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marți, 25 ianuarie 2011
You've Never Seen a State of the Union Address Like This
How to Build an Effective Footer Graywolf's SEO Blog
How to Build an Effective Footer Graywolf's SEO Blog |
| How to Build an Effective Footer Posted: 25 Jan 2011 07:13 AM PST
Footers are one of the most often underused, misused and abused areas of a website. In this post, I’ll be taking a look at footers and passing on some tips to help you get more out of them.
Link BrothelHave you ever visited a website where they have 50, 100 or even 150 links down in the footer area? Then, friends, you have seen a link brothel. Search engines look at your website and try to isolate the template from the content, and weight different areas differently. They also try to break down the template and isolate masthead, sidebars, and footers and weight them differently (see How to Silo Your Website: The Footer). So by plunking down all of those static links, you aren’t helping yourself. My recommendation: keep the number of links in your footer to a minimum–under 25 if possible. You better have a really good reason if you have more than 50. Dynamic FootersOne tip to make make footers more interesting to search engines is to make them dynamic. By dynamic, I mean mix up the content. You could include links to your 5 most recent blogs posts, add links to the 5 pages you updated last, or add links to your 5 most popular posts of the week, your 5 most emailed posts, or 5 of your featured posts. The key is to introduce and expose content that is changing on a regular basis to search engines. The New York Times does an excellent job of this in their footer. They may have added images, but the concept is the same.  New York Times Footer Date Tagging and Crawl DebuggingIf you have a large site, it can sometimes be helpful to tell what parts of the site Google doesn’t “like” and doesn’t crawl frequently. If you add the current month and year into the footer with a bit of unique text like “page generated on Jan 2011,” and then come back two months later and do a search for [site:example.com "page generated Jan 2011"]. It will give you a listing of pages that haven’t been crawled in over 60 days. It’s a low tech but easy way to figure out where you have crawl issues. WARNING: don’t go with a full date or Google might use it date tag your pages. No-Follow and Pagerank SculptingFull disclosure: I used to be a strong advocate of no-follow and pagerank sculpting. I have since changed my position and no longer feel that it’s an effective tactic. So if you are using no-follow to keep search engines out of things like your contact page, privacy policy, terms of service page or similar pages, please stop. It’s likely doing you more harm than good. However there are some instances when you want to use no-follow. Do you have any login links, such as gift registries, customer accounts, or admin pages? If you do, those are pages you want to keep the search engines out of and where you should use no-follow. Additionally you should use robots.txt to block those pages as well. Usability and Font SizingWhile this has nothing to do with SEO, usability is something everyone should be concerned about. When constructing your footer it’s ok to use a font size that’s slightly smaller than your normal font size. That said, micro fonts are bad, no matter what that beret-wearing designer tells you. You can use a lighter or different color font, but don’t make it invisible: that just makes it look like you are trying to hide something. If you have a lot of items in your footer, group them into logical categories or hierarchies, don’t be scatterbrained about it. Use sub-headers to make it easy to figure out. Use standard naming conventions: if you have a contact form, name it “contact” or “contact us”; don’t be cute and use “talk to us.” You don’t want to violate the “Don’t Make Me Think” Principle. So let’s recap. What are some ways to make your footer more effective:
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This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review. |
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The State of the Union Address: Watch and Engage
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SEOptimise
SEOptimise |
| So What Makes a Real SEO ‘Expert’? Posted: 24 Jan 2011 08:51 AM PST There are often too many people in the search marketing and social media industry who proclaim themselves 'experts', but can any of us really justify the title?
Mashable noticed that there were 15,740 social media experts on Twitter and this was back in 2009. In fact, with the prevalence of blogs and Twitter, it can be hard to distinguish between the writers with something useful to say and those simply filling space. The people I am most wary of are those who call themselves 'experts' but who have, all too often stopped learning. This is a fast-paced, changing industry and there's no time for resting on your laurels or for laziness when it comes to keeping on top of new developments. Of course, it doesn't matter much to me if a company's SEO manager stops staying abreast of the sector; it's only going to affect their own business and, eventually, their professional reputation. However, I do have a problem with 'experts' who continue to flaunt their expert status, and who offer advice and pose as authorities, but have stopped learning. There's no time to stand still and admire the view In the SEO industry, I have to learn everyday. I never know how my knowledge is going to be used and so I have to stay on my toes. Perhaps none of us should call ourselves experts because we're all still learning, by reading blogs and books, by attending conferences and by taking on new marketing challenges. Should I still be in this line of business when I am 74, I will still be learning because the industry will still be changing. If I ever stop learning then it's time to leave SEO because I will have fallen into the trap of thinking I know it all. And no one person does. Of course, you could probably study the works of George Elliot until you know absolutely everything there is to know about the author – that's a finite pool of information; you just have to soak it up and regurgitate it when you want to bore people at dinner parties. But it's a very different skill to react to a changing online environment, consider a huge number of variables, interpret them and come up with a solution that works for an individual client. Running an SEO agency means applying my skills to different clients with different problems, websites, budgets and ambitions every day. If I stopped learning in 2010 then I can't be confident I am doing what's best for them in 2011. Context is king No matter what your experience and knowledge base, your online marketing solution has to be ready to change depending on your client. Every business is different and, if you can't adjust your technique, your chances of success are pretty hit and miss. Even if you've previously achieved outstanding success at an agency or with a former client, if you can't learn, adapt and evolve then you risk catastrophic failure next time. After all, those great tactics from 2003 may not hold much weight when applied today. At best, your career will start to wither as your successes start to drop. 'Expert' opinions What frustrates me the most are the so-called experts who have stopped studying but kept talking. It can cause real problems when they expound their 'expert opinions' online. Unfortunately, lazy and ill-informed pseudo-experts can keep SEO myths circulating long after they've been busted, simply by repeating them endlessly via blogs. They are all-too-often the inspiration for the bad practice I encounter in smaller businesses, which have relied on a small amount of online research. If you consider yourself an expert in any industry, but especially a fast-paced one like online marketing, then ask yourself when you last learned something new or really challenged yourself professionally. Anyone struggling to remember should ask themselves if they can justify calling themselves an expert in their field, or if their complacency has shackled their future success. Perhaps there are no real experts, just a bunch of students fighting to outrank each other in knowledge – and the search results. © SEOptimise – Download our free business guide to blogging whitepaper and sign-up for the SEOptimise monthly newsletter. So What Makes a Real SEO 'Expert'? Related posts:
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Seth's Blog : Eight Lessons from the life and work of Jack LaLanne
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Eight Lessons from the life and work of Jack LaLanne
- He bootstrapped himself. A scrawny little kid at 15, he decided to change who he was and how he was perceived, and then he did. The deciding was as important as the doing.
- He went to the edges. He didn't merely open a small gym, a more pleasant version of a boxing gym, for instance. Instead, he created the entire idea of a health club, including the juice bar. He did this 70 years ago.
- He started small. No venture money, no big media partners.
- He understood the power of the media. If it weren't for TV, we never would have heard of Jack. Jack used access to the media to earn trust and to teach. And most of what Jack had to offer he offered for free. He understood the value of attention.
- He was willing to avoid prime time. Jack never had a variety show on CBS. He was able to change the culture from the fringes of TV.
- He owned the rights. 3,000 shows worth.
- He stuck with the brand. He didn't worry about it getting stale or having to reinvent it into something fresh. Jack stood for something, which is rare, and he was smart enough to keep standing for it.
- Jack lived the story. He followed his own regimen, even when no one was watching. In is words, "I can't die, it would ruin my image."
He died last week at 96. I don't think he has to worry about ruining his image, though.
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