Archive for the ‘SEO Tips’ Category

Five Essential Elements of SEO

There’s plenty of work you can perform on your pages to appeal to the search engines. All sorts of fancy techniques have been devised by the clever minds of the SEO community. If you’re just starting out in SEO, it can all be very confusing. It’s best to stick with the basics, and luckily these are relatively well set out.

If you’re unfamiliar with search engine optimisation yet in desperate need for a good position in the search engines, it can help to get professional advice. It’s also vital to know the basics. These five points are the basics of SEO:

Keyword research: This is the first, the most central, and sometimes the only affordable step of SEO when a business is trying to optimise on its own. Guessing at keywords is definitely not the way to go. Many SEO firms find that their clients are surprised at the results of keyword research, which often turns up words or phrases customers use but their business is unaware of. With the wide range of keyword tools available, there is no reason not to conduct keyword research of some sort, and you can talk to us at SEO Consult

• Architecture reorganisation. You can form the world’s most perfect keyword list, but it won’t have a chance to work if your site’s structure creates blocks for the search engine spiders. Search engines assume that the important information on your site is on your early pages, and tend not to crawl very deeply. When it comes to architecture, simple is best. This can be difficult to achieve if you have a large site, but re-categorisation of some pages will ensure that the most important pages are on clear paths. The important thing to remember is to keep pages as few clicks as possible from the main pages. Your internal links can also boost the SEO of your main pages, but this is more advanced SEO

• Focus. Choose how many keywords you want to rank for, assign them to pages, and optimise those pages with intense focus. An ideal situation for SEO is to build your pages around your keywords, but this isn’t always possible. Shifting the focus of your content onto your keywords is almost as good

• Incorporate keywords seamlessly. This is a lot harder than it seems. Many sites commit the grievous search engine crime of keyword stuffing simply through over-enthusiasm. It’s important to get used to using keyword phrases in place of ordinary descriptions, such as using ‘Smith Co’ instead of ‘our company’, but don’t go overboard. It can help to read the content of your competitors’ sites for guidance. Consult your SEO firm for help with content

• Be patient. Impatience has been the downfall of more than a few SEO campaigns, and is one of the mistakes made by newcomers. When you feel things aren’t working, it is tempting to fiddle with your SEO. This is often done before the SEO plan has had time to produce any results. Remember, SEO takes time and is best thought of as a continuous processE

Getting Your 302s Sorted for SEO

Your site’s code can have a very big effect on your relationship with the search engines. Server codes in particular can steer search engine spiders in the right direction, or drive them away. There are several areas where the room for error is great. One of these is the use of 302 codes.

Temporary redirect codes, known as 302s, are used when you need to temporarily pass page traffic on to a different page. They come in handy whenever you need to take a page down for repairs, or are in the middle of a site move. The trouble is, site owners frequently forget to replace 302 temporary redirects with 301 permanent redirects, and this can cause issues for search engine optimisation.

The history

The problem with 302 codes has a bit of history, and some of it revolves around the two ways 302 redirects can be implemented. The code can be implemented from within a site, transferring users from one page to another. The code can also be implemented from outside a site, directing users from one domain to another. This second use has caused the most problems.

In the early 2000s, black-hat internet operators discovered that they could effectively hijack wholesome-seeming pages by using a 302 temporary redirect code. Many pages had their rankings effectively destroyed before the problem subsided.

The way that the search engines handle 302 redirects is sketchy, presenting another problem. When encountering a 302 code, the search engines have the option of showing the original URL or the new one. The hijacking problem made the search engines lean toward showing original URLs, so that users can see what’s going on. However, legitimate redirects often direct a clunky URL to a nice short one, meaning that it’s better for the user to see the redirected URL. Search engines aren’t uniform in choosing one or the other.

Why, exactly, are 302 redirects such a problem?

The 302 temporary redirect code is not something that just got conjured up in the night to create problems for innocent little SEO pros. The code has a genuine purpose, namely to temporarily redirect a browser to a new page. This might prompt the question, if you can use a 302 redirect for its original purpose then what exactly causes the problem over time?

There are a couple of ways in which the permanent use of 302 temporary redirects causes problems.  If the 302 code is being used while you shift domains, there’s a chance that the search engines could treat it as a page hijack. Not a good thing. If you’re using them internally, problems arise with the way your URL is displayed in the search engine results pages. The search engines have difficulties determining the correct address for the page.

The best thing to do is only use 302s for their intended purpose, a temporary one. Sorting out code is a technical job and can be hard to do yourself. If you’re concerned about how your site’s code affects your SEO, talk to us at SEO Consult.