Omar Kattan - search in a nutshell

Google Analytics is by far the most robust free site side analytics program out there.  Now owned by Google, Google Analytics started out its life as a small analytics company called Urchin.

Google Analytics is used by millions of sites (hobby as well as ecommerce) to measure the amount and quality of traffic to a website. 

Moreover, if configured properly, Google Analytics can also measure predefined KPIs and Goals such as purchases, downloads, subscriptions, thereby showing you which keywords convert to business.

Here are a few Google Analytics tips that I’ve gathered to help you get the most out of the package:

1. Use the filter at the bottom of the keywords list to include and exclude certain keywords.  For instance, you can exclude your own brand name thereby allowing you to see which generic keywords are driving traffic to your site.

2. Use the compare two dates/metrics at the top to be able to see trends across the same variable on two different dates.

3. Exclude your IP address so that your figures are not skewed

4. Configure site search measurement  in order to get valuable data on how users  search  within your site. 

5. Under “Content” use site overlay to see what links on you site are most popular.  This will give you a better idea of what content on your site is appealing to your users and  gives you the confidence to remove or  place “Nofollows” on non popular links.

The above are a few tips for using Google Analytics.  There are many more fantastic features including the ability to export and email reports as well as integrate with Adwords in order to measure the performance of your paid ads.

In a nutshell, if you haven’t used Google Analytics yet, you’re completely missing out on a fantastic free Analytics resource. 

There’s been much debate about whether ot not the strategy of creating subdomains to improve natural search ranking works or not. Well, I’m writing here to tell you that it does, but only if you do it right.

First of all, let me explain to you what a subdomain is.  Its basically what it says, a sub section of your domain (your site) and it usually looks like this:

subdomain.domain.com

A subdomain can usually be created through your server’s control panel.  With Apache C-panel you can login and go to manage subdomains and easily create one there.

Best practices for creating subdomains: 

1) Subdomains are considered as standalone sites by most search engines and therefore it is crucial to ensure that you have a reason for creating your subdomain (ie you have sufficient useful content to add to it)  I recommend at least ten pages of at least 450-500 words.

2) Make sure that your subdomain is keyword rich and does not cannibalise any content on your site.  So for example, if you have a site about computers, an idea for a subdomain would be suppliers.computers.com.

3) Don’t overdo it.  Too many subdomains and you will raise some red flags.  Also you don’t want to siphon off your main domain popularity unless you absolutely need to.

4) Make sure that your subdomain is well supported with keyword rich internal links from your main domain and also enough outbound links (links from other sites).

5) If your’ using subdomains to target various markets (ie. uk.yourdomain.com) try and host the UK subdomain on a UK server with a UK IP address.

Thats about it.  So to conclude, make sure to follow the above guidelines when deciding to go with a subdomain strategy. 

Good luck!

Keyword Cannibalisation is the term used for the common SEO mistake of having several of your website’s pages targeting the same keyword.  This confuses the search engines as to which page to serve back to users.  This also confuses other sites owners that want to link to your site thereby leading different sites to link to different pages leading to a dilution of your link popularity.

So what are the most common causes of keyword cannibalisation?

1. Duplicate Title and Meta Tags

2. Duplicate Content

3. Similar internal links pointing to different pages.

How do you solve Keyword Cannibalisation?  Easy,  make sure each of your pages are targeting different keywords by optimising the meta tags and ensuring unique content on each page.  Also ensure that all internal links on your website support the landing pages’ keyword target.

There are various tools available to help you solve Keyword Cannibalisation including:

1. Conducting a site colon search ie type site:yoursite.com in Google;  You can tell by browsing the results if you’re suffering from Keyword Cannibalization.

2. Performing permanent redirects (301) to ensure that many pages with similar content are all merged into one.

3. Using content similarity tools to check duplicate content, a good tool of this sort can be found here: http://www.webconfs.com/similar-page-checker.php

To sum up, make sure that your website’s pages are not cannibalised by following the simple steps mentioned above.  Good luck!

A good article was published by Brett Borders on his Copy Brighter blog listing 7 SEO techniques that no longer work.  here’s the summary with links to related posts on this blog:

• Reciprocal links. Read: A Reciprocal Link Building Strategy that Works

• The “site: *** -sljktf” command (to show the supplemental index results). Read: Google’s Supplemental Results

• Directory links.  Read: Directories - how to submit to them

• Open link brokers and link networks. Read: Purchasing Links - A Best Practice Guide

• Sponsored blog post networks. Read: The Perfect Inbound Link

• Owning the SERPs with subdomains.  Read: Subdomain - A best Practice Guide

• 10 Blue Links. Read: Google’s Universal Search Extends to Blogs and SEO for Universal Search

Thanks for your article Brett, very thorough!

There are so many SEO companies out there, each with their strengths and weaknesses, some with very experienced staff who know exactly what it takes to achieve high rankings, and others with no clue what so ever and worse yet, no full time staff but instead, part-timers or freelancers working in cheap labour counties such as India and China.

So how do you choose a good SEO company?

Its not that difficult, it has to do with a bit of due dillengence on your part before you sign on the dotted line.

Here are a few tips:

1. Ask for credentials

2. Check pagerank of SEO company’s site.

3. Check if they’re ranking for any of their industry keywords such as “SEO”

4. Check their previous work.  Check for their client’s sites ranking for keywords they should rank for.  Better yet, get in touch with their clients and ask about them!

Picking the right SEO company is such an important decision as the fate of your site’s success is riding on it.  Choose wisely!