If you were to map out your website’s internal links, would there be a logical order to it, or would it look like a steaming plate of spaghetti? Be careful before you answer. Strip away all the fancy design, the hours of brilliant copywriting, and the carefully considered page names. Instead, today we’ll think of your site as a simple series of dots (pages) and lines (links) to evaluate internal linking for SEO purposes. That’s one of the first steps we take at Portent when we’re doing a technical SEO audit or review with our in-house crawler, RainGage. This often helps to take ego or pride of authorship out of the equation, for a really important exercise.

Spoiler alert: once you’ve stripped the site down to this level, it becomes obvious that a lot of websites have tried to link too many of these pages to each other, especially in the top menus and sidebar navigation. Two big reasons for this are:

1. The desire to be user friendly.
2. Trying to send SEO link juice to too many pages.

The Desire to be User Friendly

You want visitors to find what they’re looking for. That’s great, but, main navigations with a hundred links and overzealous internal linking can lead to both SEO and usability problems.

From a usability perspective, choice overload will lead to decision paralysis. Instead of taking the time to go through specific, logical, descriptive drop-down menus and nav elements to find what they want, your visitors will get overwhelmed, frustrated, and abandon your site. The reality is that people will click on links if they believe that they are on a clear and direct path toward their goal.

If nobody clicks on a link what does it accomplish? If a whale cries in the ocean, does it get saltier?

On the SEO side you’ve still got people trying to link everything to everything, presumably to get as many pages ranking for as many things as possible. But to spread all those nav links with the shotgun approach will ultimately just dilute the value of the links and pages that really matter, making them nearly worthless. If a page has 100 internal links, then each link can only pass 1/100th of that page’s available Link Authority. At a certain point, search engines will even stop following links on a page due to exhaustion. Meaning that some of those most ‘useful’ links, the ones that actually drive leads or revenue for you might not even be crawled.

• ‘How We Decide’ And The Paralysis Of Analysis
• Testing the Three-Click Rule
• Internal Links – SEO Best Practices

If you are using a tool like Crazy Egg, take look at the links people are NOT clicking on. If nobody clicks on a link what does it accomplish? If a whale cries in the ocean, does it get saltier?

Internal Linking with a Purpose

One of the first fundamental concepts of SEO I learned is that every page of relevant content can strengthen your SEO. If you’ve studied long tail theory you understand the power of content to capture high quality visitors by optimizing for a bunch of different keyword concepts, especially specific searches that trade off low volume for less competition and high visitor relevance. Translated: write about stuff that a few good prospective customers care about deeply, and they’ll find you when you nail their question. Rinse, repeat.

In a typical scenario, you might publish a new blog post or page.

Next you choose to give it an SEO boost by cross linking other pages to it thereby sending your article extra “link juice” or PageRank. Again, the danger here is that if you overuse this tactic for every new post or page, you can cannibalize ranking authority from your important higher level pages, especially if you cross link to too many pages.

All things in moderation. All things done for a well-considered reason.

Overzealous cross linking results from the desire to increase key pages’ authority and rank, which is a good part of the reason that a lot of us have these sweet jobs in the first place. But, when you treat too many pages like they’re high value SEO targets you end up diluting the raw material you have to work with.

Important: I’m absolutely not telling you not to cross link.
A better strategy, especially for that long tail content, is to increase domain authority and flow PageRank through your site naturally using something like a hub page, for example.

• SEO copy writing’s secret weapon: Hub pages

Lead With Internal Link Discipline

The first step in “SEOing” a new website is to develop your content ideas and topics. Next is to organize all of those wonderful content ideas into categories or topic silos. At this point, you don’t need to think about keywords. Only after you’ve laid out the groundwork should you research, select and assign keyword groups to pages.

Here is a classic SEO website architecture for two categories.

Within the category, the topic is broad at the top, close to the home page, then becomes more specific as you go deeper into the silo. Looking closely at the internal linking structure:

1. Every page links to the home page.
2. Every page links to every category level page. This is your main navigation.
3. Sub-category pages link to other sub-categories within the same category only.
4. Sub-category pages link to their own topic pages only.
5. Topic pages link to sub-category pages within the same category only.
6. Topic pages link to their own article pages only.
7. Article pages link to each sub-category page within the same category only.
8. Article pages link to each topic page within its own sub-category.
9. Article pages link to other article pages within the same topic.

This classic SEO internal linking architecture works especially well for brochure or sales pages. You can choose to be more disciplined with your internal linking too. Here is a strict internal linking scheme.

And if you want to be even more disciplined, do not link articles to each other.

Cross linking for SEO

After you’ve set-up the website’s internal linking structure you can begin to think about those cross links. Cross linking can boost the SEO value of a page by sending it PageRank from outside of its silo in the internal linking structure.

Three reasons that cross linking makes sense:

1. Give an SEO boost to new content.
2. Create hub pages.
3. Pass PageRank from pages with lots of external links to key SEO targets without external links.

Give an SEO Boost to New Content

Playbook Recap: You can get search engines to naturally index new content more quickly by linking to it from high value pages like your home or category pages. Cross linking can also provide a PageRank or link juice boost to a page to help it rank better.

If you’ve worked on a blog, this will be quite familiar to you. Cross links can give new content the visibility to earn its own links and authority. As material becomes older and can stand well on its own, you can potentially remove those high authority cross links and aim them at newer and fresher content.

Blogs work like a conveyor belt, constantly giving the most internal link juice to the newest content and removing it from older articles.

If that doesn’t immediately make sense, play out this example. On a blog, links to new articles usually appear on the home page, the article’s category page, and in tag pages. Links may also appear throughout the blog in the sidebar, often under the heading Recent Articles or Recent Stories. As new content gets introduced to the blog, that link from the home page is pushed further down the page until it disappears. The same happens on category and tag pages. Eventually the only default way to click to the story is through the archive links on its category and tag pages.

Create Hub Pages

Playbook Recap: Hub pages are important SEO keyword targets and UX goldmines in your website, often for deeper content. The home page and the category pages are natural hub pages. Therefore, every page links to them in the internal linking structure. Before you create a hub page it is important to be ruthless in your evaluation. Does the page really deserve to become a hub? If successful in earning you visibility for the topic, what value will it bring? Remember, every time you cross link outside of the link architecture you steal PageRank from other pages that would otherwise receive that link juice. Each link also messes with your carefully crafted top-down flow of PageRank.

Once you decide that a web page is also a worthwhile hub page, begin by linking to it from within the body content of pages with similar or related topics. Link using anchor text that contains the hub page’s most important keyword target. If you must, add links from other pages, but do so gradually and thoughtfully.

If your ruthless evaluation convinced you that every page on your website ought to link to your incredibly important new hub page, perhaps it should become a new category page or sub-category page.

Pass PageRank from Pages with Lots of External Links to Key SEO Targets without External Links

What’s the use of creating great link bait if you cannot spread the wealth around? A well optimized website has lots of pages with external backlinks. These boost the domain authority of your site and help all pages to rank better. But PageRank is a renewable resource. Once a web page effectively uses PageRank for itself it can pass some of that authority along. If you’ve created a page that’s successfully garnered lots of external links it absolutely makes sense to pass some of that hard-earned PageRank to other SEO targets.

A final reminder: Be disciplined and deliberate with your internal linking. Only link to high value SEO targets and only link to a few pages. If you link to too many URLs you will exceed the amount of external link juice the page can transfer and siphon-off internal link juice.

Do not attempt to make every page a high-value SEO lander, just those that actually drive your business. If you can do this consistently, you’ll be well on your way to increasing the search engine optimization of your entire website.

The post Smart Internal Linking for SEO appeared first on Portent.

• Shopify SEO Basics
• Introduction
• Shopify URLs
• Shopify Title Tags
• Meta Description
• Image Alt
• Navigation
• 301 Redirects
• Wrap up

Shopify SEO Basics

Warning: This is not a full-bore Shopify tutorial, this is a deep walkthrough of the SEO basics on Shopify to make sure that your store is properly optimized for search engines.

In my quest to become a self-proclaimed expert in something other than fried chicken joints and IPAs, I decided to set upon search engine optimization for e-commerce websites. A client of mine was using Shopify and I was having a hard time finding the exact resources that I wanted to make some basic SEO optimizations. Plus, I was interested in the back end .liquid stuff.

I decided to set up my own Shopify store to see what the experience was like and get in at the ground floor. Taking advantage of the free 14-day trial, and looking to keep myself entertained, I set up Left Shoes Only, an online retailer of left shoes. When going through the account set up, I was pleasantly surprised that there was already a drop down option for me:

Alright, so it’s not much to look at. But, it was incredibly useful for me to go through all the steps of setting up the store front to get an idea of what Shopify store owners go through when they are getting started.
After doing the initial store set-up, the next thing that I was prompted to do was to add products, collections, then pages, and even a blog if I was so inclined.

Shopify URLs

Product / Collection / Page / Blog URLs

Honestly, the Shopify URLs drive me a little crazy… I’ve been SEO-ing (yeah, it’s a verb) for the better part of a decade now and I have always recommended clean and simple URLs: follow a purposeful naming convention that utilizes targeted keywords, makes sense to people, denotes hierarchy, conveys relevance, etc. The Fact that you CAN NOT have a Shopify site without URLs like

www.seo-shopify.com/collections/dope-kicks/products/one-left-shoe

and

www.seo-shopify.com/pages/about-left-shoes-only

makes me a little queasy but, it is not the end of the world. You need to make sure, that when you name your products, collections, and pages, that you are keeping it short and front-loading keywords that make sense.

If you decide later that you want to change any of your URLs, you CAN edit* the handle (or slug) to your hearts content. Scrolling down to the Search engine listing preview you can click on the handy-dandy Edit website SEO button and edit away.

*Disclaimer: Don’t go changing URLs all willy-nilly. Shopify dynamically generates all the pages by referencing object handles to access the attributes of Liquid objects. If that sentence sounds as confusing to you as it did to me before researching all this, take care when creating your URLs the first time around and then don’t change them.

Most Shopify store designs rely on the handles staying the same. If you start changing URLs after your store has been set up and without help from a developer who’s well versed in SEO, it may collapse on you like a house of cards.
https://docs.shopify.com/themes/liquid/basics/handle

Products

/products/specific-product-name

/collections/collection-title-goes-here/products/specific-product-name

When you create a product, Shopify automatically generates the URL based on the name of that product. The product will always live at its unique /products/ URL and when put into a collection, the product URL adopts that collection name but should automatically rel=”canonical” back to the original product URL. No duplicate content pages? No duplicate content pages!

*dusts hands in satisfaction*

Collections URLs

/collections/collection-title-goes-here

URLs are the same deal for collections pages; the title of the collection automatically creates the URL and is available to edit in the Edit website SEO feature. With one exception, the /collections/all page. For this you will need a bit of theme.liquid wizardry to edit and that is not really why I’m here.

Blog URLs

/blogs/name-of-the-blog/8675309-title-of-the-blog-post

Blog URLs are also basically the same. You can control the name of the blog where you are posting, basically the blog category, and the title of the post is appended to the URL, another great reason not to have super long post titles. Things that you can’t control here: /blogs/ of course and the article number that gets inserted, which is likely a holdover from when Google required at least a three digit number in the URL to be featured in Google News.

Page URLs

/pages/new-page-with-amazing-content

Pages are probably the most straight forward URLs to manage; no caveats or exceptions, the page title generates the URL handle.

Shopify Title Tags

I’m sure you don’t really need me to tell you that other than the actual page’s content, Title Tags are super important. Always make sure that your Title Tag can pass the Blank Sheet of Paper Test!

Products Title Tag

The next step in getting a Shopify online store off the ground is actually getting your products into the system. When adding a new product, a product name (Title) is obviously required and will automatically be used as the Title Tag for that product. Once again, in the Search engine listing preview the Title Tag can be optimized using targeted keywords.

One thing that stuck out to me is that Shopify shows here that the character limit for a Title Tag is 70. While 70-character Title Tags have been once again seen in the wild, this may not be the best representation of the average character limit shown in Google SERPs. With the removal of ads from the right rail of results pages, there is once again more room for Title Tags to stretch out. Truncation of Titles in SERPs is dictated by the pixel length and, according to Dr. Pete, the current limit is 600 pixels or about 60 characters. Best practice: Title Tags should be under 60 characters.

Collections Title Tag

Same deal here, the Title of the collections page becomes the default Title Tag. If your collection name happens to make the Title Tag too long, it can be edited in the search engine listing preview tool. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

Other Page Title Tags

All the Pages pages and the Home page can also be named and edited in the same way. Let us move along.

We all know that the Meta Description is not a direct ranking factor but, if you can write a good one, customers will have no choice but to click it. More clicks and higher Click-Through-Rates do send positive ranking signals and isn’t that why we’re all here?

For each page type, the page description is not only the body text found on the page but, it also becomes the default Meta Description. So, to prevent your beautiful search result listing from being truncated or *gasp* determined by robots and algorithms, get back down in the search engine listing preview and edit away. Be sure that you are using those targeted keywords, encouraging those clicks, and keeping it under 160 characters.

Image Alt

For some reason, I find that the SEO value of an Image Alt tag is debated. Maybe it’s the completionist in me but, if all other things are equal between yours and a competitor’s sites, wouldn’t you want to have all the boxes checked to reap any potential benefit. The Image Alt sends relevance signals to search engines, screen readers need them, and image searches will use it. You should too.

After you’ve uploaded an image, hover over it, and hit the ‘ALT’ to edit the alt text. Now use what you learned from the Blank Sheet of Paper Test and write a brief description of the image, using your targeted keywords of course.

Shopify Navigation

Navigation links are important! A new Shopify store will come with a Main Menu and Footer Menu that you can add to, edit, and rearrange as you like. All main navigation items must be clickable links, this is default action of each navigation element. Boom.

Aside from vastly improving user experience, greater relevance is assigned to words on the page when they are also links. So, make sure to use your highest value and most important terms in the main navigation. And for the love of Alfred Peet, don’t use boring words like “Products” and “Services” in your nav! Every site on the internet has products and services, what do you have that sets you apart? If you want to rank well for “sweet left shoes” you better make sure that’s top and left in the navigation.

301 Redirects

The way that Shopify handles 301 Redirecting retired URLs is simple and straightforward. You won’t have to hire a developer to add lines to the .htaccess file. Just hit the URL redirects button from in the navigation pane and add your 1-to-1 redirect.

As it is now, you cannot bulk import a list of 301s without getting an add on application from the Shopify App Store.

Wrap Up

Well, there you have it. A quick walkthrough of the basics for SEO on Shopify. As an eCommerce CMS, Shopify makes it easy to integrate solid SEO fundamentals into each and every product and page of your site, so be sure to take advantage of their built-in tools and follow these best practices. Happy selling!

The post Shopify SEO in Six Simple Steps appeared first on Portent.

]]> https://www.eigene-homepage-erstellen.net/blog/seo/write-decent-seo-recommendation.htm Tue, 02 Aug 2016 16:30:22 +0000 https://www.eigene-homepage-erstellen.net/?p=32754 Pssssst! Hey, you! Want to know the best way to drive a client crazy? Talk. A lot. But tell them nothing. The SEO industry has a lot of people who are really, really good at that. We’ve seen some true artists; men and women who can speak or write thousands of words without uttering a… Read More

The post How to Write a Decent SEO Recommendation appeared first on Portent.

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Pssssst! Hey, you! Want to know the best way to drive a client crazy? Talk. A lot. But tell them nothing.

The SEO industry has a lot of people who are really, really good at that. We’ve seen some true artists; men and women who can speak or write thousands of words without uttering a single useful thought. Stuff like this:

“Your goal is to rank well for your target phrases. Your site isn’t ranking well for those phrases, though. That’s because you don’t have a high enough keyword density in important parts of your pages. For example, you need to use your key phrases more often in your title tags and in on-page content.”

Someone paid an SEO ‘expert’ for that. It’s like voting for Abraham Lincoln and getting Donald Trump.

Here’s how a client feels when they read something like that:

Image and commentary courtesy of Ian Lurie

The Result

That’s how we end up with lots of clients who think the entire SEO industry was cloned by the same Empire.

Writing a Decent Recommendation

A good SEO recommendation will have:

• Self-sufficiency. It should stand on its own.
• Clarity. It should make sense to a non-SEO.
• Actionable advice. The reader should know what to do next. Exactly.

My formula is usually something like this:

[Provide a specific example]. [Explain why it’s a problem]. [Explain how to fix it]. [Provide a specific example]. [Sell the payoff].

Here’s an example:

“The title tags on your product pages don’t include the key phrases people use to find those products. For example, the ‘Flux Capacitors’ page on your site has the title tag ‘Part number 123456’. But consumers search for ‘Flux Capacitors’.

Since the title tag is the strongest on-page ranking factor, you have no chance of appearing in the top 10 for that phrase. Even if you do, the title tag, which appears in the search snippet, will confuse readers, so they won’t click through to your site.

To fix this, use the product name, instead of the part number, in your title tags. You can use this template: [Product name] – [Category]. I’ve attached a code snippet that will work in most PHP-based store systems.

For example, on the ‘Flux Capacitors’ page, the title tag would be ‘DeLorean Flux Capacitors – Automotive Time Travel.”

Not perfect, but you get the idea.

Another great way to get your game-changing SEO recommendation actually implemented by a client is to show them. Taking screen captures of what the current state looks like is my favorite way to show the direness of the problem.

A picture is worth a thousand words, yadda, yadda, yadda

SERP mockups courtesy of the Portent SERP Preview Tool

Even better yet, use data to support your recommendation (Gasp!):

“Google shows that there are currently about 27,100 average monthly searches for ‘flux capacitor’. If you can rank third in the search results, you can expect to see about 10% of those searchers to click through. That would be 2,710 additional users on the site. Analytics show that the conversion rate on that product page is 6%; that’s more than 160 additional conversions a month.

On top of the increase in organic traffic and conversions, you could save over $25,000 a month on paid traffic because your PPC campaign is spending almost $10 per click for that phrase.”

Aside: According to the AdWords Keyword Planner tool, there truly are 27,100 average monthly searches for ‘flux capacitor’, which I think is amazing. The first page is pretty competitive too, with news and image results, the “People also ask” answer boxes with four different questions, and Google shopping products including USB chargers for your car *adds to cart* and authentic looking replicas, which are expensive!

Back to the point…

Provide clear, useful, and actionable recommendations. You’ll keep more clients.

Actually, wait. Continue writing vague and difficult-to-understand stuff. Then we get to keep more clients.

The post How to Write a Decent SEO Recommendation appeared first on Portent.

]]> https://www.eigene-homepage-erstellen.net/blog/seo/the-rank-awakens-living-the-brand-with-universal-life-church.htm Thu, 03 Dec 2015 22:31:44 +0000 https://www.eigene-homepage-erstellen.net/?p=29277 Or, “How I Became a Certified Jedi Knight” Yay! Star Wars! I can’t wait for The Force Awakens! It comes out in a couple weeks and I have totally bought into the hype. I know I’m not alone, even after a certain late-nineties, floppy-eared, backward knee-walking, CGI disappointment, who shall remain nameless. Now here’s the… Read More

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Or, “How I Became a Certified Jedi Knight”

Yay! Star Wars!

I can’t wait for The Force Awakens! It comes out in a couple weeks and I have totally bought into the hype. I know I’m not alone, even after a certain late-nineties, floppy-eared, backward knee-walking, CGI disappointment, who shall remain nameless.

Now here’s the really fun part. A few days ago, 15 years after seeing A New Hope, I became a certified Jedi Knight. And I did it for professional reasons.

A universal marketing goal: The droids we’re looking for

Reach and retain more prospective customers, increase website traffic, increase conversions, and increase revenue.

These universal goals for digital marketing should sound pretty familiar. And as an SEO strategist, there are a couple big things I need to help get you there.

First, some future-proof SEO.

Future-proof means using foundational tactics (not gimmicks or loopholes), clearing a path for search engine bots and humans to find every valuable page of a website, connecting them to the relevant content they’re looking for, and growing a site’s authority honestly and organically. Future-proof SEO is as relevant years into the future as it was a long time ago and far, far away.

Secondly, I wantneed to know what makes your business amazing.

To do the best work possible in SEO, just as in every other facet of marketing, I need to have an understanding of my clients and their websites, but more so who they are and what sets them apart in their market. Businesses wantdeserve a team that understands their KPI goals, but also their mission. Someone who knows them well enough to connect them with that unique, “weird” audience that fits them so perfectly. To that end, I get to know each client’s website inside and out, but I also make it a point to understand what makes them unique and relevant to searchers.

So what is the Universal Life Church and why do they matter?

One of my SEO clients is the Universal Life Church Monastery, and if you think that you haven’t heard of them, you might also believe that Greedo shot first (of course that is ridiculous, everyone knows it was Han).

The ULC is a non-denominational, non-profit religious organization that provides free and legal ordinations online. They’ve even ordained the likes of Conan O’Brien and Kathy Griffin. There is a pretty good chance that someone you know has been ordained by them, or you have been to a wedding officiated by one of their ministers. Before I even knew who the ULC was, both of those things were true for me. They are everywhere.

Almost immediately, I found that there were a few things that I personally and emotionally latched onto with the ULC’s message & mission statement. Their core belief is that “we are all children of the same universe” and two of their tenets are to “do only that which is right” and the First Amendment’s freedom of religion: to each their own.

The Universal Life Church also doesn’t take themselves too seriously. They truly know who they are, and they know who their customers are. How cool is that?!

What a shame it would be if I tried to change their site, in the name of SEO, into something that no longer represents them or celebrates that message as loudly as possible. No, my mission is to understand and embrace what makes them awesome and to be their ambassador to a galaxy of people who are just their kind of weird and cool.

So, just to recap, the ULC provides free ordinations, Freedom of Religion, and… Jedi Knighthood?!?! Holy beek-monkeys!

Who wouldn’t want to be a Jedi Knight?!

Well, I did not see that coming! Maybe there were more midi-chlorians pulling me to the ULC than I realized… And then, the more I thought about it, the relationship between SEO and the Force got closer and closer.

• SEOs attempt to influence the search universe around them through unseen ranking signals.

• There are groups of people out there who believe SEO is either a hoax or has long since died off.

• Some use their skills honestly, only for knowledge and defense, while others use the Force for aggression and personal gain, leading them to the dark side.

• Those who are on the side of good tirelessly work to serve others and seek to improve themselves through constant training.

So, yeah, now I’m a certified Jedi Knight (along with the entire Portent SEO department & ULC team here). It just made sense to me. No midi-chlorian blood test required. No need to pass through the ranks of Youngling and Padawan. Straight on to Jedi!

R2-D2 marketing (Weird, Useful, Significant)

At Portent, we talk a lot about the idea that marketing should be weird, useful, and significant. Yep, it’s literally on the home page.

When I say weird, I don’t mean the drummer in the Cantina band. I’m talking about holding out an authentic and unique piece of yourself and your brand, and flying that Rebel flag for any like-minded souls to rally around.

For useful, I’m talking R2-D2 useful. Even though he was built for just starship repair, using only those skills and knowledge, the little guy just kept showing up to be an incredible help, whenever and wherever he could.

Significance is all about showing up, over and over, until you’re an irreplaceable partner to your customers, prospects, and industry.  R2 quietly went from a very out-of-place astromech, to one of the most amazing, indispensable sidekicks in history. We could all learn a little something.

I know that every company is unique, occupying its own galaxy in the middle of a universe of intersecting values and audiences. But by getting to know and actually understand my clients and what makes them remarkable and important, I get to live their brand along with them. And that makes me 100 times better at both telling their story and meeting their goals.

May the Force, and marketing success, be with you.

 

Postscript:  I just got back from Disneyland, where it has been declared the “Season of the Force.” You should totally go. Also, don’t worry, I bought my kids the requisite BB-8 water bottles, and rode the revamped Hyperspace Mountain. Twice.

The post The Rank Awakens: Living the Brand with Universal Life Church appeared first on Portent.

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