SEO Training

SEO for Dummies does exist, you can buy it. It is far from the best book on the subject though. If fact, books are generally outdated nearly as soon as they go to print!

SEO for Dummies. It is an attractive prospect.  It brings to mind a quick, easily digestible way to get your website to the top of Google. There are lots and lots of sites and people proclaiming to be able to show you how to do this.  These are the snake oil salesmen and women of our modern world.

Is there an easy way to learn SEO?

Frankly there is no easy way.  This site “SEO training” will be going for years and will never cover everything completely.  There are a few reasons for this:

1. SEO is a huge topic
2. The SEO goalposts keep moving

I really want to learn SEO though.  How can I get started?

The starting place for every budding SEO practitioner should be Googles’ Webmaster Guidelines. Go and follow all of the advice they set forth and you will be half way there.  I do mean all of it by the way.  There is no point picking and choosing which bits suit you.  This is the “white hat” SEO way.  It means that you are doing what Google want you to do.  Your reward shall be no penalties.  This does not guarantee you better ranking though….. Google Webmaster Guidelines are just a starting point!

Following Google guidelines looks like tons of work!

Indeed.  Making sure that your site is structured as Google would like it to be can be a lot of work depending on how  well your site was put together in the first place.  In some instances it is easier to start from scratch!

Google Guidelines seem very technical, is there an easier to understand version?

No. There is no easier version.  The Google guidelines are the easy version.

You said this article was about SEO for Dummies!

This article is about SEO for Dummies.  The point is that if you go and look at Google Webmaster Guidelines and find it too technical or do not have the time to put into learning everything there then you are better off hiring a professional SEO consultant. They do not have to do all the work for you, but they should be able to at least give you the tools you need and the understanding to be able to tackle the job yourself.  More importantly, they can bring you to the next level and bring you from conforming to performing.  To do otherwise would be dumb.  Here is the reason:

SEO starts with diagnosis

In the last post I wrote I mentioned the importance of SEO analysis.  You need to know what is wrong with your site before you can fix it.  When my car breaks down I sometimes have a fair idea of what is wrong, but I will bring it to a mechanic to find out for sure.  He is a professional.  He knows more about it than I do.  If I fiddle about with my car I am likely to spend money on parts I don’t need, waste time “fixing” the wrong thing and end up with a car that may be fixed, but in my case is more likely to be more damaged than it was originally.

The thing I am missing is an accurate diagnosis.  This holds for SEO too.  If I start tinkering with a site without knowing what I am doing then I am in danger of actually causing damage as well as not fixing my problems.  I need to know what to fix and why.

As a professional SEO consultant, the first thing I do is analyse the website I am going to work on.  That tells me where the sites strengths and weaknesses are and helps to ensure I target the areas that need it most.

SEO knowledge can be learned.  That is what this site is for.

I do not want to be negative about learning SEO.  It is not rocket science.  It does take time to learn though.  This post is really aimed at business owners or management who think it is a good idea to do their SEO in-house with no help from a professional source.  It is not a good idea.  I say that from experience.  I had to learn too.  I got as far as I could by reading everything I could and following guidelines.  Then it was time to get somebody to teach me.  I realised at that point that I could have saved a lot of time (and time is money) by using a consultant in the first place.

Since then I have learned a lot more from a lot of different sources, but the point is that using a GOOD SEO consultant is expensive, but prudent – it saves money in the long run.

When starting out on an SEO campaign where do you actually begin? How do you organise and prioritise? What is more important: social media, link building, content?

These questions are valid for everybody. They are particularly relevant if you have been charged with your company’s online marketing and are not 100% sure exactly what to do in order to get results that will get you a clap on the back.

Your SEO campaign needs planning to make you look good.

It all has to start with SEO analysis.  My granny used to knit a lot.  The house was littered with knitting patterns.  Try building a house without blueprints.  The same is true for online marketing and SEO.  Without a clear picture of what has to be done you will end up with a proverbial one armed jumper (an itchy one at that) or a house with architectural properties similar to that of my own (and the builders actually had plans!).

SEO analysis allows you to work out exactly where you stand right now and provides pointers for where you can achieve that all important traffic and Google rankings. Think of an SEO analysis report as an SEO blueprint.  A good SEO analysis report will tell you:

• What keywords am I using currently?
• Is my website standards compliant? (good code base)
• How can my site structure be improved? (for ease of use and for SEO)
• How does my site compare to that of competitors for SEO?
• What keywords are competitors using?
• What sites link back to my site?
• What sites link to my competitors sites?
• What are my sites Strengths, Opportunities, Weaknesses, Threats? (SWOT analysis)

A really good report will also bring in social media and assess what can be done there too.  It will also explain the effects of these different aspects on your websites online performance.

Webshed offer a SEO Health Check that incorporates these features.  That is because it is the essential building block of any online campaign.

If you are about to start an SEO campaign, do not go into it blind.  Have a clear plan based on facts and your life will be made that much easier and there is less possibility of spending lots of time on little return.

Twitter Tweet Button Slows down Wordpress index pages

Since adding posting about how to install the official Twitter Tweet button yesterday I have noticed an unfortunate side effect.  The button slows down the load time of wordpress sites significantly.

Originally I had placed the button at the top and bottom of each post on the index page.  I have since removed the twitter button from the bottom of the posts.

Why has the Twitter tweet button slowed down my site?

We have all experienced trying to log on to Twitter only to be met with a message that Twitter is over capacity – please try again later.  Well this is what happens…

For each instance of the button on a page the little bit of javascript makes a call to Twitter.  If Twitter is running slow then the query will take longer and it will slow down the page load speed on your site.  If you have 10 articles on a page, and a tweet button at the top and bottom of each article, then that is 20 calls to twitter.  If they slow to half a second then load time will be slowed by 10 seconds!

It’s not just the Twitter Tweet button, The Facebook share button has the same problem.

Maybe, like me you have the facebook share button installed on your wordpress site too.  The same thing applies.  The facebook share button has a far smaller effect though, load times are not effected as much.

Google Adsense Isn’t helping matters either!

Want to really slow down your site?  Add in Google adsense too!  Each of the Twitter button, the Facebook button and Google adsense, all make calls to external sites.  This leaves you at the mercy of their response times.

Should I remove the Twitter Tweet button from my index page?

I am leaving the Twitter button for now.  I may well remove it from the index page in the future.  It all depends on whether more people installing it (which will be millions of users) slows it down even more, or if Twitter address the problem somehow.  I could always go back to Tweetmeme, which seems to have these issues under much better control. Interestingly Tweetmeme are working with Twitter on the button.

Will the Twitter Tweet button affect my SEO?

Google has intimated that they will be taking page load speeds into more consideration.  It stands to reason then that there is a possibility that installing the Twitter Tweet button could have a negative effect on your sites Google rank if the current load speed problems persist.  I for one will be monitoring it closely.

Page load speed not the only problem.

Page load speed has not been the only problem to affect the Twitter Tweet button.  Several major sites removed the button yesterday after discovering that firefox users were getting a pop up that rendered the site inaccessible.  Twitter have since stated that this problem has been recified.

Look!  The official Twitter tweet button is here!  Get the official Twitter Tweet Code.  Ah, but it’s not quite so straight forward for a Wordpress site.

Twitter Tweet Button code generator makes life easy... but modification is required for Wordpress sites.

Adding the official button to Wordpress (like on this site) takes a little more.  The code you get from using the Twitter generator I linked to above looks like this:

<a href="http://twitter.com/share" data-count="vertical"
data-via="SEOHolistically">Tweet</a>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>

That works perfectly well for static pages.  But the index page of a Wordpress blog contains more than one blog post.  Inserting the above code into your index page will only tweet the title of your index page and that url.  We need to make some adjustments to the code….

<a href="http://twitter.com/share" data-count="vertical"
data-via="SEOHolistically"
data-related="copyblogger"
data-url="<?php the_permalink(); ?>"
data-text="<?php the_title(); ?>">Tweet</a>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>

Lets take a look at these changes.

1. data-via=”SEOholistically” was generated by the generator at stage two “Recommend People to Follow (optional).  It will add in “via @SEOholistically” at the end of the tweet message, so don’t forget to change it to your own twitter account (not that I would mind if you didn’t).
2. data-related=”copyblogger” I have just added in.  It would be generated automatically if I had filled in the second field of the “Recommend People to Follow (optional)” section.  Coppyblogger is nothing to do with me… but you should follow them anyway… good advice! Again, unless you want coppyblogger to be offered as a follow suggestion to everybody who uses the button, change it!
3. data-url=”<?php the_permalink(); ?>” This is where we get into Wordpress specific stuff. This tells twitter to take the url as being the individual blog post url rather than the page url.
4. data-text=”<?php the_title(); ?>” This tells twitter to make the Wordpress post title the content of the twitter post.

That is all there is to the code for the twitter tweet button if you are adding it to a Wordpress blog.

So where do you put the Twitter code in Wordpress?

You should add it to index.php and single.php. In this blog it looks like this (facebook button code removed for simplicity)

Single.php

<div class="entry">
 <!--Twitter Tweet button-->
 <div style='width:100%;'>
  <a href="http://twitter.com/share" data-count="horizontal" data-via="SEOHolistically"
  data-url="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" data-text="<?php the_title(); ?>">Tweet</a>
  <script type="text/javascript" src="http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js"></script>
 </div><!-- end width - 100% -->
 <!-- end tweet button -->

… so just search for <div class=’entry’> and put it in directly below that.

index.php

Do exactly the same thing as for single.php.

Why use the official Twitter Tweet Button?

You could use Tweetmeme or some other button… but the official button has a big seller for me.  Every time somebody uses it, it will offer up two suggestions of people to follow…. the two suggestions you provide using the data-via and data-related options.  It makes it much easier to gain more followers. That can’t be a bad thing!

The default way that Wordpress displays your page/post/comment/tag pages title is to have the blog name, followed by two >> marks and then the post title, tag title, comment title, or just the blog name if it is the home page. Here is how to do some simple optimisation (ok ok optimization just for you Americans) on your Wordpress site or Blog.

As you can see, on this blog things are a little different.  The home page displays the blog name “SEO Training” and also the site description (small text below the blog title).

On the other pages I have made the blog name go to the right.  Why?  because it is better to have the more important keywords near the beginning of the title for SEO.  This is particularly true when the blog title is repeated on every page as it is in this case.

This is another issue.  Should I have the blog title showing on every page?  Jury is out on that one here… so I’m experimenting.  Another blog I write on my home site about online marketing does not have the blog title on every page. If it is a tag page then the page title will be just the tag.  If it is an article then just the article title will appear in the meta title tag.  The blog is new, so I will give it six months and see if I can notice any discernable difference in performance.

Anyway, I digress a bit. Here is how to change your title tag in wordpress.

1. You need to open the header.php file in whatever theme you are using.  You can do this directly from Wordpress, by clicking on the appearance menu item on the left of your Wordpress dashboard and then clicking on Editor which will show up below it.  Once you are in editor you can select Header (header.php) from the list of pages on the right.  Your files must be writable though or it will tell you it could not save your changes.  Alternatively, if like me you prefer to use ftp, then the path is wp-content -> themes -> (whatever theme you are using) -> header.php.
2. Find the title tag. It will look like this: <title><?php wp_title(’&laquo;’, true, ‘right’); ?> <?php bloginfo(’name’); ?></title>
3. Change it to this: <title><?php if ( is_single() || is_page() || is_tag() || is_category()) {  wp_title(’&raquo;’,true,’right’); bloginfo(’name’);} else {
   bloginfo(’name’); echo ” &raquo; “; bloginfo(’description’);
   } ?></title>
4. Save it.  You’re done!

If you would like the blog title not to appear on every post then you want to use this instead: <title><?php if(wp_title(’&laquo;’,false, ‘right’)){wp_title(false);} else { bloginfo(’name’); echo ‘ &raquo; ‘; bloginfo(’description’);} ?></title>

That is all there is to it. Better SEO for your Wordpress site and it’s not even difficult! Enjoy!

It’s happened again.  I got another one of those emails.  Somebody claiming to have ‘inside knowledge’ that could help me beat the competition.  They all share a common theme…. “We work with/ are friends with/ once worked with / are a trusted partner of/ sleep with Google, or people who work there.  The implication is that these people can help you to rank higher than your competition because they are in possession of information that others do not have.

If you get one of these emails RUN AWAY!

There is no such thing as a Google Trusted Partner for SEO!

They are at best treading a fine line between legal and illegal in their claims.  Google does not have ‘trusted SEO partners’.  SEO is an annoyance to Google and to other search engines.  Google made it as big as they are by providing better (for better read more relevant) search results than the competing search engines.  They did this by building algorithms that catch people trying to ‘cheat’ their way to the top of the rankings and not showing them prominently – or indeed at all sometimes.

Google publish webmaster guidelines.  This is a list of what they deem to be acceptable behaviour when it comes to SEO.  What it boils down to is that they want website owners to publish useful material for their human visitors – not search engines.  What this essentially amounts to is a cap on what is acceptable in terms of SEO efforts.  Breach that cap and your website can fall like a rock into complete obscurity.

Any company that offers SEO services and is willing to claim that they have some association with Google is not likely to be ethical enough to use practices that will not get your site into hot water.  They are preying on ignorance.

In my last post I mentioned that I am not an electrician.  There are cowboy electricians out there.  Luckily there are also regulations in place to ensure some standards (even though I bet some of you can tell me some stories!).

On the web, and particularly with SEO there are no common standards to adhere to.  There is no SEO qualification (not by a recognised body at least).  There is just experience and results. This lends itself very nicely to the sort of people who like to take your money in return for little or nothing that you think you are paying for.  In the real world we call them con artists.

How do you know your SEO consultant is not a con artist cowboy?  I’ll get to that in a future post.  For now though, the easiest way is to talk to several SEO consultants.  There are quite a few SEO consultants in Ireland.  Some are very good, some are excellent, and some are good at talking, but not so much at producing.  By that I mean offering things like directory submissions, which frankly don’t hold a lot of weight these days (although they did years ago).

Please don’t be fooled by the “Google Trusted Partners” line though.  That is a blatant lie.

SEO is not too technical. Sometimes just because things are presented in a different way they seem more complex than they really are

Search Engine Optimisation is quite technical.  After all, it all boils down to mathematics.  Search engines have their equations for working out what page is most important on any given subject.

This site is about SEO training, so therefore it is more important for that term than other sites that do not concentrate on this one topic alone.  There is also surprisingly little competition for training.  SEO in general has plenty of competing pages.

Those are just two factors though.  There are over 200 ranking factors that Google take into consideration when ranking a web page.  To make matters more complicated, nobody has the actual equations (algorithms).

So not only is SEO technical, it is blindfolded too!  Makes you want to throw your hands up in despair doesn’t it.  It’s not really that bad though. Particularly here in Ireland.  Because of our smaller population SEO in Ireland is that much easier because there is just less competition.  That said though, it is getting harder all the time, as Irish companies become more and more aware of the power of the internet.

Many people, when faced with terms like keyword density, link building, page loading speed, and domaining, just shut off.  I’m not an electrician.  When I hear people talking about amps, kilowatts and maximum loads I switch off a bit too.  It is a natural human reaction to avoid conversations that sound technical in an area we have no experience with.  I can change a plug though.  I can put in a new lightbulb.  I have learned the skills that I need to have my house functioning.

In the same way you can learn to have a functioning website that actually shows up in search results without having to have an in depth knowledge of what is going on behind the scenes.  It does not have to get too technical. You can learn to do the basics yourself, and call in a SEO consultant like me for the rest.

SEO consultants like myself can analyze your current website, and then either train you and your staff to do what is necessary to improve its performance, or do the work for you.  Sometimes a bit of a mixture is the ideal solution.

Are your pages straining under the weight of keyword density and struggling to climb the Google ranks?

Keyword density is the number of keywords as a percentage of the total text on a web page.  Too little density and the search engine algorithms will presume that the page is not important for that keyword.  Too much density and the page will get penalised for keyword stuffing.

Since nobody has access to the search engine algorithms, how do we determine what the bounds are for keyword density?  What is the correct or optimum keyword density for your page?

If you have gone searching for the answer online you will have found the answer to be stated as anything between 1% and 8% (in general).  The truth is that keyword density is old news.  It just does not matter as much as it used to.  Nobody knows for certain, so this is just my opinion.  It is an opinion however, that is based on experience and experimentation.  Here is my view on Keyword density:

Forget about Keyword Density! The only check I do around density now is to make sure I have not gone too high.  I like to stick to not going over about 6% in general.  However, if the article reads well to me, then I’ll let it slide so long as it’s under 8%.  I do not have a minimum density.

Keyword Positioning is far more important than the number of times it is repeated.  I generally have the keyword in the title, and in the H1 / H2 tags and again in the body text.  This is particularly true of text immediately after headings.  I do not always keep the same word order, or even use exactly the same words.  I want what I write to be legible for humans.

Certainly I have repeated the words “keyword density” a fair bit in this post, more so than usual.  It is just how this particular post has gone.  I find it harder to write “SEO training” in posts, simply because it does not fit into the general flow of what I write.

A word of caution.  If you have a density that is too high, it may work for you.  It may get you up there in the google ranks… but not for long.  Keyword Stuffing is bad bad bad!  It worked back in the 90’s, and many SEO consultants in Ireland are still recommending it on a smaller scale than before.  I completely disagree with this.  Keyword stuffing is outdated now to the same extent that travel by horses has been replaced by cars!  Keyword densities are a factor still, but are not something to be pushed to extremes and do not hold the same weight as they once did.

You are certainly not the first to ask why your site is not showing up on Google, and you definitely will not be the last.  The whole point of SEO training is to try and avoid this very situation. The trouble is that it is hard to answer the question without more information.

If your website did show up on Google previously and has since disappeared or just fallen significantly in the Google rankings, then it is clear that something has happened to change how your sites importance is viewed by the worlds largest search engine.  If it has never shown up scroll on down towards the end of this article.

Website Dropped By Google? Don't worry, it can be fixed!

Have you changed anything on your website recently?  If so, have you got a backup of your website as it was before the changes?  I’m willing to bet you don’t.  I’ve been guilty of that cardinal sin myself on occasion!

So what are the factors that could cause your website to drop or disappear suddenly?  There are a lot.  I’ll cover the most obvious.

1. Your website has been hacked and malicious code has been inserted on your site.  If you suspect somebody has hacked your website, Check in Googles Webmaster Tools.  There may well be a warning there.  Remember it is not enough to just remove any offending code or hidden keyword stuffing.  You need to close the hole that made the hack possible in the first place.  Consult your hosting provider as a first point of call.  They should be able to steer you in the right direction.
2. You made an alteration that broke the structure of your website or made it otherwise difficult to read by a search engine. If you had a W3C compliant website to start with, simply running the site through the markup validation service should show you any problems fairly quickly.  If your website has more errors than words, then this in itself could be part of the problem!
3. Keyword stuffing or other “naughty” practices.  Have you been a bit overzealous in your SEO efforts?  Your website must must must read well to actual human beings.  After all, that’s who the site is for in the first place.  Do not repeat words ad nauseum in your title tags, description and again throughout headers and the general text.  Once in each will suffice (even that may be overdoing it in some cases).  If a search engine algorithm suspects you are trying to “cheat” you will pay for it.
4. Those other “naughty” practices. Text the same colour as your background (only readable to robots), text sized too small to read, serving different pages to users than to search engines, the list goes on.
5. Text content in Flash or Pictures.  Search engines cannot read text in a picture or flash presentation.  It may look…. well, “flash”, and wow your human viewers, but they will never get to see it if it does not show up in a search!  If you put text in flash, try to have the same text repeated in standard html tags elsewhere on your page.
6. Buying links.  I’m not talking about buying an ad on a website (although I would question the worth of doing so).  What I am talking about here is buying links in bulk as it were.  These links, once the link farm has been discovered are not just worthless, they can damage your site.  Short term gains are not worth the fall!  Getting out of that one is not easy, and sometimes the easier route is to start from scratch with a new domain!
7. Adult Content or references to Gambling or Pharmaceuticals. I don’t even like writing those words here!
8. Linking to “bad neighbourhoods”.  Be careful who you link to. Your website is judged, in part, on the quality of websites that link too you, and also on those you link out to. Neighbourhoods matter.  I always try to have as few outbound links as possible by the way.  If the link does not add to my users experience it does not happen.
9. Downtime. If your website is not hosted well or has a lot of downtime for some other reason, then it will have an adverse affect on how your site ranks on Google.  Why would they show a website that may or may not be accessible… it’s not like there is a shortage of websites to choose from!

What about if your site has never shown up on Google? This is quite normal initially.  There is also the famed “sandbox”.  It takes time for websites to be found by search engines.  It takes much longer for them to trust your website and want to list it in the position that you might like it to show up in.

Submit your sitemap to all the search engines.  Google tends to be the quickest to respond.  This tells them that your site exists and what pages are on it.  Check that you are following the guidelines with your site and then just be patient.

One other thing that can go wrong with a new site is its history. If Previous owners of the domain broke guidelines/trust, then you will probably have an uphill battle with getting your site to perform well.

If your site is not show up well, or at all on Google, then it is not the end of the world.  There will be a reason.  It may take time and tears to fix the problem, but it can be fixed…. no matter what!

Get found online

Getting found online is not all that difficult.  It is not incredibly easy either.  Of course it depends on how much competition you have.  Why do some sites show up above others? On Google it is a combination of over 200 factors!

In general these are split into two types of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – On page (the actual website itself) and Off page (links from other sites to your site).

For On-page SEO all you need to do is follow Googles Webmaster Guidelines.  Although, there is quite a bit to that, and it may take some time and patience to work your way through it.  There are other issues too.  Try looking up information on keyword density for example.  The web is full of different opinions.  The reason that some people will tell you not to exceed 4% density (4 percent of total text on the page) and others 8% density for example, is that nobody knows exactly how many keywords will get your page flagged for keyword stuffing.

Here is the problem…..

You want your site to get found online for specific keywords (SEO training in the case of this blog for example).  In order to show that the site is all about SEO training, it is tempting to use the phrase lots.  However, if I do that, then it will look like I am trying to influence search engines and they will penalise me for it.  This is not to say that it does not work…. but eventually the chances are your site will plummet down the rankings if for keyword stuffing.  I always advise clients to stick to the webmaster guidelines rigidly.

Off site SEO is where a lot of people come unstuck.  How do you get links to your site?  How many links do you need? Should you pay for links? Does it matter where the links come from?

It is a mine field.  Get it wrong and you will pay for it!  Get it right and your site will reap rewards.  By the way NEVER pay for links! It does matter where the links come from too.  What is more, external link building should be something that is an ongoing practice.  I will be posting more on link building in the future.

If you want to get found online, then it really does pay to get somebody who knows what they are doing to either train you, or do it for you.  This saves a lot of time.  Nobody knows it all (the search engines do not release the details of their criteria) but using a SEO professional who has gained experience from spending time on research as well as experimenting and finding out where some of the limits are pays off.