I have a site which has lost about 1000 back links, they were weak back links (repetitive links from same domain).

My question is this: is the site now permanently damaged or is it possible I can get it ranking again?

Thanks
Louie

Dear Louie

No the site is not permanently damaged - you’ll most-likely find that since the links were poor quality, and site-wide, a bulk of them probably weren’t even being counted in the first place.

Not all links are equal and the better quality (ie. more authoritative, trust worthy, relevant etc. ) the fewer links you’ll need to achieve the same results.

Jim Boykin explains this nicely in his post about Why that site with 50 backlinks beats your site with 1000 backlinks where he quotes:

It’s not always “He with the most links” who wins the game……often, “He with the right links” can win the game as well. Really, very often, he with the right 10 links can beat the guy with 1000 of the wrong links – I see it all the time.

So all you need to do is go out and find some decent links and you’ll be fine. If I were you, I’d consider this a good thing to be rid of the old crumby links and a golden opportunity to start building a better inbound link profile.

Hope this helps

Peter Newsome
SiteMost Search Engine Optimisation

I was hoping that you could help me with the following debate.

What is suggested SEO-friendly punctuation for the following examples:

keyword/keyword or keyword / keyword (ie. using a space before and after the slash or using no space)

and

blah blah-blah blah … or blah blah — blah blah (ie. space or no space between — and the words)

Also, if you would recommend an article on the subject of punctuation for SEO, that would be great!

Thanks and best regards!

Laura

Dear Laura

Different types of punctuation and where/how it is used will have varying impacts on your SEO. Some punctuation is completely ignored, some should be avoided although doesn’t strictly have an impact on SEO and some can make minor differences when the search engines are indexing your content.

In the examples you’ve provided, it doesn’t make much difference at all. I personally would put spaces between the dash and slash, but that is purely to make the text more legible and doesn’t really impact on the indexing of the content.

When naming files, I tend to use hyphens instead of underscores and spaces. For instance I’d name the “Contact Us” page on a site: contact-us.htm instead of contact_us.htm or contact us.htm (as the later example would end-up looking like contact%20us.htm after it’s been parsed by the webserver/browser. The same applies to adding any other unnecessary punctuation (such as inverted commas, quotation marks, ampersands, exclamation marks, commas etc. etc.) as this can also create some funky looking page names.

If you were optimising a page for the keywords men’s hats vs mens hats - this slight variation (with or without the apostrophe) would have an impact on how Google indexes the content and while you’ll still rank for both terms, you’ll obviously rank better for the term that matches what you’ve used in your content.

As you’ll probably use your chosen keyword more than once on the page, you could choose to use punctuation most of the time, but “accidentally” leave it out on a couple of occasions to cover both bases.

Generally speaking, your best bet is to adhere to the standard grammatical rules for punctuation and when in doubt, err on the side of the reader and not the search engine as usability and readability far outweigh the very minor benefit that could potentially be gained otherwise.

If you’re looking for some good articles that pertain to punctuation and SEO, here’s a few to check-out:

How Google Treats Punctuation
How Punctuation in Keywords Affects Google Results
Does punctuation affect SEO?
Watch Your Punctuation Online

Hope this helps

Peter Newsome
SiteMost Search Engine Optimisation

How would I find that how many users are visiting my site? Is that possible to have it as a report? i.e. daily, weekly etc.Question

Baskar

Dear Baskar

The two word answer to your question is “web analytics”. Web analytics software will not only help you to track the number of visitors coming to your website, but would tell you where they came from, the amount of time they spent on your website, pages they visited, and a whole lot of other data pertaining to your website.

The data from your web analytics software is extremely useful in helping you fine tune your website and is a must have for anyone who owns a website or a blog. There is a plethora of web analytic software, both free and paid, which you can use to get all the data you are looking for. The only challenge you are likely to face is converting this raw data into information which can be acted upon.

Personally I prefer Google Analytics and I have various reasons to do so. It is free to use and will supply you with all the data that you need, at least at beginner and intermediate level. On top of this, it is simple to use and intuitive. Your can generate reports based on various dimensions, customize it, and export them in various formats. You could not ask for more from free-to-use software.

The installation process is simple. All you need to do is sign up for Google analytics (you can use an existing Google account), grab a tracking code and insert it in webpages you want to track - job done. Google will start tracking your website’s activities in the next 24-48 hours. You can refer to Google Analytics Installation Guide for step by step instructions.

Saurav.

Pay for Performance Search Marketing

I have been practising on my own site.  When I add an alt img tag I still cannot see the text when I scroll over the image.  I don’t understand this, could you please help? My URL is [URL removed for privacy reasons]. There is no alt img tag at present (I took it out because it didn’t seem to work).

Thanks in advance and regards,

Barry

—————————————————————————————————

Hi Barry

If you’re using Firefox, you won’t see alt tags when you mouseover. But if you right click on the image with your mouse and view *properties*, you should see your alt text in the alt field.

Or you could just view your site in Internet Explorer where the mouseovers should work fine.

Regardless of which browser you use, search engines will be able to index your alt tags. Plus text to speech software will be able to read them for visually-impaired visitors, so you should include them wherever possible for site usability purposes.

I’m on the verge of starting an apartment mega site mixed with social networking kind of like Rent.com meets Myspace, where people can list property for rent, etc.

I need tons of traffic and was going to start this off strong by targeting the keyword “apartments”. I have heard from many people to go more targeted but I need the massive traffic as I will be running Adsense as well. What would be the perfect way to tackle this?

I currently have someone writing 1,000+ articles with the keyword and derivative of it so I’m set in that arena.

Thanks again and any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cathy

Hi Cathy,

The first challenge any SEO faces isn’t how to improve the rankings of a website, but more-so how to manage the clients expectations.

While I acknowledge the need for massive amounts of traffic for your website to work effectively, it’s also important to remember that taking-on very generic keywords and wanting to compete with highly authoritative websites will take a lot of time and money. There is no cheap or easy way to accomplish this and if you don’t have a substantial (and really, that’s my polite way of saying HUGE) marketing budget covering a mix of both online and offline advertising along with the patience of a Tibetan Monk, you’d better stop reading here.

At the time of composing this post, there are roughly 181,000,000 sites indexed by Google.com for the word apartments. Rent.com has over 9,000,000 inbound links. The number one site ranked for the term ‘apartments’ has over 11,000,000 inbound links and the sites in the other top 5 each have well over 100,000 inbound links (all according to Yahoo’s Site Explorer).

So the first challenge will be finding a way to attract over 100,000 good quality links.

The next challenge will be the age of your website - each of the top sites in this niche have been around for over 10 years. Google looks at the age of a site as a sign of trust and authority, so if you setup a brand new website on a brand new domain name, it could take years before Google even considers your site in the same league as the sites you’re targeting.

Google’s Traffic Estimator tool suggests that advertisers are paying up to $3 per click for the word ‘apartments’ and the recommended daily budget (as suggested by Google) to achieve the maximum number of clicks through their PPC system would be approximately $39,820. This would bring you anywhere between 21,819 - 27,364 click every day.

So if that’s the amount of traffic you’re hoping for - it’s simply a matter of putting aside $1,200,000 a month on Adwords.

Now the Yahoo! and Google data above is bound to change and should only be used as a guide, but based on this information, it clearly indicates that a few thousand keyword-rich articles and a well optimised site isn’t going to cut it.

My advice would be to focus on more specific keywords (perhaps targeting different locations), try and create a range of viral/linkbait articles that will help generate slightly higher-than-normal link quantity while building relationships with other prominent (and industry-relevant) sites to get the link quality in there. To utilise social media effectively, you should also start to build an online profile within some of major networks and start creating genuine connections with people through comments, guest blogging, submitting other great articles (not written by you) etc.

Be prepared to pay for some online advertising through systems like Adwords and banner advertising or sponsorship deals with other high-volume sites. And although I probably shouldn’t be endorsing offline advertising on an SEO blog, you should also use mainstream media to gain greater exposure for your brand.

If you consistently roll-out great content, focus on managable keywords, form the right partnerships with the right websites, be prepared to put in the time-and-effort with social media and embrace the old adage “you have to spend money to make money”… in a few years time, you might be in a better position to try and tackle the major players.

If all this seems like too much hard work… maybe making money online isn’t for you.

Hope this helps!

Peter Newsome
SiteMost SEO Brisbane

Hi Kalena,

We’re having a debate here - what’s the difference between a (bad) doorway page and a (good) landing page? Is hosting an informative 1 page on a topic (eg:www.bluewidgets.com) and having that point to multiple pages on a related, parent site (e.: www.widgetes.com) frowned upon by Google, and does that technique fall under the landing or doorway page title?

Thanks for your help!

Cindy

An excellent question Cindy.

At their extremes, the differences between a spammy doorway page and a good landing page are usually pretty obvious to us humans. A “doorway” page has been designed specifically to appeal to search engines and rank well for a particular keyword phrase (or phrases) is typically stuffed with keywords, makes little real sense when you read it, and adds no real value to the user experience, whereas a “landing page” has been optimised for search rankings, but also aims to be useful and appealing to human visitors, and encourage them to take an appropriate call to action.

It can be much more difficult to determine the difference between a well crafted doorway page and an over-optimised landing page - not only for humans- but also for Google.

Google has to algorithmically determine the difference between these types of pages and uses a whole variety of factors to decide whether or not a particular page deserves a good ranking or a penalty. The types of factors taken into account could include - keyword density, duplicate content, inbound and outbound links, number of similar pages,

Ultimately the difference is probably a matter of intent - If a page has been created to be useful to visitors it will probably be treated by Google as a landing page, if the page has been over-optimised to a point that it becomes of little real benefit to users, then it will be treated by Google accordingly. This is one of the dangers associated with over-optimising a page or even an entire site. Even though it may have started out with a clear and useful purpose, over-optimisation could result in reduced rankings.

In the example you’ve provided I think the important word is “informative”. It is quite legitimate (and in fact encouraged) to link from a useful page on one site to relevant pages on another site.

Hope that helps.

Andy Henderson
WebConsulting Web Optimisation & Design

Well I’m happy to say the article has finally been published in the July edition of Website Magazine. If you’re not a subscriber to the hard copy OR online version, you can download this PDF version of the article: Conversational Marketing With Twitter.

Speaking of Website Magazine, did you know you can get a free subscription? That’s how I became interested in writing for them actually. I signed up for the 4 free issues and was both impressed with the quality of the articles and pleasantly surprised to see some familiar faces authoring them. So I got in touch with the Editor and suggested a story about Twitter.

Thanks to everyone for your help with the research and the great feedback on the article - I’ve had a surprising amount of feedback actually. My only regret is that editorial staff slashed my article by about 30 percent but I guess that’s to be expected with an offline magazine where space is at a premium. They also didn’t use the neat graphical polls I’d created using Twtpoll, but you can still catch those below:

1) Which of the following US companies do you follow on Twitter?

2) Have you ever communicated directly with a company via Twitter?

3) If you represent a business using Twitter, what is your/their *main* reason for doing so?

I’m hoping to publish the unedited version of the article with poll graphics on SiteProNews later this month so I’ll blog the URL when its live.

So did my article resonate with you? Is your business using Twitter in any of the ways mentioned in the article? I’d love your feedback in the comments below, thanks.

Hi Kalena,

I have recently been working on SEO optimization where we promote our trainings to the individuals, we have implemented certain algorithms to optimize certain pages which is working but how can I make my contents more relevant so that I can reduce my bounce rate & increase conversion rate.

Best,
Chetan

Hi Chetam,

A great question, as it highlights that optimising your site to improve Traffic is really just a part of the overall optimisation process. Increasing traffic through SEO is a great way to start, but you also have to ensure that you make the most out of all the traffic that you do get.

It could be argued that the you can simply double your sales by doubling your traffic, and this may be achievable for low traffic volumes, but as your traffic increases the effort required to double it also increases. Once you are getting a reasonable volume of traffic to your site, it can very often be more efficient to work at improving your conversion rate than increasing your traffic.

Your sites Conversion Rate is the percentage of visitors that purchase a product, or make an enquiry, or signup to your newsletter, or undertake whatever activity it is that you want them to do. The process of improving your conversions is called Conversion Optimisation (or Conversion Rate Optimisation), and there are many many strategies that you can use (see Conversion Rate Experts - Google Website Optimizer 101 – a quick-start guide to conversion rate optimization for a list of more than 100 different techniques).

Your bounce rate is the percentage of visitors to your site that look at a single page (the landing page) before leaving. A high bounce rate can be an indication of a relevancy issue as you have suggested, but it is not necessarily so. A high bounce rate could also indicate that the visitors to your site are not really interested in your products/services in the first place, and the keywords targeted, or the strategy you are using to drive traffic (PPC for example) is not working properly. You can make use of your site usage stats to take a closer look at the visitors that do convert - Do they predominantly come from a single source, or a certain group of keywords ? If so, focus your SEO strategies on these.

A high bounce rate could also be an indication of problems with the look, or functionality of your site. If your site is slow to load, or difficult to navigate - if your product/ service offerings are not clear, or your call to actions are not obvious or enticing enough, your bounce rates are likely to be high, and your conversion rates low.

Try some usability testing - sit someone down at your site and watch over their shoulder while they use it. Very often they will use your site quite differently to how you expect them to. On the basis of this usability testing compile a list of changes that could be made to your site, that you believe will improve the user experience, and make it clearer and easier for visitors to get to your call to actions.

When implementing changes to your site make sure that you test and monitor the results. If a particular change (or batch of changes) decreases your bounce rate and improves your conversion rate it is probably a good thing. There are tools available such as Google’s (Free) Website Optimizer that can help you with testing and monitoring the impact of changes to your site.

Have Fun with Conversion Optimisation - it can have dramatic impact on the effectiveness of your website.

Andy Henderson
WebConsulting - Website Optimisation Services

I am planning to build a website completely in Flex. What type of SEO can be done on it? Is it crawlable?

Shailendra Sial.

Dear Shailendra

Building a Flex (Flash) based website has always been the bone of contention between website designers and SEO professionals. While website designers argue that it provides great interactivity and a chance to explore the boundaries of creativity (which is quite true), SEO professionals contend that it is not search engine friendly. This scenario was greatly altered when Adobe announced that it is working with Google and Yahoo to enhance indexing of Flash file formats (SWF). This information was echoed in a post made on Google Webmaster Central Blog; a major shift in how search engine treated Flash based websites.

But the picture is not as ‘rosy’ as it may seem. While search engine spiders, especially Googlebot, are capable of indexing flash (SWF) files, it is far from perfect. Jill Whalen made a perfect case out of it – Are The Search Engines Really Indexing Flash?

So “Is it crawlable?” – I would have to say both Yes and No for an answer. It would depend on how you would place content within Flash (SWF) files. Anything that is static will be indexed by search engines whereas anything that is fetched dynamically will not be indexed.

Search engine spiders are interested in data that is present on the webpage and do not care much about the surrounding markup. In case of Flex, the primary source of content is XML (dynamic content) and therefore ‘may’ not be indexed. The common workaround to this issue is XSLT, which can be used to transform XML data into various formats like HTML that can be readily indexed by crawlers. This is how far I can take you with my technical ‘know how’. I would recommend you read Flash & Search Engines : Indexed in a Flash, a mega post that deals with all aspects related to Flash websites.

Once you have digested all the information provide above, I am sure you would have a fair bit of idea on where your website would stand from an SEO perspective. Personally, I would recommend that you use Flash in moderation; search engine spiders are still best at crawling (X)HTML architecture. It would ensure that you website has enough ‘food’ for crawlers. For parts of website built in Flash, I would recommend you refer to this detailed post on beu blog, to make it as search engine friendly as possible.

Good luck!

Saurav.

You’ve helped us out with a couple of problems over the years ~ thanks again. Don’t have a problem this time but I do want to get your opinion/guidance so I can maybe AVOID a problem.

We handle over 5,000 products, and we want to create a page for each product using an automated page generator. Same as what thousands of other people do. Nothing fancy and no SEO tricks. Just a brief description of the item, price & how to order.

I’ll be using a template, of course, and about 75% of the words (excluding shared borders) will be common to all pages. The other 25% of words on a given page will be unique to the product/page in question.

I may be overly cautious, but I’ve learned the hard way that what seems like a good idea or what the rest of the herd is doing might not be acceptable to the SE’s, especially if not executed properly. We have a fairly well-performing website and the stakes get higher as we grow. So, any tips on what to do / not do when creating these individual product page would be appreciated.

Thanks
Rick

Dear Rick,

Sometimes it’s possible to reduce duplicate content by placing that content in a dedicated section of your website and then linking to it where necessary (this can apply to things like shipping/handling, product guarantees, returns policies and terms & conditions… which some store owners will try and display on every page but could quit easily be put elsewhere).

Another way to make the search engines focus on the unique content is by using emphasis tags (such as H1, H2, bold, italics etc.) and use them sparingly (or don’t use them at all) in your page header, footer and other duplicate parts of the page. This will help the spiders isolate your unique page-specific content as well as drawing your readers attention to the most important parts of the page.

You could also try and setup a feature that allows users to add reviews or feedback on each of the products. This user-generated content would become yet another source of additional unique content for each page (and what’s better is you didn’t have to write it yourself).

Hope this helps!

Peter Newsome
SiteMost SEO Brisbane