Using Canonical Links and avoiding common mistakes

The use of ‘canonical links’ is a helpful tool for webmasters in cases where a website may have duplicated pages of content. The role of ‘canonicalisation’ allows website owners to tell Google and Bing which webpage is the one to give precedence when there are duplicates of that page on the site. However, there are some common mistakes that need to be avoided when doing this.

It’s often a common occurrence for a site to have several pages listing the same information, or set of products if it’s an ecommerce site. For example, one page might display products sorted in alphabetical order, while other pages display the same products listed by price or by rating. If Google knows that these pages have the same content, it may index only one version in the search results, or it may penalise the site for creating duplicate content pages.

Therefore website owners can specify a canonical page (the preferred version of a set of pages with highly similar content) to search engines by adding a ‘link’ element with the attribute rel=”canonical” to the ‘head’ section of the non-canonical version of the page. Adding this link and attribute lets site owners identify sets of identical content and suggest to Google that of all these pages with identical content, this page is the most useful – therefore please prioritise it in search results.

The use of canonicalisation has to be done carefully however, as there are some common mistakes that can be made and it’s important that it should only be used for pages that are duplicates.

These are the most important points to consider:

• Verify that most of the main text content of a duplicate page also appears in the canonical page.
• Check that rel=canonical is only specified once (if at all) and in the ‘head’ of the page.
• Check that rel=canonical points to an existent URL with good content (i.e., not a 404, or worse, a soft 404).
• Avoid specifying rel=canonical from landing or category pages to featured articles (as that will make the featured article the preferred URL in search results.)

If you would like to know more about how the use of canonical links can improve your website’s indexing of duplicate pages with Google & Bing, contact us now.

We’ve outlined below some of the key things you should have in place or be thinking about to tackle in 2013 as a prominent website in your sector. You may be targeting a small local area, or a national or even international marketplace. Either way, you can ensure that you’re one step ahead with our health check report, which will highlight any areas of potential improvement – some of which can be quick to fix, others may take more time and cost.

We’re also offering our standard health check reports – either for your overall website marketing positioning, or specifically for your Google Ads (AdWords) account – at half the usual price for January only. So now’s the time to start and see what needs to be done to get 2013 to the best possible start.

What does the marketing health check cover?

There are some core areas that we would recommend need to be in place for any website competing online and our health check review will address these, including the following:

Website Indexing – how well is your site being indexed by Google and Bing, and how often? Is your site using the Webmaster Consoles provided by these search engines? Are your robots.txt and sitemap.xml files being used correctly? Do you have duplicate content pages and, if so, is canonicalisation being used?

Search Engine Optimisation – if your pages are being indexed, how well can your website be found? How effective is your search engine optimisation structure, including the use of search terms, body content and design issues? Are you targeting your local market effectively? How strong is your brand name reputation in the search results?

Links – one of the key requirements for a good ranking performance on Google is the number and quality of inbound links to your site. How does your domain perform and what else could be done, both with internal and external links?

Pay-per-click advertising – are you using PPC advertising, such as Google Ads (AdWords), and how well does this perform? We can give your account a brief review, or we offer a more in-depth health check for PPC advertisers if required (see below).

Website design & functionality – once you drive visits to your website, how well does it perform? Our health check will identify any key issues like navigation, design or content issues, how ‘trustworthy’ is it, and more. We will also review your site on smartphones to see how you are catering for the growing mobile search market.

Analytics – does your site use an analytics package, and specifically Google Analytics? If so, what does it show and how can you use this powerful business information tool for your advantage?

Social media – finally, what role does social media play in your market and are you doing enough to capture potential customers from this market?

SPECIAL OFFER: Our standard website marketing health check usually costs £350, but if you’d like this for your site in January, we are only charging £175 (exc VAT) for the report. To find out more, please submit this form or contact us directly by email.

In another addition to Google’s enhancements of its ranking algorithm filters – Panda and Penguin – it recently introduced a new “EMD” filter. This should be of interest to SEO marketers and webmasters, as it can also affect the way in which their website may rank.

The ‘Panda’ update filtered sites that are deemed to have too much poor or duplicate quality, while the ‘Penguin’ update was designed to catch those that are thought to be spamming its search results, particularly through links or ‘over-optimisation’. “EMD” stands for “Exact Match Domains”, which are domains that exactly match the search terms for which they hope to be found and are generally bought and developed by businesses that are focused on rankings for a particular term. This filter tries to ensure that low-quality sites don’t rise high in Google’s search results simply because they have search terms in their domain names.

Google emphasises that all EMD domains aren’t being targeted, just EMD domains with ‘bad content’. Similar to those other filters, Google says EMD will be updated on a periodic basis. Those hit by it may escape the next EMD update, while others not hit this time could get caught up in the future.

If a website hasn’t had its rankings reduced by Panda or Penguin before and the domain name was bought just in the hope of an “exact match” ranking success, then its rankings will probably be affected by the EMD filter, so its potential effects are well-worth being aware about.

Google admits that there’s a small degree of boost to sites for having search terms in their domains with Google, but in general, it’s just a very small degree. So the potential benefits of gaining increased rankings through this type of exact match domain-naming strategy are out-weighed by potential decreases, particularly if the site’s content is bad quality.

Contact us now for more information about these Google filters and how they can affect the rankings for your website.

The Bing Webmaster’s blog recently announced the addition of a “Disavow Links” feature that now allows Webmasters to protect their sites from malicious link building that could result in a website’s rankings being penalised on that search engine.

The incidence of this type of negative link building to impact a competitor’s website is not that widespread, but with Google’s increasing focus on targeting bad links, it could be an issue for some companies, or there may be a need to review past link building programs that might have used sites that are now being seen as poor quality.

So this new Bing tool is very useful as it enables the person responsible for a business’s website indexing to tell the Bing search engine that their site shouldn’t be associated with un-trusted links to it from another particular website. It can be used to submit a page, directory, or domain URLs that may contain links to the business’s site that seem “unnatural” or appear to be from spam or low quality sites. In turn, Bing may use this information to identify sites that are seen as low quality within its index.

There is no limit on the number of links that can be disavowed via this tool and it’s great to protect against fraudulent link building activities by any competitors. Until now there was no way to protect a site from unwanted links added by competitors to diminish the trust vote by Bing and subsequent search engine positions. There probably won’t be dramatic changes in rankings as a result of using this tool, but the information shared does help Bing understand more clearly the intent around links pointing to your site.

So this is a good response from growing industry demand for the inclusion of such a feature within Bing’s Webmaster Tools. It shows that Bing is actively responding to such requests, which will increase their favour within the SEO industry in the future and SEOs are already requesting that Google implements a similar tool within its own version of Webmaster tools.

If you’d like to know more about how the “Disavow Links” tool can benefit your website, contact us now for more information.

Google recently responded to Bing’s addition of the “Disavow Links” tool for Webmasters by announcing new notifications in its version of Webmasters tools about un-trusted (“spammy” or artificial links) links to a website.

Previously, Google sent out a broad alert to Webmasters in severe cases, when it believed a site had been engaging in a widespread pattern of link spam over a long period of time. This notified the Webmaster that their trust in the entire site had been reduced due to these unnatural links and that they should be removed before submitting a reconsideration request for the site with Google.

The new version of the alert service tries to alleviate concerns amongst site owners by making it clear that for a specific incident, Google will take targeted action on the unnatural links, instead of the site as a whole. So anyone that gets the new message can tell what type of action has occurred. The new alerts also lack the yellow exclamation mark that older messages have, which tries to convey that they’re addressing a situation that is not as severe as the previous “we are losing trust in your entire site” messages.

So although Google have made a good effort to alert Webmasters that their site may have a potential issue – one that’s worth some investigation – without overly stressing them, this isn’t quite as an effective approach to the un-trusted link issue that Bing has provided, that actually allows those links to be disavowed.

Google also recently announced the addition of search query alerts. Webmaster tools processes the data for a website and tries to detect events that are the most interesting for site owners. So alerts forsearch query data have been added into that category, with the existing ones about crawl errors.

The search queries feature in Webmaster Tools shows, among other things, the search result impressions and clicks for your top pages over time. For most sites, these numbers follow regular patterns, so when sudden spikes or drops occur, it makes sense to alert the Webmaster to look into what caused them. This is a very useful addition to the alerts provided by Google, although wisely, they’re still working on the “sensitivity threshold” of the messages, in response to feedback they receive.

Contact us now if you’d like more information about how the Google Webmaster tools alerts can improve the performance of your website on search engines.

This month marks 10 years since Web Marketing Workshop first started trading in the UK. In Internet years, 10 years has been a very long time and the online world has changed considerably since 2000. In addition to this, many companies now understand why they need to be marketing their business online, through search or related sites, and more recently through social media.

Back in September 2000, creating a website was the priority task, so that working out how to get visitors and what to do with them was not so important! The number of prominent search engines was higher then, since Google was still growing their market share following their launch in 1997, but optimising your website was rare and so those that did could get good rankings quite quickly and easily. Pay-per-click advertising had not really grown as a popular and commercial tool, and social media and networking was not even on the horizon.

We’ve listed a few other things that were happening 10 years ago here ‘ some may not seem that long ago, others might be a distant memory! To mark these 10 years, we’ve decided to change the format of our newsletter over the next few months and consider 10 of the most common questions that have been raised over the years about online marketing issues.

This month, we review 10 common questions about Search Engine Optimisation and link building, and we provide our answers and explanations for these. Next month we’ll look at pay-per-click advertising and Google Ads (AdWords). Then we’ll consider 10 questions about website analytics and Google Analytics, and then our final issue in this series will look at the more recent trends in Social Media Marketing.

We hope you enjoy these issues of the newsletter and perhaps we’ll answer a few questions that you’ve always wondered about! If not, and you have a burning question, please let us know and we’ll respond directly to you.

On to this month’s edition…

Common FAQs for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

So what is “search engine optimisation”?

Search engine optimisation, or SEO, is the process of making planned changes to a website in order to target relevant search terms that will help it to rank higher in the “natural” or “organic” search results when potential customers are looking for a product or service. All search engines, including Google, will take into account many factors to determine how to rank web pages within the results for a specific search term, although the number and importance of these factors remains a closely guarded secret. However, companies that want to attract relevant visitors to their websites need to target the main factors that will make a difference to their rankings, including on-site factors (such as page content, title tags, site structure and page links) as well as off-site factors, such as links from other websites. More information on search engine optimisation can be found here.

Why is search engine optimisation important?

If you have a website, then you should give it every opportunity to rank within the search results that your potential customers might be viewing. The “natural” search results attract the highest clickthrough rates and companies don’t pay for these clicks once they achieve a good ranking position, so SEO is vital to attract relevant and low-cost visits to your website. Search engine marketing is probably the most cost-effective and targeted form of marketing, and websites should be aiming to attract as many visits as possible from the most popular search terms, as well as from “long tail” terms (those wide range of very specific terms that may be used quite rarely but together can comprise a high overall volume of targeted search traffic).

How can the SEO for my website be improved?

There are a wide range of factors that need to be considered and some are easier to influence than others. All search engines operate in a similar way although ranking performance can vary between sites such as Google or Bing. Firstly, you need to ensure that your website is being indexed correctly so that every page has a chance to appear in the ranking results. You also need to have a design that allows this to happen and some good content, which is what the search engines really appreciate! You also need to determine the search terms that your potential customers will be looking for, and how these terms can be used on each page of the site. Most importantly, you need to identify the best search terms that will give your website a good ranking and drive relevant traffic to your site – which may not be possible for the most competitive terms in the short term, but there will always be others that can work effectively for your business.

How do I get my website “indexed” and how long will it take?

Whether you have a new website or one that already appears in the search engine results, getting all your pages “indexed” (added to the search engines’ database) is vital. You also need to get new pages or updated content indexed as quickly as possible. This process is partly to do with the link structure within your site or from other websites, as well as how often your pages are updated. All the main search engines, including Google, provide a “webmaster service” where you can register your site and submit an approved sitemap.xml file, which can help to speed up the indexing process and allows you to monitor how often the site is being visited by the search engines. It should be possible to get a new website indexed within several weeks, and existing sites can have pages revisited from every few days to every few months, based on how regularly the content is being updated.

Why can’t I get my site to achieve a high ranking on Google?

This really depends on the search terms you want to rank under, and how well your site is optimised. Many business websites now use SEO as a core part of their online marketing strategy, so the competition to get the top ranking positions on Google can be intense. However, every website should be able to achieve some good ranking positions and so your SEO strategy should aim to achieve the best possible rankings for your target market now, and then work towards more competitive terms in the mid to long term. That means you need to look at all the relevant factors that will help your site rank well, including the combination of search terms that your potential customers might be using. Achieving a high ranking for popular terms is not something that happens overnight and can take many months of development and testing, which may also require an investment in link building.

What are “Universal” search results and why are these important?

Over the past few years, achieving a high ranking on Google doesn’t just depend on the traditional methods of optimising the content on your website. The introduction of “universal” search results by all the main search engines has meant that a user’s search can often display results from other sources, such as Google Maps for local business searches, images or video results, news stories, and more recently blog posts and Twitter comments. You therefore need to consider optimising for these additional results as well, which can sometimes be an easier way of gaining search visibility and driving additional visitor traffic to your website.

Why are links a key part of an SEO strategy?

Links from other websites that point to your website can make a real difference to how well your site will rank for a particular search term. The factor of “link popularity” has been central to Google’s success as a search engine and those sites that rank well are often there due to a high number of links pointing to their domain. This means that although you can have a very well optimised site for a range of search terms, you also need to develop this “off-site” factor to perform well in the search results. Links can also drive traffic from other sources, but most importantly they will indicate to Google, and to the other search engines to a lesser extent, that your website is a relevant and “respected” website in your target market.

How can I get more links pointing to my website?

Although links that point to your website are an important factor, they can also be a difficult one to influence effectively, which is one reason why Google uses these as a key ranking criteria, since links need to evolve over time and should reflect the relative importance of one website compared to another. There are a number of strategies to attract links, although you should avoid methods that Google may penalise, such as buying into text link networks. Adding links to relevant directories or sites that are relevant to your market is important, as are links from business partners or suppliers. Creating unique content or other features on your website that attract links from other sites are ideal, but often hard to achieve. Links from blogs and other social media sites can be good for generating site traffic, but the link value from these sites is often limited. More information about link building can be found here.

How do I measure the success of my SEO strategy?

The visibility of your website in the ranking results for your market’s commonly used search terms is one clear indication that your SEO strategy is working. However, these ranking positions also need to translate into increased visitors to your website and, if the search terms being targeted are effective, good quality visitors that results in enquiries and new business. Reviewing your website analytics data (such as Google Analytics) is the best way to see the improving trend in search engine referrals from your SEO work and you can also see which search terms have been commonly used to find your website. This data, of course, reflects how your site is ranking and not necessarily how your potential customers are searching, so you also need to continually review search term activity and your site’s rankings for these terms. SEO can require ongoing review and revision, the development of links, and the continual “raising of the bar” to increase your ranking positions for the most popular and relevant search terms for your market.

How much will it cost to optimise my website?

If you decide to outsource your SEO to a specialist agency then prices for the work can vary wildly and don’t necessarily reflect expertise and quality. The quoted cost should be based on the expected hourly rate and so this will vary depending on the type of website you have, how many pages it contains and, importantly, which market and search terms you are targeting. You also need to consider the link development aspect of your website’s SEO work and how much time might be required over a period of some months. The best approach is to get some quotes and compare the approaches of a number of SEO companies. We always provide an initial free website assessment which outlines how a website currently performs, what work should be implemented and how much it would cost in that instance.

We hope that the above questions and answers have helped to explain or clarify some of the core issues surrounding search engine optimisation. If you would like any further information on any of these points, or would like us to answer any other questions that you have, please contact us now.

The HTML Title tag is one of the most important factors in search engine optimisation, yet it is often overlooked or used incorrectly. A well written Title tag can support search engine rankings and also increase the clickthrough rate from the search results list into a website.

The Title tag should be included in the ‘head’ code section of every website page and remains one of the key elements within the SEO factors on a website and page. There are 2 reasons for this – firstly, because a still plays an important role in keyword targeting, and secondly because the text that’s included in the Title tag also forms the hyperlink from the search engine results page. In addition, this text also appears in the browser bar when a user views the page, although the length of the tag is important in both of these cases as the number of characters being displayed will be limited by Internet Explorer and also by Google within the ranking results.

Websites are often built with little attention to the Title tag, which will simply reflect the page name (such as ‘Home Page’ or ‘About Us’) or will use a generic wording throughout the site (such as ‘Welcome to XYZ Company’). This is really missing a great opportunity to improve the ranking potential of a site, whereby the targeted optimisation of different search terms throughout all pages of the site should be driven by the page content and the focused use of 2 or 3 search phrases in the Title tag.

Once these targeted search phrases are included in the Title tag, they should also be reflected in the description tag and the body content of the page, including headlines where appropriate. This will give the website a better opportunity to rank well for relevant terms in its market, although the tag may need to be adapted and tested in different ways to establish the best possible ranking position that can be achieved at the time.

As noted above, consideration also needs to be given to the way the Title tag will be displayed in the search results, so that it encourages searchers to click on the link into the site and, if important, establishes product or brand awareness as well. Google tends to cut off the Title tag content after 55-65 characters, so it’s worth testing this and seeing how the Title tag displays within Google’s results once the updated page has been indexed.

Some websites may see an immediate impact coming from some basic changes to their Title tags, whereas others will need to work harder on getting this optimisation factor to work well with the rest of the site. If you would like more information about how the Title tag could be used better with your website, please contact us now.

Many of the trends likely to have an impact in 2009 have already started, but what are our predictions for some of the key developments this coming year?

1) The economic slowdown focuses attention online: there is little doubt that the economic impact of the ‘credit crunch’ in 2008 will have a significant impact on business in 2009, particularly in the US and Europe. Progressive companies will still need to maintain and grow their business in the face of any downturn and therefore even if marketing spend is cut back, the focus on online marketing will be greater, due to the measurability and proven cost-effectiveness of this form of advertising for many businesses. Search advertising will still see an overall growth in spend and market share of online advertising and despite some companies withdrawing from this sector, many others will put more spend into this targeted advertising to support their business.

2) Analytics becomes more mainstream: partly because of the widespread uptake of Google’s free Analytics tool and partly because of the greater need for advertising spend to be effective in 2009, the use of website statistics or analytics is expected to become more common, even for small companies. However, the interpretation of the data and the way that understanding can be used will still be the most important aspect of this trend, but companies can now access much better data on their online activities which in turn can help to improve their website and marketing strategy to get the most from their online spend.

3) Yahoo won’t survive in its current form: it seems inevitable that Yahoo’s ongoing saga that was the source of much news coverage in 2008 will come to some sort of conclusion in 2009. Whether this is with Microsoft eventually coming back on the scene and buying Yahoo’s search business, or some other form of takeover by another leading online brand, it’s likely that Yahoo won’t be able to survive the next 12 months in their current form, despite ‘ or maybe because of ‘ the change in their CEO. It would be a shame for Yahoo to lose more search market share, as Google needs a stronger competitor, but with the economic problems in the US, it’s hard to see Yahoo surviving much longer as a key player and we can expect more developments here sooner rather than later.

4) Video becomes the new marketing tool: as mentioned above, with the growth and impact of ‘universal’ search, video is now playing a more visible role within search and in 2009 this is likely to see a bigger impact in the business sector. Companies need to think about ways they can effectively use video to drive traffic and new business to their website, as it is becoming a more widespread medium and one that can play a bigger role within search and advertising channels. The ‘optimisation’ of video will be as important as the production if the effort of creating videos is to reap the rewards expected, particularly against the massive growth of user generated video content on sites like YouTube, but the creative use and marketing of videos will become more mainstream this year.

5) Reputation management becomes a core service: we’ve covered this issue before, but with the increasing growth and focus on user-generated content sites – such as review sites, blogs and comments on social networks – the need for companies to monitor what is being said about their business and brands, and to respond effectively to that content, will become a bigger requirement in 2009 as more businesses realise the potential dangers as well as the advantages of this trend. Online reputation management will therefore become a service in much demand from PR companies and search engine marketing firms, as web content is monitored and responded to in a more effective manner.

In our continuing series on the most useful functions within Google Analytics, this month we review the use and creation of Custom Reports. These are most useful when you have to combine metrics and dimensions that are not included in the standard report layouts, or when you want to simplify an existing report format by removing data that’s not relevant.

Building a tailored custom report in Google Analytics is easy and means quicker access to the information you’re more interested in, with less data overload and easy exporting. It allows you to create, save, and edit reports that present the information you want to see organised in the way you want to see it. A drag and drop interface lets you select the metrics you want and define multiple levels of sub-reports. Once created, they can be exported in the usual way of clicking on the export button on the top of the dashboard and choosing the format in which to export it.

It’s easy to navigate to the custom reports by just clicking on the ‘Custom Reporting’ link in the menu on the left-hand side of the main dashboard. Then choose some of the Analytics data from the left hand side menu that can be classified in two simple ways: Metrics or Dimensions.

A metric is the horizontal column heading(s) in the report that is a quantitative measure of how visitors interact with your site. Metrics are always numerical and include things like page views, time on page and bounce rate (the percent of visitors that leave your site after only 1 page).

A dimension is the vertical row(s) in the report that is a characteristic of a visitor or a page on your website that you can use to organize your metrics. Dimensions are almost always text, such as “new” vs “returning” (visitor type) or “North America” vs “Europe” (region).

You can choose any metric to build your custom report with. You also don’t have to pair them with dimensions, which means there are no restrictions to which metrics you can use. However, when they are paired with dimensions, metrics are subject to certain restrictions.

By using custom reports, it is possible to drilldown to five levels deep into the data or to keep the reports more simplified than the ones displayed on the standard dashboard. So the choice of creating simple or complex reports is entirely yours with the flexible and extremely useful Analytics Custom Reporting Tool.

For more information or help on the Custom Reporting function in Google Analytics, please contact us now.

Google has made a number of notable changes to their search results in the past month. The first development has increased the frequency of local business listings being displayed within the first page of the search results, which has a significant benefit for local advertisers. The second enhancement concerns the inclusion of additional ‘sitelinks’ below selected search listings, which offers the searcher more opportunities to enter the listed website at different points.

The recent change that Google has made to the use of the Local Business Listings means that the small map and accompanying business listings for up to 10 companies are now appearing across more search results, rather than ones that specifically include a location within the search phrase. Google is trying to recognise typical search phrases that would have a local search intent (such as ‘plumbers’ or ‘accommodation’), even if the searcher has not included a location term in their search. When this happens, Google will display the business listings below the top 3 ranking results and bases the map and location details on the recognised IP address of a searcher’s ISP (Internet Service Provider).

The intention is clearly to focus the results to meet a searcher’s intended need and although the method of targeting is by no means a perfect solution, this is an important enhancement that may improve clickthroughs for companies listed in the local business listings. Therefore it’s now more important than ever that companies who are targeting a local market ensure that their business is listed on this section of Google and is optimised as effectively as possible to increase the chances of being found.

The second recent change to Google’s rankings concerns the ‘sitelinks’ displayed below selected websites in the ranking results. These have been visible for some time for large websites or when a specific business website is searched for, with the intention of giving searchers an idea of what the site includes and also more opportunities to click directly into a prominent section of the site. Previously these were displayed as a short list below the main ranking result and for the first search result only. Google has now introduced an expansion of these sitelinks into a single row of links, which will be displayed even for results that aren’t in the first position. This will help to show searchers some relevant sub-pages within more sites and potential increase the opportunities for people will clickthrough into the ranked website.

Google says that, just like the previous sitelinks, the new one-line sitelinks are generated algorithmically and the decisions on when to show them and which links to display are entirely based on the expected benefit to users. Therefore site owners can’t tell Google which links to include, but they can block some or all of these links if there is any reason they may not want to show them. This can be done through a Google Webmasters account, but removing these links is not recommended in most cases because the inclusion of these additional links will probably increase the visibility of, and traffic to, a website, whilst also improving the experience of users.

To find out more about increasing the marketing opportunities for your website on Google’s search results, please contact us now for more information.