Set a preferred domain for search
So what is a preferred domain? The preferred domain is the one that you would liked used to index your site’s pages (sometimes this is referred to as the canonical domain). Links may point to your site using both the www and non-www versions of the URL (for instance, http://www.example.com and http://example.com). The preferred domain is the version that you want used for your site in the search results. By not setting a preferred domain, your www. and non-www version of the web site may be seen as duplicate content. And this would be bad!
If for some reason you cannot find your web site in Google when you type in www.example.com. Try example.com instead. Google may see the non-www version as the preferred domain.
So how can you set a preferred domain? You can set a preferred domain in Google Webmaster Tools. This is usually the first thing we check …
Googles dislike for duplicate content
There is nothing that search engines hate more than duplicate content. Google and the other search engines have very stringent criteria for detecting duplicate content.
Here is Google’s definition of Duplicate Content:
Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar.
There are some steps you can take to proactively address duplicate content issues, and ensure that visitors see the content you want them to.
Use 301s: If you’ve restructured your site, use 301 redirects (“RedirectPermanent”) in your .htaccess file to smartly redirect users, Googlebot, and other spiders. (In Apache, you can do this with an .htaccess file; in IIS, you can do this through the administrative console.)
Be consistent: Try to keep your internal linking consistent. For example, don’t link to http://www.example.com/page/ and http://www.example.com/page and http://www.example.com/page/index.htm.
Use top-level domains: To help us serve the most appropriate version of a …
Google MayDay – drop in rankings for long-tail phrases
There has been some interesting discussion regarding a possible update from Google which folks have dubbed “MayDay”. Webmasters and search marketers are reporting that they are experiencing large drops in long-tail search traffic especially for large web sites for well established brand that you would think have incorporated clean SEO tactics.
Reports from SEO Roundtable (www.seoroundtable.com) suggest that:
Most of these complaints come over webmasters seeing a huge drop in traffic from Google over “long tail keywords.” Keyword phrases that are 3 or more keywords long. One person said he had a “traffic dropped 50% in a few days, 100,000′s of long tail k/w.” Another person “recovered until this Mid April, when it started seeing some recovery, then bang now 90% of its traffic, mostly long tail disappeared.” Then we get the “me toos,” “that’s exactly what has happened to my site. 50% loss of traffic and constant hammering by …
How SEO can Help your Business
We are often asked exactly how is it that SEO (search engine optimization) can help a business. SEO is the process of making your website comply with what the search engines consider important in terms of having a useful, up to date and easy to navigate website.
Search engines are all about providing the end user with relevant information, a properly optimized website gives the user the information they are searching for and it is also easy for the search engine robots to index.
Try this for your own website:
Without using your business name, try searching for your products or services.. does your site come up? if not, just imagine what kind of opportunities you are missing out on, potential customers wanting to buy from you but cannot find you. This is the equivalent of having your storefront hidden behind a brick wall.
The good news is that SEO can help you …
Find out how users are searching for your business online
We all know that people are using search engines more and more to find businesses like yours. But how do we find out what kind of keywords are used more often in a specific area?
Fortunately Google makes this data available for all of us, it provides details as to how many people are searching for specific products or services and what kind of keywords they are using on these searches.
On the video below we show you how to use this data to improve your website: