Month: January 2012

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Can You Even Get SEO Juice From a Subdomain?

For best search engine benefits what is the best configuration for your blog a subdomain or a subdirectory? First, it is important to clearly identify the difference of a subdirectory versus a subdomain.

Subdirectory example: http://www.mccordweb.com/weblogs/

Subdomain example: http://blog.mccordweb.com

How search engines handle the two is entirely different. So set up determines the link juice and search engine capital that a blogsite will pass to the parent website (in the above example the parent site is mccordweb.com).

Here is a very concise explanation of how search engines index, spider, and count subdomains:

“… Google considers sub domains separate from their parent domains:  sub.yoursite.com is considered a different site altogether compared to yoursite.com when it comes to search engine authority.” You can read the full and very interesting article here.

Although you can track subdirectories and subdomains using Google Analytics with special code inserts, how search engine weight and evaluate content that is resides off-domain as in a subdirectory domain is crucial to your organic placement strategy.

It is clear that I am not alone in finding that a subdirectory domain is considered as if it was a separate domain by the search engines. You can find out more by following this thread to the Webmaster World forum.

“It  [a subdomain] is treated much more like an independent domain in many respects – for example, if urls from both the root domain and a subdomain show up on the same page of search results, they do not cluster together.”

Matt Cutts says this on the issue:

“My personal preference on subdomains vs. subdirectories is that I usually prefer the convenience of subdirectories for most of my content. A subdomain can be useful to separate out content that is completely different. Google uses subdomains for distinct products such news.google.com or maps.google.com, for example. If you’re a newer webmaster or SEO, I’d recommend using subdirectories until you start to feel pretty confident with the architecture of your site.”

The bottom-line is that a subdomain is simply a way to mask the URL of an off-domain site or blog location and give the APPEARANCE that it is installed within the server where the parent site resides. Search engines consider the content separate and will weight it an index it separately from the parent website. What is crucial to understand is that any links that point to the subdomain blog or website do not flow through and add capital to the parent domain.

For best use of blogging and mini-websites, it is still by far best to install them in subdirectories and not subdomains.

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Google Search Plus Your World Will Be Rocking Your World Soon

Google rolled out a new version of its search engine last week and many of you will see it this week and in the weeks to come. It is called Google Search Plus Your World or in my industry Google Search Plus. Using the backbone of Google+ this incredibly important search engine enhancement may very well change Google.com and organic search placement tactics as we have known them forever.

This new way that Google will be delivering your search results is based on Google+ and your social activity (including your updates and your social network). The key is Google+ but that does not mean that Google may not show Twitter or Facebook activity at some point in time. However, for now it appears that it will be mainly pulling from activity on Google+.

Clearly businesses and individuals will need to embrace Google+ now or in the very near future in order to capitalize on this new approach for organic search placement and Web Visibility.

Here is just one future world example, and that is not too distant really:

Let’s say you are active on Google+ both personally and you have tied a business page to your personal Google+ profile. On top of that, you tie your Google AdWords program to your Google+ account (yes, you can actually already do this). You post and interact with a wide variety of followers and people on the Web using the +1 button as well as comments on Google+. You actively work to grow your network and hashtag your updates(at this point we are not sure of the character key that will mark this on Twitter it is #). What Google says about this activity is very important…

“Search has always brought you information from across the web. Now, search gets better by including photos, posts, and more from you and your friends. When signed in with Google+, you’ll find personal results and profiles of people you know or follow. You can even expand your world by discovering people related to your search.”

You can sign up or find out more information about Google Search Plus Your World here.

You can read more on the Google Blog about Search Plus Your World.

Since the announcement last week, Twitter has been mounting an online complaint campaign about unfair use and favoritism of Google properties in Google.com results. Clearly Twitter feels challenged by Google’s actions.

To our clients and readers, I recommend that you watch Google+ very closely. Google is so big and so powerful and it is throwing its full resources into integration of Google+ and +1’s that it will be impossible to ignore the importance of embracing this far reaching change early.

As Google+ does not yet allow for easy posting and scheduling of updates yet, we do not provide client services, but will be in the very near future. As clearly involvement with Google+ will impact what prospects and customers see about you in the Google.com search results this is an action item for all businesses concerned about organic placement in the near term. Not only will status updates be needed to position your business, but you will need interaction with others, and a follower growth program to really impact your search placement.

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My Twitter Strategy

I have been using Twitter since the day it was made available and I have to say that I really like using it for my own personal business. I have developed over time a Twitter strategy that is really working for me both for follower growth, link sharing, and personal satisfaction.

I typically tweet on Monday through Friday and typically tweet five times a day. I cover 6:00 a.m., 9:00 a.m., noon, 3:00 p.m., and 6:00 p.m. There are some times when I may tweet more, but this is my typical schedule. I use HootSuite and schedule all my tweets for the day in the morning. In the morning I also respond to all direct messages, and review what my lists and followers are saying and interact back with them.

What I have found is that through regular interaction with certain people in my industry I have created a network where we will retweet and comment on each others updates. As I have over 2,473 followers on one account and 2,032 on the other, when I retweet someone to my own followers the exposure for that tweet is strong and link exposure excellent. I monitor who retweets me and know who has klout on the Web so that I can look to retweet them and know that they will retweet me. It is a win-win situation of power users in the same industry, who are not competitors, sharing the viral nature of our follower lists through retweets among ourselves.

The personal satisfaction that I receive from these interactions on Twitter is what fuels my additional activity. It is enjoyable and I learn things from others. Twitter for me is a vibrant community of similarly minded people. That does not mean that I am just tweeting to people I know. It means that I have many followers but the people I interact with the most are in my industry and my account followers get the benefit of these exchanges between power professionals.

I hear all the time from potential clients, “I don’t get social media.”,  “It seems like a big waste of my time.”, “Twitter is so far down on my list of want to do’s or things to implement.” Although they may not “get” social media, there are others just like me who get it and who are soaking up the viral community nature and new search engine benefits from strong effective interaction on Twitter.

If you don’t “get” Twitter but need someone who does to create your own Twitter strategy, I invite you to visit our Twitter services page to find out how inexpensive updates to Twitter may be for your business. They start at $170 for three tweets a day for a month to $560 for 10 tweets a day for a month including follower interaction.

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SEO Is Much More Than Code Optimization

Organic placement improvement for your website is much more than code optimization. In fact I have seen some sites whose code is not really optimized still place well. But for the typical business website code optimization is a start and just one of the pieces of the puzzle that need to be put together for better Web visibility.

First off, it is very important to understand that where you place on the search engines is now much more that what is happening back on your own website. Now it is about all these things working together:

  • Inbound links from new sites and authority websites
  • Facebook activity and regular status updates
  • Twitter activity and follower growth as well as retweets from authority followers
  • On-domain blogging to build Web authority and keyword density
  • Quality content, more than blogging, press releases and white papers are needed
  • Website code optimization
  • Regular updates to your home page and website content

What I have found is that once a site hits the tipping point by doing all of these things on a regular basis they insulate themselves from big drops in the search engines. I have seen sites stay at nearly the same search positions without additional code tweaks and even improve from just the above updates. It does not require a monthly source code update to keep and maintain position organically. I have however found that improvement from a poor position once these strategies have been implemented is slow but steady.

If you need help in these area, I encourage you to visit our website to find out how to start with an evaluation so you can create a blue print for how your website can get better organic placement.