Busy times at the Googleplex

First we had some big news about some well known websites all being penalized by Google for being on one side or the other of paid links.  This was quickly followed by the biggest Google search result shake up in years called the Farmer Update by us SEOs but Google named it the Panda Update.  This update apparently targets content farms or sites with massive, low quality content and a whole bunch of other items.

The Farmer (Panda) Update is all about good content (more or less)

We have been expecting something like this for a while now, which is why we have been pushing and prodding our clients to concentrate on building great content on their website, as opposed to just focusing on pure link acquisition. We are sure thousands of SEOs all around the world have been discussing article marketing the last several days.  That’s because the many of them use article marketing to one degree or another for link building and other SEO needs, even though they won’t admit it (similar to paid links). After all, how do you think sites like Yahoo’s Associated Content accumulated two million articles?  And that is just one site.  The reality is we all knew those were inexpensive, easy to get articles and links and now Google has put the kibosh on most of them.

Where do you go from here?

If you have seen no change or an increase in traffic, you should keep doing what you have been doing. If you were going to be impacted in a negative way with this update you should already see that in your rankings and traffic.  If you have seen a significant drop in traffic (and rankings), we recommend looking at a holistic approach to your SEO and web marketing efforts. What do we mean by that? It means a few things. One, if you are concentrating on obtaining backlinks, you should be doing this through diverse methods based on having magnetic content that people will want to link to based its own merits. Two, take a look at your site architecture. 

As our friend Alan Bleiweiss has quietly mentioned a time or two, you can do yourself a lot of good by concentrating on on-page SEO. Three, if you are interested in traffic that has your best chance of converting, we recommend promoting your website through a variety of methods, with excellent content as the cornerstone. Here are two excellent articles with more in-depth info that doesn’t need to be repeated here: Tom Critchlow at Distilled and Ben Pfeiffer at Search Engine Roundtable.

Is this update actually an opportunity for you?

It just might be! Millions of webpages that were filling up the top rankings in Google just got penalized; some in a very big way, and we don’t see many of them coming back any time soon. To us, this leaves a bit of a void. It’s been speculated that Google has been working on this big update for more than a year, and one of the issues that concerned them was a void of “on topic-ness”:  that says opportunity to us. 

You have the opportunity to fill the gap with real, valuable content on your site.  That’s what Google wants to see.  Websites stepping up to be the authority in their specific area of expertise. In the February 28 Wall Street Journal, executives from Google was quoted as saying, “Sites with original content such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on, will move up.” It’s all about the content stupid.

So step up and fill that void. Create some fun, informative, engaging content that targets the same audience that the content farms were targeting; those seeking help in long-tail searches.  Many content farm contributors were excellent at crafting titles that were found by searchers.  The content was usually worthless, but they knew how to optimize those articles to be found online.  Now that many of them are gone, it opens the door for you to create optimized content, but instead of “cranking it out”, slow down and make it valuable to your audience.  

You know the difference and they know the difference. Create “how to” videos, or posts that answer questions you get asked most often, or even an infographic that tells a story. In fact, April Fools is coming soon in the U.S., can you think of something clever that you can produce that your audience just might share?

The convergence of search, social & content

At Vertical Measures, we have defined an 8-step content process to help grow your business online.  It includes strategy, research, content development, optimization, promotion, distribution, link building and measurement. We strongly encourage you to consider this or a similar strategy moving forward.  Don’t rely on your content being found on third party sites, instead be the place people turn for expert advice in your specific field of expertise. Whether you do this in-house or work with a firm like ours, we feel this is the best approach to building a long and steady stream of loyal customers for any business.

Would love to hear your reactions and thoughts on this.

Arnie Kuenn

Arnie Kuenn is the president of Vertical Measures and author of Accelerate! Content Development & Marketing to Grow Your Business Online. Vertical Measures provides search, social and content marketing services, designed to help businesses improve their online presence and obtain more traffic and conversions.
+Arnie Kuenn

Website – Twitter – Facebook – More Posts

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1. Article Marketing After the Panda Update
2. VerticalMeasures.com Website Move, Update & Blog Integration
3. Vertical Measures Website Move, Update & Blog Integration (part 3 of 4)

Huh? What’s A 404 Error Page?

A 404 is a standard response code from a web server that indicates that the client (web browser) was able to communicate with the server, but the server could not find what was requested due to any number of reasons including:

• A mistyped URL
• A user error with copy/paste
• Broken or truncated links on web pages or in an email message
• Files that have been moved or deleted

A 404 “Not Found” error indicates that the requested resource may be available again in the future, as opposed to a 301 (permanent) redirect or a 410 “Gone” error. If you’ve somehow never seen a 404 error page before (very unlikely), I’ve included an example at the top of this post.

Some hosting companies actually supply you with their own 404 error pages so that it’s not left up to your web browser. These can often confuse visitors since they’re created using your hosting company’s website layout and not your own. They’re also no more useful than the default 404 shown by web browsers, so I definitely don’t recommend leaving these in place.

Instead of just serving up the default browser error or using a page supplied by your web host, it’s considered a best practice to create your own custom 404 error page. For detailed instructions on configuring your website to display custom 404 pages, check your server or web hosting company’s documentation. You should still make sure that your web server returns a 404 status code to visitors and crawlers so that search engines don’t accidentally index your custom 404 page.

Creating Custom 404 Error Pages

Since a 404 error page can be a standard HTML page (or whatever language the rest of your pages use), you can customize it just about any way you want. Some suggestions for creating a great 404 error page that keeps visitors on your site by helping them find the page(s) they’re looking for:

• Tell visitors clearly that the page they’re looking for can’t be found. Be descriptive and helpful.
• Make sure your 404 page uses the same look and feel (including navigation) as the rest of your site.
• Add links to your most popular articles or posts, and always include a link to your site’s home page.
• Consider providing a way for users to report a broken link to you or your webmaster from the 404 page.
• Use the Enhance 404 widget to embed a search box on your custom 404 page and provide users with suggestions.
• Another useful tool is the Change of Address tool that tells Google about the pages that have moved.
• If a page has been renamed/moved, always 301 (permanently) redirect to the new page name or location.
• One last tip worth noting…if possible, be creative with your 404 page.

Feeling Uninspired?

Check out these sites for unique examples:

Wanted: Your 404 Error Pages

404 Error Pages: Reloaded

404 Error Pages, One More Time

35 Entertaining 404 Error Pages

60 Really Cool and Creative Error 404 Pages

A few of my favorites (although not necessarily the most effective):

Feel free to share your favorite examples of well-designed 404 pages in the comments below!

Jason Hendricks

Jason got his start in search engine optimization with his first company, Tidal Wave Media, and achieved top rankings for his clients and his own websites since 2001 before joining Vertical Measures. He handles technical SEO as well as web development projects for the company.

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1. Don’t Build Links To Your Web Pages
2. Using 404 Pages for Link Juice
3. How To: Create and Use a Content Inventory

When search marketers refer to canonicalization, in plain English it means how to deal with web content that has more than one possible Uniform Resource Locator (URL). URL canonicalization is an important aspect of onsite SEO that every webmaster needs to not only understand, but implement solutions for. Having more than one URL that resolves to the same content can cause problems for websites in several ways, including:

• duplicate content penalties from search engines for having multiple URLs with the same content
• preventing search engines from determining and showing the correct URL in search results
• weakening the authority of a page by splitting PageRank across two or more pages
• not gaining the ranking benefits of inbound links due to inconsistent URL usage

The most common canonicalization issue that webmasters encounter without a doubt involves a website’s homepage. In fact, it’s so common that even Google themselves don’t have it quite right! If you point your browser to google.com (without the www), you’ll see that they correctly 301 (permanently) redirect to the version with the www in front. However, if you browse to google.com/index.html, you’ll see the exact same content at a different address. Physician, heal thyself.

The following URLs can all potentially point to the same page, so try these using your own website. If your pages use a server-side technology such as PHP, ASP, ASP.NET, or ColdFusion, substitute index.html with your own homepage URL (index.php, default.asp, default.aspx, or index.cfm, respectively):

• website.com
• website.com/
• www.website.com
• www.website.com/
• website.com/index.html
• www.website.com/index.html

URL inconsistency doesn’t just apply to homepages though, in many cases it’s a site wide nightmare caused by unsavvy e-commerce suites, content management systems, and blogging software. Pages may be accessible via several different URLs by sites that utilize session IDs (website.com/widgets/index.php?sessionid=123), parameters to sort and drill down to specific products (website.com/widgets.php?product_id=321&color=green&cat_id=1&price=50), and tracking IDs (website.com/?source=blog).

I won’t go into too much detail here, but the important takeaway is that using session IDs, parameters, and tracking IDs causes duplicate content issues because search engines will see different URLs with the same content every time they index your site. Instead of tracking and session IDs, learn to use your web analytics referrer and navigation path reports. If you absolutely must use session IDs, parameters, and/or tracking IDs, change your software to use a hash mark (a ‘#’ sign) instead of a question mark. Search engines ignore everything after the hash, so you’ll avoid confusion.

It’s not only easy to identify these issues, it’s also easy to implement solutions to tell search engines which version of your URLs you prefer and remove duplicates from their index. There are several options available to webmasters, which I’ll cover briefly below.

301 Redirects

Probably the fastest and most widely used method of correcting URL inconsistencies, 301 (NOT 302) redirects tell search engines that the content has been permanently moved to another address. If your web server runs Apache, a simple rewrite rule added to your .htaccess file will handle everything for you. Here’s an example of a rule that redirects all non-www requests to the www version:

RewriteEngine On

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^website.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.website.com/$1 [L,R=301]

So what does this rule do? Basically the ‘(*.)$’ says that the web server should take anything that comes after http://website.com and append it to the end of http://www.website.com (which is the ‘$1′ part), and redirect to that URL. For more details and specifics on exactly how this works and how you can create custom rewrite rules for your website, search the web for “regular expressions“.

Alternatively, you may also setup 301 redirects in the Apache config file, named httpd.conf.

<VirtualHost xx.xx.xx.xx>
ServerName www.website.com
ServerAdmin webmaster@website.com
DocumentRoot /home/website/public_html
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost xx.xx.xx.xx>
ServerName website.com
RedirectMatch permanent ^/(.*) http://www.website.com/$1
</VirtualHost>

Google Webmaster Tools

It won’t fix the problem of splitting authority or PageRank, but from the Webmaster Tools Console you can specify the URL that you prefer for Google to use. To set the preferred domain for a site, click Site configuration, and then click Settings. In the Preferred domain section, pick the option you prefer.

Canonical Tag

In the beginning of 2009, Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft announced support for a new link element to make correcting duplicate URLs a little bit easier, called the canonical tag. Unfortunately the search engines only view canonical tags as “suggestions”, but it’s still considered a best practice to add them to pages when needed. A great example of when canonical tags can really help would be sites that use pagination, where visitors can click links numbered 1, 2, 3, etc. to jump to later pages in search results, product lists, or articles. An example of a paginated URL would be website.com/products.php?page=2.

To setup your preferred URL version via canonical tags, create a link as follows:

<link rel="canonical" href="http://www.website.com/folder-name/page-name.html">

After the tag is created, you’ll need to add this new link to the <head> section of non-canonical URLs.

Site Architecture

This one is pretty obvious, but if you setup your URL structure consistently throughout your entire website (such as internal linking, navigational links in the header and footer, etc.) it will prevent issues like this from arising. This is the most important method of all, and it doesn’t require innovation, just some research on the best standard to follow. With proper planning and a consistent linking convention from the start, canonicalization problems can be avoided entirely. However, if you find that your site has any or all of the errors listed above, you can quickly get things back on track.

For more information on URL canonicalization, check out the references below.

Further Reading:

Matt Cutts on URL Canonicalization

Matt Cutts on the Canonical Tag

Google Webmaster Tools Help article about Canonicalization

What major websites that should know better have you seen with unresolved canonicalization issues?

Jason Hendricks

Jason got his start in search engine optimization with his first company, Tidal Wave Media, and achieved top rankings for his clients and his own websites since 2001 before joining Vertical Measures. He handles technical SEO as well as web development projects for the company.

No related posts.

Analytics software is focused on telling you what visitors did on your site, and the clues that this information can provide ranges anywhere from pages that are underperforming, to ideas for new keywords to target. However, to get the most out of the information, you have to spend some time setting it up beyond simple installation. One of these areas that provide great insight is ‘Site Search’.

Site search is turned off by default because not every website has a search function, and those that do all work a little differently. If your website is currently lacking a search feature, we highly recommend adding one for reasons that will hopefully become obvious as we dissect the information that becomes available. When many of our clients first come to us they haven’t enabled this feature, but turning it on and configuring it is a couple of simple steps;

1. Go to Website Profile Settings – Currently set to ‘Don’t Track Site Search’ and ‘Edit’

2. In the new page click the radio button ‘Do track Site Search

3. Perform a search on your website and take a look at the URL to find your query parameter. It’ll be the url between the ‘?’ and ‘=’, probably a ‘s’, ‘q’, ‘search’ or ‘query’. Search for something unusual, not your company name or ‘search’. I searched my own name, and in the URL you can clearly and you see our website uses ‘s’.

4. If you also have categories, such as ‘Books’, “DVDs’ “clothes’ etc that people can search within, then set up the categories section in a similar fashion. Otherwise Save Changes and you’re done!

Once you have this set up a whole new realm of information becomes open to you with 6 new reports to analyze, pick apart and otherwise dissect and digest. Some highlights of these reports, and clues you can gain from them are as follows;

Overview

The overview is just a dashboard for your site search, so while useful, lets dig a little deeper!

Usage

Usage is again a little self evident in that this report tells you how often the search function on your website is being used, and it does this by way of a pie chart and graph over time. The actual figures involved in this report will depend on the industry you’re in, and the type of website that you are running, but anything over 20% would make me worry for most websites and make me ask such questions as;

• Why is the search volume so high?
• Has it changed over time or always been high?
• Are people having a problem with your sites navigation?
• Are your landing pages accurate for keywords, or do people need to search for what they want?

…and so on. Really try to see your website as someone visiting for the first time and without the ‘Curse of Knowledge’ in that you know where everything on your website is.

With this and any other report don’t forget to check out those tabs at the top for ‘Goals’ and ‘Ecommerce’ if you have these set up. This can tell you if those who use your search are more or less likely to convert into sales – maybe too many people are leaving your site because they can’t find what they want to buy, and are unwilling to use the search bar.

Search Terms

Search terms is how Google Analytics separates search queries on your website, and search queries that bring traffic to your site, which are classified as ‘Keywords’ in the Traffic Sources reports. In terms of SEO, this information may be the most important as it can tell you directly what your customers are looking for and if they were satisfied with what they found – look at exits %’s and time after search. This can give you inspiration for new keywords to target, new content to create, or new products to stock to keep your visitors happy!

Start Pages

The start pages report tells you the most common pages where visitors on your website enter a search query. You may wish to compare this information with that in your top content report to see which pages have disproportionally high number of searches, and then ask yourself;

• Does the page have difficult navigation? Why can’t visitors find what they want?
• What content are visitors expecting on certain pages?
• Are my landing pages not correctly aligned with their targeted keywords?

Drill down to each page to see the search terms used, as well as looking at the % of search exits, time after search etc, to see the value of each search term to your sites goals.

Destination Pages

The destination pages report tells you those pages which were most commonly found via a search term. This again can give you clues into some of the following questions;

• Which pages are your website visitors looking for but struggling to find?
• Why can’t your visitors find the pages they want? Are there navigation issues, or are you categorizing pages in subsections your visitors don’t think to check?
• Which pages do people want, and can you create more of them?

Catagories

If your website has different categories that can be searched in, and if set up correctly, this report can show those categories with the highest percentages of search queries. The information you can gather will again vary wildly, but you might want to ask yourself the following

• Why are some categories searched more than others?
• Is it in proportion to the volume of visitors in those categories?
• How can I alter the navigation of each category to reduce user search?

Trending

Like any Google Analytics report, the best information can be gathered by comparing how information changes over time, and the trends that take place. The trending report is therefore crucial in measuring the effect of changes that you make in response to any or all of the above questions. For example…

• Have the changes you made increased or decreased search volume?
• Are your visitors able to find what they want with just one search?
• Are visitors staying on your site longer after searching?

Once again this post can only barely scratch the surface of what all of this information can tell you about your website and its visitors. The better you can understand the two of them, and how they interact, the more successful your online business will be. Whether you have Site Search set up, or you follow these instructions to get started, let us know in the comment section below of any additional tips you pick up from the reports. Alternatively, if you would like to have us take a look, and see what we advise to get the most from your visitors, contact us and we’d love to help you succeed!

James Constable

James is a Campaign Manager at Vertical Measures, looking at client’s Internet Marketing from a strategic viewpoint to get them the best possible results for their business needs and budget. His blog posts revolve around strategy, analytics and keyword selection.

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1. The Olympics Impact on Google Search Results
2. How Much Data Will Your Site Lose With Google Encrypted Search Default?
3. Flow Visualization: Visitor and Conversion Reports in Google Analytics

Kaila Strong

Kaila is a Sr. Account Manager at Vertical Measures. She works directly with clients to evaluate and analyze their overall Internet Marketing needs, creates sales proposals and recommendations. In addition she regularly reports on client rankings, gives SEO advice to brands in a variety of industries and manages client expectations.

Kaila has a background in social media marketing, link building, SEO and content marketing. She’s an active blogger on SearchEngineWatch.com, and an avid social media user (@cliquekaila on Twitter). She brings her experience to the table with new clients and enjoys writing about her experiences as well here on the VM blog and throughout the web.

Website – Twitter – More Posts

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