Month: May 2009

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The Canonical Issue for SEO Performance – Do You Need To Worry?

I am seeing increasing client concern on the canonical link issue of their website and how Google and other engines are indexing them become almost a level of paranoia this month. Let me take a few moments to talk about this issue to help you understand more about it and what you can do to keep your website search engine friendly.

First, for those of you who don’t know what I mean when here is an example on the way that you link within your website that is a factor for which URLs search engine should recognize in their index.

http://mccordweb.com or http://www.mccordweb.com – Note the first URL has no www and the second does. This is the whirlwind that surrounds the canonical topic.

Now, my site and the sites that I have designed have never had issues here as I am nitpickingly consistent on how I link withing sites, I always use the www. It is a standard that I never waiver on. If your website or blog has used both links you may have an issue. What is at stake is which page should the search engine index? As more engines and particularly Google want to properly index your site and remove peripheral pages, you want to help Google know which page link style to use.

To understand more on this topic you can watch the video on the new canonical link element from Google Engineer Matt Cutts. If you do not know how Matt Cutts is, he is a star in the SEO industry and the Google mouthpiece on technology and Google indexing to the professional community. We all hang on what he says!

The bottom line is that the big three engines are now recognizing a new head tag link element in the source code that allows you to control the page that Google will index. Here is the syntax:

<link rel=”canonical” href=http://www.mccordweb.com/weblogs/index.php> This relates to the home page of my blog. This appears in the source code of your site. You can even create code in your template to pull in the preferred canonical link on your page if you desire and are using header and footer includes. Although for many sites this issue is really not a make or break issue and really will not significantly impact your organic placement for sites that have URLs that contain session cookies and other dynamic elements you can now tell the search engines to index your SEO friendly URL instead of the URLs that may contain session information. Now that has importance! Especially if your URL has been well crafted to contain a product name, model number or SEO keywords.

For normal websites you simply do not need to be spun up on the topic. You can now add the link code in your head tag and you could always through the Google Webmaster control panel tell Google what canonical link to use, but for dynamic sites this is important news for optimization and potentially could be used as just another tool to get better organic placement.

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Viral Promotion in Action – My Own Paper!

Man I was shocked earlier today, I found out that my special mini-whitepaper, “Twitter Demystified for Business Users“, was on the home page of SitePro News. SitePro News is the web’s most widely read webmaster resource. It’s like the New York Times for my industry! (I linked to the article on its own page although by now, it has probably moved off the home page.)

Now, I am not sure if SitePro News picked up my article from Twitter or if they found it from one of the ezines syndication sites that I posted my newest article on, but the buzz on Twitter alone has been huge.

Today on Twitter as well, there was a flurry of activity and link love pointing to my paper. I picked up a steady and constant stream of new Twitter followers – just from one great article that got disseminated in a variety of ways.

This is an excellent example of how viral marketing using Twitter and article marketing can be used together to promote your business endeavors. Wow, even I’m impressed. I don’t always put my special edition e-newsletter articles on syndication services, but I will certainly look to do that more frequently with this particular reaction.

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Fix Mail Stuck in Your Out Box in Outlook 2007 and Vista

If this has happened to you, as it has to me, then you know that there is literally no information on the Web about how to fix this thorny and aggravating issue – mail is stuck in your out box that cannot be deleted.

It appears that when this happens that actually Outlook has sent the mail, but has forgotten to move it to the sent folder. When you try to delete the mail or move it to another folder, you get the message that “this action cannot be completed as Outlook is in the process of transmitting this message”. ARGH!

For me, this is how I fixed it. First I renamed my .pst file to Outlook-old.pst and change the Personal Folder name to Old Personal Folders. Then I closed Outlook. On reopening Outlook, the application made a new Outlook.pst file. I went into File – Data File Management, and set my new .pst file as the default. My old PST appeared in the folder tree under the file name I had previously given it of Old Personal Folders. From there I copied or dragged and dropped in the mail that I wanted to save from the old Personal Folder files. That so far is pretty straight forward, but the next step is new.

When I opened my address book and calender there were no entries. In Vista you do not have access to these files so how do you migrate your calendar and address book? This is what I did.

Go to contacts – view – current view – Outlook Data Files. Highlight all the entries, using control key + A, then while they are highlighted drag them from the window to the top left to the Contact File that represents your new Outlook.pst file. You will know which one it is as when you click it, it is empty.

Do the same with calendar, go to calendar – view – current view – Outlook Data Files. Highlight all the entries, using control key + A, then while they are highlighted drag them from the window to the top left to the Calendar File that represents your new Outlook.pst file. You will know which one it is as when you click it, it is empty.

Now you can get rid of your old Outlook.pst file. Go to File – Data File Management. Find your old .pst file and delete it. Now you have all your information, a new out box and all your contacts and calendar.

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SEO Blogging – Top Professional Blogging Techniques

Blogging is big business but there are definitely ways to do it better than others. Here are my top tips for blogging like an SEO pro.

  1. Make sure your blog post title contains your top keywords. Sometimes even this style may be best- keyword then a hyphen then the post title. Review my blog post title above as an example.
  2. If and when you include hyperlinks in the blog post, make sure the hyperlink text (that’s the content that is underlined is keyword rich. Here’s an example: make sure to visit our website for search engine optimization pricing and our client results. I like to not only use keywords in the hyperlink, but also force the browser to open the link to a site off my blog in a new browser window. This way I will not lose the customer from my site.
  3. Make sure to use the link title field in WordPress. For the link listed above, I get even more keyword traction by inserting in the link title field the same keywords as in the anchor text. This is a simple but overlooked feature to help build keyword density in a blog post.
  4. Keyword density is important for a blog post done for SEO purposes. I try to repeat the top keyword phrase at least three times in a post done for search engine optimization purposes.
  5. Keep the blog post short and sweet and focused. The shorter your blog post, the better your keyword density will be, but don’t stuff you keywords. Remember you have to say something in the blog post too, not just string out keywords. Offer something of value to your readers.

Many people who are doing blogging for SEO do not want outbound links. Here’s were we differ on perspective. I will never link to a competitor, but I do routinely link to information rich sites so that my blog readers will get real value for following my blog. I do not feel that I am bleeding off search engine optimization capital by linking. From my perspective a blog is about linking to great informational sites on the topic you are blogging about. If you want to link and it has meaning to the blog post do it. Don’t take too hard of a line on outbound links. You want other blogs and websites to link to you right? It is a reciprocal two way street.

Another reason why you should consider the judicious use of quality information rich out going links is that Blogger has targeted as “spam blogs”, blogs that mainly link back to one website over and over. It may be a better long term “Google Tactic” to spice up your links so Google will not perceive your blog site as a “spam blog” site.

Got any other great SEO blogging tips you want to share? Add them by clicking comments below.