Converting Blog
To all of our readers:
We are currently transferring our blog from Blogger to Wordpress, so until we are through with the transfer there will not be anymore posts. Be sure to check back in with us! Thanks!
Regency Interactive Support Team
No tags for this post.SEO: SEO Site Reviews Step-by-Step
A couple of weeks ago SEOmoz posted a Whiteboard Friday video of SEOmoz Global Associate, Tom Critchlow, explaining the “site review” process. We wanted to summarize what the video was about so that our readers could see just how thorough site reviews are as well as how well thought out they are too!
Feel free to check out the video after you have finished reading our summarization.
- First Impressions - Look at the website as the user would. For example, look at it as far as conversions, usability, long forms and are concerned.
- Accessibility/Spiderability - Look at it as a robot by turning off javascript, cookies & CSS to see what the website looks like; does it have all of the content visible? Also, be sure to check out the robots.txt file to make sure you’re allowing robots to crawl your website. Next, use the crawl test tool on SEOmoz’s website to see if your website is crawlable. Also, be sure to browse as Googlebot so that you can see what it will see.
- Google Health Check - Make sure to do a Google health check, i.e. performing the following:
- site search: “site:regencyinteractive.com” (minus the quotation marks)
- Brand searches such as your company name
- Look at the Google cache and pay particular attention to your important pages to see if your content shows up.
- Duplicate Content - It’s important to make sure that there’s not duplicate content within the web results. Search for content strings within quotations to find content scrapers. Also check the web results for non www vs www versions of your website as well as check all domains look hosted on that particular web server. Look at all of their domains (use site only ip check).
- Website URLS – You need to ensure that the website only has one URL per page. Don’t have a dynamic URL for it as well as a static version. Also, make sure your URLs are clean, short and descriptive with your keywords targeted in them.
- Title Tags - Make sure that your website has unique title tags and that they are descriptive.
- Content Review - Make sure that you have enough content throughout the website and that you also use header tags that contain your keyword phrases.
- Meta Tags - It’s key that you don’t have a meta description that is too long. Also, make sure if there is a robots tag that it has been done correctly.
- Redirects - You should use live http headers (Firefox extension) to check out headers codes and so forth. Also, it’s helpful to check everything else as well.
- Internal Linking - You should check the # of links then check out the # of links on homepage then the # links on category pages to make sure it’s a good ratio and that it will not stand out to the search engines. Also, look to see if there is any anchor text within the content as well as look for links to nofollow. He makes reference to also checking for pagination.
- Geo-location - Make sure your IP address is the right address for your targeted location. Be sure to check out SEOmoz’s tool for this as well.
- External Linking - Look to see what anchor text is pointing to your site to make sure that they’re not all the same anchor text. Review any type of deep linking to make sure that all of the links are not just to the homepage, but are actually spread throughout website. Also, look to see if they look natural. If you have any paid links and they look obviously paid then you need to fix it.
- Semantic HTML - Look through the website to make sure that the website does not have bulky pages (long load time), poorly formatted code or that it’s missing alt/title text relevant to page that it’s linking to on the website.
SEO: SMX Advanced 2008: Give It Up Recap
As you know we posted about the SMX Advanced and the 30 day embargo that we had to wait for to learn what went on during the Give It Up Session of SMX Advanced. Thanks to Lisa over at Bruce Clay, we now know what all transpired during the session.
She took some good notes on each presentation, both the whitehat SEO and blackhat SEO presentations. The panelists for the session were Rand Fishkin (SEOmoz), Todd Friesen (Visible Technologies), Michael Gray (Atlas Web Service), Rob Kerry (Ayima Search Marketing), Marty Weintraub (AimClear) and Stephan Spencer (Netconcepts).
Here’s a brief rundown of the topics:
Stephan Spencer lists a bunch of tools for blackhat methods including A Link Ninja Tool, Google Directory Mining Tool, Using a Proxy Server for SEO, Thin Slicing and URL Testing and Iterative Optimization.
Marty Weintraub offered up some more blackhat methods with topics including Fools Gold Link Exchange, Nested iFrame Community Crawler and Extended SEO with Powerful Social Media Profiles.
Michael Gray spoke about more white topics such as how to beat the AdWords Quality Score and how the Quality Score Gets Adjusted Just Like The Sandbox.
Rob Kerry gave a disclaimer that his methods may be perceived as blackhat so he advised everyone not to try it on their branded sites. He talked about Micro Site Creation, Automated Content and On Topic Spamming.
Todd Friesen followed up with topics such as finding old blogs, hotlinking images, how to use Digg to your advantage, custom 404 pages, reputation management and Google bowling.
Rand Fishkin was last to go and due to him having a lot of slides to show during his presentation, Lisa kinda of lost track she says. Here are a few things she caught. He spoke about how to Search For Links, Google Local Ranking Tips, Reputation Tracking Query, Google Temporal Web Search and had an Obligatory Black Hat Slide as well.
That about sums it up and as you can see there were some blackhat methods being discussed so keep in mind what the penalties may be from Google and the other search engines should you get caught trying to do these methods. Regency Interactive makes sure it sticks to Google’s guidelines and does not practice any type of blackhat methods. However, we do think everyone should know exactly what is and is not blackhat so that everyone has a better understanding.
Check back with us in two weeks for our next article!
Tags: regency interactive, regency interactive corporation, smx advanced, whitehat seoBlog Updates
Regency Interactive will be closed from June 30 until July 6, 2008 due to the July 4th holiday. Blog updates will resume on July 7, 2008.
Thanks!
Regency Interactive Corporation
No tags for this post.Link Building: I Ask You, What Is Yahoo! Buzz?
Throughout some of the various blogs I read I always noticed a button labeled Yahoo! Buzz at the end of each post, but I never knew what exactly is was until now. Kind of like Digg, Yahoo! Buzz allows its users to determine what are the most “remarkable” stories and videos around on the Internet. By voting for a particular article or video that you think is “remarkable” it will give that article the attention it deserves. Basically, Yahoo! Buzz showcases the best of the best voted by us everyday people as instead of editors, the Yahoo! users get to decide what is the best story / video out there on the Internet and these becomes to top-rated stories / videos around. Thus, you can see the resemblance to Digg and how Digg works.
According to Yahoo! Buzz’s website here it how it works:
- First, we determine the most popular topics that people are searching for on Yahoo!.
- Then, we showcase the most popular stories within those topics, based on activities like voting and emailing stories to friends.
- Stories with most Buzz may be published on the Yahoo! home page - you can impact what millions will see on Yahoo!.
You can also email any top story / video that you think is interesting to your friends as well as download Yahoo! Buzz widgets for your website. And, they even have a buzz log to show you what everyone is “talking” about on the Internet. It looks like this will be a very useful site for Yahoo!’s users. Now the question to answer is; which will be more popular: Yahoo! Buzz or Digg?
Tags: regency interactive, regency interactive corporation, search engine optimization, seo company, yahoo, yahoo buzz
