Blogger, WordPress, Sub-Domain, Sub-Directory, New Domain - Oh My!!

Posted by: Date: October 17, 2008

When it comes to setting up your Blog, there are many options and it’s enough to drive you crazy.

Here is some information for each option…

Blogger Versus WordPress

WordPress offers a lot more customization and has more marketing and SEO power.
Some people think since Google owns Blogger it gives you a boost - that is not true.
Blogger has more rules you must follow and it could potentially limit a marketing technique or tactic.

My experience and personal opinion is that any Blog is better than no Blog but if you want to get the most out of your Blog - go WordPress.

There are other Blog platforms as well, but I consider the two main contenders to be WordPress and Blogger so that is all I have commented on.

Once you’ve decided on your Blog platform, you then have to decide on your Blog structure.

There has been a lot of debate about a Sub-Domain versus a Sub-Directory versus setting up a new domain.

A sub-domain would be: blog . yoursite . com
A sub-directory would be: yoursite . com/blog
A whole new domain would be: newdomain .com

If you go with a whole new domain, then you have no “trust” and history built up and it may take longer for the Blog to get picked up.

It used to be that a sub-domain was treated as its own separate site with a root directory so you got the benefit of link juice and you potentially got more listings in the SERPs (search engine results pages). Since December 2007, Google states this is no longer the case. So you aren’t really getting any extra link juice from this structure.

Matt Cutts, the public face of Google had this to say about sub-domains versus sub-directory (as related to the December 2007 change):

“Note that this is a pretty subtle change, and it doesn’t affect a majority of our queries. In fact, this change has been live for a couple weeks or so now and no one noticed. The only reason I talked about the subject at PubCon at all was because someone asked for my advice on subdomains vs. subdirectories.”

He then goes on to say: “My personal preference on subdomains vs. subdirectories is that I usually prefer the convenience of subdirectories for most of my content.

A subdomain can be useful to separate out content that is completely different. Google uses subdomains for distinct products such news .google. com or maps . google . com, for example.

If you’re a newer webmaster or SEO, I’d recommend using subdirectories until you start to feel pretty confident with the architecture of your site. At that point, you’ll be better equipped to make the right decision for your own site.”

Although his feedback wasn’t directly related to setting up Blogs, it still applies. So, based on that feedback, and my own personal success and experience I too vote for a sub-directory.

Don’t forget, you may as well make it as search engine friendly as possible and rather than just call the sub-directory Blog (ex: yoursite . com/Blog) you could use a keyword or short keyword phrase (ex: yoursite . com/keyword-Blog or yoursite . com/keyword-phrase-Blog)

So in summary - any Blog is better than no Blog, but to get the most power from your Blog, go with a WordPress Blog in a sub-directory named with a keyword on your own server. Make sure you learn about all the necessary plugins and configure them properly to get the most out of your Blog. Hey - that sounds like a great article topic. Stay tuned!

Jennifer Horowitz is the Director of Marketing for EcomBuffet.com. Since 1998 Jennifer’s expertise in marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has helped clients increase revenue. Jennifer has written a downloadable book on SEO and has been published in many SEO and marketing publications. Jennifer is the editor of the popular Spotlight on Success: SEO and Marketing newsletter. Follow Jennifer and stay current on SEO, marketing, social media and more. http://twitter.com/EcomBuffet

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Blogger, WordPress, Sub-Domain, Sub-Directory, New Domain - Oh My!!

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Blogger, WordPress, Sub-Domain, Sub-Directory, New Domain - Oh My!!

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Site Architecture - SBM Unleashed

Posted by: Date: September 22, 2008

by Diane Aull

Site Architecture

Presented by Stoney deGeyter

Why should we care about site architecture?

Good Site Architecture

Helps SEs find important pages
Helps users find them
Helps SEs determine page relevance
Helps users & SEs have to think less

Bad Site Architecture

Roadblocks SE spiders
Decreases rankings
Confuses visitors
Reduces sales

You want your site to be a “no thinking zone” where neither SEs nor human visitors have to try to figure out what to do next.

Site Architecture: foundation for good SEO

Elements of Site Architecture

Domain and URL structure
Link & navigation structure
Document/page structure

Duplicate content issues

Duplicate content can plague you like a virus (or two). When two pages are identical, one gets booted from index. When SE spiders find too many duplicate pages, they may not spider your entire site. They assume the whole site is made up of duplicates, even when unspidered pages may be unique.

Link Structure

How are you linking to pages within your site navigation (with WWW or without)? You want to be consistent, no matter which way you link.

Absolute vs. relative links

Absolute = full URL, always the same no matter where the link is
Relative = based on location where the link is

Positives and negatives in both. Stoney’s preference: go with absolute. You know exactly where SEs and visitors are going to go, no room for misinterpretation.

When linking on secure pages, always use absolute to make sure you stay in secure when you need to, and leave secure when you need to. (i.e. links should include either HTTPS or HTTP to make sure visitors go where you want them to). Otherwise, can lead to duplicate content issues if secure pages get indexed when you want non-secure version indexed (or vice versa).

Linking to home page: don’t link to “index.html” — link to site.com alone without “index.html” designation. At first, SEs will think site.com and site.com/index.html are two pages (duplicate content). Eventually SEs will figure it out, but in the meantime, you’re splitting your link pop.

Search friendly links

Keywords in URLs play a very minor role. But if you can get them in, do so. Value in having “SE friendly links” with keywords. Also helps humans figure out where the link is going, so they can decide if they want to go there or not.

Bad links: links written by javascript won’t be followed by SEs, so they’re not spiderable. Avoid them unless you’re trying to block the spiders for some reason.

So-so links: SEs may or may not be able to spider them. Don’t take a chance, don’t make SEs have to think. Don’t leave anything to chance - so fix these when you can.

Good linking practices:

Avoid Flash and Javascript whenever possible
Keep links in control (less than 100 per page)
Every relevant page needs at least one incoming link (no orphan pages)

If you have pages with similar content (for example: product pages where same page is in two categories with two different URLs) and you link to both pages, you’re splitting the link flow between those two pages, decreasing the value of both pages.

Try to set it up so each piece of unique content is available through one unique URL only, so all links can point to that one page.

Site navigation: purpose is to get people to where they want to go. Header image should be linked to home page. Top and side navigation is common. Make sure your main navigation links to all the main category areas on your site. This indicates to the SEs what is the “top layer” of your site.

Usually not a good idea to link to every page from your home page, unless your site is under 20-30 pages max. That’s what the site map is for. Link to important pages, categorize to help people quickly and easily figure out where to go.

Footer navigation: good place for SEO related links, admin/contact/company related pages. Try to avoid the big block of link text at the bottom of the page. Looks ugly and not usable.

Goals of good site navigation: intuitive and non-complex.

Breadcrumb navigation: helps people know where they are and helps them navigate back to previous sections without having to figure out where those sections are in the overall “big” navigation. A lot of people don’t actually use the breadcrumb navigation, but they’re good for visual cues.

Link anchor text

“Click here” and “read more” are terrible link anchor text. Make anchor text scannable and informative about where the link is going to go. Include keywords.

Links should accurately reflect the information on the destination page. Nothing wrong with having long hyperlinked sentences (just don’t go overboard).

If you’re using two links to the same place, make the first link descriptive anchor text. May be OK if second link is “click here” because it appears SEs may be paying more attention to first link anchor text.

Cross link related products, either by straight HTML or by database links in your back end. Helps both users and SEs categorize the page and find related content.

Product categorization can create duplicate content issues by making same products available through two different URLs when they’re included in two categories. Solution: have a “master” category for each product. No matter how customers get to the product, the final product description page must be fed from master category/product URL.

When you have multiple products on the same page, allow some kind of filtering so customers can narrow down the choices. Eliminates long string of “next” pages that might not be so good for users or SEs.

Question: what is the effect on the SEs of changing your site navigation?

Answer: when you change navigation, you will see some temporary dropoff. You have to decide if the long term payoff is worth the short term pain. Putting keywords in URLs is not a good enough reason. Fixing duplicate content issues might be.

Keep shopping cart pages hidden from SEs. No reason for them to index these pages. Keep them out, whatever you’ve got to do. You don’t want search engines adding products to a shopping cart.

SEs can’t index links that are blocked by a form. In some rare instances, they’re trying to fill out forms with some larger sites, but why take the chance? Make sure your product/content pages are accessible without going through a form.

Sitemap: unless you’re a very small site and every page links to every other page. Good place for sitemap link is in the footer. You may need master sitemap and sub-maps if your site has thousands and thousands of pages. Make it useful for humans as well as SEs. Don’t rely on sitemap to get visitors to those pages, but it can be helpful.

Exclusion: robots.txt can be used to exclude SEs from certain pages. Be careful — can accidentally exclude spiders from your entire site. You can use this to exclude the policy pages, for instance. There are different strategies, might want to read up on this further.

Nofollow attribute: originally used to indicate a link to a site you weren’t willing to vouch for. Now, google says nofollow will avoid passing “link juice.” Stoney recommends using nofollow on “click here” links to help direct SEs to more valuable anchor text links. Preferable to use your site architecture itself to “sculpt” PageRank, but can still use nofollow on links to pages like contact and policy pages.

Noindex/Nofollow META tag: prevents indiviudal pages from being indexed and/or links from being followed.

On a monthly basis, run a broken link check. Broken links happen all the time, and it’s a good thing to check. You don’t want one simple change on your site to prevent SEs from finding pages. He recommends Xenu Link Sleuth (free download) to check links.

If you change a URL or delete an old page, be sure to redirect to newer, more relevant page. 301 permanent redirect is usually the best/safest way to go, to make sure you pass along traffic and link juice. Leave the 301 there for as long as you can. No reason to get rid of them, because they’ll catch traffic from those old bookmarks and links.

Site hierarchy: lay out your site in a way that makes sense to SEs and to people. Stony recommends structure that’s “amazingly similar to directory structure” where there’s a home page, leading to main topic pages, each of which leads to subtopic pages, each of which leads to more detailed pages, etc. You want the organization to make sense, with each unique section of the site to be pretty much self contained so pages that are relevant to a specific topic, they link only to that topic.

(It is OK to cross link between sections when the pages are related.)

Title tags: should be unique for each page. Best to build this in from the get-go without having to go back and “fix” the database. OK to have common elements in different title tags (company name/brand, for instance) but each page should have some unique element. Useful for branding to have business name or brand in all titles.

Put business name at the front of the title if it makes sense (brand building or already well known brand), or at the end if that’s where it works best, or leave it out entirely if the brand isn’t relevant or significant.

Description META tag: not every page needs a META description. Use for section-level pages. Don’t need it for article pages targeting long-tail terms because you want SEs to find the relevant snippet from the text on the page. Use when you’re targeting a few higher-competition phrases for the page to help control the snippet that shows up.

Keyword META tag: not even worth discussing.

Content: create unique for each pages. Don’t rely on default product descriptions. (You don’t want to be the same as the manufacturer and your competitors.)

Use textual interlinking to connect related content on your site whenever possible. Helps reinforce relevance and makes for better user experience.

On-page content:

Clearly written
Accurate
Research and use keywords
Use image alt attributes

If you have video or audio content, transcribe it. Good for users who can’t see video/hear audio, helps SEs index the content. Produces a lot of good content the SEs otherwise wouldn’t find. Audience member: teach Dragon Naturally Speaking the words in your audio and it will transcribe for you, then all you need to do is proofread.

Hx Heirarchy:

Lay out like an outline you used to set up for term papers when you were in school.
One H1 at the top for the overall subject of the page
Multiple H2s, one for each main topic
Multiple H3s, one for each subtopic, grouped under appropriate main topic
And so forth…
Don’t make every heading an H1. Don’t put H1 down below H2.

Eliminate code bloat:

Excessive tables — tables are intended for tabular data, not formatting. If you use them for formatting, simpify your table structure as much as possible, and keep in mind how they’re read by the SEs: they read cell-by-cell, starting at upper left corner, row by row.
On-page Javascript and CSS: eliminating makes pages load faster
HTML formatting (like font tags)

General hints

Use ALT attributes for images, especially those that are linked.

Use valid HTML whenever possible. Will not improve rankings, but may help SE spiders get through your page successfully.

Sight-impaired accessibility is also important, and becoming more important over time. Keep in mind needs of screen readers, provide adjustable fonts.

View your website in a text-only browser to make sure it can be read properly to make sure information that needs to be found can be found.

View your site with CSS turned off to make sure it’s usable for CSS-less browsers.

Check your site on a mobile browser. More and more people are using their cellphones for web access.

Create printer friendly pages (you can use CSS for this rather than creating whole new pages). Test what your printer friendly pages look like.

Make sure you don’t require cookies for standard browsing. People get nasty-looking warnings if they have cookies turned off (and SE spiders don’t accept cookies).

Site architecture should be a priority in your SEM campaign. Doesn’t do any good to have great pages with great content if the SE spiders can’t get to it and index it. A search friendly structure will help achieve stronger SEO results: improved spidering/indexing, better customer usability.

Questions:

How long should META description be?

Shouldn’t be longer than content on the page. Keep it simple. Cover what you want people to see about the content on the page (snippet that shows in the SEs)

Is it a problem to have hyphens in domain names?

Avoid hyphens. It’s hard to tell people how to get to your site when you have to “read” hyphens out loud.

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Site Architecture - SBM Unleashed

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Website Analysis: SEO Starts with a Thorough Analysis

Posted by: Date: August 04, 2008

SEO starts with a thorough analysis of the website to conclude which aspects of your site need optimization. Why let coding errors or poor site architecture impact rankings for the worse? With search engine algorithms changing daily, there are no guarantees that the immunity you have today (from a favorable pat on the back) will pass value tomorrow.

A typical website analysis SEO sweep would look for things like:

Link Optimization - Links leaving each page (even if pointed at other pages in the site) should all have something link worthy to communicate. A link that says “click here” is a candidate for a makeover to something more consistent with the topical theme of the site, such as click here for more information about “main keyword and qualifier” as the link instead. 50% of your link profile is up the the webmaster, make good use of internal links. (more…)

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Website Analysis: SEO Starts with a Thorough Analysis

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Jennifer Laycock on Viral Marketing & Link Baiting - August 6 12 Noon EST

Posted by: Date: August 02, 2008

Learn the latest Viral Marketing and Link Baiting Strategies right from your desk; that’s right you do not even have to leave your office!

http://www.marketmotive.com/online-workshops.php?expand=text5

This live two-hour interactive workshop is specifically designed for marketers and business owners looking to learn practical methods to harness the power of viral marketing and build buzz around their businesses online. Link baiting will be covered including case studies on unique and creative content development that can help fortify your campaigns.