Central Perk

luni, 30 iulie 2012

Internal Linking Strategies for 2012 and Beyond

Posted: 29 Jul 2012 07:49 PM PDT

Last Friday, I did a Whiteboard Friday called "Smarter Internal Linking." If you have not yet watched it (I do show some graphs and stuff, so you'll probably need to watch and not just listen), I'd recommend doing so first before reading the rest of this post.

The goal of this post is to clear up a few misconceptions that I saw in the comments, and to show you exactly what I mean about sitewides that could be problematic both now and in the near future for over-optimization algorithms and filters.

Footer Links Are Not (Inherently) Bad

One question I saw a few times was about if we should use sitewide footers at all. My answer to this is "absolutely!" Footer links can be awesome for the user experience. Especially in the growing world of mobile surfing of the Internet, there is an increasing need for good navigation at the bottom of websites that allows users to navigate to a place on the site that makes sense, without necessitating scrolling back to the top of the page.

Footer links like SEOmoz's are fine, as they point people to the most important and useful pages on the website. People expect to see them there:

Zappos does this as well, though interestingly they do not have the same footer on the homepage as they do on their category pages (take a look at the homepage and this category to see the difference). They are not overloading you with anchor text and taking you to irrelevant pages from every page, though. Their main footer is large, yes, but contains useful links for the user.

And according to SearchMetrics, their SERP coverage is up and to the right -

The Problem is Scale

Footers like these become an issue when they are scaled out across a full website and also into microsites. This is a common practice for large sites, especially in the travel/hotels/tourism industries.

If this is a normal webpage -

This is an example of a homepage from a major hotels chain -

The architecture looks like this, which is a completely standard architecture -

But if you scale this out to a sitewide section, such as in the hotels site above, then every page becomes like a homepage linking with optimized anchor text. And often these links are irrelevant and don't add value to the user.

Here is an example of interlinking gone crazy -

Microsites/Franchises Can Be Dangerous

I recently came across a site that also has many third-party franchise sites. Each of these sites is built off a template (which is not necessarily an issue) and provides local content specific to the area where the franchise is located. Each of the sites, in my opinion, adds value to the user.

Here is an example layout of those sites, with the problem area (in my opinion) highlighted -

When you take this out to scale, the linking between the sites (and all of the links shown in the microsite example are sitewide) begins to look thus:

Think Taxonomy

The best way to steer clear of these over-linking issues that could and probably will get you into trouble, is to categorize your pages. Inside Distilled, we often talk about these categories as "page types", but basically we're talking about the different levels of the pages on your site. Some examples are:

Homepage (a category in and of itself);
Category pages;
Product pages;
Product detail pages;
PPC landing pages;
Blog posts.

One thought as to how to improve your internal linking, but in an algorithm-update-friendly way, is to interlink between the different levels in ways that make sense. The ultimate best answer would be to create an internal linking schema or algorithm that allows you to link to these pages automatically depending on how you best decide the pages fit.

You'll end up now with linking that looks thus, with all of the pages pointing in being pages in the same geographical category:

Parallel Internal Linking

As I said in the video, it doesn't make sense to link to all of your important category pages from every other category page, as this is bad from a user perspective. If someone is looking for a Washington DC hotel, they're not interested in seeing London hotels probably. If someone is looking for London hotels, they are probably not interested in Orlando hotels, but they might be interested in Paris or Munich hotels.

Now we need to figure out how to segment. To categorize this specific site, I'd use the following taxonomy:

Continent;
Country;
City;
State (if US and applicable);
Category or hotel

Then, pattern match the continents, then countries, then cities. If we do this, then your London hotels page could like this way, with links in the sidebar to Paris, Munich, Amsterdam, etc and not links to Orlando and Atlanta -

ccTLD Internal Linking

A tip that I gave in the video is to link between your relevant pages on your ccTLDs (.co.uk, .fr, etc) to the relevant page on the other TLDs. Using this methodology, we end up with the following structure and linking patterns instead of the craziness seen above:

How Do I Test This?

As with any blog post you read, you should take the advice with a grain or two of salt. I don't care who writes it, you need to do your own testing and competitor research to find out what is working and then how you can stay competitive while also not putting your website in danger.

Do Your Competitor Research

I found the principles talked about here by doing a deep dive into how competitors are getting their rankings (this is one factor of many). I found how they are linking and compared that against their traffic to see how it is trending.

You need to do the same. I recommend starting off with your most competitive term and reverse-engineering their strategies, looking specifically at external links, internal links, and content. You might find that you are being beaten because they have superior useful content. Or maybe you'll find that their internal linking is better, and you can learn from their strategies.

Work With Your UX Team or Developer

Now, depending on the size of your company, you might have a dedicated UX team. If you're working on the scale that I am talking about here, you need to have a UX team, even. Get them to help you categorize your pages and levels, and then work with them to create mockups using a tool like Balsamiq (the tool I used for the illustrations here).

Start off NoFollowing Links instead of Removing

Some people in the comments on the Whiteboard Friday recommended starting to test this by nofollowing your excessive internal linking instead of removing links. I think this is a good place to start, on a small sample of your pages, so that you can test the potential gains or losses experienced through these strategies.

Ultimately though, if these strategies work for you, then you will want to create new page layouts so that your categorization can help you effectively interlink. Slapping a no-follow on these links is only a band-aid, as we are also concerned about conversions and not just rankings.

I hope this helps to clarify some of the points I was making in the video. If you have more questions (and I hope you do now), please leave them in the comments!

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Photo: Not Your Usual Olympic Event

Your Daily Snapshot for
Monday, July 30, 2012

Photo: Not Your Usual Olympic Event

This past week, First Lady Michelle Obama traveled to London as the head of the Presidential delegation. The First Lady met with American athletes, hosted 2,000 American military kids at Let's Move! London, and helped cheer on Team USA at the opening ceremony.

Check out a special photo gallery from the First Lady's trip to London:

First Lady Michelle Obama is picked up by U.S. Olympic wrestler Elena Pirozhkova during a greet with Team USA Olympic athletes competing in the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, at the U.S. Olympic Training Facility at University of East London in London, England, July 27, 2012. (Official White House Photo by Sonya N. Hebert)

Seth's Blog : The theater of the mind

The theater of the mind

The most effective marketing story isn't the one you tell to someone in your audience, it's the one the person tells himself.

Consider this no parking sign. Instead of stating the fine, the signmaker states the range of the fine. At this point, it's up to the observer to have a conversation with himself. "Well, maybe I'll just get a $50 fine. Hmmm, why would that happen? With my luck, it'll be the maximum... I'll just park somewhere else."

It's not an announcement, it's an invitation to a little internal drama.

Too often, we don't give people a chance to fill in the blanks.

• Email to a friend •

duminică, 29 iulie 2012

Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis

JCPenney to Eliminate All Checkout Clerks, Instead Using RFID Chips and Self-Checkout; End of JCPenny? How Many Jobs At Risk?

Posted: 29 Jul 2012 06:44 PM PDT

By 2014 JCPenney PLans to Eliminate All Check-Out Clerks, and instead use self-checkout machines and RFID chips.

Struggling retailer JCPenney is making some big changes that will affect customers and its clerks. The store is getting rid of its check-out counters.

CEO Ron Johnson said it will remove check-out counters in stores and replace them with a system that won't require clerks. It's all part of an effort to return the department store chain to profitability.

Shoppers will be able to use self check-out machines, similar to those found in grocery stores.

JCPenney is also planning to replace traditional bar codes on price tags with high-tech radio frequency identification, or "RFID" chips to make purchases faster.

Johnson told "Fortune" magazine he hopes to phase out check-out counters by 2014.

End of JCPenny?

My first thought was a question: Will this work?

A move to entirely self-service is a risky bet-the-company type of move.

Given that many large grocery stores have both self-checkout and manned checkout lanes, I suspect in reality that JCPenny will not go big-bang with this concept but instead will use a series if trials to see how customers respond.

How Many Jobs At Risk?

I personally loathe self-checkout but it's not my opinion that counts. If there are enough who think like me, and JCPenny does go big-bang, this move will the death of JCPenny.

However, If I am wrong, then note that JCPenny has 1100 stores so we are talking about the elimination of lots of jobs. Also note that if the move by JCPenny is successful, other stores will follow.

Finally, even if this ends up as a half-way measure, we are talking about the elimination of 10's of thousands of jobs if other stores follow suit.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Foreigners Dump Nearly €80 Billion in Spanish Debt; Haircuts Come After More Dumping

Posted: 29 Jul 2012 09:13 AM PDT

Through the first half of the year, foreigners reduced Spanish debt by Nearly €80 Billion as banks in Spain gobbled up more of the toxic garbage.

Foreign investment in Spanish public debt has decreased by €78.168 billion in the first six months of the year, standing at €203.271 billion euros, compared to €281.439 billion which reached the end of 2011. This is a break of 27.7% over last year.

The largest decreases were recorded in February and March, at nearly €25 billion each month.

Analysts note that Spanish financial institutions that are supporting strongly the Treasury issues and thus raising their level of debt thanks to interventions by the ECB.

Contrary to popular belief, the LTRO and other ECB financing programs that allowed Spain to accumulate more Spanish bonds is not a favor to Spain but rather a favor to foreigners who are now unloading the debt.

Just as happened with Greece, as soon as foreigners dump enough Spanish debt, haircuts on the bonds will come.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Remarketing Is Now Simpler

Posted: 27 Jul 2012 09:21 AM PDT

Google's made some exciting announcements about remarketing.

You can use one AdWords remarketing tag on all pages of your site, and then create as many remarketing audiences as you like from it. The audiences are then defined according to the URL of visited pages.
You can (after "a small edit") use a Google Analytics tag to make remarketing audiences for a linked AdWords account. This is being rolled out "in waves by the end of the summer", so keep an eye on your Analytics account for the remarketing option!

Why is this exciting?

Needing just the one tag means it's much simpler to install on all pages, so it should be quicker for your (or your client's) web development team.
It's also easier to check that the right code is on the right pages.
You don't need multiple AdWords tags on one page if they're viewed by multiple audiences. If you already use AdWords and Analytics, you won't need tags for both. Fewer tags mean faster load times – and faster load time helps user experience, improves landing page quality (a quality score factor) and may be a ranking factor.
You can start with a simple remarketing strategy and then refine or split out audiences when you know they're successful.
When you realise only after the remarketing advertising has started that you want to exclude visitors to a particular page (like pages only converted customers will see) you can make a new audience and exclude it, easily and quickly.

On top of that, some more variations of retargeting are coming soon:

You'll be able to make audiences of people with browsing histories similar to the people in your remarketing lists. This will be available "in the coming weeks".
There's a beta that allows you to customise your search ads seen by the people in your remarketing list. If you've got an account big enough to have its own Google manager, ask them about it.

Of course with all this innovation you still need to remember not to creep out your visitors by overdoing remarketing too much – remember to keep membership duration of audiences a reasonable time, and use a frequency cap!