it's dynamic URL then sure, it helps to change it or make it 301-redirect.

Ash Nallawalla: Absolutely not, unless there is overwhelming evidence that the current format is leading to poor indexing for other pages and Google WMT can't fix those issues. Google is pretty good with ugly URLs these days. If most of the pages have been indexed, I would let sleeping dogs lie. Keywords in URLs are nice to have if you are starting a site, but rarely make a difference to indexing.

Michael Gray: Indexed and not ranking like putting on a sequin evening gown to spend the night alone watching a bravo marathon. If you're indexed and not ranking yeah I'd fix those; indexed and ranking I'd leave as is.

Thomas Rosenstand: Absolutely not. Why would I?

Tim Ronning: As a rule of thumb here I'd say no, but it kinda depends on other factors like if this is part of a bigger project, redesign, refocus, mismatched topical indexing, etc.

Steve Gerencser: It depends. If this is for a large site then no, the ROI usually isn't enough to justify the time/money spent making all the changes and redirects and testing to make sure they are done right. We make the change going forward from that point.

Marcus Miller: Nope, generally not. I manage one site with horrid URLs but the SERPs display the breadcrumb (in place of the URL) so everything looks neat and tidy and there is seemingly no impacts on click through. I would always review on a case by case basis but where budgets are tight I can usually find more productive areas to focus on.

Facebook

Santosh Singh: Definitely not.

Dave Davies: 90% of the time I'd say not. There are exceptions such as a new site that's likely a ways off from ranking.

Steven Musumeche: Yes, I did make the URLs more descriptive and have keywords. With the use of 301 redirects, it worked great.

Karon Price Thackston: Change existing URLs? No. But if I create a new page, I'll include keywords in the URL.

Pontus ?sterlin: Been thinking about this just recently and came to the decision to actually change existing URLs. Even considering adding keyword on start page URL -- mysite.com/keyword instead of mysite.com -- in cases where keyword is a highly competitive one.

Barbara Keek: My first reaction was no. But what's the use to be indexed if they don't contain the right keywords? So yes!

Jill's Comment: Wow, lots of differing opinions with this one! My opinion mirrors Ash Nallawalla's above: Never change URLs unless they're causing a problem.

Labels: Question, Rankings

September 21, 2011By Jill Whalen

Hi Jill,

I am a long-time subscriber of your newsletter. I have implemented many of your SEO/SEM ideas over the years with good success.

Recently I had a conversation with an SEO expert who claimed that the most important thing we need to do for SEO on our website is URL rewriting. Our old CMS system still uses parameters in the URL ("?pageid="). The expert claims that if we don't rewrite these URLs to a friendly, keyword-rich URL, there is no use doing any SEO work on our site because it cannot be successful.

That just doesn't seem right to me. Although our current URL is not the most friendly to look at, and can be hard to determine pages in Google Analytics, all of our site pages are indexed by Google, and some of the pages we have optimized do come up high in organic search results. I can see that keywords in URLs may be one of the many things Google looks at, but it is hard for me to believe it's the most important thing. I have always placed priority on page titles, page content, and outside linking to our site.

I very much trust your opinion and wonder if you could share it with me on this subject. Thanks in advance.

Doug

++Jill's Response++

Hi Doug,

You are exactly correct! While I understand that many SEOs put a lot of stock in having keywords in URLs these days, it's kind of scary to think that there are some SEO companies out there saying that your URLs will make all the rest of your SEO work useless. It's absolutely not true at all.

A quick search in Google for "pageid=" shows more than 200 million URLs contain that term.

It's not a problem at all.

I would personally caution you or anyone else about changing perfectly indexable URLs for the sole purpose of adding keywords. If you're redesigning your website and are going to be using a new content management system that will end up changing your URLs, then it's fine to consider the best use of them for SEO purposes. But I would not recommend changing URLs for the sole purpose of changing URLs.

Note: I decided to get other people's opinions on this via the High Rankings Question of the Week, which you can see here:

Do you change URLs for SEO purposes if they're not currently using keywords but are being indexed fine?

Hope this helps!

Jill

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Labels: Harmful, pageid, website

Posted by admin on September, 23rd 2011

After Google announced the launch of their new social network, Google+ in June 2011, Facebook was uncharacteristically quiet.

Then following the Google+ launch, the search engine Bing (which happens to be a partner of Facebook) bought Skype, an internationally popular piece of internet video and telephone software.  Following the announcement from Google about their new Hangouts feature to accompany Google+, it doesn’t take a marketing genius to see that Bing and Facebook were keen to not miss out on any established users defecting to Google+ in the early days.

Facebook and Google have long been rivals, with each criticising the other over many points. Facebook have blocked Google from seeing their users’ public profiles and Google have attacked Facebook for their loose privacy settings.

In response to these criticisms, Facebook has launched a string of new features (including privacy features) that just happen to coincide with Google+ opening up their network to the public. Google+ is incredibly feature-rich even at this early stage, however, at Real Web SEO, we do wonder if Google can really can tempt established Facebookers away from the social network who may have invested a lot of time and energy in to uploading photos, connecting with friends and playing games. Google+ may already have millions of users, but last month, it emerged that 83% of their audience is inactive. Hardly a surprise as the initial audience was web and internet marketing types who wanted to have a look around but found it boring without the majority of their friends signed up to flesh out the service.

So what is Facebook now offering?

If you have a Facebook account, you will see that your homepage has changed. You still have your friend’s recent stories in their normal place, but to the right of the screen, you can see a feed which contains information like comments on their friends’ statuses etc. Privacy settings have also been enhanced meaning you have more control over the posts you are tagged in by your friends.

Coupled with these changes, earlier on this week Twitter announced today that they would be sharing data with Facebook more easily e.g. no apps or programs to link the two so Twitter statuses are automatically posted to Facebook. There is a possibility that this could pave the way so you could give Facebook your twitter login and essentially have a double account. Many people have speculated that this is Facebook and Twitter uniting against Google+. We think this is a small step but if Facebook is determined to use their muscle to consign Google+ into the social network dustbin along with Google Buzz, they may have to work with Twitter more in the future. Would this really be of much use to users though?

Facebook’s biggest announcement was at the F8 conference yesterday which showed an entirely new layout to each user’s feed – see this report for more details.

Do you think the rivalry between Facebook and Google is getting ugly? Do you think that only one will be victorious in the fight for market share within social media, or do you think that they will learn to co-exist? Tell us using the comments box below!

To find out how Real Web SEO can help improve your presence in the search engines, contact David Wiltshire on 0845 544 1764.

Third time lucky? Google tries to go social – again

Circles, sparks and hangouts… no, we’re not talking about a visit to the circus, we are talking about Google’s latest attempt at breaking into the lucrative social media market. After two failed forays into the world of social media, Google announced it’s latest project this week – Google +: https://plus.google.com/ Billed as a more human [...]

How The New Twitter Could Effect Social Marketing

The new Twitter preview video shows some exciting features which could have a profound impact on how people spend their time online: Shortened URL’s no longer are mysterious links to webpages, twitpics and videos, they will soon appear within Twitter on the right-hand sidebar.  The only way to preview shortened URL’s currently is the very [...]

Twitter as an SEO tool

People are tweeting at an exponential rate and Google now indexes Twitter in real time using it’s new Google Caffeine software. Twitter comprises of short messages that are under 150 characters long, any big gossip, news or viral gets ‘tweeted’ by thousands and quickly spreads across the globe.  Twitter is mostly used for self-promotion due [...]

Google Plus – Our First Thoughts

Today Real Web SEO gained access to Google+ and we couldn’t be more excited! Google+ (also known as Google Plus) is a well thought out mix of the best features from Facebook with instant messaging and video chat similar to Skype.  Here’s our initial reaction to Google Plus asking the question, will it be third [...]

Google’s “Best Guess”

Google very quietly launched a new little feature in the SERPs recently, the search engine now gives its ‘Best Guess” at any commonly agreed information. Look at the example below for a Google search on a upcoming computer game called “Duke Nukem Forever”: Searching the game’s name plus the words “release date” sparks off the [...]

Labels: Collusion, Facebook, Google, Thwart, Twitter

Posted by admin on September, 14th 2011

One of the first rules you learn when you start doing Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is that search engines hate duplicate content. Firstly, duplicate content doesn’t add value to web users as several websites popping up with the same content is irritating for users who are trying to do research. Secondly, search engines then have to decide which website posted the content first, which has the most authority etc and then decide which reigns supreme over the others.

This is why Google implemented their Panda update – to encourage people to stop posting copied or similar (spun) content across the web which added no value.

The Panda update affected mostly article websites, but if you post a lot of content on your website, you may want to check that you aren’t harboring duplicate content. One trick to check for duplicate content is to compare the number of pages of your website that Google has indexed to the number of pages you crawl on the site itself.

To do this, you can use the “site:domain.com” function of Google to see how many pages Google has indexed. The program Xenu for Windows (http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html) and Integrity for Mac (http://peacockmedia.co.uk/integrity/) are free programs which crawl an entire site and essentially create a sitemap, telling you how many pages are indexed and the page structure of the website.

If Google has ignored many of your pages then it is likely that there is a duplicate content issue. This might become obvious when looking at the the list of crawled pages that you have generated on Xenu or Integrity or you may have to use a service such as Copyscape to check for duplicate content on a page of your website: http://copyscape.com/

If a lot of your pages are missing, what happens next?

If parameters/session id issues are not to blame for the pages Google hasn’t include in it’s index then the issue may lie with copied or shallow content.

Technical issues that may be holding back the number of indexed pages in Google could be problems such as the robots.txt file, mis-used iframes or canocial tag issues. If this is the case then your SEO company needs to liaise with your web developer to rectify this as soon as possible as the negative impact upon SEO can be catastrophic. Check out our blog post of canonical tags to find out more.

Hopefully, once all pages on your site are unique enough to make it into Google’s index, you can concentrate on other aspect of SEO which will help you on your way to conquering your SEO goals.

To find out how SEO can help your business, contact David Wiltshire on 0845 544 1765.

Google Sitemaps – What To Look Out For

When looking at your Webmaster Tools which features do you normally look at? The lazy SEO’er will just click through the links on the left hand side of the page, hoping that nothing stands out as odd or wrong. If you’re new to Webmaster Tools or just find it a little daunting, one thing you [...]

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Every search engine (apart from search directories) uses programs called “spiders” to crawl whole websites and grab all the relevant data they can from each page. The spider will enter the homepage of a website and then follow every link it comes across in the code after saving the content.  It will then crawl each [...]

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Common Canonical Problems

Lots of websites have different “copied” versions of their homepage which can hinder your SEO efforts.  Whether it is part of your internet marketing strategy or a mistake made within your website’s URL structure, multiple homepage URLs can water down your SEO campaign and have other potentially harmful effects. Examples of this are: – www.domain.com/ [...]

How to Ruin Your SEO Efforts – Copied Content

Let’s face it, writing content for websites for most is a labourious & boring task! If your employer sold for example cardboard boxes or reems of A4 paper your blog/news-page could be very, very boring and the temptation to cut corners would be massive. Many people cut corners when it comes to SEO work, they [...]

Labels: check, Content, duplicate

Posted by admin on September, 12th 2011

A long time ago, Yahoo! was a major player in search engines, transforming itself from what was essentially a massive directory of the web into a full search engine as we would recognise now. Yahoo! had many successes, such as its 1,000,000th hit in 1994, two years before it’s rival Google even began.

For over 15 years, Yahoo! has dabbled in video, social networks, email and other services such as live chat. Unfortunately for Yahoo!, all of these services seem to have been superseded by other websites (Gmail, Skype, Facebook). So many ventures by Yahoo! have been quietly killed off such as Geocities, Yahoo! Go and Yahoo! 360.

So where did Yahoo! go wrong?

Usability – The Yahoo! homepage is a famous example of a ‘bad’ homepage. With information overload and a messy design, usability experts have always criticised Yahoo!. In comparison, Google have always kept their homepage fast and simple, leaving users in no doubt about what they need to do when they land on the page.

Spam – Search results have been easy to spam on Yahoo! Back in 2009, we noticed a porn result in the top 10 results for the keyword “make money”. Not only that, but Yahoo! have been widely criticised for adult results appearing when the SafeSearch feature was enabled.

Quality of results - The quality of the results are less popular than Google. Users often find that results seem slower to appear and have less advanced features such as ‘shopping’ or ‘news’.

Management – CEO of Yahoo, Carol Bartz was fired at the start of September 2011 as no visible improvements had been made in almost 2 years. Bartz slashed budgets, cut staff numbers but reports of demoralised workers and boards of directors taking a long time to make decisions was cited as the reason for her removal by many SEO websites.

Because of the above problems, SEO companies don’t tend to optimise websites for Yahoo! as its ranking algorithms don’t even compete with Google, who have enjoyed a 90% market share in the UK. Can Yahoo! find its way back in to the hearts of UK internet users? What do you think Yahoo! can do to win back market share from Google? Comment below and tell us what you think!

To find out how SEO can help transform your online business, contact David Wiltshire on 0845 544 1765.

Yahoo Directory Submission – is it worth it?

Recently our partner site Juno Media submitted themselves into the Yahoo Directory.  Some SEO experts say it’s a vital step to get the top rankings, others say it’s a complete waste of $299 a year.  The directory submission boosted Juno’s Website Grader ranking to an incredible 99.9% score making it one of the top 1000 [...]

Labels: Demise, Yahoo

Posted by admin on September, 5th 2011

We’re pleased to announce that Union Square, known for their award winning Construction Management Software ‘Workspace’ are enlisting our SEO services to increase traffic levels and conversion rates on their website.

Union Square is the company behind the UK market leading, knowledge management platform, Workspace, which is used by more than 30,000 construction industry professionals from 15 different countries. The company has come a long way since it’s first order for Workspace in 2004, with average annual growth rates ranging between 30-35%. Union Square aim to provide their customers with a high quality service to go a long side the high quality software that they sell.

The company has worked with a variety of businesses and people within the construction industry, including the likes of Volker Fitzpatrick, Osbourne, and the Patton Group.

Union Square are extremely aware that not every construction business is the same, and with this in mind they do their very best to get to know their customers particular interests and their business’s objectives. The pre-sales support team also offer demonstrations of Workspace, which can be viewed online, or they’ll simply visit your work place and show you how it works. There is also the opportunity for potential clients to attend briefings at Union Square, where they will be able to gather a quick overview of how the software works, as well as listen to client case studies and experiences. On many occasions their existing clients take the time to invite people into their businesses to demonstrate just how Workspace has contributed to their success.

Training people sufficiently on how to use the software is one of Union Square’s priorities. They offer a range of different training options such as e-learning, public classroom training, private in-company training and ‘webinars’ which use the internet, screen sharing software and a text chat tool to make the learning process accessible to those who don’t want to travel.

Workspace combines elements including corporate databases, document management, email management, project accounting and project data management into one single project management tool. It offers an alternative to network sharing and public email folders by providing a centrally accessible place for documents and emails to be stored.

Union Square have won numerous awards for their achievements including the title of ‘Nottinghamshire Small Business of the Year‘ back in 2004 and were appointed as a Microsoft Gold Partner in 2008. They are keen supporters of the Care International Construction challenge and host annual charity events.

We are aiming to expand the traffic levels to the Union Square website through related keywords in Google and in turn bring in related clients who are looking for a construction CRM.

Magento SEO Web Design

Magento is a content management system that can handle a complex ecommerce store. It has a lot of advantages over out-dated oscommerce systems including increased flexibility for the user, simple product management by the retailer and customisable meta tag options for the search engines. Magento stores can be linked seamlessly with WordPress blogs which is [...]

Labels: Construction, Management, Software, Square, Union

September 7, 2011High Rankings Forum member "detzx" wondered if more pages of his site would be indexed if the page load time was faster.

See what other members thought and share your own comments here:

Does Faster Spidering = More Indexing?

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Labels: Advanced, Forum, Thread

September 7, 2011That's all for today!

Hope you enjoyed the long weekend (if you had one). We dropped Tim off at Brown University for his freshman year on Saturday. He sounds like he's settling in nicely and already managed to test out of a biology course that he studied all summer long! So far we don't notice the lack of his presence too much in the house. We'll notice more on Saturday and Sunday nights when he usually joined us out for dinner. He's not far, because Providence is less than an hour away, so if he's up for it in the future we might take a road trip now and then and get some decent food into him :)

Not much else going on. In fact, it's been fairly boring around here. Not sure if it's just the end-of-the-summer blues or me being bored with SEO and my typical routine, or some combo of both. I haven't traveled recently, so that could be part of it as well. I did manage to secure a speaking slot at Pubcon Honolulu in February, though! Definitely looking forward to that. I'm also scheduled to speak at InternetSummit in November, but I don't have many details on that yet. We're also looking for something interesting to do for Thanksgiving. Perhaps New Orleans?

Catch you in 2 weeks! ? Jill

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Labels: Wrapup

By Jill Whalen

A few years ago, I read a good article by Canadian SEO Melanie Nathan called "The Reciprocity Link Building Method" in which she outlined a technique she sometimes used to build up high-quality links for her clients' websites. The gist, as I understood it, was to first find a website that would be good for your client's site to link to. Then you'd click around to see if any of their current links were broken (went to dead pages or sites). If you found some, you'd use this information as an opening to start a dialogue with the site owner or webmaster, and eventually mention your client's site as a substitute for one of the broken links. I thought it was a very clever idea, a great way to make contacts in your client's industry, and a win-win for everyone involved.

More recently I saw another article on this topic by Nick LeRoy, a search marketer in the Minneapolis area. Nick talked about the same basic technique Melanie had mentioned, and added a real-life example email he had used. In his example email, he mentioned to the webmaster that he had a favorite site from which he liked to buy stuff for his son on birthdays and holidays. Nick again mentioned "his son" in a follow-up email, saying that he liked the products at this particular website because they made his son think.

All sounds good so far, right? Except that Nick doesn't have a son!

I made the following comment on the post:

"Nick, I didn't know you had a son (as per the emails requesting a link). If indeed you don't, are you suggesting that people create a trust relationship with these webmasters by lying to them?"

Lots of comments ensued, which I encourage you to read over at Nick's site. For me, what he did was certainly not ghastly, but the situation does bring up a ton of questions.

Was it necessary to lie? Isn't that sort of thing exactly what gives marketers in general (not just search marketers) a bad reputation? Couldn't he have done things exactly as he did without the lie?

I contend that he could have.

Nick claims that telling the webmaster that you're looking for links on behalf of a client has less of a success rate for securing the link. It would certainly be interesting to test that theory, and it may very well be true. But even if you get fewer links out of it, that doesn't justify lying in any aspect of business--or in life. (Are they really two different things?)

Lying in any form is deception.

Even if it's just a tiny white lie. Even if it gets you more links. Even if it gets you more business. Even if it makes you look better in the eyes of your boss or client.

Which brings up another point: As the boss of someone using this technique, how would you feel about it? If your company culture is one of honesty, then any form of deception within your business should be a no-no. I can tell you that if I found out that an employee of mine did this, I would be very disappointed in them and explain why we don't use deceptive practices. I would also wonder why I had to explain such a concept to an adult.

And what about the client?

Did they know that their search marketing company was using deception in order to obtain links? Is their company culture such that it's not a problem for them? Or did they not even know exactly how their links were being obtained? If you're being deceptive on your clients' behalf, one would hope that you get their permission and written sign-off so it doesn't come back to haunt you at some point.

Personally, if I hired a company to perform a service for me and they did it in a way that involved any form of lying, I would wonder what else they were doing that was deceptive. Were they overcharging me? Did they even have the skills they claimed to have?

Not to mention the unsuspecting webmaster on the other side who gave out the link.

How would they feel later to find out they were duped? Would they have a bad taste in their mouth for not only the marketing company, but for the company they were linking to? What if they felt so duped that they decided to go public on social media with the information? How would the client like the technique if they ended up with a reputation management nightmare?

Surely I'm being dramatic here, because we're only talking about a little white lie. But does the size or color of the lie make it any less deceptive?

And we are talking specifically about link building here. There's a reason that I dislike it and don't do it. As far as I'm concerned, link building in and of itself borders on being a deceptive practice because it's usually done to secure a fake "vote" for a website. It's an industry that shouldn't exist, and wouldn't exist if Google didn't place so much weight on links. If it weren't for that aspect of Google's algorithm, we'd have website owners giving and getting links for the right reasons, with a lot less deception (and payment) going on behind the scenes.

We can debate ethics forever and never come to a consensus because they are often seen as situational. What might be unethical in one situation might not seem so unethical in another situation. Certainly, life-or-death situations are not the same as marketing ones. If a lie is going to somehow save someone's life, then by all means, please lie your head off!

But marketing isn't a life-or-death situation.

Lying and deceiving to seek someone's favor is generally agreed upon by most cultures as being wrong.

This is not a "black hat vs. white hat" issue.

It has nothing to do with hats. When it comes to search marketing, I don't care what techniques you use or what methods you use to gain more targeted search engine visitors. I don't believe that there are techniques that are more or less ethical than others. I don't care what Google puts in their Webmaster Guidelines, because there's no reason to need to know. If you fundamentally understand that all Google cares about is that your website isn't being deceptive in some manner, then you can't run afoul of them. They have to know that they can trust the information contained on your site and the information that you provide to Google. Nothing more, nothing less.

So many ethical conundrums come down to one simple question:

Is it deceptive or not?

I worry about search marketers who believe that deception is a necessary part of their job if they are going to get results. It's not only incorrect, but a sad commentary on our industry and perhaps our world.

Jill

Labels: Deceptive, Marketers, Marketing, Necessary, Search

By Jill Whalen

This week I've changed the name of this newsletter feature from the "Twitter Question of the Week" to the "High Rankings Question of the Week."  I decided that it was too limiting to only ask my Twitter followers because I also have friends on Facebook and now Google+. Moving forward, you'll have the opportunity to respond on any of those social networks. Keep in mind that while you can write more than 140 characters on Facebook and G+, I'd appreciate it if you could continue to keep your answers succinct, and I'll be editing them as necessary!

To go along with today's rant on deceptive marketing, I asked my social media followers:

++Are dishonesty, stretching the truth, or white lies necessary to be a good marketer?++

Here's how they replied at Twitter:

tcpeter: No. You position your product based on its strengths and weaknesses. But long-term value with customer depends on honesty and transparency.

joshgister: No ? unless you are trying to sell something nobody needs ? also known as a con.

Casieg: I'd like to think not, but there is the question that, if you omit things, does that count as lying? I don't know.

BrianHarnish: I don't think so. I believe that delivering the right message to the right audience is key. No deception or lies.

analyticscanvas: Honesty and transparency are what a good marketer needs. Anything else is (a) wrong and (b) will get detected in an instant!

ann_donnelly: Dishonesty, even white lies, are not the way to be a good marketer; lost credibility and trust = lost referrals and relationships.

forefront1: Never ? unless your product is weak or flat-out sucks.

joehall: There is a very fine line, and it's also blurry and sometimes hard to see...but also everything is relevant given the right context.

chris_m_mason: IMO good marketing and PR are based on building trust. Dishonesty ruins trust. Lies will catch you out in the long term.

GrpTwentySeven: Even when the truth hurts, it's better to be open, direct and honest. You will gain from it in the long run.

JTPotts: No way! Marketing is all about identifying real needs and showing good solutions. Anything else is ineffective.

Here's how they replied at Facebook:

Derrick Wheeler: They are required to be a good person. There is a time and place for all three ? I prefer stretching the truth, though. Of all three choices, stretching the truth is the most honest, right? So that is my preference. Plain ol' truthfulness can work too!

Jon Rognerud: Dishonesty, no. Stretching (depending) may be fine to get attention, but you'd better deliver on that promise. As Seth Godin says: "All marketers are liars"... ;-)

Eric Lander: None of them are necessary. All of them are helpful for certain clientele, however.

Larry Mersman: Dishonesty will kill your business quickly. It will lump you into the same category as the old "used car salesman." In this business, news spreads quickly. Stretching the truth seems to be the less offensive of the three, as it is still somewhat based on truth. I'd rather be honest with the customer. They do appreciate it.

Karon Price Thackston: I don't think any of the 3 are necessary.

David Matson: It's only necessary if you are marketing a truly crappy product.

Steven Musumeche: No, just exaggeration. :)

Rob Watts: No, but it IS all about how you tell the story. Paint it wrong or overdo it and it'll look like crap. A good marketer, like a good artist, will know exactly what it is they're trying to communicate and will use their tools and skills to satisfy the recipient.

Woodie Gay: No! Little white lies will lead to bigger lies. Where does it end. They will always come back to bite you. Always tell the truth even if it loses you a sale. Your conscience will tell you that you were right.

Scot Smith: No. Being anything but honest is never acceptable and will always bite you in the rear later on. Even if it doesn't catch up with you, will you be satisfied to have met your campaign goals by being unethical? It's more important to only accept contracts for marketing products and brands that you can fully buy into yourself; once you reach that level you'll undoubtedly reach success in your marketing efforts.

Here's how they replied at Google+:

Tim Laughlin: No, getting caught in those practices is quite often a deal breaker.

Gary Stock: No, they are not necessary; they are regrettable. If political campaigns qualify as "marketing," then sadly, all three are becoming more common ? especially intentional dishonesty. Given many popular claims contrary to economic principles, scientific realities, and even historical facts, such deceptiveness is mounting by the day.

Mike Wilton: To be a good marketer, no. To be a successful salesman, sometimes, but even in those instances you'd better make damn sure that you can make up for it in the end. The biggest thing to consider if you have to be dishonest is the risk. If you get caught, will the person impacted understand why and accept it, or will it create a level of distrust for your or your message?

Dianna Huff: Absolutely not. I hate it when people say, "It's marketing!" as if all advertising / marketing is not honest / truthful.

Jill's comment: Thanks for the very thoughtful replies! While it certainly sounds like you're all wonderful non-deceptive marketers, I do wonder if those who disagree were (rightfully) keeping silent. If you don't quite agree, but would rather not leave your name, feel free to share your comments anonymously below.

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Labels: Question, Rankings

Posted by admin on September, 5th 2011

Lots of websites have different “copied” versions of their homepage which can hinder your SEO efforts.  Whether it is part of your internet marketing strategy or a mistake made within your website’s URL structure, multiple homepage URLs can water down your SEO campaign and have other potentially harmful effects.

Examples of this are:

- www.domain.com/

- www.domain.com/index.html

- www.domain.com/ref=XYZ123

- www.domain.com/visit?n=743835

All of these pages could be exactly the same homepage with the same content, yet but on separate URLS.

Then there are WWW. canonicalisation issues can also occur if you don’t have a 301 redirect in place. e.g.

- domain.com/

- domain.com/index.html

- domain.com/ref=XYZ123

- domain.com/visit?n=743835

The two examples above show that you could theoretically have 8 different versions of your homepage!

When people decide to link towards your website they may simply copy and paste the URL in the address bar.  If this is one of the ‘copies’ of the homepage and not the main version then that link won’t count towards your SEO; remember Google ranks web-pages and NOT web-sites.  Google could index the ‘wrong’ version of your homepage which could harm your sales statistics, but even worse, an affiliate could rank higher for your main brand keywords – taking commission for sales that should have been yours!

To get around this problem, there is a simple tag your web developer can add to your website’s code to instruct Google and other search engines to ignore any duplicate homepages you may have created, accidentally or otherwise.

As you can see, this is an incredibly simple bit of code you can add to your website. This bit of code tells search engines that the original page is located at the web address stated in the canonical tag and to ignore any copy it might find on slightly different URLs.

The canonical tag allows you to improve your email marketing campaigns as it allows you to create lots of different pages that you can use to target different groups of customers with content personalised to the customer’s prior purchasing habits.  Duplicate content isn’t an issue with Canonical tags and a NoIndex/NoFollow tag also on the page.

Creating almost duplicate pages can also be easily done by ordering products on your website by price, name or customer rating.  The same products will get re-ordered in different positions but effectively you will have an identical page than before.  Luckily the major search engines have systems to recognise this and generally do a good job in picking the original category page on an ecommerce site.

Forgetting to add canonical tags to your website can be a very costly mistake for your SEO but can be identified and fixed easily. Speak to your web developer to ensure that canonical tags are all in place and that they are all checked to avoid any SEO goofs.

To find out how a targeted SEO campaign can help improve your online sales, contact David Wiltshire or Jonathan Ellins on 0845 544 1765.

SEO Goofs

Every now and then we see SEO mistakes from catastrophic errors to minor mishaps; here’s a list of goofs to look out for on your own site… Robots.txt The robots.txt file tells search engines which page not to bother crawling on your website (not that all of them will listen to it).  Less widely used [...]

How to upgrade an ecommerce website with little impact on SEO

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Google’s Sandbox for Major Site URL Changes

Changing a website’s entire URL structure can be both a blessing and a curse, if done incorrectly you can permanently damage a proportion of your overall SEO. You may change the URL structure of your website to improve aspects such as on-site SEO and/or site usability such as product filtering.  This can change nearly all [...]

Check your broken links for search spiders

Every search engine (apart from search directories) uses programs called “spiders” to crawl whole websites and grab all the relevant data they can from each page. The spider will enter the homepage of a website and then follow every link it comes across in the code after saving the content.  It will then crawl each [...]

Getting a new site indexed by Google Quickly

When you have created a new website and uploaded the files it doesn’t instantly appear in Google’s search results how-ever you try and search for it. Google may have not noticed the new website or more likely they have “sandboxed” it which is where they put it within a holding area and wait to release [...]

Labels: Canonical, Common, Problems

August 24, 2011By Karon Thackston ? 2011, All Rights Reserved

What's the first thing you think of when writing with keywords? Probably one of the first is that keywords and phrases are descriptive of the products and/or services you're writing about. But what happens in those circumstances where you can't (or don't really want to) use your chosen keyphrases descriptively?

Is Your Product or Service Really Cheap?

One of the primary causes of this dilemma is the word "cheap." There's a big difference between somebody typing "cheap travel insurance" into a search engine query field and you calling your own insurance cheap. Nobody really wants "cheap" insurance. That brings up images of companies that go out of business, don't return calls, fight you on paying claims, etc.

What customers want is "inexpensive" or "affordable" insurance. Problem is, in their haste, they type in the first thing that comes to mind. Average Joe doesn't understand that search engines are (in part) matching the words in their query to words on the web pages. "Cheap travel insurance" may be the keyphrase you want and need to target, but you certainly don't want to label your own product "cheap." What can you do?

Use that search term with the opposite meaning.

Perhaps your copy could read something like this:

Affordable? Budget-friendly? Absolutely! But this is certainly not cheap travel insurance. Coverage is underwritten by one of the most trusted and well-respected companies. With this policy, you'll find benefits comparable to more expensive coverage, but with rates at or below what the cheap travel insurance companies charge.

See the difference? Instead of writing, "We sell cheap travel insurance," and degrading your product in the eyes of your customer, you actually use the search term to elevate your product to a higher level of quality.

Legalities That Get in the Way

Another issue with many keyphrases is that they violate government regulations if used to describe a product. You find this often with health supplements. The FDA (and other such agencies around the world) has a long list of what manufacturers can and cannot say with regard to their products. This is mainly an effort to protect the consumer against snake-oil salesmen who make fraudulent claims.

For instance, you cannot call your supplement a cure. In many countries you can't even call your product a remedy. And so you face the issue with those ever-popular search terms that include "remedy" and other such words.

One of my favorite techniques is to ask questions that incorporate these keywords.

You can't legally say, "Here's a new heartburn remedy we've just released." But you can ask questions like:

Tired of that same old heartburn remedy that doesn't work? Wish someone would create something new?

Looking for a heartburn remedy that doesn't require a prescription?

Is your heartburn remedy falling short?

You're not saying your product is a heartburn remedy; you're just asking questions about what the customer might want or need. [Jill's caveat: Double-check with your own attorney to be sure you're not falling afoul of any of your own state or country laws.]

When you're writing with keywords, you really have to think outside the box. We typically have tunnel vision when we write SEO copy, inserting the keywords the same way over and over. But there are so many different methods (like the two listed above) for using search terms when you write.

If you diversify your SEO writing skills, you'll find your copy becomes more natural-sounding and is able to communicate your message better. Why stick to just one ordinary way to write with keywords when there are so many to choose from?

Karon Thackston is author of Writing With Keywords, which gives you 11 clever ways to use keywords in your SEO copy. Stop struggling to make keywords fit. Do it the easy way with these 11 proven techniques for writing naturally with keywords.

If you learned from this article, be sure to sign up for the High Rankings Advisor SEO Newsletter so you can be the first to receive similar articles in the future!

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Labels: Keywords, Optimize

August 24, 2011Forum member "Pam" asks other High Rankings Forum members whether using a freely hosted blogging service such as Blogger.com is better, worse or equal to hosting the blog on your own domain.

See how others responded and share your own comments here:

++Blogger/Blogspot vs. Own Domain++

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Labels: Advanced, Forum, Thread

Posted by admin on August, 31st 2011

If you use Google a lot for searching the internet, you may have noticed some changes in recent weeks.

When you search for a brand e.g. “Graham and Green”, you will see that the majority of the first page of Google has changed. This is because Google have recently made some changes to how they display search results for large or popular websites by adding sitelinks.

So what exactly are Google sitelinks and how do they work? In the simplest of terms, Google crawls your website and finds shortcuts to the pages that it thinks users will find the most useful and displays these links under your home page when users search for your brand. This helps users find the content they are looking for much quicker.

As the changes seem to currently only appear for company or brand names, this update means it is more important than ever to rank number one for your brand name.

“I haven’t got sitelinks yet, how do I get them?”

At the moment, Google has said that sitelinks are automated and so webmasters will need to build well-structured sites and be patient if their website doesn’t have sitelinks yet – Google has indicated that they may incorporate webmaster input in the future.

There are two bits of good news for websites that are lucky enough to have sitelinks listed under their names in Google already.

1. You can ‘demote’ any sitelink that you are unhappy with. Simply go to your webmaster tools homepage and under ‘Site Configuration’, click ‘Sitelinks’. Enter the URL you don’t want to appear in the search box and go from there. However, changes may take a little time to take effect.

2. It will be harder for competitors to use Google to muscle in on your brand name in search. Competitors can bid on your brand name in Adwords but if your homepage and 12 site links are appearing, it is less likely that competitors will be able to divert visitors away from your website.

In the mean time, you can make sure that your website is easy for Google spiders to crawl with clean code, clean URLs and internal links within your website that are

To discuss your website and how an SEO strategy implemented by Real Web SEO can help improve your online sales, contact us now on 0845 544 1765

How to get Google Sitelinks

The Holy Grail of SEO is where your site is powerful enough that “Google Sitelinks” appear in the search results for your site’s listing. Recently our highly talented SEO team managed to get their 5th Site links appearance for one of our new clients University of Whatever: University of Whatever (UOW) sell fantastic Uni-style clothing [...]

Real Web SEO – Nottingham Google Sitelinks

Here at Real Web SEO we were happy to notice Google sitelinks towards our main local keyword this week which is “SEO Nottingham”. This signifies that RealWebSEO.com has stepped up a mark to become an ‘Authority site‘ for the local keyword in Google’s algorithm! Other exciting news is for our relatively new PR Company (JPR [...]

SEO Myth – “Google Favours W3C Validiated Web Pages”

Does Google favour web pages with perfect HTML code or will it happily accept one with coding (syntax) or validation errors? Google’s spokesperson Matt Cutts (shown in this video on this topic) has said for many years that demoting webpages which don’t validate to the W3C standard is not something Google will ever consider. Some [...]

Getting a new site indexed by Google Quickly

When you have created a new website and uploaded the files it doesn’t instantly appear in Google’s search results how-ever you try and search for it. Google may have not noticed the new website or more likely they have “sandboxed” it which is where they put it within a holding area and wait to release [...]

Google PageRank (PR) Update!

At last, Google have updated their PageRank score on web-pages across the whole of the internet! The last Google Toolbar PageRank update was way back on the 2nd of April 2010 and it’s been a huge wait this time around with 2009 having 5 updates and 2010 having only one. You can quickly tell the [...]

Labels: Google, Sitelinks, Whats

This week I asked my Twitter followers:

++What's your 1 tip for naturally working keywords into content?++

Here's how they responded:

JulieJoyce: First say it out loud as you would if you were telling it to someone. Then write it.

NewfangledMark: Writing content which is based on your expertise and solutions that answers your prospects' problems.

Davidcarrillo: Take draft & look for related words you can sub with keywords; sentences you can restructure to add singular & plural variations.

SeoSteven: Create content that fits your keywords, don't try to fit your keywords into your content.

dan_shure: Have a really clear focus on the purpose of the site/page. Keywords flow once the idea is figured out: 90% prep & 10% writing.

therichbrooks: Just KEYWORDS make KEYWORDS sure KEYWORDS you KEYWORDS don't KEYWORDS overuse KEYWORDS them. P.S. KEYWORDS.

BeSearchable: The trick to including keywords into content naturally is to know your primary keyword, yet forget it as you write.

ShaMenz: From original KW phrase, develop variations ? singular, plural, etc. Place one variation at beginning of each paragraph & write copy naturally around them.

MichaelTheHayes: No silver bullet, just write natural quality content, make it about your target keywords. Post panda, forcing keywords is a no-no.

forestsoftware: I use the old public speaking idea - tell 'em what you are going to say, say it and tell 'em what you have just said.

oleary: I start with 1 main keyword and a few long tail variations and write content in sections covering each keyword phrase.

Tony_DWM: Relax, let is flow and don't stress. Read it aloud - does it make sense? Rinse and repeat ;-)

Netrafic: We tell clients to just write specifically about the subject on the page and the keywords will be there! Then we tweak :-)

And a summarized version of a Facebook friend's response:

Ken Jones: Take the annoyingly zen approach and forget your keywords and just write about your keywords.

Jill's Comment: I'm surprised nobody mentioned my favorite (and I think easiest) way to get keywords into your content--write more descriptively instead of in generalities.

Want to participate in the Twitter Question of the Week?
Follow @jillwhalen on Twitter

Labels: Question, Twitter

August 24, 2011That's all for today!

On the home front, our son Tim has less than two weeks until he heads off to his first semester at Brown University. Needless to say, he's pretty excited. (Can't imagine why he'd be so anxious to get out of our crazy house :) And our oldest daughter, Corie, just got a new job in Houston (where she's been living for the past year), which she is also excited about. She is now the Political Director at a new organization called "Alliance For Self-Governance." Middle child Jamie remains home as a cellar-dweller, just to be sure we don't show any signs of Empty Nest Syndrome ;)

Catch you in 2 weeks! ? Jill

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Labels: Wrapup

August 10, 2011This week I asked my Twitter followers:

++What sorts of things do you measure as conversions on your sites?++

Here's how they answered:

Nilaye10: Web call volume, click to chat, coupon downloads, profile creation, express ordering and sales.

torka: What I count as a conversion depends on the purpose of the site. :) On one site: sales. On another: info requests.

bradleyhunt: Product sales, lead gen subs, contact form subs, newsletter and email opt-ins, location/direction page visits, faq visits.

SEOjunkie: Measure conversions of: Newsletter signups, document downloads, enquiry forms & quote requests!

Want to participate in the Twitter Question of the Week?
Follow @jillwhalen on Twitter

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Labels: Question, Twitter