On July 14, 2010, I will discuss how to maintain Pagerank when you update or launch a new website with the North Alabama Web Developers group.
In this meet-up we’ll discuss Google webmaster tools, Google analytics, sitemaps, and using redirects to map content with the .htaccess file (emphasis will be on Apache/Linux hosting). Please visist the meet-up site for details and sign-up.
http://www.meetup.com/web-99/calendar/13878846/
Slides from this discussion are here:
Maintain Pagerank when you Launch a New Website
SEO Huntsville 301 redirects, google, google analytics, Search Optimization, SEO Huntsville, sitemaps
When dealing with a decline in traffic it is important to determine the source of the problem. Is the change something indirect that you can’t control such as change in a search algorithm or a new competitor in the market, or is the change due to something more direct, like recent (well intentioned) changes to your site or a a server outage?
The clues are all in your Analytics data.
- Is the loss from a single referer (Google, Yahoo, Bing)?
- Is the traffic loss clustered around a specific keywords or phrases?
- Has your website been off-line due to a server outage or update?
- Is there a basic configuration issue, such as an incorrectly written “No Index” entry in the robots.txt file?
- What changes, if any were made to the website preceding the loss?
Jill Whalen with High Rankings in Boston has a really great write-up on looking for the root of the problem here.
To summarize:
- Determine what type of traffic loss you’re dealing with.
- Look at the extent of the traffic loss.
- Compare apples to apples.
- Review and filter out “brand” traffic.
- Analyze which keyword phrases have had a significant decrease in visitors.
- Do a quick Google search for the phrases.
- Review the landing page for the keyword phrase that lost traffic.
- Review your long-tail traffic.
- Decide if you’re dealing with a search engine penalty
SEO Huntsville, Web Analytics SEO Huntsville, traffic analysis
I attended PubCon in Dallas last week. I have attended several Search Engine Strategies (SES) and Search Marketing Expos (SMX) over the years, but this was my first PubCon. PubCon is driven by the folks at WebmasterWorld, which is the leading source of what is happening in search and is a different crowd than either SES or SMX. I went to PubCon to get a fresh perspective on the SEO universe and I have to say, I wasn’t disappointed. I picked up especially good information on reputation management and Black-Hat SEO that I haven’t gotten anywhere else.
Black-Hat techniques are often used to inflate a websites ranking or destroy some one’s reputation. While I don’t advocate or use Black-Hat techniques (if caught you will be banned from search engines), it was good to learn some of the many nefarious techniques that are employed.
I was eager to connect with some of the people associated with WebmasterWorld. I was extremely pleased to meet Ted Ulle (Tedster), a prominent poster on WebmasterWorld. I attended Ted’s session on Information Architecture [take away: limit choices to seven or less]. I also attended sessions with Tim Ash and Bryan Massey on Landing Page Optimization [take away: test, test, test...] and the session on Local Search Marketing by Kate Morris was especially good and uncovered several recent additions to the AdWords interface.
It will take some time to digest all that I learned, but I will discuss key finds with my customers and begin to roll out key changes for their sites in coming weeks.
SEM Huntsville black-hat, Pubcon, SEM Huntsville, SEO Huntsville
Google added a feature to Webmaster Tools yesterday that I hope will find its way in to Business Listings and other services. Now, if you are verified owner of a website, you can simply add additional users to the Webmaster Tools account (through the verify link). This means site owners can add individuals that do development, marketing or optimization, without having to upload additional files or edit pages. This greatly simplifies things, giving owners a simple way to remove this access.
More on this from Google here
SEO Huntsville SEO Huntsville, webmaster tools
I am attending the search optimization and marketing conference SMX West in Santa Clara next week. If you will be at the conference and would like to get together, drop me a note. For my customers, this is one of the larger industry events. While I follow in the neighborhood of 20 blogs on marketing and optimization all year, this show does a lot to pull all the information together. Confirming trends and many times is the launching point for new techniques and information.
SEM Huntsville SEM Huntsville, SEO Huntsville
