Archive for the ‘SEO’ Category

Knowing Why Is As Important As What

Share A thought occurred to me yesterday, that I just had to tweet, “One of the biggest causes of SEO mistakes is because people know what to do but not why they need to do it”. I had a load of great responses to this, but still felt like I needed to elaborate on it a little, so here goes. There are so many things that I see people recommending for SEO that are not relevant for the site they have been recommended for. Robots.txt files are the example that always springs to mind, it’s not uncommon to see someone state something along the lines of “your site has not robots.txt file and one should be added”. Why? If the site doesn’t [...]

Find A Mentor (Or Some Mentos)

Share Along with the list of skills that you need to possess in order to be a good SEO, I’d like to add the following: Knows how to find a good mentor. I’ve been in the industry for enough years that I do think that, for the most part, I know what I’m doing. I know what’s going on, I can adapt to industry changes very quickly, and I feel confident that the advice that I give is valid and worthwhile. However, I’m not stupid enough to believe that I can’t be wrong, which is why I am so fond of having mentors. No matter how much experience you have, someone else has more of it, and someone else has [...]

What Happens When SEO Stops Working?

Share SEO or search engine optimisation is the act of altering certain key aspects of a page to help the various search engines understand what the page is about and rank it accordingly.  Each page needs to have a specific focus and there are various elements on each page which need to be fine-tuned in order to ensure the web page is found, and ranks well, for specific search queries. Some companies feel that this is a one-time job and once done, it should last forever.  There are several reasons why this is not true and why as a business, you need to ensure you are keeping up with the changes your site undergoes. The algorithm Google uses changes daily [...]

Geotargeting on the same domain – using XML sitemaps

Share I wrote a blogpost a few months ago on Searchcowboys about “How to use Multiple Sitemaps on the Same Domain for Geotargetting” and got a great response. Although a few of the readers commented that the instructions were a a bit “fuzzy” and that a step by step explanation would have been great. So I thought I would share it with the SEO Chicks readers and do a step by step guide on this method for geotargetting. But first, let’s get some background info on why and so on. Issue and why we came up with this solution? One of our clients (as so many other companies) have a .com domain targeting the UK, but in addition they are [...]

Americanize This! Google Changing My Search Spelling By Default

Share (I have a half written blogpost in my head, about ‘deathbait’. When I finally resurrect it, you can smugly point me back to this question.) Is it just me or are the days of the bucket test now dead? I was ‘told off’ by a journalist recently for using jargon- laden crap language.., so by bucket test (which was the terminology we used at Yahoo! and I’ve seen it on the outside too) I mean when a small percentage of search users, are deliberately shown a different set of results to most others. Performance criteria such as likelihood of refining query and repeating search, interaction with results, interaction with which result etc. are all closely monitored and then the [...]

The Local File – Google Local Business Hijacking Issues

Share As some of you might already know I experienced some issues with one of my client’s local business listing the other day and it royally pissed me off. It seems Google Local Business Listings have a hole bigger than the Grand Canyon. And apparently it’s been there for a while, talking to DaveN over IM the other day he ran into similar problems month ago. And it’s still not fixed, ARGH!??!! Ok, so let me paint you a picture, at the moment local business listings are HOT property, especially in the UK and particularly in the hotel, restaurant and pretty much any service industry that is applicable to location in the search phrase. Most of these searches now includes [...]

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