Optimising Your Site for Tablets

Tablets have become ubiquitous, so much so that any website owner would be foolish not to optimise their site to make it friendlier for tablet users. To help you get started here are some tips for redesigning your site and realigning your strategy to ensure you don’t miss out on the gaining popularity of tablets:

• Convert Flash content to HTML5 – While other tablets may support Flash, iPad, which is still the most popular tablet, does not. If you want your site’s content to render correctly on an iPad, then you’d better start converting all that flashy Flash content to HTML5. Need more reason than the significant number of iPad users you’re missing out on? Then do it for your SEO efforts, after all flash is just about as search bot friendly as it is iPad friendly, which means not friendly at all.
• Use larger fonts and buttons – Tablets may have smaller displays than computer screens, but the funny thing is that larger fonts work better (read: more user friendly) on mobile devices. Please your mobile users by making things easier on their eyes. It is also super annoying to keep on pressing the wrong button, so make buttons finger-friendly and make them as large as possible.
• Offer a way for users to toggle between tablet view and normal view – Ideally this toggle alert should only be appear when the browser detects the tablet, but you can also just embed a toggle button on your site.
• Avoid paginated pages – While clicking on next page or swiping a finger to get to the next page is not that hard, it will mean more waiting time for your user as the next page loads. Since scrolling down is pretty easy in tablets, you should opt for view all pages as much as possible.
• Make your content downloadable – You don’t have to make everything downloadable, but at least choose the most popular or useful ones and make PDF downloadable versions for them. A lot of people use their tablets as ebook readers and would appreciate being able to read your content even if they are not connected to the Internet.
• Be speed conscious – While studies show that tablet users are using their devices at home more and more, a significant amount of time spent on the tablet browsing is still done while on the go. This means that you have to make sure that your site has fast loading time if you want tablet users to stick around.
• Simplify your checkout – This is important (especially for your conversion rate) since typing on a tablet is still not as easy as typing on your keyboard (unless they have an external keyboard attached of course). Make life easier for your users by simplifying your checkout and so avoid discouraging them from completing the purchase action.

 

Resources:

Start Thinking Mobile SEO by Steve Wiideman
SEO for the iPad by Phil Nottingham
Is It Time to Start Optimizing Your Sites for Tablets? by SEOPub

a

Optimising Your Site for Tablets

Tablets have become ubiquitous, so much so that any website owner would be foolish not to optimise their site to make it friendlier for tablet users. To help you get started here are some tips for redesigning your site and realigning your strategy to ensure you don’t miss out on the gaining popularity of tablets:

• Convert Flash content to HTML5 – While other tablets may support Flash, iPad, which is still the most popular tablet, does not. If you want your site’s content to render correctly on an iPad, then you’d better start converting all that flashy Flash content to HTML5. Need more reason than the significant number of iPad users you’re missing out on? Then do it for your SEO efforts, after all flash is just about as search bot friendly as it is iPad friendly, which means not friendly at all.
• Use larger fonts and buttons – Tablets may have smaller displays than computer screens, but the funny thing is that larger fonts work better (read: more user friendly) on mobile devices. Please your mobile users by making things easier on their eyes. It is also super annoying to keep on pressing the wrong button, so make buttons finger-friendly and make them as large as possible.
• Offer a way for users to toggle between tablet view and normal view – Ideally this toggle alert should only be appear when the browser detects the tablet, but you can also just embed a toggle button on your site.
• Avoid paginated pages – While clicking on next page or swiping a finger to get to the next page is not that hard, it will mean more waiting time for your user as the next page loads. Since scrolling down is pretty easy in tablets, you should opt for view all pages as much as possible.
• Make your content downloadable – You don’t have to make everything downloadable, but at least choose the most popular or useful ones and make PDF downloadable versions for them. A lot of people use their tablets as ebook readers and would appreciate being able to read your content even if they are not connected to the Internet.
• Be speed conscious – While studies show that tablet users are using their devices at home more and more, a significant amount of time spent on the tablet browsing is still done while on the go. This means that you have to make sure that your site has fast loading time if you want tablet users to stick around.
• Simplify your checkout – This is important (especially for your conversion rate) since typing on a tablet is still not as easy as typing on your keyboard (unless they have an external keyboard attached of course). Make life easier for your users by simplifying your checkout and so avoid discouraging them from completing the purchase action.

 

Resources:

Start Thinking Mobile SEO by Steve Wiideman
SEO for the iPad by Phil Nottingham
Is It Time to Start Optimizing Your Sites for Tablets? by SEOPub

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Who Are You Writing Blog Posts For

Who are you writing your blog posts for … people or search engines? Depending on your intended audience your posts can and should be radically different in tone and style. This concept is related to my my post on how to choose keywords for your blog posts. When you write a post or article on your blog you have to decide am I writing this for “today” and my short term day-to-day audience, or am I writing this as a long term evergreen content? While you are ultimately writing for people in both cases, how your intended audience will find your post matters. Your choice will result in the post taking an entirely different path, have entirely different language, and create an entirely different end product.

Up until a few years journalists and writers were taught and came in with the mindset that once a book, magazine, or newspaper article was written it was “cast in stone” so to speak. While libraries had microfilm, and archives, some even had electronic databases, the general public didn’t have easy access to “old” information. Sure you could go to the library and take out last years issue of “Gourmet Magazine“, but the consumer had to take that action. Now with the advent of google and other search engines these archives are a lot easier to access. If you as a web publisher want this traffic, you need to change your mindset. Gone are the days of writing pithy titles that are witty and clever, now you need to write your titles and posts anticipating the search engine queries of users.

There are tons of “news websites” (and I use that term loosely) who exist and do make a decent amount of money, for example look at the homepage of sites like techmeme and AOL. But these sites are chasing a different type of traffic, they are chasing “now” traffic, and by and large earn money from a CPM advertising model. This is why so many of them fall into the page view journalism trap. The only way to make more money is with more page views, it doesn’t matter if post matches the sites core topic, as long as it brings eyeballs. Put another way their traffic and income are directly related to the traffic they bring in “today”, and they need to to bring in a consistent level of traffic day after day. This is one reason why these are mostly multi-author websites. If you are a single author website, and you take a day off, spend time with your family, go on vacation, your income takes a nose dive.

On the other end of the spectrum are the evergreen content publishers. They miss the hustle and bustle, and burst traffic that comes from covering something like an apple developers conference, the release of a new iphone, or covering the latest insane lunatic ravings that Eric Schmidt makes on a regular basis at press events. However unless they target these evergreen posts around keywords with a decent Adsense payout or around affiliate programs, it’s traffic without monetary value.

While the traffic may persist, for years, and not require daily updating, that doesn’t mean it’s maintenance free. Even evergreen content needs to be evaluated regularly with a content audit (see how often should I update evergreen content). Especially now that google is getting better and more aggressive about showing dates in the SERPS. IMHO you need a strategy that keeps your posts dates less than 1 year old for evergreen content (posts that aren’t evergreen should show their true age). Additionally you need to keep some “old” posts, because nothing says reputable like a blog/website with 5 years of consistent archives.

My suggestion, use a hybrid model between news, current, present, and “today” posts, but also publish evergreen content. The exact ratio depends on your website, but I like to stay around the 80/20 model: 80 percent evergreen 20 percent current events. However I like to go on vacation a lot, and sit poolside, so I work really hard to set up low maintenance, passive income websites (see how I manage a wordpress website). For those of you truly curious, I made the shift here about 2 years ago to the hybrid model, with a lot more emphasis on evergreen posts on this website.

So what are the take aways from this post:

• Decide what type of website you want to run, and what type of posts are you going to publish
• Present day, news, and current events bring traffic but are hard to monetize with anything other than CPM advertising
• Evergreen websites are easier to run, but often lack excitement, and traffic bursts
• A hybrid model can give you the best of both worlds
• Focus your evergreen posts around keywords and topics with high advertising revenue and affiliate offers
• Categorize your evergreen posts so you can retweet/push them in social media channels (see how to tweet from your archives)
• Remember even evergreen posts need to be updated from time to time, and don’t forget to change the date when you do for maximum benefit

photo credit: Shutterstock/Gary Paul Lewis

Related posts:

1. Writing Keyword Focused Posts that are Interesting One of my constant criticisms of bloggers and the blogosphere...
2. 6 Tools & Tips to Help You Improve Your Blog Posts I was having a a few conversations on twitter last...
3. Top Posts From 2010 As 2010 draws to a close I’d like to thank...
4. The 18 Most Potent Things I Learned Writing An Ebook My book on advanced SEO is finally done. The book’s...
5. The Art and Science of Writing Good Titles Crafting a good title for your pages or blog posts...

Advertisers:

1. Text Link Ads - New customers can get $100 in free text links.
2. BOTW.org - Get a premier listing in the internet's oldest directory.
3. Ezilon.com Regional Directory - Check to see if your website is listed!
4. Need an SEO Audit for your website, look at my SEO Consulting Services
5. Link Building- Backlink Build offers customized link building services
6. Directory Journal - Get permanent deep links in a search engine friendly directory
7. LinkWheel SEO - Get Web 2.0 Backlinks
8. RevSEO High PR BackLinks- Private High PageRank Homepage Link Network
9. The #1 ranking SEO software toolkit: get your free download
10. TigerTech - Great Web Hosting service at a great price.
11. Article-Writing-services.org - Article Writing Services creates quality content for websites and blogs at no cost to site owners.
12. Rouper.com - Buy & Sell Premium Websites
13. Blurbpoint - is reputable SEO link building service provider. Get quality one way links with our complete link building packages.

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

Who Are You Writing Blog Posts For

Assessing and Adjusting Your Website Development Approach Based on the Mindsets of Search

About.com recently published the results of a study done in partnership with Latitude Research on the “The Mindsets of Search”. The study, conducted between March to June of this year gathered data about 59 variables of search behaviour, and revealed much about the three distinct search types, how and who people view as experts these days, and how marketers can take advantage of the findings.

The study showed that most people just want direct answers to queries with 46% of all searches falling under the “Answer Me” type of search. The number of people who want in-depth answers to their questions and are open to be shown different perspectives, or the “Educate Me” type of search, are also almost equal in number (26%) to the number of those who are browsing mostly for fun and are not looking for a particular answer. The latter type of search, called “Inspire Me”, makes up about 28% of all searches.

What is even more interesting than the percentages is that what searchers view as valuable expert opinion varies for each kind of search type. For the “Answer Me” searchers, users do not seem to even take into account expertise that much. As long as they get the answers right away, it does not matter to where the answer came from, much less if that one who provided the answer is an expert on the subject matter or not. On the other hand, “Educate Me” and “Inspire Me” searchers rely more on the opinion of experts (i.e. professionals). However, they rely on different kinds of experts with “Educate Me” searchers looking for answers from credentialed experts as well as some of their allies (Ally being people who are known for being knowledgeable in a certain topic but do not necessarily have the academic background to beef up their resumes, such as moms writing on parenting blogs), and “Inspire Me” searchers placing more value on the opinion of their allies as well as that of social sources or the “wisdom of crowds”.

With that in mind, you can set a strategy for snagging the interest of your target readers based on the type of searchers you have in mind. If you want more of the “Answer Me” type of search, then you need to present your content in easily digestible snippets of information. You don’t have to find doctors or credentialed experts either to back up your facts, as long as you present them in a way that can be read at a glance, since your users won’t really care much where the information came from anyway.

On the other hand, your content will need to have more depth if you’re targeting “Educate Me” searchers. Aside from that beefing up the profile of the writer or the company is very important in this case because you need to have credentialed experts, or allies at the very least, providing the content in order for them to be believable in the eyes of your users.

Last but not least, content has to be fun, exciting, or stimulating for “Inspire Me” searchers. There’s no such thing as information overload for such search types so provide them with as much content via multiple formats by providing links to additional or side info, info snippets in the middle of the content, chat tickers on the sidebar (social aspect), search boxes, video presentation, etc.

It is also important to note that the top search categories for each type of search are entertainment and fashion/beauty/style for “Answer Me” searches, health and finance for “Educate Me” searches, and travel and home and garden for “Inspire Me” searches. That way, you can easily identify what search type your content falls under and adjust your overall strategy including your website design/layout, content (copywriting), marketing, and even SEO.

Image Credit: About.com and WingedWolf

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Why Rank Checking Is Not Critical (at least for me)

Recently, I was talking with Graywolf about rank checking, a topic that we disagree on.  Personally, I really enjoy debating business topics.  It helps me to see different ways of thinking.  I figured I would share my rant *cough* I mean debate points with you.

1. Google personalizes all serps.
   It is common for two different users to see different websites ranking #1.  Google displays search rankings based on previous searches, user activity and many other factors.  It is common for New York City people to see rankings that favor local websites.  With all of this personalization, it is hard to figure out accurate rankings for your website.
2. Google throttles rankings. 
   Depending on the time of and day, Google may show different websites ranking at the top.  If I check my rankings at 6am and Google throttles my rankings between 9am and 5pm, then the data I gathered at 6am is useless since most visitors are not even awake at 6am.
3. Google’s universal serps makes ranking data inaccurate. 
   Google has integrated local listings, news headlines, videos and much more into their serps.  Sometimes these integrated boxes appear above all rankings; other times they appear in the middle of the serps.  So you may rank #1 with a Google local onebox appearing below you or you may rank #1 with 10 local listings appearing before you.  That is a big difference.
4. Automated rank checkers are unreliable.
   Google does not like automated rank checkers and therefore does not make it easy for them to operate.  I tip my hat to the many smart developers of automated rank checkers who do an incredible job of fixing bugs and overcoming issues.  They do a great job.  Unfortunately, it is the nature of the beast that there are still constant issues that make it difficult to measure rankings properly and have 100% accuracy.
5. Rookie webmasters check rankings for wrong keywords. 
   A pet peeve of mine is when clients brag about having #1 rankings but then say they have no traffic.  This is because not all keywords are equal.  Some keywords can drive a lot of traffic.  Other keywords can drive sales.  On rare occasions, you can find a keyword that drives high traffic & sales.  Look at these keyword examples:

• “personalized cancer” – no traffic & no sales
• “free wordpress” – high traffic & poor conversions
• “buy thesis theme” – low traffic & high conversions
• “buy wordpress theme” – high traffic & high conversions

Let me take a minute here and clarify some stuff.  I am not saying you should never check rankings or that there is zero value in checking rankings.  I am saying that to me the value of checking rankings has greatly decreased over the last 10 years.

There are only so many hours in a day, and I need to prioritize how many hours I am going to spend on generating quality content, building backlinks, improving site usability, upgrading website security, boosting site speed and working on all of the many other pieces that go into running a successful website.  So I rarely spend time on checking rankings.

What do I do instead?  I prefer to monitor my analytics.  By monitoring my traffic, I can immediately see if  search engine referrals decrease.  If there is a decrease, I can drill down to see which keywords are sending less traffic and then I can go to work on fixing the situation.  By monitoring my analytics, I can better watch over my entire conversion pipeline.  That is something that rank checking cannot do.  Rank checking will not tell me if I am getting traffic but have a high bounce rate, which could be caused by poor usability or other site issues.

In my humble opinion, accurate ranking data is a very slippery fish to chase after and it’s not normally necessary since my analytics provide me with a much larger net of information that can help me make decisions that I would otherwise have made using incomplete ranking data.

I hope you enjoyed my crazy rant

photo credit: Shutterstock/Brian Jackson

Related posts:

1. Rank Tracker Review Rank Tracker is a program from the SEO Power Suite...
2. SEO and the Thrill of the Rank I’m an SEO. My job is not is not to...
3. Checking for Broken Links and Link Rot and the Importance of Good Site Architecture Recently I’ve been experimenting with a plugin for checking broken...
4. Two New Plugins Worth Checking Out from Linkshare and EzineArticles As I mentioned before, I’m a big fan of plugins....
5. Traffic Down From Panda Update – Diversify Your Traffic Sources Recently Google had an update and some webmasters were significantly...

Advertisers:

1. Text Link Ads - New customers can get $100 in free text links.
2. BOTW.org - Get a premier listing in the internet's oldest directory.
3. Ezilon.com Regional Directory - Check to see if your website is listed!
4. Need an SEO Audit for your website, look at my SEO Consulting Services
5. Link Building- Backlink Build offers customized link building services
6. Directory Journal - Get permanent deep links in a search engine friendly directory
7. LinkWheel SEO - Get Web 2.0 Backlinks
8. RevSEO High PR BackLinks- Private High PageRank Homepage Link Network
9. The #1 ranking SEO software toolkit: get your free download
10. TigerTech - Great Web Hosting service at a great price.
11. Article-Writing-services.org - Article Writing Services creates quality content for websites and blogs at no cost to site owners.
12. Rouper.com - Buy & Sell Premium Websites

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

Why Rank Checking Is Not Critical (at least for me)

Why Rank Checking Is Not Critical (at least for me)

Recently, I was talking with Graywolf about rank checking, a topic that we disagree on.  Personally, I really enjoy debating business topics.  It helps me to see different ways of thinking.  I figured I would share my rant *cough* I mean debate points with you.

1. Google personalizes all serps.
   It is common for two different users to see different websites ranking #1.  Google displays search rankings based on previous searches, user activity and many other factors.  It is common for New York City people to see rankings that favor local websites.  With all of this personalization, it is hard to figure out accurate rankings for your website.
2. Google throttles rankings. 
   Depending on the time of and day, Google may show different websites ranking at the top.  If I check my rankings at 6am and Google throttles my rankings between 9am and 5pm, then the data I gathered at 6am is useless since most visitors are not even awake at 6am.
3. Google’s universal serps makes ranking data inaccurate. 
   Google has integrated local listings, news headlines, videos and much more into their serps.  Sometimes these integrated boxes appear above all rankings; other times they appear in the middle of the serps.  So you may rank #1 with a Google local onebox appearing below you or you may rank #1 with 10 local listings appearing before you.  That is a big difference.
4. Automated rank checkers are unreliable.
   Google does not like automated rank checkers and therefore does not make it easy for them to operate.  I tip my hat to the many smart developers of automated rank checkers who do an incredible job of fixing bugs and overcoming issues.  They do a great job.  Unfortunately, it is the nature of the beast that there are still constant issues that make it difficult to measure rankings properly and have 100% accuracy.
5. Rookie webmasters check rankings for wrong keywords. 
   A pet peeve of mine is when clients brag about having #1 rankings but then say they have no traffic.  This is because not all keywords are equal.  Some keywords can drive a lot of traffic.  Other keywords can drive sales.  On rare occasions, you can find a keyword that drives high traffic & sales.  Look at these keyword examples:

• “personalized cancer” – no traffic & no sales
• “free wordpress” – high traffic & poor conversions
• “buy thesis theme” – low traffic & high conversions
• “buy wordpress theme” – high traffic & high conversions

Let me take a minute here and clarify some stuff.  I am not saying you should never check rankings or that there is zero value in checking rankings.  I am saying that to me the value of checking rankings has greatly decreased over the last 10 years.

There are only so many hours in a day, and I need to prioritize how many hours I am going to spend on generating quality content, building backlinks, improving site usability, upgrading website security, boosting site speed and working on all of the many other pieces that go into running a successful website.  So I rarely spend time on checking rankings.

What do I do instead?  I prefer to monitor my analytics.  By monitoring my traffic, I can immediately see if  search engine referrals decrease.  If there is a decrease, I can drill down to see which keywords are sending less traffic and then I can go to work on fixing the situation.  By monitoring my analytics, I can better watch over my entire conversion pipeline.  That is something that rank checking cannot do.  Rank checking will not tell me if I am getting traffic but have a high bounce rate, which could be caused by poor usability or other site issues.

In my humble opinion, accurate ranking data is a very slippery fish to chase after and it’s not normally necessary since my analytics provide me with a much larger net of information that can help me make decisions that I would otherwise have made using incomplete ranking data.

I hope you enjoyed my crazy rant

photo credit: Shutterstock/Brian Jackson

Related posts:

1. Rank Tracker Review Rank Tracker is a program from the SEO Power Suite...
2. SEO and the Thrill of the Rank I’m an SEO. My job is not is not to...
3. Checking for Broken Links and Link Rot and the Importance of Good Site Architecture Recently I’ve been experimenting with a plugin for checking broken...
4. Two New Plugins Worth Checking Out from Linkshare and EzineArticles As I mentioned before, I’m a big fan of plugins....
5. Traffic Down From Panda Update – Diversify Your Traffic Sources Recently Google had an update and some webmasters were significantly...

Advertisers:

1. Text Link Ads - New customers can get $100 in free text links.
2. BOTW.org - Get a premier listing in the internet's oldest directory.
3. Ezilon.com Regional Directory - Check to see if your website is listed!
4. Need an SEO Audit for your website, look at my SEO Consulting Services
5. Link Building- Backlink Build offers customized link building services
6. Directory Journal - Get permanent deep links in a search engine friendly directory
7. LinkWheel SEO - Get Web 2.0 Backlinks
8. RevSEO High PR BackLinks- Private High PageRank Homepage Link Network
9. The #1 ranking SEO software toolkit: get your free download
10. TigerTech - Great Web Hosting service at a great price.
11. Article-Writing-services.org - Article Writing Services creates quality content for websites and blogs at no cost to site owners.
12. Rouper.com - Buy & Sell Premium Websites
13. Blurbpoint - is reputable SEO link building service provider. Get quality one way links with our complete link building packages.

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

Why Rank Checking Is Not Critical (at least for me)

Thanks to This Month’s Sponsors September 2011

I’d like to say thanks to the people who sponsored the blog this month, without them there wouldn’t be regular posts here.

Text Link Ads – New customers can get $100 in free text links.

BOTW.org – Get a premier listing in the internet’s oldest directory.

Ezilon.com Regional Directory – Check to see if your website is listed!

Directory Journal – Get permanent deep links in a search engine friendly directory

Link Building – Backlink Build offers 45 PR5+ Backlinks for $295.

Interested in seeing your message here? There are banner and RSS advertising options available find out more information. Be sure to check out our new Sponsored post option.

Blam Ads – Content locking can help you make more money with your website

LinkWheel SEO – Get Web 2.0 Backlinks

Here’s a list of some other programs and products I reccomend

Thesis Theme for WordPress – Hands down the best theme on the market right now, read my Thesis Theme for WordPress Review.

RevSEO High PR BackLinks- Private High PageRank Homepage Link Network

Link Building- Backlink Build offers customized link building services

Scribe SEO – Improve your blog posts with this easy to use built in tool, read my Scribe SEO Review.

KnowEm – Protect your brand, product or company name with a continually growing list of social media sites, read an Interview with Michael Streko.

Links From PR9 Sites – - Get In Top 3 Google ASAP

TigerTech – Great Web Hosting service at a great price, read my Tiger Tech Review.

photo credit: Photospin,

Related posts:

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2. Thanks to This Month’s Sponsors August 2011 I’d like to say thanks to the people who sponsored...
3. Thanks to this Months Sponsors – September 2009 I’d like to say thanks to the people who sponsored...
4. Thanks to This Month’s Sponsors May 2011 I’d like to say thanks to the people who sponsored...
5. Thanks to This Month’s Sponsors Feb 2011 I’d like to say thanks to the people who sponsored...

Advertisers:

1. Text Link Ads - New customers can get $100 in free text links.
2. BOTW.org - Get a premier listing in the internet's oldest directory.
3. Ezilon.com Regional Directory - Check to see if your website is listed!
4. Need an SEO Audit for your website, look at my SEO Consulting Services
5. Link Building- Backlink Build offers customized link building services
6. Directory Journal - Get permanent deep links in a search engine friendly directory
7. LinkWheel SEO - Get Web 2.0 Backlinks
8. RevSEO High PR BackLinks- Private High PageRank Homepage Link Network
9. The #1 ranking SEO software toolkit: get your free download
10. TigerTech - Great Web Hosting service at a great price.
11. Article-Writing-services.org - Article Writing Services creates quality content for websites and blogs at no cost to site owners.
12. Rouper.com - Buy & Sell Premium Websites
13. Blurbpoint - is reputable SEO link building service provider. Get quality one way links with our complete link building packages.

This post originally came from Michael Gray who is an SEO Consultant. Be sure not to miss the Thesis Wordpress Theme review.

Thanks to This Month’s Sponsors September 2011

Link Directory Strategies in the New SEO Age

Think directories are so last year (older than that actually)? If you’re referring to link directories that are now little more than link farms, then we quite agree with you. However, that does not mean that directories have completely lost their SEO value. Yes, Google has devalued most of the links coming from directories, but despite that you can still benefit from having your link posted in some of the legitimate directories that do still exist today.

When you do link building via directories though, make sure that you understand the new way of doing it and how it should fit in to your overall SEO strategy. Instead of seeking out to be added to every link directory out there, be more selective to go for niche sites that will actually deliver targeted traffic for you, plus give better vertical ranking signals to search engines. You should also forget about relying on these directories for a massive number of links, instead as mentioned already, be selective and aim to get links that will actually bring real value. In the end, you will still need to focus more on links from more organic sources.

For a more in depth look on newer link building strategies using link directories, read Cyrus Shepard post “Conquer Link Directory Best Practices for SEO”.

Image credit: LuMaxArt

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Tips on Paginated Content and View-All Pages

Google has expressly stated that they prefer displaying view-all pages as opposed to paginated content. The reason: user satisfaction. This makes sense since who would like to have to click on “next” just to see the next instalment of an article, when you can just as easily view them by scrolling down the page.

With that in mind, Google urges those who display their content as paginated pages to also offer them in a view-all page format. However, they also acknowledge that in some cases using paginated pages and ensuring that users land on them as opposed to the view-all page is desirable (i.e. view-all pages with slow loading times and sites where users are already used to or prefer paginated content). In these cases Google’s advice is to “noindex” the view-all page so that it will be clear to Google that it shouldn’t be displayed in their results pages, much less rank better than any of the paginated content. They also suggest that you use the new HTML link elements rel=”next” and rel=”prev” to help Google easily figure out the flow of the paginated content, and so be able to return the first page as landing page as much as possible.

For more in depth tutorials on how to use the rel=”next” and re=”prev” tags, read Maile Ohye’s post on Pagination with rel”next” and rel=”prev”.

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SEOMoz Explains Correlation and Causation

Understanding the difference between correlation and causation is very important if you want to be able to really find out what the factors are that make search engines tick. While factors that are included in search engine algorithms will surely show clear signs of correlation, not all factors correlated with rankings do have an effect in rankings, in fact it might be the other way around.

Still a lot of people go on jumping to wrong conclusions because of correlation data. To help us understand the reason behind the phrase “correlation does not imply causation”, below SEOMoz has come up with the insightful and easy to understand infographic below.

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