Latest Publications
Search friendly Badges: SEO Strategies
Search Friendly Badges are graphic’s that can be displayed online with links that are both crawlable and contain anchor text. Search Friendly badges are an excellent way to garner links if optimised well and are often used as part of wider link building campaign.
Traditionally badges have been made using graphically images with a single link wrapped around.
How to make Search Friendly badges:
In my Search friendly buttons post I described the reasons why traditional graphic buttons and badges are not Search Friendly and how they may be created.
Search Friendly badges are made in a very similar manor where a background graphic is applied to a <div> tag.
Alternatively a HTML table can be used where each table cell is then styled with a background graphic and the link is formed around the HTML text written within the cell. Viewing the table without table borders and margins allows the table to appear as a single badge.
The HTML Table example below has been taken from EGi Awards for Commercial Property deals made by Estate Agents across the country. The HTML & CSS example has come the Flightglobal Webbies Awards for aviations blogs & Websites.
HTML Table & CSS
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HTML & CSS
Strategies for Search Friendly Badges
Popular strategies rely on leveraging the collateral gained as part of being an authority on a particular topic or niche.
Awards presentations are particularly good examples. A website that specialising within a particular area will often have a certain authority status amongst its users.
EXAMPLE: An example would be that of the Computer Weekly Blogs Awards. Computer Weekly is an online publication specialising in IT related stories. For the Blogger part of winning an Award is the opportunity to display an "official winners badge". This gives the winning Blog a nice accolade and a chance to prove it whilst it also improves Computer Weekly’s Link Profile.
Similarly Badges can also make up part of reward scheme if the reward holds significant value. Completing a training course for example would often involve a paper certificate but offering a Search friendly badge linking through to a confirmation landing page would allow the award to be displayed clearly online.
EXAMPLE: A personal example would be the Google Adwords Professional qualification that can seen displayed on the majority of these pages.
Alternatively badges maybe used to show affiliation or support for a cause whether that be legitimate, novel or otherwise.
How to distribute your Search Friendly Badges
Badges can be sent out via email or the code can simply be "copy & pasted" from an area of your site.
**NOTE: Lastly be careful when considering to add campaign tracking code to the links within your Search friendly badges. Different campaign tracking codes are considered separate URL’s by Google.
Search Engine IP indexing - Google Indexing
What is IP indexing?
IP indexing occurs when a Search Engine crawls and then indexes content under a server’s IP address instead of the intended (canonical) Top Level Domain (TLD).
In most cases the majority of content maybe correctly indexed under the TLD whilst only a proportional of URL’s maybe indexed under both their TLD and IP address.
Some background:
An example of a top level domain maybe a .com, .co.uk, .ac.uk, .gov etc etc.
When a user agent such as a browser resolves an address it first has to map the TLD to the Web Server.
A simplistic understanding of how this works is given below:
When a User agent try’s to find: http://www.guardian.co.uk it must first Map BBC.co.uk to its Server IP address. A request is made to the DNS (Domain Name System) for this Server IP. The DNS is a service that essentially maintains a list of all registered Domain names against their associated server locations (IP addresses).
When a requested for http://www.guardian.co.uk is made the DNS service will return 77.91.249.30 to the user agent and the page will then begin to load.
However if you already know the IP address of the desired host you can type that into the address bar of the browser instead and you’ll see the website displaying perfectly well. Try it, copy and paste: 77.91.249.30 into the address bar.
Is Website IP indexing a concern to me as a webmaster?
IP indexing may not be a major issue for most webmasters. The underlying concern is that of Duplicate Content. Google and other search engines consider content that appears under multiple domains as duplicates. In the past some SEO’s suggested that Google may have suppressed rankings on content that it couldn’t determine its origin.
Nowadays its less of an issue. Google has become better at understanding which domain a piece of content appeared on originally thereby suppressing the rankings of website scrappers, Sploggers (spam bloggers) and a like.
However it may become a concern if Google is returning IP indexed content instead of the TLD version. Further linking to IP indexed URL’s from other website’s or blogs will further exasperate the problem.
A situation may arise where a piece of content may have the number of links that it has gained split between both versions. For example a piece of content which has 10 links pointing to it may have 5 pointing to a URL with the TLD whilst the other 5 pointing to an IP version. As a result the article may perform less well within the SERP’s due to the perceived lack of links.
A second minor issue is the number of External links pointing to a site (estimated by either Google Webmaster Tools or Yahoo! Site explorer) may appear artificially inflated. This is because the IP indexed version of a site will appear as External website linking back to the TLD version.
How to spot whether a site has content indexed under it’s IP address?
- Firstly find out a website’s IP address. There are multiple ways of doing this. The easiest is to use enter the Web address into Web Sniffer. It’ll then display the Connected to address.
- Perform a site syntax search in Google, Yahoo and Microsoft live for that IP. e.g: Search for " site:208.109.209.232 "
- If the SE returns any results, then you may have an issue.
How to Remove IP indexed content from Search Results Pages
Prevention is always better than cure. A Page or URL will only become indexed unintentionally if it has a link pointing to it.
However an entire site maybe indexed if a crawler enters an IP indexed page and then follows relative links on that site. If those links are all relative and a Base href meta tag hasn’t been used then a crawler could work its way through a site and index all the URL’s it finds under that IP address.
A simple Base href meta tag should be added to the <head> section of a HTML document ie.:
<base href="http://www.democompany.com/" />
This statement indicates that a crawler should append the relative links that it finds within a HTML document with the TLD referenced.
This Meta statement also has the added benefit that it makes life more difficult for Webscrappers to republish your site’s content.
If content has become indexed then the only cure is to set up a 301 Permanent redirect from the IP address version to the canonical domain.
A 301 redirect will indicate to a search engine to update (in this case remove) the IP version that it has in its index and replace it with the TLD version.
Creating this style of 301 redirect can be tricky. The logic behind it would be:
If TLD = www.example.com then return a 200 HTTP response. If anything else redirect to www.example.com.
An example of how this in action can be seen on Flightglobal.com. They had content indexed on both:
62.189.48.214
81.144.183.246
Updates to the Server URL handling for this site now means a request for either of these IP addresses now results in a 301 HTTP response back to http://www.flightglobal.com.
If you’re a web developer and you can offer some advice feel free to comment and I’ll update this post!
301 Redirects for APACHE Server:
Thanks to Snake over at Google Groups for this:
RewriteEngine on
#keep search engines from indexing IP instead of domain
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.mywebsite.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mywebsite.com/$1 [L,R=301]
*Script for the Apache .htaccess server file.
What this means is if the hostname in the received HTTP header isn’t
explicitly www.mywebsite.com, then it will redirect to www.mywebsite.com
plus whatever other paths there were. If you have subdomains, you’ll
probably need to modify this a little (i.e. remove the ^www).
How to find a Website IP address
Below are 3 easy ways to find a Website IP address:
1- Use Web Sniffer to find the Website IP address
Go to Web Sniffer > Type in the Web Address
The Website IP address is listed after “Connect to” as highlight by the Red Box in the screenshot above.
2 - Download the “ShowIP” Add-on for Firefox
Alternatively Firefox users can download the excellent ShowIP addon. ShowIP display’s a website’s IP address and updates as you navigate from one site to the next.
It even displays all the IP address used to load a page when a Content Delivery Network (CDN) is used. Check out the IP address for Google’s search result pages… 3 separate IP addresses are used!!
Click here for other Advanced SEO addons for Firefox.
3 - Use the Ping Command in Windows
In Windows, select:
Start > Programs > Accessories > Command Prompt.
Then type “ping” followed by the Web address
ie: ping searchideas.co.uk
*Note its not necessary to include the “www” of the Web address.
The Ping Command queries the DNS and replies with the Website IP address.
How to make Search friendly buttons : SEO Strategies
This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for a while as I’m regularly asked to create Search Engine "friendly" buttons.
The creation of Web Buttons can be used as part of a wider link building campaign. Graphic Buttons provide a simple and clear navigation route for a site user and web crawler alike. They can be used for internal content promotion or be given anyway via a quick and easy snippet of code of HTML that can be attached to E-mail’s or copied from a web page.
Traditionally Web Buttons have been made using graphics only. Here I demonstrate how to create Search friendly buttons.
So what’s the difference?!
A normal button is simply a graphic with a link wrapped around it, for example:
Whilst its true that you can easily add an "Alt" (alternative) attribute (aka the Alt tag) to a graphic to give both Search Engines and screen readers a description of the image.
Semantically however, the Alt attribute is just an image description and is not a description for the anchor text/link itself. Similarly with these SEO friendly buttons we can play with the semantic mark-up surrounding the link to dictate the importance of the link itself.
SEO 101 recommend’s adding Keywords into the page HTML Title, Meta description, Headlines (’H’ tags) and Strong tags. Links within these semantically important areas may also have an added relevancy weighting given to them by the Search Engines.
SEO friendly Button example:
Make your own Search friendly Button:
- Either create your own button graphics or follow the excellent step by step guide from the guys over at Iris Design. They also have some nice examples of Web 2.0 buttons in .PSD (Photoshop format) which are free to download.
- Depending on use buttons are best kept to a maximum width of 200 pixels. Be aware however that a standard navigation menu on a blog or website is between 120 and 160 pixels in width.
- Save the image in a web friendly format. My personal favourite is .png however early Internet Explorer browsers (IE 5.5 and 6) do not fully support this format so for maximum capability stick with a regular .gif
- Choose a CSS friendly font your wish to use. I generally stick to a nice Sans Serif font like Helvetica but there are many more.
- Amend and paste the the HTML below to your site:
<div style="float:left; width:IMAGE-WIDTHpx; margin:5px; background:url(YOUR-IMAGE.gif) no-repeat; height:Image-Heightpx">
<h1 style="font-size:16px; padding-top:8px; padding-left:30px; font-family:YOUR-FONT-TYPE; font-weight:bold;" align=center>
<a href="http://www.YOUR-PAGE.co.uk/" style="text-decoration: none; color:white">
YOUR LINK ANCHOR TEXT
</a> </h1> </div>
And that’s it…
Top 6 Advanced SEO Firefox Plugins
Its seems everyone has an opinion on what the best SEO Firefox plugins are. Most of the posts out there cover the basic SEO plugins that display Title tags, Page Description, Phrases length used within the page copy, etc.
So here are my Top 6 Advanced SEO plugins for Firefox. You’ll notice that all of these SEO plugins offer Page level metrics. Site wide metrics (i.e. Internal Linking, External linking, duplicate Meta data, etc ) are better viewed via Google’s Webmaster tools.
1 Search Status
Search Status has multiple metrics but the 3 most useful features are:
PageRank
Unlike Alexa rank Google’s PageRank arguably still means something
Link Report
Display’s the number of links on a page. Includes the number of internal and external links.
NoFollow link highlighting
A excellent feature that sets this plugin apart from any other. All links that carry a NoFollow attribute are highlighted pink when this feature is enabled. The NoFollow highlighting works at the link (rel=nofollow) and page (meta robots) level.
2 Web Developer toolbar
Probably the most used day to day SEO plugin with too many features to mention here:
Disable JavaScript
JavaScript can be used to load copy (i.e. Widgets), navigation (links), Maps and Search Results (Ajax). Crawlers don’t load JavaScript. Disabling it allows you to see what the page looks like to a crawler.
Disable Meta Redirects
Meta Redirects are not SEO friendly and can be easily missed or overlooked. Having this feature enabled will not redirect the browser to the destination page.
Disable CSS stylesheets
Search engines “see” content and not style. Disabling CSS stylesheets allows you to diagnosis page semantics. Content in Headline, lists and strong tags to name but a few.
HTML Validation
Poorly coded web pages make life harder for a crawler to discern content meaning. Validation is made against the page DTD (Document Type Definition) and the W3C set of recommendations.
3 Http Fox
There are many HTTP response plugins out there but this is by far the best.
Just press “start” and HTTP Firefox will record all the Http requests (from the browser) and responses (from the server) made when loading a page or navigating a site.
Extremely useful for Error handling diagnosis and redirection detection.
4 Firebug
The Firebug SEO plugin allows for HTML and CSS inspection. Clicking “inspect” allows you to hover over a page element and see HTML used to generate it.
5 YSlow
Technically YSlow is a Firebug extension and Not actually a Firefox SEO plugin, but that’s just splitting hairs. YSlow from Yahoo offers a suite of metrics related specifically to page load times. Page loading is already publicly acknowledged by Google as a factor in determining a page’s “quality score” and the minimum bid required for Adwords advertising. And its suggested that load times are also becoming a factor in the general web results algorithm.
Yslow displays a page score covering 13 factors ranging from content compression (GZip and JavaScript Minify) to content placement and HTTP responses.
6 LinkChecker
The newest addition to my SEO plugins list. LinkChecker does “exactly what is say’s on the tin”. It will follow every link on a page and highlight that link depending on the Servers’ response. For example a request for a link with a server response 200 “OK” will be highlighted “Green” for Good or OK. Whilst a link that loads an error page (404, 410 or 500) will be highlighted another colour. Similarly a link that navigates to page with is redirected will be highlighted yet another colour.
It is best to run LinkChecker at the same time as Http Fox as the exact Server response will be displayed only in HTTP Fox.
LinkChecker helps a SEO analyst to find links that need to be updated. Even those that redirect successfully still increase page load time as the page is essentially requested twice from the server. This is poor for SEO and usability.
*Note The web Developer toolbar also contains a useful link checking feature found within the “tools” menu.
Hope that was useful. I would be keen to hear your favourite SEO plugins for Firefox… Have I missed any??
Definition: Keyword Footprint
A Keyword Footprint can be defined as a list of terms and phrases core to a website. Keyword footprints come in 2 varieties:
Actual Keyword Footprint
The actual keyword footprint is a list of key terms that drive the majority of website traffic through Organic and Paid Search.
Desired / Intended Keyword Footprint
The desired Keyword footprint strongly reflects the services, products or business the website covers and may correspond with conversion goals/targets already in place.
Keyword Footprints provide a useful tool to focus a website content creation plan. The creation of a keyword footprint is often undertaken by a search specialist with inputs from Product owners (Business directors, Online editor, Sales director etc), information architects and analytics specialists.
Working together they outline the existing content categories, the business goals, the type of traffic / audience they wish to gain and the keyword / keyphrases that will potentially drive the greatest numbers of visitors (estimated through keyword research and PPC campaigns). 
Keyword footprints are often used in conjunction with regular keyword ranking reports. WebCEO can automate the look up of a keyword position within the Search Engine Result Pages (SERP’s). Regular (monthly) checks can demonstrate areas for improvements which can lead to further content creation or browse page strategies.
The intended keyword footprint and the actual Keyword footprint may differ considerably and its down to the Search specialist to drawn up a strategy to address this.
Development of Web 2.0 Video
This is a fantastic video demonstrating the possibilities that lie within our grasp now that content, style and structure have been separated.
The uptake of XML has freed data from its original form without the specific need for an API. Sites such as Netvibes, Yahoo! Pipes, Flickr Maps amongst many other have enabled users to “mash” data from a host of content providers, wether that it be publishers, search engines, picture libraries etc. Indeed my very own Branded News widgets transform content from an existing RSS feed into a new structure and style as demonstrated by these Farmers Weekly Widgets.
Michael Welch from Kansas State University surmises that we do not use Search Engines to find relevant content, rather we teach them (the machine) to find it for us. Surely this is never more transparent than with the release of Google’s own SearchWiki.
The future ?… My guess is ever more customisable website’s that enable the user to plug into and manipulate content from other sites and sources for their own needs.
With mobile technology finally coming of age, it would not be surprising to see websites beginning to take notice of the environment around the user, location being the obvious one, direction and proximity to other technology and places may become the foundations for a more semantic web and the beginning of Web 3.0 … ?
Tracking Google Adwords Spend in Google Analytics
It’s a question frequently asked:
How do I track my Google Adwords Spend in Google Analytics?
Its actually surprisingly simple. Neatly you don’t have Log in details for either Adwords, Analytics or Gmail, rather you have an account with Google and those are the services you have subscribed or have access to.
This makes linking your Google Adwords spend to a Google Analytics report extremely simple even when the Analytics account was been set up by another user.
If the Analytics report was set up with another account, then they must grant your username Administrator Access to the Website Profile. To to this the user who set up the Analytics account (or someone else who has Administrator Access) must:
- Sign in to Google Adwords
- Select the right account from the drop down box in the top right hand corner
- Click “Edit” against the appropriate profile from those displaying in the center of the page (see image 1)
- Scroll down to “Users with Access to Profile“, then click “add user” (see image 2)
- Type in Your username, click the drop down box and select Administrator (see image 3)
- Click “Save Changes” and log out
*Note, Access Type cannot be set as “View reports only” (see image 3)
Image 1 Image 2
Image 3
This will have granted your username access to the Google Analytics Profile. To check, log in to Google Analytics and see if you the Profile contains the Analytics report for your desired website.
If not check the first 6 steps.
Now access has been granted it’s simply a case of linking your Google Awords campaigns to your Google Analytics. You must log into Google Adwords:
- Select “Analytics” from the Top navigation tab
- Choose the second “I already have a Google Analytics account. Please link it to this Adwords account” radio button, then click continue (see image 4)
- Then select the desired Analytics account (see image 5)
That’s it… Your Paid traffic will now appear within Google Analytics, along with the keywords searches and cost per click..
You will now be able to define segments that allow you to view just Paid traffic, the conversions they’ve completed (if goals are set up) and costs per conversion etc.
Image 4 Image 5
Google Adwords Qualified!
I am delighted to say that I am now professionally qualified to handle such dangerous tasks as running PPC campaigns in the eyes of Google!
I even get my very own page, look its here…
