When the world wide interwebs came along, I was instantly intrigued. That was largely because when I was a (gullible) little kid I thought there was a book called “The Everything Book” that contained the secrets to everything; like how to fly, be invisible – you know, cool stuff. (In case you’re wondering, now I’m a gullible adult).

So the very concept that there was this place you could go and find the answers to e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g got my attention quick. Silly me: in short order my fascination led me to make a hobby of creating websites. Very, very crappy websites. (In case you’re wondering, I can still make crappy websites).

What’s All This Drivel Got To Do With SEO Deal Killers?

I’m getting to that. Geez, so impatient…

Flash forward some years later and I get this crazy idea in my head: “Hey, if I learn how this thingy called Search Engine Optimization works, I’ll be able to get my websites to rank #1 for whatever… I’ll put stuff up there for sale, and pretty soon I’ll be seaside sipping drinks from coconut shells with umbrellas sticking out of them and lighting cigars with $100 bills!” (In case you’re wondering, I still get crazy ideas in my head).

I figured SEO was some kind of magic fairy dust – you know, a bunch of insider-secrets and tricks that if I could just find out what they were, I’d be rich! Rich I tell ya! I’ll drive a Ferrari to the old neighborhood and thumb my nose at those who picked me last for kickball in 3rd grade. Ha!

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Getting Rich Quick…

Turns out SEO is work, and not magic fairy dust. Turns out SEO is not a bunch of tricks after all (I won’t cry for the lazy link-buyers). Turns out you have to know a lot about the technical aspects of how websites are constructed and operate, how JavaScript & CSS works, how external links affect your site, and you have to watch Google like a hawk because they’re constantly updating their ranking algorithm.

If you have a website, I’m sure you created it with good intentions. *cough*like me*cough*

But seriously: for those of you who have a website, especially a business or even an enterprise-level site, and are looking to “do some SEO to it”, run – don’t walk – to your website right now and see if it’s guilty of any of these 3 SEO deal killers.

If it is, fix ’em – and fast.

1. There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home…

So there I am with one of my websites and I’m learning SEO; imagine my horror, my shock, my extreme dismay when I discovered I had four, yes four, home pages!

http://mysite.com
http://mysite.com/index.html
http://www.mysite.com
http://www.mysite.com/index.html

Why you should care:

This is called a “canonicalization problem” in SEO (and has nothing to do with the Roman Church) and you should care for two main reasons:

1. You’re presenting 4 identical pages to search engines like Google and saying “pick a card, any card!” Even though search engine spiders like googlebot that crawl and index websites are pretty smart these days, these robots need all the help they can get and you don’t want to confuse them. Give them just one home page to crawl and index.

2. External links to your site are like votes. If you were running for president, you’d want all the votes for you to be counted, correct? Having more than one home page means your “votes” are probably not all being counted up correctly and that voting power is being diluted instead of concentrated. You want that power concentrated.

What you should do:

Try entering your site into the address bar of your favorite browser with http://yoursite.com and http://www.yoursite.com – watch the address closely, and if your site loads at both addresses, you need to fix that immediately. You should also click on every link on your site that says “home” and watch the address bar. You might be surprised by what you find. Have an assistant stand by with smelling salts just in case.

2. Don’t go breakin’ my…. internal links

Cheezy, I know. I’m good at cheezy.

If you have links on your site that lead to a “404” page not found error, you need to fix that.

Why you should care:

1. Broken links are frustrating to your site visitors. They hate them with a burning passion hotter than 1,000 suns. You run the risk of breaking their trust. After all, if your site doesn’t even work right, then what happens if they <gasp!> buy something or do business with you! Will your customer service suck too? Will you take their money and run? Seems like a small thing, those broken links, but they’re not. Web surfers are notoriously impatient and judgmental.

2. Crudely put, broken internal links impede the proper flow of PageRank on your site and that page may be linked-to from external websites and you’re effectively killing any incoming “votes” to that page. Not good. Frankenstein’s monster would say “Grrr. broken links bad!”

What you should do:

You can use a free tool like Xenu or Screaming Frog SEO Spider (Google it) to check for broken links on your site. Internally here at Portent, we use a highly-specialized super-sophisticated tool we custom-built called “Pythia” (don’t ask) to crawl your website – we’ll find not only internal broken links but all manner of SEO deal killers on your site. For now, you can use one of the free tools I mentioned. Shameless plug: when I need a plumber, I call an expert to get the job done right the first time and don’t waste my time trying to do it myself. If you need an SEO… ’nuff said.

After you crawl your site and find all those nasty broken links you didn’t even know you had, fix them! Fix them now!

3. Who says titles don’t matter?

If your business card says your title is “master of the known universe,” that’s super-awesome, but your website’s title tags are what I’m talking about here.

Why you should care:

Because I said so. Just kidding. You should care because <title> tags are a very strong indication to a search engine like Google what that page is about. Robots need our help, remember? Also, <title> tags are the “blue link” in search engine results pages – that is, when you search for “purple elephant end tables” in Google and you look through the results, title tags are the text with blue links. Humans see them. Search engines see them. If your home page <title> tag says “Home,” that’s not very descriptive to humans or robots.

What you should do:

Click around your site and look at the top of your screen at the very top of your browser, you’ll see the <title> tag there. If you’re adventurous, visit a page and right click and choose “view page source” and look for <title> in the HTML code – read the words between the opening title tag <title> and the closing title tag </title>. Does it succinctly (in 70 characters or less – including spaces) and accurately  (if you read this on a blank sheet of paper, would it make sense all by itself?) describe this page?

If not, it’s back to the drawing board for you. Yes, <title> tags are that important.

TL;DR

Too long? Didn’t read?

Summary for the skimmers:

1. Fix your canonicalization problem(s)

2. Fix your broken internal links

3. Fix your <title> tags

SEO deal killers are like your website shooting itself in the foot. That’s bad, by the way. Go get ’em fixed! Oh, and if you have any questions or comments about these 3 deal killers, feel free to add that to the comments section below.

Lastly, I (or one of the other SEO experts here) would be happy to check out your site out for you, find out what’s wrong with it, and then write up and deliver a complete report of 10 things you need to fix right now. You may have SEO deal killers on your site or other things that badly need to be fixed & improved, like, yesterday!

The post 3 SEO Deal Killers You Need To Fix Right Now appeared first on Portent.

The SEO Preflight

Before diving into a new SEO project I want to understand what challenges the web site faces and, of course, the opportunities. Call it my SEO Pre-flight for Fitness Program.

To design a custom fitness program a personal trainer will begin by testing your strength and stamina. How would you feel if that trainer asked you to bench press 300 pounds during your first visit? Unless you are an advanced or elite class weightlifter 300 pounds is not a realistic expectation. The trainer determines your abilities first then uses that knowledge to create appropriate goals.

Search Engine Optimization works the same way. A web site cannot rank #1 for an industry’s most competitive search query without the right content or without earning adequate trust from the search engines. A Search Engine Optimization Review will find you web site’s baseline and help you select the best goals to:

1. Achieve higher rankings.
2. Get listed for more queries.
3. Prepare to rank, in the future, for keywords that are more competitive.

Start With Web Analytics

I begin my Search Engine Optimization Preflights by studying web analytics and crawl data.

Use tools like Google’s Webmaster Tools and your web analytics package to look for trends and insights. Here are some of the questions I try to answer.

1. What search queries or keywords does the web site rank for?
2. How high are the rankings for those keywords?
3. Do the search engine listings match the web site’s objectives?
4. Do people click on the search engine links?
5. Which search engines drive the most traffic?
6. How much traffic do search engines bring?
7. After they arrive from a search engine do people explore or abandon the web site?

Which Web Analytics Package for SEO?

To make sound decisions concerning anything you need good information. To make good SEO decisions your web site needs analytics software. It’s not an option.

Personally, I find Google Analytics more than serviceable for Search Engine Optimization. The price is right too, free. (Portent Interactive just happens to be an Authorized Google Analytics Consultant so if you need help you can call us.)

Some Portent Interactive clients use premium analytics packages like Omniture HBX SiteCatalyst™. If you think you might require premium web analytics I suggest you

1. List exactly what data you want to get that you cannot get from Google Analytics.
2. Make sure that the premium web analytics packages you consider can produce the data you desire.
3. Talk to people that use the software and ask them to share their tips and tricks.

The next two parts of the Search Engine Optimization Preflight will be competitive research and keyword research.

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From Seattle – Search Engine Optimization – To You

All SEO professionals face a difficult task when explaining their work in ways that are :

1. Understandable

2. Meaningful

3. Actionable

I enjoy talking about Search Engine Optimization at Seattle area events and discussing SEO in everyday terms with our clients from around the USA—it’s a highlight of my work. So I decided that a fun challenge will be to explain, from my desk in Seattle, Search Engine Optimization and how it works in simple usable terms.

SEO Definition

I’ll start with my own definition of SEO. I wrote this awhile ago for the Search Engine Optimization Group on Facebook:

Search Engine Optimization endows web sites with the traits and authority required to achieve high rankings on Internet search engines. Part science and part art, the search engine optimizer’s craft requires intellect, discipline and sound judgment.

I should have added persistence and patience to my SEO definition.

SEO requires:

1. Knowing how search engines work
2. Understanding the search engine ranking factors
3. The ability to implement or strengthen different ranking factors

SEO is Not Connecting Dots

Search Engine Optimization is not a simple formula one blindly follows. You’ll find numerous forks in the road and hills in your path. SEO requires experience to understand the challenges ahead and sound judgement to make good choices.

Future Search Engine Optimization Stories

Going forward I plan to discuss each aspect of SEO, a beginning to end SEO Guide, except that SEO never really ends. I’ll include as much everyday vocabulary as I can muster too. We’ll start with a pre-SEO checklist.

So here we go. From my desk in Seattle, search engine optimization, for you.

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