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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?

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

10 ‘On-Page’ SEO Tactics You Should Avoid At All Costs – Part II

October 29, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Not following Google’s guidelines can lead to devastating consequences.

Last Monday, we discussed how certain SEO tactics (a.k.a. “black-hat” SEO) can get your site into a whole heap of trouble, and how these penalties can have devastating consequences for your business’ bottom line.

We outlined the first 5 of these ‘on-page’ SEO tactics you should absolutely avoid. In the interest of your time, we decided to break this into two separate posts.

Continue reading to learn the other 5 tactics you should avoid. This list is also helpful in identifying if any of these elements are on your site, or if any competitors are using any of these tactics. Being able to identify them will help you avoid a penalty, or worse, being totally banned from the search engines.

6.            Using the “Phantom Pixel”

The phantom pixel is essentially an image that’s so small – only one pixel – that it can’t be seen by your site’s visitors. However, these microscopic images can used to link to other pages, or the “alt-img” tag can be used to stuff keywords you’re trying to target.

Like hidden text (…or anything viewable by the search engines but hidden from human visitors), search engines absolutely hate the phantom pixel. Having just one on any web page on your site can result in a penalty, or even a complete ban.

To see if your site or any competitor’s site has hidden images, all you have to do is use “Ctrl+a,” which highlights everything on the page.

7.            Doorway pages

These are essentially low-quality pages that are automatically generated by software and are designed to rank well for as many keywords as possible. Many aggressive SEOs use these types of pages to funnel visitors into other pages designed to convert the visitor into a customer.

Creation of doorway pages often involves the use of two specific tools – one is a software program that ‘scrapes’ or copies content from other web pages or RSS feeds. This content is republished on the doorway page, which then links to the main sales page being targeted. The other tool, known as “Markov chain content generation” uses a special algorithm to combine words in a unique way. While hard for search engines to spot, this copy will look absolutely terrible to an actual person.

Therefore, do not use software to generate your site’s content. While it’s okay to use a system to “manage” your site’s content, it should be written by an actual person.

8.            Meta & JavaScript Redirects

Redirects are commonly used to steer site visitors away from obsolete pages or dead links. When used in this context, they’re okay.

However, spammers often times use redirects in a way search engines hate. The typical strategy is to build a page stuffed with keywords but then redirect the visitor to a sales page that would not rank well otherwise.

One way this is often done is to add a “meta refresh” to the <head> section of the HTML code. Here’s an example:

Example of Meta Refresh

 

 

Using this code will redirect, or refresh the page by sending the visitor to a different URL. The number “1” in the code we use above refers to the number of seconds to display the old page before redirecting.

JavaScript redirects are another way to accomplish the same thing. While search engines may scan JavaScript for URLs to index, they will not process the code. JavaScript redirects users to a different page, but the search engines will ignore that redirect and index the code on the initial, keyword-stuffed page.

Here’s an example of a JavaScript redirect:

Javascript Redirect Example

 

 

 

It’s important to note that redirects have many important uses from moving pages and rewriting URLs to changing domains. But since JavaScript and meta redirects have been so abused by spammers, it’s strongly recommended you use a 301 redirect if you need to send visitors to a new page.

9.            Little to no unique content

The importance of unique content has been something we can’t stress enough. The last two big algorithm updates from Google, which affected thousands of websites, were largely driven by this issue. This content issue often affects e-commerce type sites that simply use product descriptions provided by the manufacturer. While not considered spam, the search engines will remove these pages since they do not want to display hundreds, or even thousands of nearly identical pages.

This concept is true for both organic and PPC pages. If your site is promoting an offer from an affiliate, the Quality Score can drop so low that you will need to pay extremely high costs to keep your ad pages active.

If your site is in an affiliate program or reselling products, develop product descriptions that are unique from what the manufacturer provides. In all likelihood, there are hundreds of other affiliate type pages using the same content. Separate yourself from the pack and reap the benefits over your competitors.

10.          IP delivery (…or cloaking)

Considered one of the most complex and controversial of SEO strategies, IP delivery or cloaking involves serving one page to your human visitors while serving a different one to the search engines. Doing so essentially hides the real page, which is the one visitors will see, from the search engines.

However, cloaking also has some legitimate uses. Since search engines cannot index Flash content (…which human visitors love), webmasters may serve different content to the search engines so the page can be indexed. It’s easy to claim that providing content that the search engines can index benefits users. On the same token though, it’s easy to claim a setup like this is a loophole that’s ripe for exploitation.

Real briefly, when a visitor comes to your site, they’re identified through an Internet Protocol (IP) address. If you get online through cable Internet or DSL, you in all likelihood have a permanent IP address assigned to you. Search engine spiders have their own unique IP addresses as well. Some SEOs go to great lengths to identify the IP addresses used by search engine spiders, which allows them to identify if a visitor is the search engine spider or an actual human visitor.

If the IP address/number doesn’t match with their list of search engine IP addresses, the SEO/webmaster assumes the visitor is an actual human and serves up the page designed for human eyes, which often times includes graphics, JavaScript, Flash, etc. Conversely, if the IP address matches one they’ve identified as a search engine spider, then a text-only, keyword-rich page is served up.

Like hidden text and images, any time you serve different content to your human visitors, you’re asking for trouble. While search engines do make a few exceptions for cloaking, it’s best to pay it safe.

When discussing acceptable and unacceptable SEO practices, the debate often devolves in the white hat vs. black hat camps. In reality, there are a lot of grey areas.

The big question you need to ask is if your website is providing value to visitors. Remember, search engines are in the business of delivering the most valuable, relevant pages to their users. If they’re constantly delivering junk, people will quit using them. Therefore, if someone uses tactics that attempt to rank low-quality pages high in the search results, they shouldn’t be surprised when the search engine takes action to remove the offending site.

Remember, any strategy that sacrifices long-term, sustainable rankings for short-term gain is asking for trouble. Make sure your web pages offer value to your visitors while, at the same time, letting the search engines know what your pages are about.

Have you used any of these SEO strategies, whether intentionally or not, in the past?

If so, were you penalized? If you were, how long did it take you to recover?

Let us know in the comments section below or drop us a line on Facebook today!

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

10 ‘On-Page’ SEO Tactics You Should Avoid At All Costs – Part I

October 22, 2012 by
Don't let Google put you in the penalty box for trying to outsmart them

Don’t let Google put you in the penalty box for trying to outsmart them. You can’t, at least not for long.

Being penalized by the search engines for any tactics they deem against their guidelines can have dramatic consequences for not only your website’s position in Google, but your business’ bottom line as well. Each time Google releases a big update, it’s not hard to find stories about sites/businesses losing revenues and laying off staff.

The so called “black hat” SEO tactics detailed below clearly violate search engines’ published guidelines. We hope that discussing tricks search engines find objectionable will help you recognize, and thus, avoid them.

Knowing these tactics will also help you recognize when a competitor is using them. While it may be tempting to copy them, you should definitely refrain from doing so. Eventually, they will be penalized and you will be rewarded by taking their spot.

In order to have a sustainable SEO strategy, you should avoid the following tactics at all costs. Continue reading for the first 5…check back with us later in the week for the remaining 5 tricks you should avoid.

1.       Keyword stuffing

Literally repeating the same keyword over and over again is one of the oldest, easily recognizable black hat tactics. Search engines absolutely hate keyword stuffing and can recognize it pretty easily.

One common keyword stuffing tactic is the <h6> tag, which makes text so tiny that humans can’t see it but search engines can. Many a webmaster has simply placed this code near the bottom of a page. Another tag, <font size = “0”> is another way to stuff keywords without people noticing. Other places where webmasters have been known to stuff keywords include meta description, title tags and image ALT tags.

While these methods can sometimes yield short-term benefits, they rarely work for the long-term. Search engines can be tricked, but they eventually catch on.

2.       Text that’s invisible or semi-visible

As a search engine optimization company, one of the paradox’s we deal with is making a webpage that appeals to both search engines AND humans. While search engines award high rankings to pages with lots of copy, people typically respond to pages with special effects and other design elements that search engines can’t easily crawl.

Invisible text is one method that’s been used in the past to deal with this dilemma.

For example, many webmasters and SEO pros would set the text color the same as the background color, which effectively blends the copy with the background color of the page, which makes it invisible to people but visible to search engines. Semi-visible copy (i.e. gray copy on a white background) was being used once search engines became able to detect invisible text.

The easiest way to see if a competitor is using one of these tricks is to use Ctrl+a to select all, which will highlight all of the text on a web page.

While this may sound like a good trick, think again. Hidden or semi-visible text is one of the easiest ways to get your entire site kicked out of the search engines altogether. You in fact run a high risk of being penalized or banned anytime you show different content to search engines than what’s visible to your human visitors.

3.       Using CSS to Hide Text

CSS, or cascading style sheets, is another way to hide text from human visitors while making it visible and indexable to search engines. Here’s an example:

Some people try to stuff their page with keywords hidden in css

Akin to keyword stuffing, this method will render this text invisible to a human visitor while making it completely visible to search engines. Using the “Ctrl+a” method we detailed in #2 will not make the text visible. To see if a competitor is using this method, you will need to view the page’s source code.

Even though this method isn’t quite as risky as the invisible/semi-visible method, you still run the risk of being picked up by a manual review, which is why we urge webmasters to avoid it.

One method that is acceptable is when you give the visitor the ability to unhide the text. A good example of this in practice is CSS tabs that let you tab hidden and unhidden text. For example, you may come across product descriptions that have separate tabs for [Description], [Specifications], [Comments] and others.

4.       Selling Links

Many site owners sell links on their sites in order to increase the target URL’s PageRank. Your first warning for scrubbing PageRank or not using a rel=”nofollow” attribute will be your PageRank being dropped to zero. Considered a “shot across the bow” from Google, this won’t immediately result in lost rankings. But if you fail to address the issue in a timely manner, you could be dropped from the search engines altogether.

Paid links often look unnatural. For example, if we included links on SEO-e for a cheap travel site or a travel agency, they would look totally out of place to both the search engines and our visitors.

Being infected by Malware or being hacked is another way selling links puts your website at risk. If you have your site setup in Google’s Webmaster toolbox, they will warn you if they detect your site is being hacked or hosting Malware.

5.       Hiding Links

The purpose of hiding links is to give link juice, or PageRank, to favored web pages. These strategically placed links will direct the spider to an off-topic site the webmaster is wanting to index or rank well in the search results. Like hidden text, these links are only visible to the search engines, not your site’s visitors. Since they have no value to the site visitor, search engines absolutely hate them.

You can also make links “semi-visible” – like having the link embedded in a period at the end of a sentence.

While technically “visible,” you run the risk of being penalized since you’re showing something different to search engines than you are to real human visitors.

These are some of the most common tricks we come across on websites. If we spot them on a site we’re working on, we immediately fix them so the site doesn’t get penalized any further, or worse, delisted from the search engines altogether.

As we said above, check back later in the week for the other 5 SEO tricks you should avoid at all costs.

Have you been penalized because you used one or more of these tactics?

If so, how did you address the issue? How long did it take for you to regain the lost ground?

 

Filed Under: SEO Technology, 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

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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.

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