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Keeping your Content Above the Fold and Easy to Find

December 10, 2012 by Leave a Comment

All the way back at the beginning of 2012, Google rolled out a new page layout algorithm. This October, the search giant provided an update on the algorithm, claiming it was affecting just under 1% of searches.

As the name suggests, this algorithm change was designed to evaluate a page’s layout and the amount of viewable content.

At issue – some pages on the Internet, while otherwise properly optimized for the search engines, are pretty top-heavy in terms of ads. Visitors to these pages have to scroll or otherwise spend time looking for the main content. After receiving many complaints from users, Google developed an algorithm to weed out pages that may have too many ads “above-the-fold,” or the area of a page you see when it appears on your screen.

Generally speaking, users want to see content right away, not scroll through ads. When we click on a link from Google, we expect the page to have the content readily available…ads are okay, as long as they’re placed in way that doesn’t interfere with the content showing “above-the-fold.”

In Google’s advisory on the update, sites with what the search giant considers a normal amount of ads placed in the right way will not be affected.

“We understand that placing ads above-the-fold is quite common for many websites; these ads often perform well and help publishers monetize online content. This algorithmic change does not affect sites who place ads above-the-fold to a normal degree, but affects sites that go much further to load the top of the page with ads to an excessive degree or that make it hard to find the actual original content on the page.”

However, sites with little to no content “above-the-fold” will be, or have already been affected. Compounding the problem is the fact that it could take awhile for the Google spider to recrawl your site and take any changes of this nature into account.

What do I do if my site has been affected by the page layout update?

The consensus – both at Google and here at our search engine optimization firm – is to focus on your user’s experience. Consider how you use your “above-the-fold” space. Ads are okay of course, but you must be mindful of where you’re placing them. Don’t make your visitors scroll or hunt for what they’re looking for.

In other words, this update is yet another confirmation on the importance Google, Bing and others put on content.

Remember Penguin and Panda?

Well this is another perspective on the same issue – does your site deliver useful content in way that’s easy to find?

To help you visualize how your page looks on different screen resolutions, Google has developed a special tool within Google Analytics you can use. The original tool announced in January, Browser Size, has been discontinued.

While Google says this update only affects pages with ads, will it one day be tweaked to include image “sliders” or even static images?

That’s an interesting question our lead web designer Gaby asked upon hearing news of this update. It’s certainly possible – with Google, it’s anyone’s guess it seems.

Other search marketing pros are more critical though, even going as far to claim hypocrisy on Google’s part. Barry Schwartz, a.k.a. Rusty Brick at S.E. Round Table, points to Google’s own search results pages as an example – the top 2/3 of this example below is all ads!

Image Courtesy of Search Engine Roundtable

Rusty Brick also points out how you couldn’t plug in a Google SERP into the Browser Size tool (discontinued) to see if it would pass muster or not.

From the discussion we’ve seen, many feel the update isn’t fair, especially considering how many of Google’s own pages would not pass their guidelines.

Regardless though, it’s something that must be dealt with on the part of SEOs and webmasters.

One thing we can be certain about – Google will have many other updates to their updates, and even more updates after that. So be on the lookout…

Was your site affected by this update?

If so, how long did it take for you to make up any lost ground?

Related Posts

Penguin Update Targets Link Schemes and Low-Quality Content

Answer These 23 Questions to Understand What Google Looks For

Making your Content Work for You in Better, More Valuable Ways

10 Important Points to Consider when Redesigning your Website

Filed Under: Forum Watch, SEO Technology, Site Architecture, Tip of the Day Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

URL Syntax and How It Can Dramatically Affect SEO

October 12, 2012 by

While it may seem like a minor detail, we can’t tell you how many times we’ve spotted bad URLs in a website…in fact, it’s one of the first things that jump out at us when evaluating site from strictly the ability to be crawled and indexed.

Search engines do in fact take time to crawl just about any URL, no matter how badly it’s set up.

Taking a little bit of time to manage your URLs to ensure they display properly though can provide multiple benefits – in terms of both SEO and usability.

Take this URL for example:

http://www.seo-advantage.com/website-optimization-company.htm

This “breadcrumb” style that includes keywords is best type of URL to have. Since we know keywords in your URL is a ranking factor in Google’s algorithm, this “general to specific” approach makes the URL easily crawlable. Also, a URL like this already has anchor-text embedded in it so even if it’s listed on other pages like we’ve done above, you will still get some of the keyword ranking benefit…just like if you link to it using actual anchor-text (i.e. website optimization company).

Back in 2009, we wrote a post on proper anatomy of a URL and included a cheat sheet developed by Dr. Peter Meyers at SEOMoz. It’s handy to have a copy of this cheat sheet available as you evaluate your site’s URLs.

Our example above differs from some of the URLs you’ve likely encountered in the past. These old style, “dynamic” URLs include a bunch of characters. While these long URLs can be indexed, any symbols (parameters) like a “&” or “@” will dilute the impact of keywords that may be in the URL.

These older style URLs also may include information like user ID, session ID, sort code, print code and other parameters that’s transmitted outside of the URL. If a webpage address includes parameters, it is possible that you can run into duplicate content issues.

Auditing your site’s URLs and addressing any issues

A site’s content management system, or CMS, can lead to issues with your URLs. Some systems use characters like a “#” or “%” that are not legal to use. Others generate multiple URLs for the same page, leading to duplicate content issues.

By using Google and Bing webmaster tool reports and taking a careful look at the URL syntax for all of your pages, you should be able to determine if URLs are hindering your search rankings and usability of your website.

First thing you should look for are unsafe characters. There are several that aren’t even allowed in fact, and others that will not be indexed. Google doesn’t read anything past a pound character (“#”) for example. Therefore, if you have that symbol in your URL, search engines will ignore the symbol and anything past it.

For example, …website-optimization-company.html#seo-friendly-url will not be indexed. But if you change it to …website-optimization-company/seo-friendly-url, it will.

Other items to look out for include:

  • Underscores – problematic for SEO since search engines see these characters as connectors. Consider using dashes to separate words.
  • Mixed case – with the exception of machine names, URLs are case-sensitive. Having mixed cases can lead to duplicate content. The easiest way to deal with this issue is to have your website automatically rewrite all URLs into lower-case.

If you have long URLs with lots of parameters and other characters, how you transition to an SEO-friendly URL structure will depend a lot on the CMS system you’re using. Here are a few general options you can consider for cleaning up your site’s URLs and dealing with any duplicate content issues:

  • Reconfigure your CMS platform to generate one consistent URL for each page of content
  • Do a 301-redirect for any duplicate URLs to the new or correct version
  • Add canonical tags (…a way of communicating the preferred page to Google) that will direct search engines to group duplicate content and combine their ranking signals
  • Configure URL parameters in webmaster tools that direct search engines to ignore URL parameters that may cause duplicate content

Check out this piece from Tom Schmitz in Search Engine Land for more information on unsafe URL characters and other ways of dealing with bad URL structure.

Understand that not all CMS systems are created equal. You may be using one that will not allow you to modify the URL structure to be SEO-friendly. Even if you can’t optimize your URLs for the search engines, you should definitely make sure they meet minimum standards. For more information on these standards, click here.

Does your site have a bad URL structure?

If so, how badly is it affecting your position in the search engines?

Related Posts

Proper Anatomy of a URL – An SEO Cheat Sheet

Use Caution with Session IDs and Dynamic URLs

 

Filed Under: SEO Technology, Site Architecture, Tip of the Day, Usability Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Joomla Fires A Shot Across the Bow of U.S.S. WordPress With J3

September 18, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Content Management Systems like WordPress and Joomla are giant beacons of success in the software world, proving that free (as in beer), open source software can compete with high-end web services and custom solutions.

Over the last few years common wisdom has held that someone interested in blogging should use WordPress and the website owner looking to do anything else with a CMS should choose Joomla. My personal choice of a CMS has often followed this same strategy, although I am often surprised at how well Joomla scales for the purpose of a blog, just as there are some great plugins that allow WordPress to “stretch out” and show its true value as a content management system.

With that said, there are plenty of reasons to be excited about Joomla’s new product.

It has a great number

First and foremost it looks like Joomla has finally figured out how to number their software releases. You wouldn’t think the numerical designation would be a big deal, but anyone that remembers the upgrade from 1.7 to 2.5 can recall what a head-scratcher that one was. At least we seem to be back on some sort of logical path to being able t0 figure out which version to use.

Do “stuff” like a pro

The list of new features and bug fixes show that the keyboard-pounders at Joomla have not only listened to their users but really focused on creating a next gen product. Here is a list of some of the great new features:

  • New installer that is slick, fast and user (or noob) friendly.
  • Mobile ready out of the box. Joomla 3 has a built-in responsive design that automatically resizes pages to fit a mobile screen. This is especially great for administrators who need to be able to access the back end from their phone.
  • Drag and Drop- Taking a strong web 2.0 hint, it is now stupid easy to rearrange menu and content items.
  • Bootstrap- the simple elegance of the new layout revolves around Bootstrap, which is a collection of tools used by web designers to streamline css and standardize common web elements.
  • More standardization of components, templates and plugins.

Front end editing

Something that has been SORELY lacking for some time is the ability to effectively edit your website from the front end. WordPress makes it a snap, and as you can see from the video below, Joomla has built something that does it even better.

Raising the bar

The real reason a major CMS release like Joomla 3 is exciting is because it forces the competition to push ahead and try to “beat them at their own game”. Competition spurs innovation, especially in the free-for-all that is the internet. While I am happy to see Joomla 3 begin to pick up steam (especially in the 3rd party add-on market), I am equally eager to see what WordPress and others will come up with to raise the bar even higher.

Joomla 3 is technically still an alpha version that can be downloaded from the Joomla Development Network. It is not recommended to install the alpha release in a production environment as there are still many bugs to be worked out. If you want to get a look at the new offering but don’t feel like installing it, OSTraining has a Joomla 3 demo where you can check out the front and back end without getting your hands dirty.

Related Posts

WordPress CMS – The Easiest Way to Build an Optimized Site

Filed Under: SEO Technology, Site Architecture Tagged With: , , ,

Is SEO and Usability Separable or Inseparable?

August 23, 2012 by Leave a Comment

As a search engine optimization company specializing in helping businesses dominate their respective industries online, we spend a lot of time considering what makes a website not only good, but stellar.

Of course, we spend a good bit of this time evaluating the metrics (a.k.a. algorithm) Google and other search engines use to rank web pages. What makes a certain website appear on page 1, or at the top of page 1?

However, this isn’t the only question we consider.

While search is the dominant way people find information online, we’re also mindful of the experience users have once they land on a website. Therefore, we don’t cater to every little SEO trick out there thinking all we need to do is pepper the right keywords in the right frequency, put up some good metatags and call it a day.

Over doing SEO can certainly “…undermine the user experience” according to a recent column from Jakob Nielsen’s weekly column.

Initially, it’s easy to see SEO and usability as two separate topics – search engine optimization is about “attracting people to your site” by making it show up high in the search results. Usability on the other hand is about the user’s interaction with your site after they’ve found it.

Therefore, the goal of SEO is to attract visitors while the goal of usability is to maximize the numbers of visitors that become actual customers.

Both SEO and usability have to be impressive in order for your site to succeed

If your SEO is stellar but your usability is lousy, plenty of people will find your site but none of them will actually convert.

Likewise, if your usability is great but your SEO is lousy, your site just won’t see too many visitors.

So even though SEO and usability focus on different parts of the lead generation process, there are many ways in which these two elements work together. However, there are a couple of ways they conflict, which I’ll get into below.

One of the first points to understand is that SEO goes well beyond Google. Studies have shown how search is “…the main resource discovery strategy” for most people. This concept applies to those already on your site as well. Many websites though don’t spend much time thinking about their site’s internal search usability, which can kill conversion rates in the end.

This is especially true when it comes to e-commerce type sites – one of the first laws of e-commerce is that your products must be found before they can be purchased. For general, mainstream websites, many users go straight to the site search rather than using navigation. Often times, the internal site search is so bad that users get frustrated and go all the way back to Google to find what they’re looking for.

Therefore, websites have to employ basic SEO techniques in their internal site search functionalities to ensure their site’s usability, and specifically their site search, is the best it can be.

In the long-term, good search rankings will come from how well your site helps users

Since the advent of ranking factors, search engines must use a variety of indirect metrics (i.e. number of links pointing to it) to determine a site’s quality. But as Google and others increasingly move toward evaluating user behaviors, search rankings will more and more be based on usability criteria.

In the short-term, you can try and game the search algorithms…but long-term, this is a losing proposition since these algorithms are always changing. Instead, focus on providing a good experience for your users.

In the long-term, this will generate not only high search rankings, but high conversions as well.

Good short-term SEO and good design are equally important though

Only focusing on how current search algorithms work is a bad idea, yes. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t design your website to work well with today’s search engines.

Offer stable URLs so other sites can easily, and directly link to any piece of content on your site. Use terms in your titles, headline and main content that visitors will use in their searches – meaning, you should avoid cute sounding headlines or words that may sound catchy but no one will understand.

You need to also be sure you use plain text to ensure your site gets indexed in the first place. Information architecture is important too – a clear navigation not only helps your users easily find the products/ services you offer, it also makes it easier for search engines to crawl your site and determine where in your site’s hierarchy a page is located.

Finally, be sure you develop compelling content that attracts links and chatter on social media.

These steps are things you should be doing anyway. But considering these SEO/usability guidelines in tandem will ensure you not only see sustained search rankings, but that you will see increased numbers of click-throughs as well.

Although SEO and usability often go together, there are instances where they conflict

One clear example of this is keyword stuffing. While it may help search rankings in the short-term, keyword stuffing makes your content harder to read.

Fat or obese footers is another point where SEO and usability conflict. While including informative, keyword-rich landing pages in your site’s bottom navigation may be good for search rankings, it can play havoc on the usability of your site since you have so many links going to disparate pages that are hard for users to follow.

In the long-term, sustained search rankings come from having a crawlable site that’s both informative AND usable. As Google continues to increase its reliance on user behavior in determining a site’s quality, you will need to be increasingly mindful of your site’s usability to ensure you stay on top of the search results.

We want to hear your thoughts on how SEO and usability either work together or conflict.

Do you consider one more important than the other?

What do you spend more time worrying about – your site’s ultimate rankings or the user experience once they land on your site?

Related Posts

Answer These 23 Questions to Understand What Google Looks For

10 Important Points to Consider When Redesigning your Website

10 Most Common Web Design Mistakes

“Don’t Make Me Think” – A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability – Part I

“Don’t Make Me Think” – A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability – Part II

“Don’t Make Me Think” – A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability – Part III

 

Filed Under: SEO Technology, Site Architecture, Tip of the Day, Usability Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Why Mobile Sites Have to Be Simple

June 13, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Just about every day, a new technological innovation hits the market – at least it seems to anyway. One area that’s experienced rapid growth in recent years is mobile smartphone technology. These devices provide the capability to surf the web, check email and shoot/upload pictures and videos.

Of course, there are probably 20 other features we’re skipping here but that’s okay.

And from our first post exploring mobile-compatible websites and from our personal experiences, it’s safe to say that Internet capable handheld devices are quickly becoming the norm, especially in foreign countries where the cost to obtain a smartphone is much less than the cost of a laptop or desktop.

Most businesses and websites though have not taken this into consideration

While they may have a very extensive main site, many businesses have not spent 5 minutes thinking about a site optimized for mobile devices.

As you may know from your personal experience or by using a friend’s phone, the screen is very small. Trying to view a site that is not mobile-compatible on your phone means you may be scrolling up/down and sideways a lot.

Needless to say this can get frustrating…

Another consideration is the data used to transmit webpages to a mobile device. Unless all of your users have unlimited data plans through their service provider, they will quickly consume their allotted data (…usually expressed in megabytes) for the month if they have to access a site that’s designed with only traditional computers in mind.

Large images, background images, videos and other animations take bandwidth to transmit. Not only will this quickly consume a user’s monthly megabyte limit, it will be much slower than a connection through a traditional computer.

Unlimited data plans are in fact a thing of the past for many service providers so anyone new to mobile smartphones will likely have a limit after which additional charges will kick in. Like text messages and minutes, these charges can add up really quickly.

The other reason your mobile site has to be simpler is the fact that the vast majority of mobile users are in a hurry, even more so than users accessing your website from a traditional computer. Navigation and information on your mobile site has to be simple and easy to understand – visitors must be able to find what they’re looking for quickly and move on.

So what can I do to be sure I have a site compatible for mobile users?

In a way, the answer can be surmised in the three words – simplify, simplify, simplify!

Like we said above, smaller screens coupled with data limitations means any large images, videos or background images will take longer to load, consume more bandwidth and the entire screen on a mobile device. Get rid of these “extras” and stick to a basic navigation with short bits of content…logos and simple images are okay but fancy graphics will cause visitors frustration.

Also, keep your pages shorter.

Since screens on mobile devices are smaller, users may have scroll a lot to see all of your content. Some up and down scrolling is okay (…and is pretty common on traditional sites). Side-to-side scrolling though is a bit more cumbersome and frustrating.

It’s been suggested by usability experts like Jakob Nielsen that you should limit up-and-down scrolling as well by breaking pages up into several different pages. On each section, include a link that says “next” at the bottom so that visitors can click to continue reading.

And of course, you should also provide plenty of cross-linking opportunity between your mobile site and your full site. Doing so allows visitors the flexibility to choose which site works better for them…if they want to learn more, they can indeed go to your main site for more information.

There are of course other things you need to consider that are dependent on the kind of site you have.

One question that always comes up is whether you should have your entire site formatted for mobile or just a handful of main pages.

If you’re running an online store, you may want to consider having the entire site in both mobile and full versions. But if you’re a B2B or a service-oriented firm, having a few main pages then linking to your main site may be good enough.

All of this of course is dependent on your budget for developing a mobile site.

One thing is absolutely clear though – mobile compatible sites will be increasingly important in the future. If there are no businesses in your industry with a mobile website, building one now can give you a distinct competitive advantage in the years ahead.

As economic challenges in the western world continue to mount, it’s quite possible this competitive edge will make the difference between business success and failure.

Have you developed a mobile website for your business? If so, did you optimize your entire site for mobile or just a few pages?

Other Posts You May Be Interested In

Mobile Smartphones and SEO

Preparing for the Mobile Revolution, Part I

Preparing for the Mobile Revolution, Part II

10 Important Points to Consider When Redesigning your Website

Filed Under: Online Marketing, Site Architecture, Tip of the Day, Usability Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
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