ssharma@brightedge.com

M Posted 11 years 4 months ago

t 9 min read

A well-defined website structure is key to helping both users and search engine bots navigate your site with ease. When you determine the navigation and structure of your site, you are effectively deciding its topical focus and organizing the content. Your topical focus is where you define your brand and demonstrate its expertise, what it stands for, and what products or services it provides. And, the more content you generate on your site about the topics that people are searching for in your realm of expertise, the more relevant your site will become to search queries – which in turn will result in more search visibility. In this post, we’ll go over the high-level concepts on how to use keyword research to create an optimal site structure when creating a new website or forging a redesign of an existing site.

What is site structure?

Simply put, site structure is the way you group and organize the content on your site. Individual Web pages become directories and sections of your site when linked to one another in a SEO-savvy way. (To learn more about linking, refer to part 2 of my BrightEdge post on basic SEO concepts). For users, a well-defined site structure helps them easily move from section to section on the topics they care about or wish to explore further, helping them readily find the information they seek. For search engines, it helps them better “understand” your site’s content, and builds authority and topical relevance in the eyes of the bots.

How do keywords play into site structure?

There are many ways you might choose to design your site’s structure and navigation, and this depends upon your business and website goals. For now, we’ll focus on how your keyword research can indicate the types of topics that should comprise your site’s content, which you can then group into the “themed” sections of your site – ultimately defining its navigation. As I mentioned in my basic guide to keyword research here on the BrightEdge blog, the final step in research can be using your keyword categories to create a site structure. As a refresher, at the close of your keyword research. you may find you have a group of keyword terms related to “X” product or “Y” service. Once you’ve determined your keywords’ search demand, you can assign keywords to corresponding pages of your site that build out those important sections related to X product or Y service.

How to use keywords to create navigational site structure: an example

At a minimum, most online businesses have a services or product page, an “about us” page, and perhaps a “resources” page. So you most likely already have an idea of what sections of your site will exist. Next, you can begin mapping the keywords to the content you will create to expand upon the sections of your site, thus further defining its navigational structure. Using a San Jose dentist/orthodontist as an example, the practice might provide and have a lot of keywords around different services, such as standard dental care, braces and Invisalign. Your goal would be to create useful content in the form of individual Web pages that correlate to both the services and the keywords for that service. Each of these individual service pages would be organized under a main “Services” landing page. This will help visitors find specific information easily, and help search engines determine that its site is relevant to those search terms. Here’s a visual from a keyword research spreadsheet and the corresponding URL structure. 

In general, you’ll want to reserve the main landing pages for the most “generic,” high-demand keywords (often only one- or two-word key terms). The main landing page is where you’ll introduce visitors to your services, products or topics, depending on your business. Subpages typically support keywords that are more specific, and likely have less search volume that those of the main landing pages’ keywords. Each section of the site would be housed in a website directory, which is created by designating your site’s structural navigation – the URL structure. The result? A well-organized website experience for users that provides topically relevant, easily-navigated content for search engines!  

ssharma@brightedge.com

M Posted 11 years 4 months ago

t 9 min read

Knowing how to optimize your site for mobile takes the right tools so you understand the experience your site is creating today, and how to make improvements for tomorrow. Both the BrightEdge platform and Google make it easy to track performance with a few simple reports. In this post, we’ll quickly go over what those are.

How BrightEdge helps with mobile optimization

BrightEdge takes mobile reporting beyond the webmaster and to the marketer with reporting that helps brands understand their SEO and content performance by device. BrightEdge’s mobile SEO reporting allows users to track and measure mobile device performance with things like:

1. Measuring true rank by device in Universal Search (image, video, social).
2. Visibility into local SEO performance by keywords and keyword groups across cities.
3. Tracking and reporting on keyword trends and rankings across device type.
4. Optimizing mobile campaign performance for ecommerce.
5. Understanding the competitive SEO landscape and “share of voice” for a brand across mobile devices.

The following screenshot shows a BrightEdge report that gives data on rankings and keywords by device (you can set to tablet or smartphone) for a defined time period:

This next screenshot shows a BrightEdge report that offers data on visits and conversions by page and by device: 

How Google Helps with Mobile Optimization

Google’s goal is to ensure websites are easy to use for those navigating on a mobile device, so many of its reporting features let webmasters know how they can improve the user experience. Here are a couple you can access right now …

1. PageSpeed Insights for Mobile

Google Developers created the PageSpeed Insights tool that allows site owners to input a URL and discover how to improve the speed of any given Web page. Remember, Google stated that above-the-fold content for mobile must render in one second or less, and gives tips on how to manage that, here. The following screenshot is an example of the PageSpeed Insights tool in action for the home page of NYTimes.com:

This year, Google added new functionality to the mobile suggestions of the PageSpeed tool with a section on user experience, which looks at criteria like tap targets, legible font sizes and more.

2. Mobile Usability in Google Webmaster Tools (GWT)

In October, Google announced a new section in GWT that points out to webmasters any issues that could be hindering the mobile experience for users. Similar to the PageSpeed Insights tool and its user experience reports, this feature looks at things like:

• Touch elements
• Viewport and content configuration
• Flash usage

You can navigate to the report in GWT by going to Search Traffic > Mobile Usability. Hopefully, you’ll see a message like the one that shows here, where no usability errors are detected:

In its announcement, Google gives an example of what a report looks like for a site that needs to optimize its mobile experience, here:

So, there you have it: simple reports packed with a punch from both BrightEdge and Google that give you more than enough data to track how your site is doing from a mobile usability perspective, and to gain insight from an SEO, content and conversion standpoint by device. Now go forth, and be mobile!

ssharma@brightedge.com

M Posted 11 years 4 months ago

t 9 min read

In yet another tectonic shift in the local SEO landscape, Google ended its local “carousel” organic search results on November 13. To date, it primarily affects listings from desktop searches for restaurants, hotels and related business categories. Gone is the interactive “black bar” of local search results that were displayed side-by-side at the top of Google’s vertical results, which accommodated up to 20 listings. The search giant has replaced it with a “3-pack” display representing the top three local organic search results. When it introduced the local carousel in June 2013 via its Google+ page, Google offered an example of local carousel organic search listings for Mexican restaurants in New York City.

Now Google’s search engine results page (SERP) listing for Mexican restaurants in New York City looks like this: By clicking on the “more” link at the bottom of the SERP 3-pack listing, users will land on a new page of local search results displayed as a vertical organic SERP listing.

The individual results show the business address, reviews and a description of the business, as well as a map to the right of the listings.

When Google launched its local carousel, marketers adapted quickly. In fact, BrightEdge CEO Jim Yu discussed a new set of best practices for Google carousel optimization that same year, noting “with 20 results appearing in the carousel. It means your business is competing for attention with 19 other businesses.” However, some of Jim’s tips in that article may be all the more important now, as businesses will vie to be among the top three organic search results of Google’s new local SERP 3-pack. For additional tips on local SEO, you can check out this post by BrightEdge’s Mark Mitchell, which discusses local SEO factors, how Google My Business factors and on-site optimization tips. BrightEdge will be conducting its own research on this new development, and will be sharing the results with you soon. Stay tuned!  

ssharma@brightedge.com

M Posted 11 years 4 months ago

t 9 min read

So you have a blog, and you aim to provide useful posts that address your readers’ interests. Take that content a step further by optimizing those posts with SEO best practices in mind that will help inform search engines about your content, and make it more relevant to show up for a searcher’s query. In this post, we’ll go over five quick tips for optimizing your blog posts to boost search rankings and generate more Web traffic.

1. Create unique meta information

Meta information (also called Meta data) is one thing search engines use to understand the content of your site’s pages, including blog posts. When implemented well, it's often one of the first things a search engine bot encounters when crawling a page. So it's your first opportunity to tell the bot what the page's content is about. The most important components of Meta data are titles and their corresponding descriptions. Meta titles are brief lines of text that summarize the content of each post on your blog. A best practice for composing Meta titles is to include at least one of its keyword terms for optimization purposes, while keeping the character count to 55 (including spaces).

The Meta title is displayed as the “clickable” result in the search engine results pages (SERPs), so it’s essential to make it as compelling as possible. Meta descriptions elaborate on what a person can expect to see when they click through, and are comprised of a brief summary of the topic or page. You’ll want to allow for more room here -- up to 156 characters (again, including spaces) -- and incorporate the keyword term(s) you’re targeting without stuffing. For more on Meta information, refer to Part 1 of our guide to basic SEO concepts.

2. Optimize your content

Of course, your SEO strategy should also include optimizing the actual text of individual blog posts. While content is often naturally optimized simply by writing about a topic, it is a best practice to review the post with an eye for more optimization opportunities to include those keywords you are targeting – given that they naturally “fit” into the text. For more specifics about on-page elements to pay attention to, see Part 1 of our guide to basic SEO concepts, noted above, which also covers:

• How to handle Heading tags
• Video optimization

… And more!

3. Optimize your images

As with blog content, your images should also have concise titles and descriptions optimized with keywords whenever possible while avoiding “keyword stuffing” that the search engines may interpret as spam. Image titles (also referred to as “filenames”) should briefly summarize its content, with hyphens ( - ) separating the individual words. For example, washable-cashmere-sweater is preferable to simply cashmere_sweater, both in terms of keyword use (“washable cashmere sweater”) and search-engine friendly style (using hypens rather than underscores). Image descriptions (also called “alt text”) are key for helping those with disabilities who may be using screen-reading services understand what the images are on the page. Generally these descriptions are brief, and literally describe the image in question. For more on image optimization, refer to Part 1 of our guide to basic SEO concepts, as cited above.

4. Link appropriately

Linking internally to useful resources on your site that are relevant to your blog post, or externally to other (trusted) websites pertaining to your post, is another best practice for blog post optimization. It’s important to ensure that the external site you link to is reputable in order to avoid being hit with a Google Penguin penalty, as discussed in Part 2 of our guide to basic SEO concepts, as well as in our guide to link audits.

5. Include social media sharing

It is well documented that social signals such as Google, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook work in tandem with organic search rankings. (For more on that, Mark Mitchell discusses “social SEO,” explaining how social media and SEO work together on the BrightEdge blog.) A best practice for leveraging social media sharing of your blog content is to include “buttons” in the form of social media icons that readers can readily “click” to share or endorse your posts. At a minimum, it’s recommended that you include the power of 4: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+. If your posts tend to be visually heavy with images, a Pinterest button would also lend itself to social sharing. (Note: For more info on this, Mark Mitchell discusses how to optimize your brand’s Pinterest presence at the BrightEdge blog). There you have it; we hope these five quick tips provide you with the preliminary info you need to optimize your blog posts. Refer to the resources cited to learn more, and if you have any questions, please note them in the comments below!

Andy Betts

M Posted 11 years 4 months ago

t 9 min read

On September 25, Google rolled out Panda 4.1 -- the latest iteration of its algorithm targeting sites with “thin” and low-quality content. As we reported here at the BrightEdge blog, Panda 4.1 packed a punch for several industry verticals. According to our initial research gleaned from the Data Cube, 4.1 dished out an organic search loss of up to 90 percent for some brands. With any major algorithm update there are also winners. When announcing the Panda 4.1 rollout, Google’s Pierre Far noted that it meant “a greater diversity of high-quality small- and medium-sized sites ranking higher.”

Google Panda 4.1 impact

Our early research (cited above) highlighted three types of sites that were negatively impacted by the update (however, there were more that our report didn't highlight beyond the following). In sum, they were:

• Infotainment and media sites that were image- and ad-heavy.
• General information sites with generic content offering little value for users (which we found to be among the sites most negatively affected).
• eCommerce sites with thin content.

We also reported on our research findings that identified the types of sites that benefited from Panda 4.1, including:

• Well-known media brands and targeted niche media (the latter likely representing some of the high-quality, small- to medium-sized sites that Google indicated would rank higher).
• Rich informational sites featuring fresh, compelling content.
• eCommerce sites with quality content that facilitates shopping and purchasing decisions.

You’ve likely spotted a pattern here, which is precisely what our research identified; when it comes to positive versus negative impact, the difference was original, quality content “above the fold” versus generic, “thin” content and top-heavy images and/or ads (Google’s page layout algorithm and mobile-minded page speed criteria are likely also at work). Our Data Cube research on Panda 4.1 has been confirmed by other professional sources within the SEO industry. Notably, Glenn Gabe discusses the risk of using aggressive or deceptive advertising in light of Panda 4.1 at Search Engine Watch.

Protecting your site from the Google Panda 4.1 update

So how do you go about “Panda proofing” your website? The short answer: provide users with a quality experience. As BrightEdge CEO Jim Yu advises in his recent Marketing Land column, consider referring to Google’s search quality evaluation guide to understand what Google defines as a quality user experience. Then analyze how your site measures up against the relevant criteria in the guide. Here are a couple steps you can take to assess the quality of your content and your site’s overall experience:

1. Evaluate page quality: When evaluating your site, start with pages and prioritize based on the highest value pages to your business (if you’re a BrightEdge user, our “Page Reporting” features can help you identify this). Create a set of criteria that you use to assess your Web pages for quality. (Hint: It’s not a bad idea to start with Google’s guidelines).
2. Optimize each page: Once you’ve evaluated the quality of your pages, including the quality of the text content and the layout, optimizing them from an SEO perspective can only help your content be found. It pays to cross your “t” and dot your “i” when it comes to doing every bit of White Hat optimization so you can help search engines better access and understand the content. For more information on basic optimization principles, check out this post and the other posts in its series.

We’ll keep our readers posted as we uncover new research on Panda 4.1. Until then, follow the basic steps outlined here to help Panda-proof your website.