Archives for July 2009

Focusing on Mobile SEO

yahoo_mobileYou might be quite happy with your current pagerank in search engine results pages (SERPs) but have you given consideration to your mobile presence? If you haven’t now is the time to act. We all know how rapid mobile web’s popularity is growing so think of all the opportunities you are missing out on by having no or limited presence in the mobile web.

If you are going mobile though keep in mind that you will need to go back to the drawing board. Phones and other mobile devices are very different from desktop/laptop computers, which makes mobile web design as well as mobile SEO also different. The difference in mobile SEO is, however, not as glaring as the problems faced by web designers because you will still need to stick to the basic SEO rules like the use of keywords, accessibility (both by users and search engine spiders), link building, etc. However, what you need to be more aware of is that mobile users have very different habits from desktop users. These differences are the very things that make mobile SEO challeging.

A couple of the things that you will need to adjust to when doing mobile SEO include:

  • targeting lesser and shorter keywords – You need to be more picky with your target keywords because mobile users like to type a lot less than desktop users, which really affects the kind of search terms they enter.
  • regionalization – Make sure you really pay attention to location-specific queries. The reason for this is that mobile users are usually location and/or task oriented. They go online for a very specific reason, which is why you want those in your business’ locale to be able to search you on their mobile devices.

There are lots more to consider when it come to mobile SEO. I’ll discuss them in future posts.

Filed in: SEO lessons, keyword research

by: Noemi

3 Comments

Choosing Your URL: Static vs Dynamic

When it comes to choosing your site URL you’d better make the right choice because it definitely has a significant effect not only one your website SEO but also on user-friendliness.

To make things clear right off the bat let me state that you should use STATIC URLS.

Static URLs have clear advantages over dynamic URLs but before I point out the differences let me make it clear that Google can crawl both URLs even though they also do recommend the use of static URLs.

So why are static URLs preferable over dynamic URLs? Because according to a post in SEOmoz static URLS have the following advantages:

• Higher click-through rates in the SERPs, emails, web pages, etc.
• Higher keyword prominence and relevancy
• Easier to copy, paste and share on or offline
• Easy to remember and thus, usable in branding and offline media
• Creates an accurate expectation from users of what they’re about to see on the page
• Can be made to contain good anchor text to help the page rank higher when linked-to directly in URL format
• All 4 of the major search engines (and plenty of minor engines) generally handle static URLs more easily than dynamic ones, particularly if there are multiple parameters

Note though that according to Google if you already use a dynamic URL it is best to leave it alone since re-writing it just to make it look like a static URL can lead to more problems. As their search quality team said, “If you transform your dynamic URL to make it look static you should be aware that we might not be able to interpret the information correctly in all cases. If you want to serve a static equivalent of your site, you might want to consider transforming the underlying content by serving a replacement which is truly static…However, if you’re using URL rewriting (rather than making a copy of the content) to produce static-looking URLs from a dynamic site, you could be doing harm rather than good.”

Filed in: Google, SEO Tips, SEO practices

by: Noemi

1 Comment

The New Use (or non-use) of the “No Follow”

nofollow-dofollowLast month I wrote a post on pagerank sculpting (See “Pagerank Sculpting: Not Worth Your Time”) after reading Matt Cutts’ explanation on why there are other things you should focus on. One of the most common ways pagerank sculpting is done is to use the “no follow” tag. Because of this, the use of “no follow” tags is less important. Furthermore, in a recent post by Eric Enge of Search Engine Watch he explained why the use of “no follow” tags can, not only be of no help, but actually even harmful in terms of link juice.

In Eric Enge’s post, “Should You Still Use Nofollow?”, he explained that the link juice that is supposed to go to links with “no follow” tags are not split between the remaining links with out the tag but are discarded. This means that it lessens the overall value that a page passes. Due to this, and the fact that pagerank sculpting is a waste of time, it seems that the “no follow” tag’s days are over for SEOs. However, note that you should still remember to use the “no follow” tag for paid links (See my post “Google Says Use No Follow for Paid Posts or Else…”). It pays to preserve the value of your links but not at the expense of being tagged by Google as a violator of their paid links guidelines.

Filed in: SEO Tips, SEO practices

by: Noemi

4 Comments

MJ’s Moonwalk and SEO

moonwalkMichael Jackson’s passing triggered a wave of sadness and remembrance all over the world. People expressed their respect and love for MJ in so many ways, from the usual dancing to SEO parallelisms. Huh? You got it. Not wanting to pirate the original content I will just be giving the outline then ask you to head on to the original post to read it in its entirety.

Here’s Virginia Nusseys “Five Ways the Moonwalk is Like SEO”

1. It changed the game.
2. The beauty is in the simplicity.
3. Everyone thinks they can do it. (I need to disagree on this one. I always knew I couldn’t do the moonwalk. I tried the moves again after I read the post. I’m still right.)
4. It’s part of a larger whole.
5. To the uninitiated, it seems like magic.

Filed in: SEO lessons

by: Noemi

2 Comments