SEO Lessons

In the 1990s, one of the performance tricks to speed up a web site was to load all images on the front page but to shrink their size and hide them somewhere near the bottom. The home page would take quite some time to load but after that, once images were cached, the site seemed to perform at blistering speed. In the days of 14,400 modems when only the super nerdy geeks had access to a T1, speed of performance was important.

This seems terribly primitive today but that was in the day. Much of the content we use today was simply impossible in 1994. YouTube wasn’t so much invented in the 21st century – it became possible in the 21st century. Bandwidth used to be actually rationed in order to prevent it being swallowed up by what was seen as excessive multimedia usage.

So when I see that Google now officially scores web page speed (in the great Weblinx as well as many other places) it is no surprise – indeed it is a surprise to see it has taken so long. The search engines add value by filtering and prioritizing according to relevance. And user experience is rlevant to just about everybody. If there are two equally relevant pages for my search, I am pleased that Google now prioritizes the one that will load more quickly.

But is this news to the Web Designers? Should this be something we attend to urgently?

Answer: No!

Putting it simply, if you had to be told that user experience was important, you have some more fundamental things to learn. Whatever your website aims to achieve it will achieve it better if your users don’t have to wait for it. This is more fundamental than ranking – it is the most basic of very basic usability.

The SEO Lesson

There are somethings that will make an incremental change to your ranking and, as we all know, incremental changes to ranking can make a huge difference. But don’t be blinded to the obvious. Good content, good layout and good performance are absolutely critical.

Enhancing your site for speed to get a better ranking is like filling your gas tank and calling it fine tuning.

Duh!

SEO isn’t rocket science – but neither is playing the piano.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that successful SEO is easy. It isn’t. It takes commitment and hard work. This is probably the single biggest mistake that people make – believing that it is easy. But most people that do fall away and those of us that are left know it’s not easy. So what – apart from thinking it’s easy – are the most common SEO mistakes that we make and how can we avoid them?

These are some of the top issues that are most often overlooked. We all make mistakes but if we learn from them they’re not mistakes, they’re lessons.

1. SEO Optimized Domain Name

Just because Google, Apple and WalMart have quirky brand names – it doesn’t mean that your idea for a funky brand will be any use. Incorporating keywords into your domain name is a highly valuable  SEO technique. It’s much easier to rank highly with pizzadelivery.com than it is PapaPizza.com. Papa Pizza might sound like a great name for a Pizza business but it won’t help to get you orders online.

And get your domain suffix right. .com is best if you have a global market, but if your focus on Canada for example, .ca will outrank .com. And don’t be too dismissive of other suffixes either. pizzadeliver.biz is likely to outrank new-pizza-delivery-online.net

Consider the domain name carefully balancing the pros and cons of the keyword you are target, the use of hyphens and the suffix.

2. Content Quality

Sites copied from others, bought content, poorly presented content and non expert content are irrelevant to the reader and the search engines know this. You risk losing rank severely if you adopt these approaches to producing content. There is no substitute for good quality content and no short cuts. It’s best to stick to a niche that you have some expertise in or enthusiasm for. Read SEO Lesson4: Face Up to it. Some People Just Don’t Like You and SEO Lesson 3: Never Mind the Quality – Feel the Width

3. Quality of Backlinks

Backlinks are important but rather than concentrating time and effort on posting in every forum and commenting on as many blog posts as you can find, spend some time being selective and make sure you get links from quality, highly ranked sites. Post in very poor quality sights and you’ll be seen as spammy.

4. Meta Description

You may have heard that the meta tags on your site will have little or no effect on your ranking. You might want to put some keywords there anyway just in case because it can’t do any harm – Right?

Wrong. The meta description of your site is the text that appear in Google Search results. If you don’t have a meta description, Google will present an extract from your page. If you have a well written and compelling meta description, you won’t improve your ranking but you will certainly improve your CTR from the Google.

Page 1 on Google is only useful if people then click on your site. Ranking is of no use if your click through rate (CTR) is poor.

5. Image Tags

Images are grea to enhance content but the search engines can’t read them. Alway ensure that description and alt tags are included that use keyword appropriately.

6. Wrong Anchor Text on Internal Links

“Click Here” is a wasted opportunity. Always use keyword anchor text when linking internally

7. Keyword Ambiguity

This is subtle, but take some time to consider keywords and phrases to understand how they might be used by search engine users. You may want a keyword or phrase that is search very regulalry but be careful in case it is being search for different reasons than you think.

For example: you want to set up a company offering to organize office parties – a kind of mobile DJ set up. You think that “dance in the office” might be a good keyword phrase. Your research tells you that that phrase is used quite often. Perhaps there’s lots of demand for office party DJs. Stop and think about it. Try putting “dance in the office” into Google. When you see Ricky Gervais staring back at you, you realize that, while people often use that phrase in Google, it’s not for what you were thinking.

8. Spend Too Much Time Checking Your Ranking?

Measure your tomato plants every day and feed them once a week and watch them die. Water them once a day and measure them once a week – they’ll thrive. Read SEO Lesson 2: Don’t Count Things That Happen – Make Things Happen That Count

9. Respect the Guidelines

Don’t buy into Black Hat techniques. A Black Hat career will be short lived. You may not be stupid, but compared to the might of Google, Yahoo Bing and the honest internet community – you are. Read SEO Lesson 5: Google is Your Friend

10. Over Ambitious Keyword Choice

Always check the competition for a keyword and never believe that because there are lots of searches on a keyword that you can get a piece of it. You can’t – not unless you have real money to invest. Read Fundamentals of SEO Lesson3: Choose Your Fish and Pond Size

Believe me – Google is always your friend. Even when Google seems like your enemy, Google is your friend.

Google is and will remain for the foreseeable future the dominant player in search by a long way. There are big players whose lifespan as the most dominant is terminated a rapidly as their growth (myspace is an example and facebook will be another) but Google has successfully diversified into so many important areas of the internet that they are very likely to be around for a long time to come. And if you want to be serious about SEO and Web Marketing you need to stay on the right side of Google.

Google from its inception fully bought into many of the internet ethics that had become established in the 1990s and now, concepts like freedom of expression without censorship and of a sharing community are now to a large extent policed by Google. Use unethical or underhand tactics to promote your site via search and Google will drop you like a stone. Publish high quality content that is genuinely relevant to the web community and Google will reward you with high ranking.

So staying on Google’s side is important. A Black Hat SEO career will be short lived.

It’s the same for Adsense. Fall foul of Google’s ad policies and your account will be cancelled. Always remember that Google is a business and if you use Adsense ads on your sight then you are in business too. You need to behave in a business like fashion. Google’s policies are Google’s. Infringe them and suffer the consequences. If your adsense account is cancelled, 99% of the time you know exactly why. The forums are full of complaints from “innocent” victims of Google’s adsense policy. It’s business. If Google don’t want to deal with your they don’t have to. But they don’t canel compliant accounts. That would not make good business sense.

I recently received a warning from Google. I was displaying their ads on a sight that promotes lingerie. As you would expect, there are images on the sight of women in underwear. The target audience is mature females and it was no more lewd than the Victoria’s Secret Catalogue. Google decided that it was in breach of policy quoting “content containing lewd or provocative poses, or close-ups of breasts, butts, or crotches” as the breach. In my judgement, there was no breach and I was concerned about who might have made this judgement. A 20 year old male in India might have an entirely different view of what is lewd compared to a 45 year old female in France for example. But I was reminded by the experience that it is not my judgment that counts – they are not my ads. They are Google’s. Don’t complain. Comply.

The SEO Lesson

Always remember that Google is a business and it’s best interests are served by maintaining the principles it has worked to develop and support since it’s inception. The only way to rank highly within a Google search is to publish high quality content with relevant quality back links. Obey the rules for Adsense and adopt only White Hat SEO strategies.

They say keep your friend close and your enemies closer. Forget it. Just stay friends with Google.