I’ve read and enjoyed your articles on adding Twitter / Google search boxes to a website. I am trying to figure out a way to have one search box on my site that displays results (in a multi-column horizontal table) for multiple sources, particularly Twitter / Google / YouTube. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
How Can I Embed Search Results On My Own Page?
March 30th, 2011 by Dave TaylorDos and Don’ts of Creating a First-Class Home Page
March 16th, 2011 by Courtney MillsIf you didn’t already know, your home page is the most important page of your site. Why? Because it is the most indexed page by Google and is the gateway to the rest of your site. It is therefore important that your home page has the right content to encourage visitors to click through to other pages of your site.
Your home page must let your visitors know that they’re at the right place and that you offer what they want. To help you achieve this I wanted to share a recent video from Success Works that outlines the do and don’ts of creating content for your home page
Google’s Farmer Algorithm Update & How It Affects You
March 2nd, 2011 by Jacob StoopsIn the last several weeks, the folks at Google have been quite busy when it comes to improving their algorithm.
Why Is Anchor Text Important To Your Site?
February 16th, 2011 by Matthew ElshawAnchor text is consistently ranked as one of the most important off-page SEO factors for any website. Understanding the importance of anchor text is critical if you’re planning to improve your rankings, so let’s look at what it is and why it’s important.
What is Anchor Text?
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Making Your PSD File Ready For HTML Slicing
February 2nd, 2011 by Gab GoldenbergIf you’re designing a custom landing page, chances are that you’re using a PSD to HTML chop shop, like my friends at PSD to HTML/CSS. The problem is that things you may obviously require won’t be obvious to the coders. Here’s a checklist of things to specify in your order to minimize revisions and save time. Read the rest of this entry »
Does Your Domain Age Affect Your Rank?
January 19th, 2011 by Matthew ElshawOne of the common questions I see asked on SEO forums is whether domain age plays an important role in Google’s ranking algorithm.
Generally, SEO professionals agree that domain age does play some part in rankings, but opinions vary on the extent of its impact. Some SEO experts refuse to work on a newly registered domain, while others don’t give it much weight at all.
Adding A Strong SEO Backbone To Your WordPress Site
January 5th, 2011 by Jacob StoopsToday, we’re going to jump into WordPress a little bit. For those of you who use WordPress, it’s either one of two things – a fantastic platform that makes building websites and blogs easy OR a real pain in the ass!
People who know coding and web design usually love WordPress’ open-source community for its flexibility, customization ability, and easy blog integration. Those who don’t know code or web design so well often have trouble making updates to their site’s design and structure outside of the main stuff in the WordPress CMS.
How Do Search Engines Work?
December 22nd, 2010 by Jacob StoopsBefore I really get into many of the SEO guides that are forthcoming on this blog, I thought I’d take us back to basics. For SEO purposes, that means understanding search engines, their purpose, and how they are useful to us.
How To Get Your Mobile Site Indexed
December 8th, 2010 by Andrew DevineSo you’ve built a mobile version of your website to target iPhone, Android, and Blackberry users. Congratulations! This can do wonders for creating increases in mobile traffic and subsequent conversions, especially when optimization includes local factors. The next step is to follow the appropriate steps to properly inform search engines of the existence and dimensions of the site:
- Create Webmaster accounts for Google, Yahoo!, and Bing
- Submit site URL to search engines
- Create and submit Mobile XML Sitemaps
- Create and submit Mobile Robots.txt files
If you don’t already have Webmaster Accounts set up for your regular site, do it now! They’re free and lend great insight into site performance and signify any indexation issues.
From the Webmaster Accounts for your desktop site, you can submit your mobile URL by selecting “add a site” as you would any other site. If the mobile site lives at another sub-domain (http://mobile.orbitz.com) or TLD (http://wapedia.mobi/), the site will have to be verified. However, if the mobile site lives in a subfolder of the regular company site (https://www.bankofamerica.com/mobile/), verification is unnecessary and the mobile folder will be segmented as a separate account.
XML Sitemaps are an important feature to implement on websites that indicate all of the pages very efficiently to search engines. Since mobile sitemaps use a unique mobile tag in the XML code, mobile and desktop XML sitemaps should be distinct from one another.
Sitemaps can be easily created using one of a slew of online automated XML sitemap generators. Although most online generators provide standard sitemaps free of charge, there is normally a fee for mobile XML sitemap creation. We recommend the Sitemap Generator V3.0 from Xml-Sitemaps.com, which costs $19.99. This will allow you to set change frequency and priority levels of pages on your mobile site.
A reliable free alternative is to write the sitemap out by hand (realistic if there are a relatively few number of pages that need to be listed). Sitemaps.org is a great resource for understanding XML Sitemap Protocol.
Once the mobile sitemap is complete, upload to the root folder of your mobile site, test it with an online sitemap validator, and submit to each webmaster account. Read more about Google’s mobile XML sitemaps standards.
Although it was customary a couple of years ago to block the desktop site in the mobile robots.txt file and vice versa, this is no longer necessary since desktop URLs are normally showing up in search results. However, mobile robots.txt files should still be created to block any internal site search results and private data. These should also be submitted to each webmaster account.
As we move in the direction of web ubiquity, mobile search engines have become more inclined to list “desktop” URLs in search results, leaving it to sight owners to implement user agent detection in order to redirect mobile users accordingly. In my next article, I will discuss the ins and outs of user agent detection as it relates to mobile search. In the meantime, set up your webmaster accounts and submit your mobile site!
Building Better Keywords With Singulars And Plurals
November 24th, 2010 by Mike MoranI received an interesting question the others day from a student in a class that I am teaching on SEO. He’s on the process of optimizing a landing page for the keywords “waterproof jacket” (singular) and “waterproof jackets” (plural), he is noticing that each keyword produces different organic search results across multiple search engines. His question is whether he should optimize his landing page for both of these keywords or just one of them? As you might suspect, there is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question (even thought the actual waterproof jacket might come that way).