About two weeks ago Google launched a link disavow tool. The purpose of the tool is to suggest to Google to disavow bad links to a website for webmasters who have either received a webmaster report with a notice of unnatural links or who have been impacted by the Penguin algorithm update. (If you’re not sure whether your site was impacted by the Penguin update read this post.)

What Is The Link Disavow Tool?

For those who haven’t yet heard about the link disavow tool I’d recommend reading their official announcement as well as this fairly thorough Q & A between Danny Sullivan and Matt Cutts on the logic and reasoning of the tool. But, in short, Google is now recommending that if your site has been negatively affected by the latest round of algorithm updates targeting bad links you should first take the necessary measures to remove those links altogether. After personally going after the removal of those links you should then submit your website first through the link disavow tool, then through the reconsideration request process a day later.

Reasons Behind Google’s Link Disavow Tool

In the official announcement of the disavow tool the purpose was clearly explained as “ If you’ve done as much as you can to remove the problematic links, and there are still some links you just can’t seem to get down, that’s a good time to visit our new Disavow links page.”

From the front end that is definitely the most apparent reason for the link disavow tool. But other’s have been more skeptical about this approach to improving your sites performance after having been impacted by the Penguin update. I have heard questions like:

• Even if we’ve done all we can to remove bad links how can we be sure Google won’t simply dig into the backlinks of our site further and hit us even harder?
• Are we sure Google is using this tool solely out of the goodness of their hearts to help websites that have been hurt?

No matter the scenario you’re definitely baring more and more as you submit your website to forms like a reconsideration request or the new link disavow tool. But, historically submissions like this have not had a tendency to produce cascading negative effects. In answer to a question similar to those above Matt Cutts recently said:

Right now, we’re using this data in the normal straightforward way, e.g. for reconsideration requests. We haven’t decided whether we’ll look at this data more broadly. Even if we did, we have plenty of other ways of determining bad sites, and we have plenty of other ways of assessing that sites are actually good. We may do spot checks, but we’re not planning anything more broadly with this data right now. If a webmaster wants to shoot themselves in the foot and disavow high-quality links, that’s sort of like an IQ test and indicates that we wouldn’t want to give that webmaster’s disavowed links much weight anyway. It’s certainly not a scalable way to hurt another site, since you’d have to build a good site, then build up good links, then disavow those good links. Blackhats are normally lazy and don’t even get to the “build a good site” stage.

So, while they presently only intend to use the data for the purpose of assisting websites in recovery it is clear the door will be left open to use this information for more spam mining later on.

So, Is Google Having Trouble Keeping Up With Their Algorithms?

What I mean by this question is this: When Google originally rolled out this new link disavow tool I immediately thought “Has Google lost track of its algorithms and is now concerned they’ve unleashed an untamed beast.” (Well maybe not those exact words, but you get it.) Google may literally be looking at the web and thinking, “man maybe a few of these websites really shouldn’t have been hit by this algorithm. They are relevant, they are rich with content, they are usable and helpful. But yes, they do have a few bad links passing to them.”

My personal opinion, they are definitely going to be using this data to improve their algorithms so that the impact is more precise and succinct and based less wholly on links and more comprehensively on relevancy, usability, freshness. They may not be using the data yet, but they will be in the near future.

Should You Use Google’s Link Disavow Tool

No doubt about it, Google is a behemoth of a machine that any one in the digital marketing arena rides on a daily basis. We are, in many ways, ruled by Google and need to live with it if we are looking to improve revenue and brand through search. I would recommend submitting your website to the link disavow tool only after taking exhaustive measures yourself. They have said that if you do not have something to show for your link extraction efforts (meaning if you haven’t gotten at least a few bad links removed) when you submit your website you may not see the improved results you’re hoping for.

Are Google's Algorithms Running Faster Than They Can? A Look at the New Link Disavow Tool is a post by SEO expert Preston Van Dyke. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

About two weeks ago Google launched a link disavow tool. The purpose of the tool is to suggest to Google to disavow bad links to a website for webmasters who have either received a webmaster report with a notice of unnatural links or who have been impacted by the Penguin algorithm update. (If you’re not sure whether your site was impacted by the Penguin update read this post.)

What Is The Link Disavow Tool?

For those who haven’t yet heard about the link disavow tool I’d recommend reading their official announcement as well as this fairly thorough Q & A between Danny Sullivan and Matt Cutts on the logic and reasoning of the tool. But, in short, Google is now recommending that if your site has been negatively affected by the latest round of algorithm updates targeting bad links you should first take the necessary measures to remove those links altogether. After personally going after the removal of those links you should then submit your website first through the link disavow tool, then through the reconsideration request process a day later.

Reasons Behind Google’s Link Disavow Tool

In the official announcement of the disavow tool the purpose was clearly explained as “ If you’ve done as much as you can to remove the problematic links, and there are still some links you just can’t seem to get down, that’s a good time to visit our new Disavow links page.”

From the front end that is definitely the most apparent reason for the link disavow tool. But other’s have been more skeptical about this approach to improving your sites performance after having been impacted by the Penguin update. I have heard questions like:

• Even if we’ve done all we can to remove bad links how can we be sure Google won’t simply dig into the backlinks of our site further and hit us even harder?
• Are we sure Google is using this tool solely out of the goodness of their hearts to help websites that have been hurt?

No matter the scenario you’re definitely baring more and more as you submit your website to forms like a reconsideration request or the new link disavow tool. But, historically submissions like this have not had a tendency to produce cascading negative effects. In answer to a question similar to those above Matt Cutts recently said:

Right now, we’re using this data in the normal straightforward way, e.g. for reconsideration requests. We haven’t decided whether we’ll look at this data more broadly. Even if we did, we have plenty of other ways of determining bad sites, and we have plenty of other ways of assessing that sites are actually good. We may do spot checks, but we’re not planning anything more broadly with this data right now. If a webmaster wants to shoot themselves in the foot and disavow high-quality links, that’s sort of like an IQ test and indicates that we wouldn’t want to give that webmaster’s disavowed links much weight anyway. It’s certainly not a scalable way to hurt another site, since you’d have to build a good site, then build up good links, then disavow those good links. Blackhats are normally lazy and don’t even get to the “build a good site” stage.

So, while they presently only intend to use the data for the purpose of assisting websites in recovery it is clear the door will be left open to use this information for more spam mining later on.

So, Is Google Having Trouble Keeping Up With Their Algorithms?

What I mean by this question is this: When Google originally rolled out this new link disavow tool I immediately thought “Has Google lost track of its algorithms and is now concerned they’ve unleashed an untamed beast.” (Well maybe not those exact words, but you get it.) Google may literally be looking at the web and thinking, “man maybe a few of these websites really shouldn’t have been hit by this algorithm. They are relevant, they are rich with content, they are usable and helpful. But yes, they do have a few bad links passing to them.”

My personal opinion, they are definitely going to be using this data to improve their algorithms so that the impact is more precise and succinct and based less wholly on links and more comprehensively on relevancy, usability, freshness. They may not be using the data yet, but they will be in the near future.

Should You Use Google’s Link Disavow Tool

No doubt about it, Google is a behemoth of a machine that any one in the digital marketing arena rides on a daily basis. We are, in many ways, ruled by Google and need to live with it if we are looking to improve revenue and brand through search. I would recommend submitting your website to the link disavow tool only after taking exhaustive measures yourself. They have said that if you do not have something to show for your link extraction efforts (meaning if you haven’t gotten at least a few bad links removed) when you submit your website you may not see the improved results you’re hoping for.

Are Google’s Algorithms Running Faster Than They Can? A Look at the New Link Disavow Tool is a post by SEO expert Preston Van Dyke. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Panda Google Algorithm Impact: How To Know If Your Website Was Affected

To identify if your site has been impacted by any of the Panda updates you will need two things:

First, you’ll need to know which date the specific Panda update in mind has occurred. You can get these dates from a number of different places. Go here for a list of the top resources.

And second, analytics (or webmaster tools) data for the website in question.

With a date in mind and analytics data on hand you’re ready to go. Using Google Analytics as our example you’ll want to first put in place a segment to show only the traffic acquired through Google organic searches.

Next you’ll want to make sure you are looking at a date range long enough to establish trends, but short enough to recognize any major drops that occur either on or right near the date of the update. Usually a 3-month range will do.

In this example you can see a website that was impacted by the Panda update that rolled out on April 24^th 2011.

Corrective Action To Resolve Panda Algorithm Issues

If you do find that you have been affected by a Panda update the first step toward corrective action is to identify you pain points. You can do this by zeroing in on exactly which pages were impacted most heavily from the update (using Google analytics) and putting each through a test against the following questions:

1. Is content from this page duplicated either by this website or other websites online?
2. Is my bounce rate for this page at a higher average than other pages within the domain?
3. Does this web page have any links passing to it from a site that could be considered a content farm?

As you identify each of these items as potential issues typical forms of corrective action are:

• Rewriting and revising on page content to be completely unique
• Utilizing the rel=canonical to help Google determine original sources and weed out duplicate page versions
• And, establishing new link signals from websites that are high quality in content (typically sites that do not allow self-submitting content are your best source to achieve links from for this purpose)

Penguin Google Algorithm Impact: How To Know If Your Website Was Affected

March and April of 2012 were big months for algorithm updates. Google rolled out 4 major updates within less than 4 weeks of each other.

• Panda 3.4 on March 23,
• Panda 3.5 on April 19,
• Penguin on April 24 and,
• Panda 3.6 on April 27.

The process to identify whether a website was impacted by the Penguin update is similar to Panda. You will need to know the specific date of the Penguin update in question and utilize analytics to identify if a significant drop in Google organic traffic was realized.

But if you are looking at the original Penguin update, (the one that occurred on April 24, 2012), keep in mind that because of the close proximity of these 4 updates it can be easy to mistake one update for the other.

For example you can see a website here—that for quite some time considered their site hit by Penguin when in fact it was a Panda refresh.

But if you take a look at this example, it is clear this sites’ traffic drop was in direct correlation to the Penguin update.

Corrective Action To Resolve Penguin Algorithm Issues

Now, if you find that your website has in fact received a drop due to the Penguin update you’ll want to go through the following checklist to determine next steps:

1. Do the pages that were impacted overuse keywords that we are trying to optimize for? (Now keep in mind there is no exact science for this. For instance, I am not going to tell you that your keyword density should be a specific percentage. Keyword use in areas like titles, headings, image alternate text, and paragraphs should read and feel natural. If you come across an area that uses a keyword or multiple variations of that keyword irregularly—this is likely an issue.)
2. Does the link anchor text passing to this page majorly fall into 1, 2, 3 or 4 specific keyword phrases? (This should be considered both with links passing to the site from external domains and with links on your domain as well).
3. Are any links passing to my website part of a link network? (A link network is one where a series of websites are all owned and managed by one party for the purpose of building links.  The best ways of identifying link networks are through a comparison of domain IP addresses, commonalities found in web design or site architecture or if they simply identify themselves as a link network).
4. Were there any major spikes in links acquired to my site recently? (This most commonly occurs when you have either purchased links or a website has linked to you from every page on their domain.)

As you identify one or more of these 4 major areas of harm, common practices for resolution include:

• Revise on page content and meta data to read clean without keyword stuffing
• Pursue link revision initiatives to clean up and diversify link anchor text passing to your website.
• Pursue link extraction initiatives to remove links from networks.
• Ensure future link acquisition strategies is as normal in trend as possible

In some circumstances a domain can be so badly affected that a rebrand is necessary. Typically this should not be an avenue pursued until all other options are exhausted.

Do you have anything to add, or maybe some additional questions? If so, please comment below.

Quick Tips on Google Algorithm Impact Detection & Resolution is a post by SEO expert Preston Van Dyke. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Panda Google Algorithm Impact: How To Know If Your Website Was Affected

To identify if your site has been impacted by any of the Panda updates you will need two things:

First, you’ll need to know which date the specific Panda update in mind has occurred. You can get these dates from a number of different places. I would recommend using the SEOmoz Algorithm Change History for an all-in-one source.

And second, analytics (or webmaster tools) data for the website in question.

With a date in mind and analytics data on hand you’re ready to go. Using Google Analytics as our example you’ll want to first put in place a segment to show only the traffic acquired through Google organic searches.

Next you’ll want to make sure you are looking at a date range long enough to establish trends, but short enough to recognize any major drops that occur either on or right near the date of the update. Usually a 3-month range will do.

In this example you can see a website that was impacted by the Panda update that rolled out on April 24^th 2011.

Corrective Action To Resolve Panda Algorithm Issues

Now, if you do find that you have been affected by a Panda update the first step toward corrective action is to identify you pain points. You can do this by zeroing in on exactly which pages were impacted most heavily from the update (using Google analytics) and putting each through a test against the following questions:

1. Is content from this page duplicated either by this website or other websites online?
2. Is my bounce rate for this page at a higher average than other pages within the domain?
3. Does this web page have any links passing to it from a site that could be considered a content farm?

As you identify each of these items as potential issues typical forms of corrective action are:

• Rewriting and revising on page content to be completely unique
• Utilizing the rel=canonical to help Google determine original sources and weed out duplicate page versions
• And, establishing new link signals from websites that are high quality in content (typically sites that do not allow self-submitting content are your best source to achieve links from for this purpose)

Penguin Google Algorithm Impact: How To Know If Your Website Was Affected

March and April of 2012 were big months for algorithm updates. Google rolled out 4 major updates within less than 4 weeks of each other.

• Panda 3.4 on March 23,
• Panda 3.5 on April 19,
• Penguin on April 24 and,
• Panda 3.6 on April 27.

The process to identify whether a website was impacted by the Penguin update is similar to Panda. You will need to know the specific date of the Penguin update in question and utilize analytics to identify if a significant drop in Google organic traffic was realized.

But if you are looking at the original Penguin update, (the one that occurred on April 24, 2012), keep in mind that because of the close proximity of these 4 updates it can be easy to mistake one update for the other.

For example you can see a website here—that for quite some time considered their site hit by Penguin when in fact it was a Panda refresh.

But if you take a look at this example, it is clear this sites’ traffic drop was in direct correlation to the Penguin update.

Corrective Action To Resolve Penguin Algorithm Issues

Now, if you find that your website has in fact received a drop due to the Penguin update you’ll want to go through the following checklist to determine next steps:

1. Do the pages that were impacted overuse keywords that we are trying to optimize for? (Now keep in mind there is no exact science for this. For instance, I am not going to tell you that your keyword density should be a specific percentage. Keyword use in areas like titles, headings, image alternate text, and paragraphs should read and feel natural. If you come across an area that uses a keyword or multiple variations of that keyword irregularly—this is likely an issue.)
2. Does the link anchor text passing to this page majorly fall into 1, 2, 3 or 4 specific keyword phrases? (This should be considered both with links passing to the site from external domains and with links on your domain as well).
3. Are any links passing to my website part of a link network? (A link network is one where a series of websites are all owned and managed by one party for the purpose of building links.  The best ways of identifying link networks are through a comparison of domain IP addresses, commonalities found in web design or site architecture or if they simply identify themselves as a link network).
4. Were there any major spikes in links acquired to my site recently? (This most commonly occurs when you have either purchased links or a website has linked to you from every page on their domain.)

As you identify one or more of these 4 major areas of harm common practices for resolution include:

• Revise on page content and meta data to read clean without keyword stuffing
• Pursue link revision initiatives to clean up and diversify link anchor text passing to your website.
• Pursue link extraction initiatives to remove links from networks.
• Ensure future link acquisition strategies is as normal in trend as possible

In some circumstances a domain can be so badly affected that a rebrand is necessary. Typically this should not be an avenue pursued until all other options are exhausted.

Quick Tips on Google Algorithm Impact Detection & Resolution is a post by SEO expert Preston Van Dyke. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

The mobile search market is fast rising. Google searches that come from mobile devices now make up 15% of total Google search volume. This rate of growth is expected to continue, and Google continues to maintain the lion share (95%) of all mobile queries.

Source: http://www.seo.com/blog/using-mobile-search-on-vacation-infographic/

These two factors alone are incentive enough make an optimized mobile website a priority for your business.

A mobile website design can be delivered a number of different ways. The most common and accepted approaches are through responsive (or flexible) design, device specific HTML, or the use of a subfolder or subdomain—essentially a separate website altogether.

Let’s find out which is best…

1. Responsive Design for a Mobile Website

Responsive design is a succinct format for delivering mobile ready content in one website.

This is done through the creation of varying style sheets that are called based on the device and screen size used by the visitor browsing the website. Each style sheet uses the same HTML file of the page to display the content giving the sense of 3 different website versions.

2. Device Specific HTML for a Mobile Website

Through user agent detection this approach dynamically serves all devices with the same set of URLs, but based on the device (mobile, tablet, desktop) in use will call different HTML and CSS.

This approach does have common issues such as irrelevant redirects and mismatch of user agents (detect a user agent inaccurately)—both of which end with the result of providing the wrong URL version to the website visitor.

Additional Resources:
https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/redirects

3. Mobile URLs for a Mobile Website

By establishing a separate location within the same domain (m.domain.com or domain.com/mobile) the creation of a second, more mobile ready website can also be done.

Within this approach the use of the rel=”alternate” and “rel=”canonical” tag is very important. This will allow search bots to eliminate potential duplicate content confusion as well as assist in their determination of which URL should rank based on the device utilized when performing any given query. [source]

Additionally, to further allow crawlers to locate both versions of each URL you have two options for the XML sitemap.

1. Create a separate mobile XML sitemap altogether [source]
2. Utilize the rel=”alternate” within the standard XML sitemap [source]

Which is the best approach for an optimized mobile website?

Responsive design is the ideal approach to take when and wherever possible. While each of these 3 approaches can certainly work the evidence and logic—both for the user experience as well as effective search engine optimization—behind a responsive design is strong.

Here are a few quick reasons responsive design is the preferred mobile website approach:

• Resolves any duplicate content issues before they occur
• Optimizes for crawl budget (not duplicating amount of landing pages crawlers have to visit)
• Cuts cost and time for web development, additional content creation and optimization etc.
• You’ll never have to worry about which version of a URL is ranking on which device
• Provides overall better user experience and search optimization
• Centralized link authority (meaning link value is no longer split between two URLs)

Why is a mobile optimized website important for every business?

It really doesn’t matter what your business model is. As more and more users adopt the mobile approach to browsing the regular viewing of your website through a phone or tablet is inevitable. The question is—is your website truly ready for mobile visitors as they arrive?

Looking at the mobile market we can see statistics all over that indicate (check out just a few here, here and here) just how important it will be to adapt to this format of browsing because the likelihood of your target audience using the phone is always going to be high.

So if you haven’t yet developed a mobile ready version of your website I would suggest, “Why not do a redesign of your current desktop website and build responsive (or flexible) design right into it?” If you have already developed a mobile ready website using one of the other two formats, don’t fret—just make sure your implementation is correct to ensure you can perform in the search engines no matter the device the visitor is using.

Additional resources:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ch/2012/06/recommendations-for-building-smartphone.html
https://developers.google.com/webmasters/smartphone-sites/details
http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/webmaster/archive/2012/03/07/building-websites-optimized-for-all-platforms-desktop-mobile-etc.aspx

The Best Way To Develop an Optimized Mobile Website is a post by SEO expert Preston Van Dyke. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

It’s Never Been Easier To Track Google Algorithm Updates

It is almost impossible to keep up with every single change in the Google search algorithm, at least on your own. So, here are four sources to help you keep up with and track Google algorithm updates, as well as what they mean for your business.

1. Inside Search – Official Google Search Blog

While some may dispute it, there is no better source of knowledge than the source itself. The Inside Search blog is undoubtedly your most important source to monitor for news on the most recent algorithm updates and just what Google is attempting to target as such.

It is important to keep in mind that what Google attempts to do in the search engine results and what their algorithm update actually does are often two very different things. But more so than this, looking at what Google is targeting is great insight into what they deem as most important and/or major issues on the web currently.

Start Tracking Google Algorithm Updates - View the Official Google Search blog here.

2. MozCast –  Google Algorithm Weather Forecast

When you are looking for the daily impact algorithms have on the web in general, MozCast is a great source. Every 24 hours the website will audit 1000 keywords to determine which top 10 results are showing that day for the query. They will then take those top 10 current results and compare them to the day prior to see just how much shake up has occurred. The bigger the change in results the higher the temperature.

This is a great way to collect a fairly small sample of search engine results and identify, in general, what is happening in Google currently due to algorithm changes.

Visit MozCast for daily Google algorithm tracking and weather reports here.

3. Matt Cutts Google+

For those of you who aren’t aware,  Matt Cutts is head of the webspam team at Google. He has become a type of spokesperson for the organic side of Google search results. He will often post each time a major roll out occurs in the algorithm and ask businesses to provide feedback on how or if they are impacted by the update. He will also typically announce how much of the web they estimate will be affected.

The unique element you will get when following Matt Cutts (as opposed to the Google Webmaster Central blog) is that, at times, he will announce upcoming algorithm updates and elements they will be targeting in advance. This can be a great help in determining what your online strategy should be as you look into future months.

Follow Matt Cutts on Google+ here.

4. SEOmoz Google Algorithm Change History

For a comprehensive perspective on all public and documented algorithm updates there is no better source I have found than the SEOmoz Algorithm Change History.

Truly a beautiful peace of link bait online. But more than just link bait, you will find here the date, name and details of each algorithm update that has occurred dating back to 2000. You will also find additional sources for each update to help with digging into the details.

Track Google Algorithms Update & History at SEOmoz here.

What Do Google Algorithm Updates Mean For Your Business?

The landscape of factors that determine your websites ability to rank organically in Google’s search results is regularly shifting. As our world continues to become more and more digital the realization that a business cannot survive without ranking for terms that define your business’ services and products is becoming prevalent. To understand what it takes to rank (and rank well) as well as what it will take 3 to 6 to 12 months from now is also just as important.

Change in the organic search industry is so inevitable that it literally happens every day. The best way to combat this change and stay on top of it is to track changes and be forward thinking about what Google and other search engines like Bing are emphasizing as most important:

• High quality, helpful and unique content
• High volumes of content (the more your know the more you have to offer – in theory)
• Quality design and architecture in a website (built for the user)
• Authoritative references or votes of confidence from other businesses or web properties (links)

Bonus: Other Notable Sources to Track Google Algorithm Updates & SEO News

• Search Engine Roundtable
• Search Engine Land

4 Unmatched Sources To Track Google Algorithm Updates is a post by SEO expert Preston Van Dyke. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

There is no doubt extensive and detailed keyword research has its place. If you haven’t been exposed to effective processes for vast keyword research I’d recommend diving into my “explode your keyword list right” series. But sometimes keyword research should be quick and dirty. Exactness is not always essential and you don’t need mounds of data to back up the need of targeting a select number of obviously relevant keyword terms.

Quick Keyword Research Process

Step 1 - Gather Baseline Using Web Analytics

• Export keyword data
• Gather current rankings

The goal here is to gather enough data to be able to quickly manipulate your keywords to shed light on opportunities.

Step 2 – High Return / Low Ranking Keyword

• Sort keyword data to show high converting, low ranking keywords.
• Select valuable term.
• Identify similar terms in analytics data.

By simply organizing your data through a “custom sort” you are able to quickly see terms that are converting well for you, but don’t rank particularly high in search engines. These are ideal opportunities for building upon and targeting.

Step 3 - Check Competitors / Google Suggest

• Run queries in Google for top common terms to identify additional commonly searched phrases through Google suggest.
• Also look at competitors search results to identify keywords and keyword variations.

With a baseline term(s) of high converting, low ranking terms we now want to expound on that particular topic. The first step to doing this quickly is going to the search engines and gathering other relevant terms through a quick snap shot of suggest common terms and those terms competitors are using within their titles & page descriptions.

Step 4 - Expand Keyword List / Gather Search Volume

• Select relevant terms
• Go to https://adwords.google.com/o/KeywordTool
• Paste all phrases
• Select “Exact Match”
• Export Suggestions

By placing our initial baseline terms found in analytics data & a quick search engine query into the Google Adwords Keyword Tool you are able to dramatically increase potential ways of approaching a topic or keyword that will fit best into your content strategy and business model.

Step 5 - Identify Phrases in Demand

• Filter list by common terms.
• Select supporting phrases with high demand.

The idea here is to quickly sort your keywords data by local search volume and begin identifying those terms in the highest demand pool that may be relevant to our initiative at hand—then continue working down the line to those less frequently searched terms.

Step 6 - Build Keyword Cluster

• Identify phrases that are both valuable to the initiative & supportive to each other.

As you begin filtering through the list of suggested keywords it is very easy to find terms that are similar to each other in both keywords used within the phrase as well as overall approach to a topic. Select those that are both supportive to one another and represent a snapshot of the topic you can truly cover within the content of a landing page on the website.

Step 7 - Identify Mapped URL / Optimize Content

• Find URL on website to target keyword cluster to.
• Optimize content.

With a cluster of terms decided upon you are now ready to determine the ideal destination for targeting, optimize the page (click here for an overview for content & website optimization) and begin your content marketing approach.

For a more broad overview of the why’s, what and how of keyword research as well as the above process check out this slide deck:

[slideshare id=14578512&doc=keywordresearch-15minutesorless-121003153538-phpapp02]

Keyword Research In 15 Minutes Or Less is a post by SEO expert Preston Van Dyke. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Rich Snippets Get Sent To The Corner

In the past Google has been fairly slow in their response and resolution for spammy approaches to organic marketing. This is not one of those cases. It was just last July (2011) when Google, Bing & Yahoo officially agreed to conform to one form of structured data. The adoption of this markup by websites has been gradual but today in many common queries you will find the results on Google to include elements like author profile pictures, star ratings and other elements not previously delivered as part of the normal search result.

Today Google has updated their webmaster guidelines to explain where, at their discretion they will choose to exclude the elements of microdata that could be delivered as rich snippets. Why? If the web page that houses this structured data is deemed as spammy or the use of the structured data itself is considered spammy Google will likely not deliver your result as an enhanced snippet.

Here is what Google has said for guidelines to understanding what is spammy in this scenario:

If your page is about a band, make sure you mark up concerts being performed by that band, not by related bands or bands in the same town.

If you sell products through your site, make sure reviews on each page are about that page’s product and not the store itself.

If your site provides song lyrics, make sure reviews are about the quality of the lyrics, not the quality of the song itself.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Every website will have reason and place to use structured data and potentially enhance your search results to increase your probability of a higher click-through rate. The best approach in this case is to use microdata only where it has specific purpose. As you do this your website will be more likely to perform better in search engines both in terms of ranking and click-through.

Google Webmaster Guidelines Update: Cracking Down On Rich Snippets is a post by SEO expert Preston Van Dyke. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

The discussion of whether user experience optimization should take priority, or even in place of search engine optimization, is not necessarily a new one, but it is one of the most important conversations we could be engaging in right now. My goal here is to explain that both approaches—while they have crossover and tend to benefit one another—should be considered separately, as they serve their own purposes. That being said – as both are targeted in a strategic and beneficial manner, a website is likely to get far greater performance on both fronts than if you were to target just one.

So far the best post I’ve found discussing this topic is by Tom Schmitz. While I don’t hold as strong an opinion as him on the matter, I tend to agree that UX is not a means to an SEO end. While both can be married fairly easily, all UX efforts won’t necessarily translate to rankings for a website.

Value & Usability Take Priority….Kind Of

In a recent webinar and post of mine, I discussed the five most important fundamentals to consider when creating any content marketing strategy. There you will find the most important values to consider when developing the content plan and design/architecture of a website laid out:

No matter how many links you build, and how flashy your website looks—a website’s long-term success (traffic, conversion, sales etc.), and sustainability of that success, can only be secured if you first focus on the character of your website.

What this means is if you focus on your website’s internal content strategy by applying the below value-based principles to establish a well thought out strategy, the longevity of your website will be secured.

And if you were to sequence these in order of priority, I would lay them out as follows:

The character and value of your website should always take first priority.

Along with that, when focusing on the character and value a website personifies, you are in turn meeting many of the most important SEO needs to achieve a great organic performance. This equals user experience considerations and optimization.

Whether you’re a developer or an SEO, chances are you have run into the issue of a perfectly functional website that still has unforeseen technical issues that hurt its rankings.

To approach the development of a website with both SEO and UX in cohesion, I’d recommend the following process:

Cover Your Bases

While the value and usability of any website should be first and foremost—there are those technical elements of SEO that, when they are known and implemented from the beginning, makes the development process much smoother.  Every development project should have a checklist of technical SEO implications before the project kicks off. To make this easy, feel free to use this quick but comprehensive checklist:

1. Main Navigation: The structuring and hierarchy of navigation are key to establishing relevance signals and overall search engine performance. To ensure your site navigation gets off on the right foot ensure the following are considered:

• Ensure all priority (top, second, and third level pages) web pages are linked to and from the main navigation (meaning every page passes an internal link to each priority page). [source pg. 10]
• Use absolute links, rather than relative (if at all possible).  [source]
• Utilize breadcrumbs. [source pg. 10]
• Involve SEO team/agency in selecting for folders and categories (URL structure); because the labeling of categories and pages determines terms used in anchor text, URLs, breadcrumbs, and headings, it is essential the right terms are used here.  [source]

2. Content Structure

• Above the fold: Ensure useful information in the form of text is designed into each web page before the visitor must scroll down. [source]
• Quantity: Within reason, ensure each web page contains ample, useful information in the form of text [source]. While the length itself should vary based on the topic and information—typically a minimum of 400 words of body text is a good standard. [source] Work to achieve text every place that any type of typography is used, rather than hiding that information from crawlers in an image.

3.  Pagination: Pagination can cause a number of serious issues for website indexing and duplicate content. To resolve these issues before they begin, take the following recommendations into consideration:

• If at all possible – do not use pagination. (May sound extreme – but users actually prefer a “view all” version when a choice is made available.)
• If pagination is a must:
  • Use Rel=Next/Prev to indicate pagination. [source]
  • Or, use Rel=Canonical to point to the “view all” version.

4. 404 Handling: To keep visitors who have accidentally arrived at an invalid URL on the domain, as well as take advantage to target high priority landing pages, the following are recommended for a custom 404 page [source]:

• Maintain site navigation.
• Maintain site look and feel.
• Integrate site search functionality.
• Provide a list of links for recommended pages to visit (use list of priority landing pages).
• Clearly indicate the visitor has arrived at an invalid URL with direction for how to proceed.

5. Alt Tags: Make sure to use alternate text (alt tags) for every image on the website. Alt tags should be [source]:

• Succinct, no longer than a short sentence.
• Descriptive to what the image itself is displaying.

6. Schema (Microdata): Placing specific labels in line with the HTML is one of the biggest innovations in search optimization as of late. Ensure all specific labeling opportunities on the website are identified and the correct Schema markup is implemented [source]. Consider the following common opportunities:

• Location (physical address) [source]
• Product [source]
• Offer [source]
• Review [source]
• Rating [source]

Search all schemas at Schema.org.

7.  Social Integration: With social signal integration into search results, the necessity of building a strong social audience and encouraging social shares of individual web pages on the domain are essential. Ensure:

• Each web page links to each major social profile for the business/organization.
• Each page contains social sharing buttons.

8.  Robots.txt: Ensure the correct implementation of page exclusions and inclusions. All pages considered public knowledge and beneficial to public users should be included for robots visitation, crawling and indexing. [source]

9. Sitemaps: The use of sitemaps creates benefit both to search engine performance as well as user experience. [source]

• XML Sitemap: The XML sitemap is the most important of sitemaps that could be used for the website. Ensure this is created to include all live, valid URLs on the website and is regularly updated. [source]
• User Sitemap: A user sitemap is delivered via HTML visually to the site visitor with anchor text links to each web page on the domain. Remain consistent to site navigation taxonomy and categorical structure.
• Other: Should the website contain additional assets (like videos), a standard sitemap can be created to ensure these are created and placed correctly.

10. Duplicate Content

• Content: It isn’t uncommon for the same page title, meta description, and meta keywords tag to be used across a large series of pages when developing a website. This is easy to get the site up and running, but it is definitely not recommended. As each page is created ensure the following [source]:
  • Unique page title, description and meta keywords are written and placed in <head>.
  • Body content is unique to each page.
• Rel=Canonical: Where dynamic versions of a web page are created, implement a rel=canonical link pointing from the dynamic to the original source. [source]

11. Rel=Author: Utilizing author tagging can increase the performance of individually authored pages in search rankings and click through. Where particular content pieces and pages are individually authored, ensure the correct implementation of rel=author is in place. If, and where possible, automate author tagging into a CMS process. [source]

12. Site Search: Use robots.txt to prevent crawling of search results pages or other auto-generated pages that don’t add much value for users coming from search engines. [source]

13. Page Speed: Undergo all necessary measures to ensure page speed is optimal. [source] Consider the following:

• Reducing image file size by optimizing
• Minify your HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
• Leverage browser caching.

14.   Analytics Tracking: Get off on the right foot. Ensure the analytics package of choice is installed on absolutely every page of the website.

Make a Great Website

With all necessary technical implications of SEO common knowledge—from design to development teams—the most important work is free and clear to take reign: a valuable and usable website.

A website should be created first and foremost to add value to the internet and to achieve an end goal for each visitor. This overall purpose will always translate into creating a noteworthy web property. (Note:  The more noteworthy your web property, the more likely it is to perform for SEO as well. Just one of the many ways that UEO really does benefit SEO).

Pursue the design of a website with the following considerations in mind:

• How is our quality of code? Is our site up to standards? [source]
• Do our graphics speak with the user purpose on each page? [source]
  • Particular attention here should apply to conversion as well. Does the design, graphics, and layout encourage conversion?
• Does this website present unique characteristic not found anywhere else online?

Pursue the development of a website with the following considerations:

• Does our website navigation make sense? [source]
• Considerations for this should include:
  • Taxonomy – does the labeling and wording make sense to both our purpose and our intended audience? Are they the most common way of communicating this subject?
  • Is the placement of our navigation prime?
• Do all website forms function correctly? [source]

Implement SEO

Once the website is built, to deliver a quality experience to each visitor, it is then time for SEOs to go in and optimize individual elements of target pages for keyword performance. Typically this “after the fact” optimization should include implementation in the following elements:

• Page Titles
• Meta Descriptions
• Meta Keywords
• Heading (H1, H2, H3…)
• Keyword Use (in body content)
• Anchor Text Use (in contextual and navigation links)
• Image Alternate Text

Conclusion

Value and usability should be the foremost focus of the creation of a website and the content contained therein. Without doubt, the more user-friendly and high-quality your website is, the more likely it is to dominate its competitors in search engines. But, for functional and logistical purposes, it still makes sense to understand the separation of the two and build a process wherein both can be integrated in your website.

Additional Sources:

• http://www.seo.com/blog/content-marketing-strategy-guide/
• http://www.searchenginejournal.com/10-ways-coding-can-help-your-seo/45402/
• http://www.brafton.com/blog/three-steps-to-building-better-user-experiences-and-catching-clicks-with-content-marketing
• http://www.sbnonline.com/2012/07/how-to-keep-a-true-aim-on-the-moving-target-of-seo/?full=1
• http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/204906
• http://www.usability.gov/pdfs/chapter2.pdf

Search Engine Optimization vs. User Experience Optimization is a post by SEO expert Preston Van Dyke. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.

Determining a good domain name comes down to 3 different approaches. They are brand, brand plus keyword, or simply a exact or broad match keyword domain. Of these 3 choices the most ideal approach is the second. One in which you can obtain a domain that has all the needed aspects of a well branded domain name as well as a keyword targeted name for search engine optimization. Often this option is not available. In the case that it isn’t available for you the second best approach would be a branded only domain name.

But before we go into the details of these 3 domain name approaches and the benefits and deficits of each one. Let’s first lay out quality domain name practices no matter your choice. A domain name should be:

• Short and succinct—easy to remember.
• Provide an idea of what will be found at the site.
• Easy to spell/read; one of the most common mistakes in this regard is when a domain name is chosen with the last letter of the first word and first letter of the second word are the same. This would be something like infoonline.com. Whether you decide to use both o’s or just keep one (infonline.com) it’s still confusing and bound to cause issues.
• Avoid numbers and hyphens unless it is part of your business name; these cheapen the way you appear and often cause navigational issues.

Brand-Only Domain Names

A branded only domain name is one where it ties directly to the business name without any regard to terms indicating products or services. Most often these types of domain names are not real terms at all. Some very well known or common domain names that follow this approach are:

• Nike.com
• Google.com
• Bing.com
• Dell.com
• Hapari.com

Strengths

All are straight forward, short, easy to spell and easy to remember. But what makes them a good domain from a branding perspective is their uniqueness. To be able to take a name that otherwise has little or no significance and turn that into a term that clearly identifies the product/service your business offers is a powerful thing.

Branded domains like these are also not as likely to mistyped when linked to or forgotten when navigating directly to the website.

Weaknesses

Initially, a branded-only domain name holds no SEO value. Meaning, without any links pointing to it and no keyword to identify relevance within the domain name search engines have no reason to pay attention. This can make the starting months of on organic marketing campaign slightly slow going.

Branded + Keyword Domain Names

The ideal domain name incorporates the best of both worlds. Most commonly you will see these domain names for online focused businesses. Businesses that depend largely on online performance typically consider their domain name choices while finalizing a business name and establishing a business entity. (Side note: Every business should be doing this whether or not you’ll depend on internet performance as a lifeblood for your business). To be able to make your target keywords—the term that clearly defines what your business is about—your brand and domain name as well can have drastically positive effects.

Here are some examples of when a the keyword literally became the brand:

• Hotels.com
• SEO.com
• About.com

This also works with the combination approach:

Keyword-Only Domain Names

A keyword only domain name would be those with no tie to the business name or brand. They use only keywords that indicate what the website is relevant to. In the past, and even still, domain names that fall under this category perform very well within search results. A few examples of this approach would be:

• PromotionalCodes.com
• TravelandLeisure.com

Strengths

While it is a slowly dying trend, search engines do still provide benefit to domain names with head terms or priority keywords. This can assist your website in getting up and off the ground quickly by establishing relevance to subject matter and queries for the audience you seek.

Weaknesses

The most common problem people often run into with this approach is in lack of availability. Because the shorter more exact phrases for terms frequently searched have already been snatched up this approach often leads to long and very spammy looking domain names. Because of  this these domains are not typically remembered by users and are likely to be further devalued in the future of search ranking factors. Although it may take slightly longer to get the site off the ground in terms of organic rankings for keyword+brand or brand only domain names they tend to maintain stronger rankings for longer with less SEO efforts simply due to the strength in brand and what that means for naturally acquired links.

Do you have a question about SEO, internet marketing or social media? If so, post your questions on the SEO.com  Facebook page, Tweet us, or leave a comment on the SEO.com Google+ page. For Twitter and G+ use the hashtag #SEOCOMFAQ.  Maybe we will use one of your questions in a future video.

What Makes a Good Domain Name? [Video FAQ] is a post by SEO expert Preston Van Dyke. For information about our SEO services or more great SEO tips and tricks, visit the SEO.com blog.