OK, so you’ve got your site set-up and configured in Google Webmaster tools. Now it’s time to start looking at the data.
Google Webmaster Tools allows you to view some basic stats and data for your site. It’s not nearly as robust as Google Analytics–not even close–but it does provide some quick and easy data that you can use to assess your site and correct problem areas.
In Part 1 of this series I introduced Google webmaster tools and walked you through adding websites. Now that you have your site(s) in the system, you’ll need to configure your site so you get the most out of the data provided through the Webmaster Tools interface.
Site configuration allows you to review and adjust your basic configuration settings. You don’t have a lot of leeway here but some of the very basics are covered which allow you to adjust how Google handles your site.
Webmaster Tools gives you four primary ways to configure your website:
Many people are afraid of Google’s seemingly “big brother” approach to the web. Google appears to keep digging their hands further and further into our lives, collecting data and using in ways that some may not trust as being completely benevolent. While I have some concerns about Google’s approach to collecting data from our websites, I’m also a big fan some of the tools Google offers web developers and site managers.
Google Webmaster Tools is one of the tools that I really like and which can be very helpful to site owners and webmasters to figure out what problems their site has, fix potential errors, and provide Google some feedback on how our sites should be treated. For the most part, the information provided to webmasters through Webmaster Tools is stuff that Google already knows. They collect this data whenever they crawl your website. Webmaster Tools just provides a way for us to see our website through Google-tinted glasses.
I generally implement my optimization campaigns in two phases. The first phase is a quick run through to get as many of the site pages “search engine friendly” as possible. The second is a much more thorough process that provides a complete optimization for each page.
Quick process can often be done in a matter of hours for the entire site, while the best process can take days, months, or even years to get through it.
Do SEO Fast
You can’t start the SEO process until you know what keywords you are going to target. Fortunately, you don’t have to complete the entire keyword research process to get through this fast stage.
They say it can’t be done.
I’m told it’s impossible.
Ridiculous!
Scandalous!
In SEO school* we are taught that you can’t optimize a single web page for more than two or maybe three keywords at a time. Many say you can’t truly be effective optimizing for more than one. It just doesn’t work!
But what if there was a way that it could work? What if you could successfully optimize a single web page for 15 or more keyword phrases at a time and get rankings for all of them? What would that kind of information be worth to you?
The following series is pulled from a presentation I gave to a group of beauty bloggers hosted by L’Oreal in New York. Most of the presentation is geared toward how to make a blog more search engine and user-friendly, however I will expand many of the concepts here to include tips and strategies for sites selling products or services across all industries.
Building Links
There are a lot of different approaches to building links. The different types of links discussed in the previous post in this series can gain you links in various degrees of goodness. But like most things, quick-fix solutions rarely ever provide excellent long-term value. That’s not to say quick fix solutions aren’t sometimes needed or warranted, but they rarely make a good long-term investment.
A link only has a certain amount of value, much like the value of a casual acquaintance. But like a true friendship, a link relationship goes much further and has a lot more potential.
The concept of building links is best when it’s focused on building relationships. You’ve heard it said, “give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime.” In the same way, build a link and you get a link. Build a relationship and you get a lifetime of links.
The following series is pulled from a presentation I gave to a group of beauty bloggers hosted by L’Oreal in New York. Most of the presentation is geared toward how to make a blog more search engine and user-friendly, however I will expand many of the concepts here to include tips and strategies for sites selling products or services across all industries.
Links come in all different shapes and sizes. Some good, some bad, some are just there. In part 14 of this series we looked at the anatomy of a link, analyzing the different elements that make a link what it is. There are a lot of things to consider when looking at the value of the link, many of which lie in the the value of the page or website doing the liking. But here we’ll look at a slightly different value of link, in how it’s linked between the two sites.
There are three basic ways of linking between sites, One-way, reciprocal and multi-way. We’ll take a look at these, their values and whether its a type of linking you should be engaged in.
Reciprocal Links
A reciprocal link, in simplest terms, is a link from Site A to site B and a link back from Site B to Site A. Many have written reciprocal links off as being completely irrelevant but that’s far too simplistic. There is nothing wrong with reciprocal links in an of themselves. Its all in the execution.
The following series is pulled from a presentation I gave to a group of beauty bloggers hosted by L’Oreal in New York. Most of the presentation is geared toward how to make a blog more search engine and user-friendly, however I will expand many of the concepts here to include tips and strategies for sites selling products or services across all industries.
Link Analysis Progression
I said in my last post that each link is essentially a vote for the page that’s being linked to. That, essentially, was the original link analysis factors. Things have come a long way since then. Today’s link analysis factors are far more complex.
Over the years what gets analyzed as part of the link has changed in order to provide better search results to web users.
The following series is pulled from a presentation I gave to a group of beauty bloggers hosted by L’Oreal in New York. Most of the presentation is geared toward how to make a blog more search engine and user-friendly, however I will expand many of the concepts here to include tips and strategies for sites selling products or services across all industries.
Links
Most SEOs have a love/hate relationship with links. We love a good link but we hate what it takes to get them. At best, link building is time consuming and tedious. At worst it’s the thing drives good SEOs to the dark side of black hat magic. It’s the one thing that most SEOs don’t to do and very few actually can do well. Show me a link builder that advertises they can get 100 PR4+ one-way links and I’ll show you 100 barely readable blog posts on 100 barely read blogs.
I’m not bitter (maybe just a little) but I just haven’t found a quality link builder that isn’t out of my most of my clients’ price range. I think this is the case with many SEOs, which is why most of the affordable link builders deliver what they can for the price, which is whey the link quality tends to be sub-par. As for the link builder’s who’s rates are unaffordable… well, you can’t afford NOT to use them. See? Love/hate.
The following series is pulled from a presentation I gave to a group of beauty bloggers hosted by L’Oreal in New York. Most of the presentation is geared toward how to make a blog more search engine and user-friendly, however I will expand many of the concepts here to include tips and strategies for sites selling products or services across all industries.
Headings
The first place to begin in writing your content is to create a great heading for each page. In the last post I discussed grabbing the visitor’s attention. This is one of the primary jobs of page headings.
The heading is different from the page title tag. Where the title tag is displayed in the search results the heading is viewed on the page itself. Sometimes you want the heading and the title to be the same, other times you don’t. The title MUST use keywords in it. The heading SHOULD use keywords in it. It all depends on the hook you want to use to grab attention and entice your visitor to keep reading.
(Don't wait for the movie!)
E-Marketing Performance: Effective Strategies for Building, Optimizing & Marketing Your Website Online
