How
to measure SEO Effectiveness?
Every
website SEO performance and results can be measured through following three
factors.
1.
Monitor Keyword Rankings
2.
Analyze Monthly Visitors
3.
Track Leads & Conversions
1)
Monitor Keyword Rankings
Initially
every website will be targeted to few keywords which are relevant to respective
website niche. SEO Professionals should make sure that “respective landing
pages of the website should be indexed & ranked for targeted keywords”. If
your website is started ranking for few long tail keywords in the first month
itself, it means “your SEO team is doing the right job”. Also month over month
keyword rankings positions should be improved. With the help of following kind
of report everybody can measure their SEO effectiveness.
Note:
This will not happen in all cases, because few of the niches are highly
competitive, so it will take little more time to get results.
2)
Analyze Monthly Visitors
Every
website visits can be tracked through Google Analytics. It’s free tool offered
by Google, also simple to install & activate on website. Usually for a new
website minimum two months’ time required to receive traffic from search
engines. From 3rd month onwards every website will start receiving little
traffic and it should be gradually increased month over month. Of course,
traffic increase in every month is a difficult task, so at least existing
minimum traffic shouldn’t be decreased.
If
your SEO team is continuously adding new content pages then the traffic should
be improved. So keep an eye on website traffic and measure your SEO team
efforts. Ask your SEO team to provide monthly improvement stats and reports for
your reference.
3)
Track Leads & Conversions
Your
website should have Phone number, Email ID and Inquiry box if you are offering
services. If your site is an eCommerce portal then it’s important to have
online payment facility, so that visitors will purchase your products through
online.
Compare
month over month stats whether you are receiving any inquiries or sales from
your website or not and calculate ROI. Sometimes cannot expect immediate ROI
through SEO efforts as SEO will give good results in longer run. However make
sure to push and keep little pressure on your SEO team to have max output.
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What is Responsive Web design?
In the modern era, every website should have web &
mobile design versions to reach max audience. From 2011 onwards usage of
tablets has increased a lot. If a design isn’t compatible with tablets or
netbooks then another version should be designed to reach tablet
visitors.
Instead of having different website designs for web,
mobile & tablets, we can have one design which is compatible with all
devices and browsers i.e. Responsive Web Design. Responsive Design itself
changes automatically based on the width and height of the visitors screen.
Irrespective of design, it majorly depends on screen resolution.
Following are
couple of valuable resources for Responsive Web design:
Most of organizations
and professional blogs already started to have responsive designs for their
sites. In future every website owner will prefer to have responsive design.
It’s time for designers to learn responsive design tips to have a bright
career.
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Basic SEO Check List
for new websites in 2012
Following a check list is
very important in search engine optimization as SEO Professionals need to take
care of so many things, so chances would be higher to forget few important
things. Following are the few basic SEO factors which need to be followed for
new websites in 2012.
SEO Checklist:
- Domain
TLD with Targeted Country Extension
Technical:
- Non-www
to www redirection
- Zero
Broken Links
- Search
Engine friendly image Sizes
- Low
Page Size
- User
friendly URL Structure
- Professional
design
- Easy
Navigation
On-page:
- Unique
Title Tags
- Converting
Meta Descriptions
- Descriptive
Alt tags
- Customized
Header Tags
- Quality
Content
- HTML
Sitemap
- Xml
Sitemap
Accounts:
- Google
Analytics
- Webmaster
tools
- Bing
Webmaster account
Social Media:
- Facebook
- Twitter
- LinkedIn
- YouTube
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Google Webmaster Tools - SEO Updates 2012
I would like to highlight & include the summaries of SEO
Updates in 2012 which are published on Google webmaster central official blog.
SEO Friendly Pagination algorithm update from
Google - Mar 13th
2012
Better Crawl Errors reporting in Google
Webmaster tools - Mar 12th 2012
Filtering Free hosting spam websites from search
results - Mar 06th 2012
User & Administrator access are now
available in GWT -
Mar 05th 2012
Video markup language for better indexation of
Videos - Feb 21st 2012
Optimize your site to handle unexpected traffic
growth - Feb 09th 2012
Webmaster tools sitemaps interface with fresh
look - Jan 26th 2012
Few changes on Top search queries data in
Webmaster tools - Jan 25th
2012
Google Algorithm update to Page layout
structure
- Jan 19th 2012
Page Titles Update in Search
Results - Jan 12th 2012
1. SEO Friendly Pagination:
Most of the eCommerce and content portals will usually have
pagination issue. Due to pagination most of the duplicate pages will be created
with product titles in eCommerce portals and with article titles in content
portals. Now Google came up with updated algorithm i.e. following are the two ways
to fix pagination issue.
Insert View all page and use
rel="canonical" in sub pagination pages
Use rel="prev" and
rel="next"
2. Upgraded Crawl Errors Reporting:
Crawl Errors is a feature in Webmaster tools which will report all
errors in your website. Google webmaster team started detecting new errors and
reporting all errors in a better way. Categorized crawl errors in to two types
i.e. "Site Errors" and "URL Errors".
3. Filtering Free hosting spam websites:
We know that "few of the hosting providers will offer free
hosting services". Due to free hosting most of the spammers will create
low quality content websites dynamically. Google started filtering this kind of
websites from search results and also requesting free hosting providers to show
patterns of spam to Google team, so that Google team can effectively update
their algorithm and filter these spam sites from search results effectively.
4. Now Webmaster tools have both admin & user access:
Earlier we do not have an option to give user access to our
webmaster tools account to any other user. Only admin access should be shared
to other users, which isn't safe. With the latest update we can give webmaster
tools user access to other users now onwards.
5. Schema.org Video Markup:
We all know that Google, Yahoo & Bing are supporting
schema.org common markup language to make a better web. Now schema.org released
mark up for Videos i.e. http://schema.org/VideoObject. Follow this markup while
adding videos to your site. It will help search engines to crawl these videos
effectively.
6. Handle sudden traffic spike:
Usually popular sites face downtime issues due to sudden increase
in traffic, websites will crash often in such cases. So, it’s better to plan
“lightweight version of the website or mobile version” to handle traffic in
difficult times. Also we can use third party services to land that particular
page which is receiving higher traffic.
7. New interface for sitemap section:
Earlier sitemap section used have normal interface with some basic
content stats. Now added videos, images sitemap statistics with colorful
interface. Compared to old interface, new interface looks pretty clean and
easier to understand with better usability. Now users can delete sitemaps,
which were submitted by another webmaster owner.
8. Search queries data update:
Normally in webmaster tools search queries data rankings will show
average position of the keyword. Now onwards it will display top position of
that keyword.
9. Page Layout Structure algorithm Change:
We often see websites with too many ads and it’s difficult to find
out the difference between real content and ads. Few sites will have completely
ads about the fold, users will have bad experience with these sites. As per new
page layout algorithm, these sites will lose rankings and bring down from top
search engine results.
10. Page Titles update in search:
Page titles will have higher impact in CTR. Usually Google pick
the title tag from <title> tag and displays the same in search results
and displays meta description based on the search query by collecting information
from page or description tag. Now title tag also will be displayed based on
search query of the visitor and it helps to improve click through rate on
search results.
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Blogspot.com is redirecting to Blogspot.in
Now onwards Blogger blogs will redirect to country level TLD
extension. Usually I read Google webmaster central blog, Google blog, Gmail
blog etc to know about latest updates from Google. Today i.e. Jan 31st 2012, I
observed that "Blogspot.com is automatically redirecting to
Blogspot.in". As I live in india, it's redirecting to ".in". It
might redirect to .co.uk, if I live in UK.
Here is the official information from Google regarding this change
- Blogspot.com is redirecting to country specific URL
Points to know regarding this change:
1. Duplicate content issue is the 1st thing we notice in this
case. However Google is stating that "rel=canonical" tag will be used
across all country level extensions and their team is trying to make less
negative impact on search results.
2. Google will receive so many requests to remove content from few
blogs. So they would like to manage country wise removal of content . Few
countries may not accept some content, but other