If you work in a large company you probably are familiar with having to prioritise.  And if, like me, you work with a year long technology roadmap to make any change you need to build a case.

I have found the best way to build this case, is to use these 4 criteria.

• Size of Opportunity
• Risk of doing / risk of NOT doing
• Level of Effort
• Time to Impact

It generally works if there is a big opportunity and quick to impact. Then high levels of effort and risk are normally then just managed.

If there is a long time to impact, and only medium or small possible return, you are unlikely to get your idea squeezed in.

Sometimes, if the level of effort is next to nothing and the size is medium and is quick you might be lucky!

If this is a SEO business case, that is when the risk of not doing really kicks in.  Try to model what the loss is, especially if this is a hygiene change!

I reckon most situations can be modelled on these 4 criteria.

Tags: 101, business case, How-to

Those helpful folk at Google have written a really simple and easy to follow PDF to explain the basics of SEO and how to do this on a small site.  It is worth a read.  Here is a link to download their file. (549kb)

You might want to compare this to my article about common SEO mistakes.

Here are some other Google articles 

• Explaination of how to understand the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPS) >>
• How to create a custom 404 >>
• How Google deals with non text assets on the page >>
• Advice on creating search engine friendly URLs >>
• Advice on dynamic pages >>
• Content analysis & sitemap detail feedback in their webmaster tools >>

Tags: 101, google, How-to, SEO

One of my responsibilities as a corporate SEO is to explain what SEO is.  This is quite often to lay-men/women who have an genuine interest and occasionally whom have been told to have an interest!

SEO has become a mainstream topic in recent years inside big and small companies alike.  And since SEO is a broad topic and covers many strategic and tactical elements it can be a long and varied chat.

And since most conversations normally start with very specific questions straight into the bits of information they have read, heard, or departmental specific topics.  I unfortunately over-use the word “depends” or answer their question with a flurry of questions back to them to qualify their interest.  

This sometime makes SEO seem slightly impenetrable.  Which it isn’t really !

SEO is a hybrid discipline of marketing & technical.  SEOs need to be logical, mathematical, project managers, researchers, data miners, lateral thinkers, writers, a politician, people manager, problem solver and creative.  And to-date I have not met two SEOs who have the same background or specific SEO passion.

Generally the overlying objective is “to drive qualified traffic to site”.  This then normally breaks out as 

• Traffic targets from search engines, &
• Transactions / Actions.

SEO is made up of manly constituent parts.  And each piece is needed, as they all work together.  Hopefully this diagram shows the main areas in my opinion.

In addition to this all good SEOs must have market knowledge, understand competitors, the changing Search Scape, all with half an eye on the SEO crystal ball.  

SEO is also the catch all for any web related questions, topics from UGC to usability.  Who else is there normally to turn abstract ideas into pragmatic actionable business sounds plans.

There is no one-size-fits-all SEO strategy, all websites are unique and can have differing goals, objectives, infrastructure, strong perosonalities, legacy systems.  But to-date all ideas / topics / issues can fit into one of my 5 categories.

SEO is many things to many people! And some of it is about Optimising websites for Search Engines!

Tags: 101, How-to, SEO

his is my essay plan on what I would put in a site audit.  Obviously there are extra bits that you may need depending on the type of site you are working on.  But this is meant to be a kind of generic framework.

Three main categories for any analysis

• Technical Spec of site
• The site itself
• External SEO

These blend into this report format / essay plan below. So, here goes…..

SE Index visibility by Engine
Look at the what each of the main SE’s have on your site(s) and compare this to what they should have !

• Observations / Duplications / URLs / Session ID’s etc
• Tech issues, clitches, err
• Comments between G, Y and M.
• Use of Google’s Webmaster Central etc

Site architecture
How is the site organised, how the site all links up.  Can you find everything if you dont have JS enabled and this includes deep content on SERPS or through refinements

• Structure of domains and folders
• Static pages
• Search results, refinements and pagination
• URL structure – capitalisation and inconsistencies
• Directories versus Search results navigation
• Effectively site map pages

Site link analysis
Quantity, Quality, Depth. And internally, can you find everything in a logical and consistent way?

• External links, Where do they go to? Anchor text of those links
• Internal linking, Crumb trials, On page, Anchor text review,Footers and Headers

Keyword ranking and optimisation
What are you targeting and is the optimsiation up to it?

• Ranking report summary, current position
• Observations , head body tail, general KW distribution.
• By Search Engine
• Compared to competitor(s) performance
• And how the keywords fit in the site structure and linking

Onsite optimisation

• Metas, Title, Description,  Best practice and Summary from GWC about duplicates, By key templates etc
• Markup audit of H1, h2.  Quality CSS
• Error handling protocols including errors and genuine site changes, adding or removing pages!

Summary of key issues with solutions

Next steps and Recemendations

- – end – -

All you need to do now – is take the recemmendations and turn that into your action plan.

Hopefully you wil get the technical resource or/and the biz resources before your competitors gain too much ground.

Tags: 101, audit, How-to, SEO

What is RSS. ? Well you may of seen this logo appear on websites and espexially sites that update their content very frequently.

It is defined as ‘Really Simple Syndication’. It means sharing data. What does that mean I still hear you ask and what does that mean to me?

Think of it as a distributable “What’s New” on websites.

On a practical basis you can get your news headlines in your ‘RSS Reader’ like receiving email ! This is the only current practical use to the average internet users. Many companies share data using XML. RSS is effecitively just like XML, and is another form of that but kindof for news and consumer content.

A program known as a feed reader or aggregator can check a list of feeds on behalf of a user and display any updated articles that it finds.

There are two main ones that I use for work and for personal info. The first is Bloglines, this is web based and has been around for a while. This has the advantage of being able to save Blog searches. And the other really popular web based one is Google Reader. This is my main one for my personal and professional reading.

I really like the BBC, (British Broadcasting Corporation) here in the UK for their explaination and they have been very good in setting up their services. They have adopted their content and it is good stuff. Take a look at their content.

Take a look at a RSS reader and have a play.

I get all my work news, news and sport direct to my ‘news inbox’ every day. It is addicitive and easier than trawling through your favourites to find new content.

Did this makes sense, any comments? A.

Tags: 101, How-to, RSS

I was trying to list out all the causes of duplicate content – well accidental duplication.

Here is the list to date

• Inconsistent URLs and links, especially search results or inventory via different attribute routes
• Similar products or bundles of products with similar description, this can be on your sites of resellers
• Print friendly pages inc. white papers, pdf downloads.
• DNS errors ie. no http:// to http://www etc or https !
• Content management systems who use session cookies in urls

These all produce Errors – and effectively your are ‘pissing in your own pool’. And risk getting duplicate content penalties – even though – you probably don’t realise you have done it. The good news is that all of these can be fixed fairly easily.

As I resolve more here – I will add to this list – send me more if you have them !

Tags: 101, Duplicate content, SEO