Tag: keyword theme

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URLs & SEO: What’s the Relationship?

Excerpts from my latest article at NBC 5 Chicago’s Inc. Well blog: “How URLs Impact SEO.”

If networks of links are the road map that search engines use to crawl the web, URLs are the street names that give that map meaning and consistency. As such, URLs affect search engine optimization in a couple of important ways: relevance and consistency.

Relevance is what most people think of when they think about URLs and SEO. Keyword relevance in URLs is like the street names that give maps their meaning. Using relevant keywords in URLs passes a keyword signal that search engine algorithms can use to boost your rankings slightly.

Optimal URLs will also be as short as possible, however. It’s important to balance keyword use with length for two reasons….

Read the article in full at Inc. Well » “How URLs Impact SEO.”

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Originally posted on Web PieRat.

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Ecommerce Product Facets and Filters for SEO

Excerpts from my latest article at Practical eCommerce: “SEO: When Product Facets and Filters Fail.”

Ecommerce sites rely on filtered or faceted navigation to make their product catalogs more easily digestible for customers. Depending on how filters and facets are implemented, however, they can either be fantastic for search engine optimization or a big failure.

SEO is based on three pillars: crawler access, keyword relevance, and authority. Filters and facets affect the first two of these pillars, access and relevance. Depending on which platform is used and how it’s implemented, faceted navigation and filters can act as crawl barriers for search engines or produce tremendous amounts of duplicate content. That’s the access issue. If a search engine’s crawler can’t or doesn’t access certain pages on the site, those pages have no chance of being indexed, ranking or driving organic search traffic.

On the relevance front, pages created by filters and facets are often treated as subsets of the unfiltered page. As a result they aren’t allowed to display unique title tags, headings meta descriptions and other textual signals that would alert search engines to their unique content. Filtered and faceted pages may contain subsets of products that have high search value, but if the page isn’t allowed to display keyword signals targeting unique keywords, the page looks to a search engine nearly identical to the unfiltered page and all of its other filtered variants.

  • Example: When Facets and Filters Work for SEO
  • Example: When Facets and Filters Fail SEO
  • Comparing Crawler Access

Read the article in full at Practical eCommerce »

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Originally posted on Web PieRat.

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Deploying Your Keyword Army to Win Searches

Excerpts from my latest article at Practical eCommerce: “SEO: Marshaling Your Keyword Army.”

Content optimization for search engines seems straightforward. You research the keywords that your customers use most frequently and you use them on your site in the places that matter most to search engine algorithms. But deciding which keywords to apply to individual pages when you’re ready to optimize is a much greater challenge.

When faced with a set of pages, it’s tempting to optimize for the same keyword on multiple pages. After all, the more pages optimized for a keyword phrase the better chance of ranking well, right? The reality can be just the opposite.

If five pages on your site are optimized for a juicy keyword phrase, each page is competing with the others for dominance for that phrase. In a well-designed site each page has a unique purpose. That’s why it’s a separate page and not part of another page. And because each page has a unique purpose it will also have a unique ability to rank for specific keyword phrases.

Think of each page on your site as a soldier in your army. Each battle to win individual search results contributes to the greater glory of the army and organic search victory for your site against competitors. Each soldier has a specific task to do to help win the war….

Read the article in full at Practical eCommerce »

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Originally posted on Web PieRat.

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Optimizing Navigation for SEO

Excerpts from my latest article at Practical eCommerce: “SEO: Putting Navigation to Work.”

Navigation does more than shuttling customers around your site. In addition to its obvious usability and design functions, navigation can be optimized to improve organic search traffic. Well-optimized navigation strengthens the flow of link popularity throughout your site while sending relevant keyword signals, both of which are important to driving organic search traffic and sales.

Think of the aggregate power of every link that comes into every page as the lifeblood of a site. Search engine optimization professionals like to call that lifeblood “link juice.” To keep the site healthy and able to rank for the most keyword phrases possible, that lifeblood link juice has to be distributed throughout the site to feed every page. Internal links like navigation are the system of arteries and vessels that pass the link juice throughout the site.

Link juice doesn’t spread evenly across a site. Most of the link juice for most sites comes into the home page as the default place to link to. Think of the home page as the heart: a big pooling of vital link juice. The farther away you get from the home page, the less link juice is passed on. Each page along the step keeps a share for itself and passes on a lesser amount. The pages at the end of the line end up with the smallest fraction.

When a page has earned links from other external sites it becomes another pool of link juice. In some cases a resource or tool your site offers can become an even stronger pool of link juice than the home page. Well-optimized navigation ensures that those pools of link juice share their strength with the rest of the site.

Read on to learn more about:

  • Optimizing Navigation Links
  • Optimizing Navigation Keywords
Read the article in full at Practical eCommerce: “SEO: Putting Navigation to Work.”
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Originally posted on Web PieRat.

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4 Simple Visuals to Explain SEO

Excerpts from my latest article at Practical eCommerce: “4 Simple Visuals to Explain SEO.”

When talking to marketers, it can be nearly impossible to get them to look beyond the brand imagery and user experience they’ve crafted for their customers online. And while they’re locked into that perception of their site it’s very difficult to explain why search engines don’t perceive their site exactly as they do. These three simple visuals can help shatter those perceptual walls and open the door to more productive SEO discussions.

 

Read more about the thinking behind these visuals and how to create them for any site at “4 Simple Visuals to Explain SEO.”

Read the article in full at Practical eCommerce »

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Originally posted on Web PieRat.