Blog
By Lee Smith-Bryan
Depending on what stage of the process you're involved at, the domain name may have already been decided. However, if you're involved with the process before the decision to buy a domain name has been made, then there are several things to consider when purchasing a domain name for best SEO practices:
- Domain Name Choices
- Hyphenating Your URLs
- Originality
- Commercial or Geographic
- Short URL
Domain Name Choices
When first searching for a domain name you should always keep in mind search terms, keywords or phrases that will be related to your website. Once you've established these you should come up with a list of seven or eight domain name choices. Prioritize by choosing the top three - these three will be your 'must have' domain choices. The remaining domains are names you can fall back on or change if your top three choices are all taken.
Unless you want a really-bad-domain-name.info you should register your domain name right away to avoid missing an opportunity. As well as the .com, don't forget to register the .net, .org and if it applies, the .mobi too. If you're torn between names you should go ahead and register them all - don't forget that you can redirect more than one domain name to a website.
Hyphenating Your URLs
Hyphenated domain names have a bad rap, but is the reputation justified? From a usability standpoint, the bad rap is most definitely justified. Having to type in an extra character (that is most likely unnecessary) can be a pain. It also makes verbally explaining your site URL to someone that bit more difficult. Instead of just saying "my domain dot com" you have to say "my (dash) domain (dash) name dot com". That will get old really quick. Think through your decision carefully. If you still can't come to a conclusion whether or not to hyphenate, purchase both the unhyphenated URL and the hyphenated version and implement a redirect. Doing this will protect your brand as well as ensuring all visitors who are uncertain about the URL are directed to your site and not a competitors.
However, there are cases where a hyphen would accentuate the content. For instance www.speedofart.com, would be far better with hyphens: www.speed-of-art.com. Now people will have no doubt that the website is about art, and not bodily functions stemming from overly tight swimming trunks. Another example would be www.gotahoe.com. Now, I'm sure Tahoe is a lovely place, but lets not have the URL make like it's some kind of stripping joint. A much better url would be www.go-tahoe.com or www.go-to-tahoe.com (which is still available by the way).
For maximum URL performance, you should include at least one of your keywords in a hyphenated URL. If we take the Raven URL as an example, we have the hyphenated version http://raven-seo-tools.com, and the unhyphenated URL http://ravenseotools.com (which redirects to the hyphenated URL). We have the product name and two keywords so with hyphens there is the increased likelihood that search engines will see three separate keywords ('Raven', 'SEO' and 'Tools').
Originality
When you think of successful social networking sites, there is one common denominator - their URLs are original and unique. Digg, flickr, ning, Twitter, Mixx, the list is endless. Google is a name we're all too familiar with, but did you know that the original name, googol was chosen because the term's meaning is a very large number followed by 100 zeros? Would this be relative at first? Perhaps not, but it certainly is today considering their search domination.
An original name is memorable - people are much more likely to visit your site if they can remember it. Adding content relativity to the url may inspire you to think of some unique domain names. Just because it doesn't immediately make sense from the outset doesn't mean that it's not useful, it just means that no one has figured out a use for it.
Commercial or Geographic Targeting
Living in America, it is obvious to us that a .com is the priority for a TLD (Top Level Domain). But what if your target audience was in Europe or the far east? For those living in the United Kingdom, a .co.uk domain (as well as a .com) would be an absolute priority. Other prominent European domains are .eu, .it, .fr, .es, .de (there are many more). But would choosing a native domain ending help your SEO?
If your site targets users in a particular geographic location, you can use the Google geographic tool (in Webmaster Tools) to determine how your site will appear in country specific SERPs. Sites with country specific domains (.fr for example) are already associated with a geographic region - websites with a neutral TLD like a .com or .org are the websites that will benefit the most should their content be country specific.
Short URL
Research from late 2007 has suggested that short URLs provide a higher click-through in organic search. The long URLs that are present in search listings appear to lead to the next result. Definitely something you don't want!
If you have dynamic pages, avoid using parameters, variables or session IDs in your URLs. Consider using search engine friendly URLs to limit your parameters and store your session IDs in cookies. Session IDs can often replicate various URLs resulting in multiple listings of the same content in the SERPs.
So you've read this article and now you want to see if your chosen domain(s) are available. One of the best places on the internet to do this would be the Whois lookup and domain name search. Using the Whois tools avoids searching for domains at registrar's websites and running the risk of any domain you searched for being kept and held for ransom.
By Lee Smith-Bryan
Site Design
First impressions can be important. How your site looks and reacts can be the difference between users taking the time to browse through and users who land on a page and immediately click away. We've all been a part of this experience. The site is either too difficult to navigate, takes too long to load, or is just plain ugly. All of these experiences are definitely not the first impressions you want to give to someone viewing your site for the first time (or at any time, for that matter). Therefore, we can pinpoint whether we're going to have a pleasant experience on a website by its visual appeal, loading time, and the information being easy to reach.
These requirements — coupled with good design — can be achieved through modern coding techniques, like using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) instead of a table-based layout. CSS allows you to separate the style from the code. Doing this provides numerous benefits:
- Decreased amount of code
- Accessibility to users
- Semantically oriented content for the search engine bots
- Easier updating of style and content
- More cross browser compatibility
Visual Appeal
Creating a visually appealing website should be at least one of your objectives if you're designing a website from scratch. Completely underwhelming your user base with a less than adequate design is detrimental to your online presence. A good designer should be more than capable of designing a fully functional, standards-based, compliant website without using tabled-based layouts. Andy Clarke, in his book Transcending CSS, states that:
It is now an essential part of a professional web designer's job to understand the fundamentals of meaningful markup and CSS.
However, there are instances where a design which is too intricate can hinder the website. The design may be so distracting that the user gets caught up in the layout, rather than the content. For instance, if your site leans heavily on providing information, that's what the user should get. Information is still information, regardless of how it is dressed up. However, a photography or design site is a good example where an intricate design may prove useful because you're accentuating the content on the site, not distracting from it.
Site Structure
Good HTML structure should have a natural flow. This means that there should be a logic, an order and a use of semantically oriented markup. A heading should use the header element, a paragraph should use a paragraph element, a list should use the unordered/ordered list elements and so on. But why is this important to SEO? Quite simply, because it helps search engine better understand your content, and therefore improve your SERPs.
A website designed with tables has a completely different structure than a site built with CSS (remember that tables were meant for displaying tabular data, not for a complete layout). Imagine different blocks of information spread out over a large area; then imagine that same information in one single piece that has an order and a natural flow to it. When a search engine bot crawls a website built with tables, it is crawling each table individually, searching for the information. How much simpler for a website to have a structure that contains easy-to-access information for both the search engine and the user!
Content
Arguably the single most important factor in on-site SEO is content. Content on the website should be written and optimized for both users and search engines. Regularly updated, original content will appeal to both users and hungry search engine bots looking for new, original content. Content that is frequently updated and is high quality will always do well in attracting repeat visitors and improving SERPs.
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By Lee Smith-Bryan
Sun Tzu once said “Carefully compare the opposing army with your own, so that you
may know where strength is superabundant and where it is deficient.”
In the ever-changing world of internet marketing, analyzing your competitors can give you a distinct advantage. Knowing what they do well and what they lack will help you target key areas of the market that you think you can dominate.
Having knowledge of what the competition does, what they charge for their services, what they are about, how they are perceived, and where they are predicted to go in the future can give you a significant boost. Competition research should be split up into three different segments - content structure, data analysis and quantify your metrics.
Content Structure
Analyzing your competition should involve lots of data gathering. First, you should manually gather information by becoming familiar with the competition's website. Doing this will let you know how seriously they take their online presence and whether they are a significant threat to your search engine visibility.
There are several questions you should ask yourself when evaluating a competitor's website:
- Does their website meet web standards?
- Is it built with tables, CSS/HTML or Flash?
- Are they keyword stuffing?
- Is it easy to navigate?
- Are the URLs Search Engine friendly?
- Is their blog updated regularly with decent content?
It may be wise at this point to create a list of all the positives and negatives about the sites you evaluate. After you've collected a certain amount of data, there should be some correlation in the sites that rank well and those that do things right (such as an updated content-rich blog, search engine-friendly URLs, and a CSS/HTML-driven website).
Data Analysis
Otherwise known as a plan of attack, this can be the most crucial part of your competition research. Don't simply plan on submitting links to social networking sites at random. Each one has its own use and should be selected carefully, based upon your targeted niche and chosen outcome. Some sites should be used for seeding links, while others should be used for generating traffic and gaining exposure.
You need to take advantage of some of the search operators used by Google:
- link:[inserturlhere]: This operator will list webpages that have links to the specified website. This can be useful to determine which websites are linking to your competitors and which content on their site has the most inbound links.
- site:[insertdomainhere]: When the 'site' operator is used, it will restrict all returned results to pages in the domain specified. You could do this when you need the results to be more specific than a generic search.
- allintitle:[keywordshere]: Queries that include the 'allintitle' operator will limit the results to pages that include all of the specified words in the title. For instance, if I searched for 'allintitle: seo tools,' I would get pages that only had "seo" and "tools" in the title.
- intitle:[keywordshere]: When the 'intitle' operator is used, Google will return the pages that include the words specified in the query. For instance if I searched for [intitle:soccer nashville], the results would return the word "soccer" and include the word "nashville" anywhere in the document (even if it's not in the title).
- info:[insertdomainhere]: By typing in the 'info' operator, Google will return the information it has about that web page.
Quantify Your Metrics
Establish your competitors based on their SERPs, not their PageRank or a metric that doesn't have a quantifiable meaning. Those that are ranked well should be your target goal but not your priority. Your priority should be to establish the site as an authority in a niche and continue to build up a user base.
By Lee Smith-Bryan
Keyword research is essential to get your SEO campaign off to a good start. A successful SEO campaign will benefit in the short and long term from diligent and extensive keyword research. During keyword research, you need to be aware of the following when deciding on your keywords and search terms:
Branding Perceptions: Large companies have their own viewpoints on how they want their product and/or company portrayed online. Before starting a campaign for a large company, you need to establish their chosen targeted keywords. I would suggest getting a list from the client and asking for terms that they want to be given a preference. Not only can you give them what they desire, but you can also optimize the content for long tail searches. Doing this will not only give you an idea of their chosen demographic(s), but will also give you an excellent opportunity to obtain traffic from further expanding on their chosen search terms. With a smaller, more local company, refining their search visibility with a local search campaign will go a long way to achieving success.
Existing Brands: Be careful when selecting which existing brands to compete against. Whether you're selling brand name items or computer equipment, out of a total 142 million sites online (and growing), you'd be better off spending your time focusing in on a niche area rather than competing with a company whose brand is so predominant.
Generic Keywords: Unless a highly competitive generic search term will bring you a large amount of traffic, it is almost futile even to begin attempting to compete. Instead of doing this, try targeting specifically what is more relative for your site. For example, if you sold shoes on your website, you could target 'women's open toed shoes' instead of 'women's shoes.' This is more likely to achieve a better ROI and attract a greater percentage of customers looking to buy.
Overlooking Geographic Targeting: It should certainly be an ambition of a start-up company to appear in nationwide searches. However, it could be to your detriment if you ignore your local area. Establishing your website as a presence in your local market should be a priority before taking over the world.
Long Tail Searches: Not taking into consideration and neglecting to optimize your content for the long-tail search could see you being left behind in the SERPs. By themselves, long tail search terms may not account for significant traffic, but collectively, they can drive a lot of organic traffic to your website.
Keyword Research Sites:
By Lee Smith-Bryan
When I was updating the Raven Weekly blog post last Friday, I noticed that we hadn't posted an article since our piece on 7 Social Media Websites and Their Impact on SEO - almost two months ago! I think it's time we changed that statistic.
Every SEO campaign is a process unto itself. It is contrived of many components that, when executed correctly, form the sum of one large piece. Without each component's working to its fullest, the benefit of the end product cannot be truly felt.
Since each part of an SEO campaign is important in its own right, it is only fair that each be written about separately. Over the coming weeks, we'll be covering 8 Steps to a Successful SEO Campaign. The steps we'll be covering are listed below:
Each step will be covered in a weekly article, the first of which will be released next week. We will still be updating the SEO Daily links and the Raven Weekly posts.
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