Posts Tagged ‘url’

I link, therefore I am… on top of Google

Tuesday, August 18th, 2009

By Robert Lockard

I enjoy Webmarketing123’s free Webinars on Internet marketing. I always learn a lot from them, and I try to apply what I learn. Today, I’ll talk about what I learned at their August 5, 2009 Webinar, “Advanced SEO Webinar: Linking Best Practices.”

Confusing keyboard arrows

The five things a website needs to get ranked on the first page of Google results are:

1. Keywords – The search terms you want people to type into a search engine in order to find your Web page.

2. Site Content – You need to use your chosen keywords in your website’s text to show search engines your site is relevant to those topics.

3. Meta Content – You don’t usually see this content, but it must be there in the backend of your site and in your Web page titles.

4. URLs – Include important keywords in your URLs. For example, it is better to have a URL like www.eharborinc.com/blog/2009/07/17/is-twitter-overhyped, which includes the date and headline keywords, than something like www.eharborinc.com/blog/post-81. The second URL gives no clue as to what it contains, while the first one gives a much better idea of the page’s subject matter.

5. Inbound Links – These are links (or votes) from other websites to your site. Search engines look at both the number and quality of the links you receive from other sites.

We’re starting a new blog on the newly redesigned Submit Solution website, which will debut soon. We’ll be shifting attention from the eHarbor Blog to that one soon. You can find the rest of this blog entry there. Stay tuned!

The photo of the confusing keyboard arrows is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of jeremyfoo.

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Posted in SEO, Web Design | 4 Comments »

Step 6 to topping Google: Strong anchor text

Wednesday, March 11th, 2009

By Robert Lockard

Welcome to part 6 of our multi-part series on effective search engine optimization tactics. You may notice that in many of my blog entries, I include links to past blog entries and other informative sites. I try to include appropriate text for each link in order to give you (and search engines) an idea of what information the link will contain. This Ship anchor in Greenock, Scotlandtext, known as anchor text, is another way to optimize your website for search engines.

Anchor text should be specific and closely related to the topic you are addressing. If you put in random links that are neither relevant to your content, nor descriptive of the information on the linked site, you are wasting your time. Links should be helpful to your website’s visitors, offering them additional information in a highly visible manner.

For instance, if I want to create a link to the Submit Solution website, I simply link the text “Submit Solution” to http://www.submitsolution.com. So when you see text that is blue, purple or red, you know that it links you to Submit Solution’s website or at least something related to Submit Solution (which, by the way, is a division of eHarbor, Inc.). As a bonus, search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN also use the anchor text to understand the relevance of that page to this one, potentially boosting your ranking.

Here are some good ideas to consider when choosing anchor text for your links:

- Keep your text short and descriptive. Brevity seems to be a common theme in this SEO series – like in my blog entry on optimizing images.

- Avoid generic terms like “Click here” or “article.” Those really don’t describe what the link is, and there are many other creative ways to anchor your links. Come to think of it, I mentioned avoiding generic terms in my blog entry on Web page titles, as well. It feels like we’re coming full-circle in this series.

- Don’t use the actual URL as the anchor text, unless you have a good reason. I used the URL of Submit Solution above simply as an illustration. You can also include a URL to promote your website, if it is new or poorly connected at the moment. You know, I think we discussed good URL practices earlier, as well.

- Make sure your links are easy to spot. If you use a style that makes links look just like regular text, people won’t be able to find them, and they won’t be much use.

By the way, including internal links to different parts of your website can help visitors navigate your website more freely and intuitively. Give it a shot, but don’t go overboard. Make sure the links are meaningful and add to the message of the page you are currently working on. Improving website navigation – that’s another topic we’ve covered before on the eHarbor Blog! Simply amazing.

This is the sixth part of this series. We started with a blog post on making content king, and we’ve covered a number of topics along the way. We’re coming close to the end of this series on strong SEO practices. We’ve got plenty of other great ecommerce topics to talk about, as well. Check out Google’s SEO Starter Guide for more information on this topic. The photo of the naval monument in Greenock, Scotland is from Flickr and it is the copyright of Bob the courier.

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Posted in Ecommerce, SEO, Search Engines | 3 Comments »

Step 4 to topping Google: Simplify URLs

Wednesday, February 25th, 2009

By Robert Lockard

Welcome to part 4 of our multi-part series on effective search engine optimization practices. I took a little break in my last blog entry to talk about some fun things that make me smile. Let’s back to talking about important SEO tactics. We’ve talked about making content king on your website, adding concise Web page titles, and optimizing images on your site. Now we’ll talk about simplifying your Web pages’ URLs.

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) movie posterTo start things off, it’s time once more for me to apply my love of movies to the discussion at hand. As Indiana Jones noted in a key scene of “Raiders of the Lost Ark” (1981), “Belloq’s staff is too long. They’re digging in the wrong place!” You’ve probably seen that movie, so you know that Indy’s nemesis had part of the instructions to build the staff of Ra, but because his staff was too long he was led to the wrong place in his search for the Ark of the Covenant.

All of this is highly applicable to URLs. If a URL is too long, it can be difficult for customers to remember and difficult for search engines like Google, MSN and Yahoo to catalog. If Indy were a webmaster, he would probably have said, “Belloq’s URL is too long. They’re Digging in the wrong place!”

That might be a little silly, though.

Examples of long URLs that are poorly structured and hard to follow can be found at Mapquest and Google. On Mapquest, I looked up the mailing address of eHarbor, Inc. and it gave me this: http://www.mapquest.com/maps?city=Orem&state=UT&address=13
23+N+Research+Way&zipcode=84097&cat=eHarbor%2C+Inc.#a/sea
rch/l::1323+Research+Way:Orem:UT:84097-6200:US:40.321124:-1
11.680809:address:Utah+County:1/m::15:40.324683:-111.679178:
0:::::/so:Eharbor+Inc:::r::25:::::/e.

Google searches are a little better. Here’s the URL of a search I did for eHarbor: http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=
1G1GGLQ_ENUS311&=&q=eharbor&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f.

Now that’s a mouthful.

I don’t mean to slight Mapquest or Google. The purpose of their URLs isn’t necessarily to look pretty and get posted on websites. They exist solely to contain search parameters and show people what they’re looking up. However, in the world of ecommerce, keywords are essential, and you want your URLs to reflect that.

Here are some principles that can help you create strong URLs for your Web pages:

- Use a simple organization structure on your website. For instance, on the Magellan Commerce website, if you click on the “Features” tab, you will go to this URL: http://www.magellancommerce.com/features. Very simple. Just add a / to your main URL and include a word or phrase describing what is in that section. As you add content to sub-pages, you can simply add another / and additional words describing the content on those pages.

- Along with the first point, it’s better to use words than numbers in your URLs. Words are much more “friendly” to your site’s visitors and they help optimize your pages for search engines. Using “page 1” or seemingly random numbers and code to organize your URLs isn’t pretty and doesn’t help much with SEO.

- Don’t use too many keywords in your URLs. Be brief but descriptive about what people can expect to find on each Web page. No need for a whole lot of repetition.

- Only create one URL for each Web page. It’s possible to have multiple sub-domains and versions of a URL. For instance, you could have http://submitsolution.com and http://www.submitsolution.com go to two different sites. Choose one form of a URL, with or without www, and stick with it. Also, you’re better off only using lower-case letters in URLs, instead of mixing capital letters in.

This is the fourth part of this series. We’ll cover several other ways to achieve SEO in upcoming blog entries. Check out Google’s SEO Starter Guide for more information on this topic. The “Raiders of the Lost Ark” movie poster is from Flickr and it is the copyright of MDH in Houston.

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Posted in Movies, SEO, Search Engines, eHarbor | 7 Comments »