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Category: SEO

Must-Know SEO Acronyms

SEOSEO, like most Internet marketing specialties, has a language all its own. The definitions below will give business leaders a better understanding of the very important ideas behind key SEO terms, and help them evaluate SEO agencies and campaigns more confidently.

1. 301 Redirect. A 301 redirect is Google’s preferred method of automatically taking visitors to an old URL or (sometimes) a URL with duplicate content to the current, correct page. SEO impact: Points Google to the content you want it to see.

2. ALT Tag. An ALT tag is a bit of HTML code that causes a text description of an image to display when the image itself does not display on the screen. SEO impact: Google bots read ALT tags, giving your images better organic visibility when they are optimized

3. Anchor Text. Anchor text is the text you click on in a hyperlink. SEO impact: Google looks for natural link text; e.g., text that varies from keywords to the URL to the company name to simply “click here”, etc. Over optimizing anchor text with keywords can negatively affect organic visibility.

4. Authority. “Authority” describes how highly Google regards your website (domain authority) or a particular Web page (page authority). Following White Hat SEO practices has a cumulative effect of increasing domain authority and page authority.

5. Black Hat SEO. Aggressive black_hat_seoSEO practices designed to manipulate organic rankings for short-term results are referred to as Black Hat. SEO impact: Using Black Hat techniques can result in severe penalties and should be avoided at all cost.

6. Canonical URL. When a website(s) has active pages with duplicate content, or multiple URLS for the same page (e.g., SampleURL.com and sampleurl.com) a canonical URL tells Google which page is the main source of the content. SEO impact: Canonical URLs ensure Google points users to the version of a Web page you want them to see.

content_marketing7. Content Marketing. Content marketing is an Internet marketing technique where content is used to drive leads and improve branding. SEO impact: Creating high quality on-site and off-site content produces significant SEO impact: Creates natural inbound links and improves domain and page authority.

8. Conversion. When a user clicks on an organic link in a search engine, or phones a company using information from an organic link, they are SEO conversions. SEO impact: Conversions are a useful metric for evaluating SEO performance. However – all conversions are not sales leads, so it is extremely important to validate sales leads as part of SEO execution and evaluation.

9. Directory. Directories are websites that display lists of recommended or endorsed websites, usually within a particular niche. SEO impact: Having a directory listing with a link can be very good or very bad for SEO, depending on the authority of the directory website in question.

analytics_icon10. Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a free service that provides highly detailed information and statistics about website performance. SEO impact: Google Analytics provides essential information for SEO, including sources of referred traffic (e.g., traffic sent from Google organic search to the website), and traffic and user behavior on individual website pages.

11. Google Webmaster Tools. Google Webmaster Tools is a free service that allows webmasters to identify and correct website issues that impede SEO performance. SEO impact: Webmaster Tools is invaluable for on-site optimization.

12. Internal Link. Internal links are hyperlinks that link to other pages within a website. SEO impact: A website’s internal linking system, if well constructed, helps Google determine the relative importance of website pages and thus improves search visibility.

13. Keyword Research. Keyword research is the process of systematically reviewing search terms used in organic search and evaluating their potential effectiveness for SEO campaigns. SEO impact: All SEO campaigns must start with detailed keyword research, since an SEO campaign is only as good as the search terms its online content is built around.

14. Keywords. Keywords are the words and phrases search engine users input on Google, Bing and other search engines. SEO impact: Strategically valuable keywords are ones used by people looking for a company’s products and services, but don’t know who the company is or are not aware it sells those particular things.

15. Landing Page. In SEO, a landing page (or entry page) is a website page that search engine users come to after clicking on an organic link. SEO impact: Creating persuasive, informative landing pages for strategically important keywords greatly improves lead generation.

16. Link Acquisition. Link acquisition, also referred to as link building or link development, is the SEO process of acquiring high authority, relevant backlinks to a client website. SEO impact: Link acquisition must be undertaken carefully by firms intimately familiar with best practices — Black Hat techniques can be interpreted as manipulative by Google and do much more harm than good.

17. Link Profile. A website’s link profile is the totality of inbound links pointing to that website. SEO impact: A strong link profile, which is diverse and driven by other websites that desire to link to the website based on the quality and usefulness of its content, has a huge positive impact on SEO performance.

18. Link Reclamation. Link reclamation is the SEO process of identifying poor quality links to a website, and then taking steps to eliminate or improve them. SEO impact: Over time, a website builds up links from websites that have fallen into disfavor with Google or are otherwise undesirable. Cleaning them up improves a website’s link profile and SEO performance.

19. Long Tail Keywords. Long tail keywords are keyword phrases that are highly detailed, often having relatively low search volume but also a very high likelihood of producing conversions, such as “buy 100% organic sunscreen in orlando”. SEO impact: Companies that focus only on high volume keywords rather than including longtail keywords miss significant opportunities to generate sales leads.

20. Meta Description. A Meta description is a snippet of HTML text associated with a Web page that sometimes displays under a link in organic search results. SEO impact: A persuasive Meta description encourages users to a click on a link, thus improving conversions and lead generation.

21. Meta Title. The Meta title of a Web page is HTML code that describes the content of a page. Meta title tags should always be unique, accurate and include important keywords. SEO impact: Well-written Meta titles have great importance in communicating what a page is about to Google. They are probably the most important thing to get right on a website.

22. Off-site Optimization. Off-site optimization is SEO work undertaken away from the website to improve organic search visibility. Tasks include off-site content marketing and directory listing/renewal. SEO impact: To be successful, all SEO campaigns should have a robust off-site component.

23. On-site Optimization. On-site on_page_seooptimization is SEO work undertaken within the website to improve organic search visibility. Tasks include reviewing Google Webmaster Tools to correct errors and adding strategic website content. SEO impact: To be successful, all SEO campaigns should have a robust on-site component.

24. Ranking Factor. A ranking factor is something known to be part of the Google Algorithm for the ranking of website content, such as Meta titles. Some factors, such as social media mentions, are not definitive ranking factors, but are instead only correlated to high organic search visibility. SEO impact: A competent SEO company understands the nuances of the many ranking factors and takes them into account for all campaign activity.

25. Robots.txt. Robots.txt is a “behind-the-scenes” file on a website that tells Google “robots” / “bots” / “crawlers” (see spider) to ignore certain content or provides other instructions to them about how to read and interpret the website. SEO impact: Proper use of robots.txt makes it easier for Google to understand and thus give higher visibility to strategically important website pages.

26. Search Algorithm. A search algorithm is a complex “recipe” for evaluating the organic search engine significance of website pages relative to the keywords search engine users input when conducting a search. The most important of these is the Google Algorithm, as Google continues to be the dominant, most widely used search engine. SEO impact: Google’s algorithm changes continually. A competent SEO company keeps pace with algorithm updates, so as not to use outdated techniques that result in neutral or even negative results.

27. SERP. SERP stands for search engine results page. It is the page of links search engine users see after inputting keywords for a search. SEO impact: Today, SERPs are highly customized. Universal search, personalized search and other factors have resulted in SERPS with various types of results on the page, obscuring the meaning of “rankings.” Competent SEO companies thus focus on overall visibility rather than pursue hard to calculate and relatively unimportant ranking numbers.

28. Sitemap. A sitemap is a list of Web pages on a website. For SEO, Google recommends specific sitemap attributes to enable it to better understand and rank a website. SEO impact: A properly structured sitemap has a large role in improving search engine visibility, especially for websites with many pages.

29. Spider. A “spider” is a search engine robot that visits and analyzes a website. Google spiders. SEO impact: Well-optimized websites enable spiders to quickly and correctly interpret its content and thus improve organic search visibility.

white_hat_seo30. White Hat SEO. White Hat SEO practices follow Google guidelines and other established best practices. SEO impact: Using White Hat SEO techniques is the best way to obtain results for SEO campaigns in the long term.

SEO is an foundational part of most Internet marketing strategies. Executives don’t have to be subject matter experts, but the better they understand the principles behind SEO, the better able they are to keep their programs on track.

This article was originally written by Brad Shorr:
Brad Shorr is the B2B Marketing Director of Straight North, a group of Internet marketing experts helping companies of all sizes with their search marketing campaigns.

Cheers,

Marcel Manzardo | President & CEO
MMDesign Business Solutions
phone: 888 885-0205 x400 | fax: 888 422-0186
marcel.manzardo@mmdbiz.com 
www.mmdbiz.com

Ultimate Website Check (part 2, Speed)

Laptop with Stethoscope

Speed is King

Website Load Time
Website Load Time in Seconds

Speed is one of the most important metrics for your website. Everybody is in a hurry and according to surveys done by Akamai and Gomez.com, nearly half of web users expect a site to load within 2 seconds or less. 40% of users tend to abandon a site that has not loaded within 3 seconds. Use the Pingdom Website Speed Test for example to evaluate your site. Make sure the load time is below 2 seconds.

Mobile internet users expect browsing on their phones/tablets to be comparable to the desktop or laptop experience.  However, internet speed on mobile devices is typically slower than on desktops and laptops. So page optimization is crucial for being successful in the mobile world.

Speed testFor starters test the speed of your website with Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool. Follow the steps below to improve your site speed. We are starting with the low hanging fruit…

  1. Select the “right” format for your image and compress all images. To learn the basics about image processing and formats read Google’s Image Optimization Guide.
    If you need alpha transparency in your images, save the pictures as PNG 24. You will notice that the image size is really large, typically much bigger than a JPG equivalent. Fortunately there is TinyPNG an excellent tool that compresses PNG files typically by about 70% while preserving alpha transparency.

iphone png 24iphone optimized

Can you tell which picture is 155KB and which is 44KB?

  1. Combine all CSS files into one master CSS file and minimize CSS by using e.g. node.js together with clean-css (see https://www.npmjs.com/package/clean-css). This approach allows you to create a batch file that combines all your CSS files into a compressed single CSS file with a single click.
    You can also just use one of the online tools to combine and compress multiple CSS files.
    Why is it not good enough to just compress the individual CSS files? You could argue that the amount of data that needs to be transferred is the same whether the CSS files are combined or not. The reason for combining the files is to minimize server requests. If you have 10 CSS files versus one, then you just saved 9 requests and they do add up…
  2. Minify your JavaScript files and combine them into a single file. http://jscompress.com/ will do that for you.
  3. Minifying HTML can save you some extra bytes and there are online tools available that take care of CSS, JavaSript and HTML minification. However, for a typical modern page, the actual HTML code is orders of magnitude smaller than the CSS and JavaSript. So if minifying HTML only saves you a couple of hundred bytes don’t bother.
  4. gzip compressionEnable gzip compression on your web server. All modern browsers support and automatically negotiate gzip compression for all HTTP requests. Server side compression gives you the most bang for the buck as it affects all resources that your user needs to download to display a page. However, depending on your web host, you may have to contact them to enable compression. Typically, you can just add directives to your .htaccess file like shown below: 
    # compress text, html, javascript, css, xml:
 AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/plain
 AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html
 AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml
 AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/css
 AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xml
 AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml
 AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/rss+xml
 AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript
 AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/x-javascript

    This is a nice article that shows you how to set things up. Make sure, you test that compression is working.

  5. Leverage browser caching by setting  a maximum age or expiry date  in the HTTP headers for static resources. This will allow the browser to load previously cached content instead of downloading all resources from your web server. This obviously is only meaningful for “static resources” meaning content that does not change frequently. Typically this can be achieved by adding code similar to what is shown below to your .htaccess file. 
     ## EXPIRES CACHING ##
 
 <IfModule mod_expires.c>
 ExpiresActive On
 ExpiresByType image/jpg "access plus 7 days"
 #ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 7 days"
 #ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 7 days"
 ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 7 days"
 ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 7 days"
 ExpiresByType application/pdf "access plus 1 month"
 ExpiresByType text/x-javascript "access plus 7 days"
 ExpiresByType text/javascript "access plus 7 days"
 ExpiresByType application/x-javascript "access plus 7 days"
 ExpiresByType application/javascript "access plus 7 days"
 #ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash "access plus 7 days"
 #ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access plus 1 month"
 ExpiresDefault "access plus 24 hours"
 </IfModule>
 ## EXPIRES CACHING ##

    If you need more information check the “Leverage Browser Caching” resources at Google.

  6.  Caching in general can greatly improve the speed of your site. This is particularly important if you use a CMS like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal or alike. So if your content does not change on a daily bases, use a caching plugin. An example would be “WP Super Cache” for WordPress. Caching does not only make your site faster it also minimizes server load.
  7. Eliminate render-blocking JavaScript and CSS in above-the-fold content. What this really means is the following: Move all JavaScript that is not required to display the visible part of your page (without scrolling) to the very bottom of the code (before the </body> tag.  Instead of referencing small JavaScripts with a file, inline the actual JavaScript code which will eliminate the request latency. For more details see “Remove Render-Blocking JavaScript“CSS files should be left in the head section (even though they are allowed in HTML5 in the body section) see optimize CSS delivery.
  8. Make sure your web server has a fast response time (under 200ms). Testing your web server requires multiple measurements over several periods of time. Depending on your hosting company, performance data may be available.
    server load
    cPanel Server Load Info

    At least you should be able to see the current load of the server. If you are in shared environment (not a dedicated server) and the load is anywhere near 80-90%, then you better talk to the hosting company so they can move you to a better server…

  9. Avoid web content, such as Flash, Silverlight, and Java. Most mobile devices do not support these plugins and even modern desktop browsers restrict their use. Besides the overhead they are a leading cause of crashes and security issues.

Case in point…
speed test

This is the result of Pingdom Speed Test for MMDbiz. Note that mmdbiz.com loads faster than 98% of all tested web sites.
We actually did tests throughout the development of the site: the page size increased and with it the load time. A sharp drop in mid February marks the implementation of the above mentioned speed enhancing measures.

Speed History
History throughout the development of the site

 Part 3 coming soon…

If you have questions, contact us!

Cheers,

Marcel

Marcel Manzardo | President & CEO
MMDesign Business Solutions
phone: 888 885-0205 x400 | fax: 888 422-0186
marcel.manzardo@mmdbiz.com
www.mmdbiz.com

Ultimate Website Check (part 1, Basics & Infrastructure)

web-health-check

Whether you have a highly sophisticated, complex eCommerce website or a simple blog, there are a few things that just have to be done right…

The Basics

Lets look at the basics first; don’t even think about launching a site without having the following covered:

web-basics

Infrastructure

Regularly check your site infrastructure:

  • Make sure your content and page titles are unique (no duplicates). Include your keywords in both title and page content.
  • Validate HTML and eliminate code validaytionerrors. The tool lists errors and warnings that will help you to fix your code. Clean HTML ensures that the bots can successfully crawl your site. Note that the HTML5 validation tool is still in experimental stage. That is the reason why it shows a warning on the mmdbiz.com site when there should be none…
  • Validate your CSS files at http://csslint.net/. Note that bots do crawl CSS files. So valid CSS file will not only display your content correctly but also help SEO.
  • Check your JavaScript; there are numerous online tools available that will check your code. Again, bots do crawl JavaScript files and they should be clean.
  • index_statusMake sure your pages are all indexed by using Webmaster Tools
  • Check for 404 errors with the Google Crawl Errors report in the Webmaster Tools.
  • Check your site speed and address all recommendations.

Ultimate Website Check (part 2, Speed)…

If you have questions, contact us!

Cheers,

Marcel

Marcel Manzardo | President & CEO
MMDesign Business Solutions
phone: 888 885-0205 x400 | fax: 888 422-0186
marcel.manzardo@mmdbiz.com
www.mmdbiz.com

Mobile Ready? – April 21st is the day…

It’s official, as of April 21, 2015 Google will be factoring in mobile-friendliness into its search algorithm.

What that means in plain English is that your website will be ranked lower in mobile search if it is not deemed mobile-friendly.

google
Read Google’s statement

There are several factors that Google takes into consideration when it assesses your site:

  1. The text needs to be set at a reasonable size on a mobile device such that it is actually readable without zooming in.
  2. The mobile viewport has to be set. To learn more about the viewport settings see here.
  3. Make sure your robots.txt rules do not block JavaScript, CSS, images or any other resources. Otherwise the Google bot will not see your site correctly and not consider it mobile-friendly. Check Google’s recommendations on blocked resources.
  4. The links need to be spaced sufficiently such that they can be tapped by a fat finger. Google actually assesses the actual link spacing and if they are too close will penalize the site.
  5. Stay away from software that is not compatible with mobile devices, e.g. Flash. Almost anything can be achieved with CSS3 and JavaScript, and Flash is clearly obsolete in a mobile dominated world.
  6. The content has to be fitted appropriately such that there is no need to scroll horizontally or zoom. Essentially the content cannot be wider than the screen of the mobile device.

 

To check your site go to Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test.

The result will be one the of examples shown below.2015-02-22-20_50_48-Mobile-Friendly-Test

Why should you care about mobile search?

There has been a major paradigm shift to a mobile dominated internet:

  • mobile_vs_desktop_searchMobile search accounts for approximately 50% of all website searches.
  • Smart-phones and tables combined account for 60% of all online traffic (source comScore)
  • 52% of smartphone and tablet users use mobile as their primary internet access device (source Ofcom).

What to do if your site fails the test

Convert your website to a responsive design.

This is one of MMDbiz’s core competencies, and we have been building responsive sites for several years. Please visit our web design portfolio to see our recent work.

Contact us if you have questions.

Happy testing!

Marcel

Is Your Website Passing the Test?

Mobile-friendly testGoogle recently made a tool available to test any website for being “mobile-friendly” (see mobile-friendly test).

Test your site, and if it looks like the image shown on the right, you should take action.

The Mobile User Experience Cannot Be Ignored Anymore.

Mobile search accounts for about 50% of overall search volumemobile_vs_desktop_search

Can your business ignore 50% of all search? I don’t think so…
According to BIA/Kelsey and Google statements, Mobile search will surpass desktop search this year.

 

Google already penalizes sites that provide a bad experience to mobile searchers. Now the company has confirmed that it’s testing with what seems like a boost for those providing a great experience.
Google also introduced the “mobile-friendly” label in mobile search results.

The Solution – Responsive Design

Responsive Web Design (RWD) has been around for several years now and has become the de facto standard for web design. Google recommends responsive design in their developer help files (see https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/layouts/index?hl=en).

  • If done right, responsive design provides the same user experience over all device types (mobile, tablet and desktop).
  • Only a single website has to be maintained unlike with a mobile site and desktop site approach.
  • RWD saves money over the live of a website (only one site to maintain).

I Failed The Test – What Now?

Mobile-Friendly_Test_-_2015-02-22_20.23.49Convert your site to responsive design!
RWD is one of the core competencies of MMDbiz and we have been building responsive site for several years (see web design portfolio).
Ask us for a quote!

If you are already work with a developer, ask to see your developer’s references and portfolio. Make sure he or she understands responsive webdesign and has responsive sites in their portfolio.