Read my section (#3) entitled Mobile SEO Will Require You to Feed the Google Experience, for more ideas on the impact of mobile SEO on your overall visibility in Google Search.

The post 2014 Prediction: Mobile SEO and Site Development appeared first on Blend SEO.

Google Plus Rich Snippets in SERPs

Google Plus search results appear prominently, with color photos in the top right column ABOVE paid ads.  These are the search results in Google Plus for the search query entered into Google web search.  Since there is only a small community, you have a chance to jump in now, ahead of your competitors and start appearing at the top of Google Plus search results that are inserted into regular web search results.  Additionally, there is a Google Plus rich snippet including your profile image thumbnail, inserted inline with organic results that links to your Google Plus profile.

Personally, I feel Google is bribing SEOs and internet marketers to join its failed community by offering extremely valuable (yet free to Google) webpage real estate.  However, here’s how to enable your Google+ profile snippet in search results.

Enable Google Plus Author Rich Snippets for Your Content

Nevertheless, a Google+ Plus share button for blogs are required to keep up with the Jones’s.  You may still get an  advance on your competitors if you set up your Google Plus business page before them and get a head start on building some community interaction.  Additionally, you will need to be sure your rel=author and rel=me tags are in place on your blog so that Google can credit your content to your Google+ author profile.  The link on your post to your author bio must include rel="author".  A link to your Google profile page must be present on your author bio page.  The link to your Google profile must include rel="me".  On your Google profile, create a link under “Contributor to” section to your author bio page.  Use the Google rich snippet testing tool to verify all the links are in place.  Yoast has a great step by step for implementing the rel authorship tags on your blog.

Google Plus Share Button Code

UPDATE: Standard Google Plus button now provides share functionality.  No code updates required on your part if you already have a Google plus button.

Currently there is no Google Plus share button available for social share platforms like add-this or add-to-any.  There is however a hack out there that uses the mobile Google Plus share code that has been adopted for WordPress.  I used the hack and installed it into this blog.  After sharing, the thumbnail, snippet and link looks like this:

Feel free to test the button and share article all you want on Google Plus

I actually use WP Socializer plugin to pull in ShareThis along with other social sharing button code.  It uses short codes for the URL and title.  Here is the Google Plus button code the way I am using it as a custom button in WP Socializer.

<!–Google Share–>
<div style=”float:left; width: 65px;”>
<a href=”https://m.google.com/app/plus/x/?v=compose&content={title}&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss – {url}” onclick=”window.open(‘https://m.google.com/app/plus/x/?v=compose&content={title}&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss – {url}’,’gplusshare’,’width=450,height=300,left=’+(screen.availWidth/2-225)+’,top=’+(screen.availHeight/2-150)+”);return false;”><img src=”http://blendseo.com/design/wp-content/uploads/plus.png”?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss width=”55″ height=”22″ alt=”Share {title} on Google+” title=”Share {title} on Google+”></a></div>
<!–/Google Share –>

Alternatively, you can use this code to hard code the button into your template:

<a href=”https://m.google.com/app/plus/x/?v=compose&content=<?php&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss the_title(); ?> – <?php the_permalink(); ?>” onclick=”window.open(‘https://m.google.com/app/plus/x/?v=compose&content=<?php&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss the_title(); ?> – <?php the_permalink(); ?>’,’gplusshare’,’width=450,height=300,left=’+(screen.availWidth/2-225)+’,top=’+(screen.availHeight/2-150)+”);return false;”><img src=”http://path.to/plus.png”?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss width=”55″ height=”22″ alt=”Share <?php the_title(); ?> on Google+” title=”Share <?php the_title(); ?> on Google+”></a>

The original code came from here:

http://www.stateofsearch.com/share-on-google-plus-any-website/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss

Update: 2/27/2012…

Google Plus Profile Appearing in Search Results

Its been 3 days since sharing this post, and it now shows the Google Plus profile snippet with my thumbnail in search results.  I only have 3 people that have me in their circles (people following my Google Plus post feed from within their account) and 9 people in my circles (people who I follow).

The post Google Plus SEO: Enable Author Profile Snippet in SERPs appeared first on Blend SEO.

How does web hosting affect SEO?

Avoid SEO web hosting issues.  See Blend SEO top 3 picks for hosting.

Web Hosting and SEO

SEO should be addressed during the planning stages of a website or blog.  A wrong decision on website design, server platform and hosting company can handicap your SEO efforts.  Many SEO hosting web design companies offer turn-key, all-in-one, one-stop-shop, too-good-to-be-true solutions for SEO, hosting and web design.  Many of these companies started out in one area and respond to customer demand in other areas by putting together a package to serve them all.

• Don’t expect SEO from a hosting company to be a full service, all encompassing SEO solution.
• Likewise, don’t expect an SEO or web design firm to provide top notch hosting.
• More likely they are reselling server space from a hosting company or else maintain an on-site local server.

My top 3 choices for web hosting…

Web hosting and web design affect SEO.  Plan to build and design your website on a Linux – Apache server environment.  The most common alternative to this is Windows IIs.  Windows web servers are innately problematic for SEO.

• They give flexibility in URL capitalization that allows for an infinite duplicate content issues.  These issues must later be addressed with canonicals, redirects or rewrites – depending on how the site is built.
• Some ASP applications that often run on Widnows IIs servers use forms and generate unnecessarily large web pages.
• If you are already on a Windows IIs machine, your SEO may be handicapped without you knowing it.

Search engines are evolving to adapt to variations in web server technology.  However, if starting out fresh, its a safe bet to choose a LAMP (Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP) web hosting environment.

Which Web Hosting Company is Best for SEO?

The main concerns in website hosting for SEO are reliability and speed.  And most importantly, speed.  Google uses webpage load speed as a ranking signal.  A hosting company that cannot serve your website quickly during high traffic hours, generally west coast afternoon to evening, can hamper your search engine rankings.

If your website is served with good speed, but goes down for an hour, half a day or even a day… as long as the search engine comes back the next day and finds everything back to normal, you won’t see any change in rankings.  This of course is relative – if you’re competing in a news space or social space where up to the second updates are critical, you better be sure your hosting does not fail you.  But for the majority of blogs, company websites, product line websites, etc, as long as your hosting company can for the most part keep your website up, you should be fine.

The better hosting companies have become very reliable and very good and keeping things running.  Hosting server maintenance is performed in ways that eliminates down time.  A good way to know if a hosting company is reliable is if you are able to call late at night and get intelligent answers and quick resolution for problems.

Top 3 Web Hosting Companies for SEO

GoDaddy.com

GoDaddy is the biggest player in hosting and domain name management.  Infrastructure behind this large company must lend to its reliability.  I have been using GoDaddy for domain names and hosting since 2002, however they have been doing it since 1997.  I use one deluxe web hosting account to handle a handful of moderate traffic websites.  Around 2009, I migrated my websites to their cloud hosting environment.  Load balancing in the cloud provides more reliable, faster hosting.  The customer login area where you find the control panels can be confusing. However, GoDaddy has always provided surprisingly great phone customer service even in the late, late night hours.  Just call them up, and ask them to walk you through whatever you are trying to do.

Bluehost.com

Bluehost only deals with hosting, and has been around since 1996, a little longer than GoDaddy.  Bluehost provides a C-Panel type of control panel – the preferred, most robust control panel for hosting.  Bluehost provides a cloud environment, appropriate for blogs and medium traffic websites.  Reliability is great – 24-7 phone customer service on par with GoDaddy.

Rackspace.com

Rackspace is another hosting-only company with a little more presence than Bluehost, though has been around since 1998.  The control panel is Plesk, which is very easy to use.  Rackspace also provides a cloud environment and 24-7 phone customer service.

I’ve had bad experiences with newer, smaller hosting companies.  The three hosting companies above have proved themselves over years and have the infrastructure to support reliable, fast up-time.  I confidently affiliate Blend SEO with GoDaddy, Bluehost and Rackspace.

The post Website Hosting and SEO appeared first on Blend SEO.

Blend starts with the end in mind.  A blended skill set of design and marketing contributes to SEO for a stronger, unified result.  Blend is SEO (search engine optimization) infused with design and marketing.  Our blog, the BlendER (ER = Everything Relevant), breaks down problems that are hard to chew into easily digestible servings.

Meaning Behind the Cute Words and Symbols?

The new business name and logo represent a blended approach to an end result.  A bit more organic than the old GLiD logo, Blend reveals aspects of synergy and growth.  The internet of yesterday, well, more like a few years ago…was pretty cut and dry.  If you got past the technical barriers, you were in.  Moving forward to the internet of yesterday – we were all captivated by web 2.0, and the community element. Blogs for individuals, blogs for companies, BLOGs for Everyone!  Search engine optimization became more organic as content provided by the community grew and search engines evolved.  Today, the elements of design and marketing are obviously essential components.  Technical internet expertise is required to keep up with quickly moving, influential search engines.  In addition, community involvement has blossomed into a mixture of social media.  Mobile web devices, local search and multinational internet presence demand focus to be divided and narrowed to human behavior at a single location.  With all this in mind, it starts with the marketing end goal.

GLiD has long been a solo act.  Since 1997, growth transformed Greg Lee I.D. through industrial design, identity, intelligent design, …and now the expansion involving collaboration with others behind the scenes coupled with intense SEO research and development pushes GLiD forward into Blend.  GLiD SEO and design services are now Blend SEO.

The post GLiD Design and Marketing Becomes Blend SEO. appeared first on Blend SEO.

I am changing my business name and the website domain name.  How do I keep search engine traffic?  What do I do for search engine optimization so that I don’t throw away my past SEO efforts?  How do I redirect traffic from other websites and marketing to the new website?

If you are in this situation, there are two things to consider:

1. people’s perception of the name change
2. technical aspects of the name change for search engines and internet traffic

Name Change Perception

At the very least, I expect you will inform your current and potential customers and  that the name will be changing before it happens.  For example, I plan to change my business name from GLiD to Blend.  The name change has been long overdue.

People may want to know why and what to expect?  Will services change under the new name?  Is management changing?  For example, GLiD will be changing to Blend.

For GLiD, the core services have evolved from industrial design, to graphic design, to search engine optimization and internet marketing.  GLiD initially was created for Greg Lee Industrial Design.  Keeping the same name, the acronym transitioned to Greg Lee I.D. (for identity) and later to Greg Lee Intelligent Design (encompassing identity, print and web development).  Since 2004, SEO and internet marketing slowly infused deeper into the services while providing extensive graphic design and website development while working in tandem with an influential internet marketer in Charleston, South Carolina.

The internet evolved and GLiD did too.  Learning from experts in internet marketing and SEO, GLiD knowledge base grew.  In January 2009, I moved the GLiD office to Atlanta, a hub for the internet marketing and SEO community.  By January 2010, I began serving as the search engine optimization research and development department for the Atlanta internet marketing firm, Medium Blue.  In summer of 2011, GLiD will transition to Blend, dropping industrial design to completely focus on SEO, website development and graphic design.

During the transition period, www.GLiD.us?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss will be co-branded with banners advertising the name change to Blend.  After the transition to Blend, there will still be prominent messages showing formerly GLiD, to address traffic from old links that promote GLiD.

Website Redirect for SEO and Traffic

OK, here’s the tricky part.  Even the experts get this wrong sometimes.  I watched a seasoned SEO webmaster use the wrong redirect and cause a business to disappear from search results.  On a day to day basis, I catch errors made by big name brands that create duplicate content and abandon thousands of back links when they attempt to switch domain names for a website.  To illustrate how to correctly make the switch, I will use the GLiD to Blend example.

The website www.GLiD.us?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss will switch to www.BlendSEO.com.?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss  This is the process to correctly redirect all your traffic, back links and search engine authority (i.e. Google PageRank) to the new domain name.  Most online articles tell you to 301 redirect www.GliD.us?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss to www.BlendSEO.com.?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss  This sounds simpler than it really is.

Many times, the web developer will create a 301 redirect from http://www.glid.us?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss to http://blendseo.com.?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss  The result is that the homepage of the old website redirects to the homepage of the new website, but all the interior pages are not affected.  This is WRONG!  Thousands of back links to interior pages still go to those pages on the old website.  Search engine results for interior pages still send traffic to the old website.  What is required is a global redirect.

Since this is only a domain name change, the website will remain the same except for the new domain name.  The files will continue to be hosted on the same server.

First, any internal links using absolute paths will need to be update to use relative paths.  Now, pointing the new domain www.BlendSEO.com?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss at the website will allow the homepage and any static pages to work.  As long as there are no back links using the new URL, search engines will not know about it yet.

Next to get the blog working, the settings will need to be changes to indicate the new absolute path to the blog.

Finally, a global rewrite rule must be added to the .htaccess file.  I will use a rewrite rule (which uses Follow SymLinks and RewriteEngine On), instead of a redirect (which only uses Rewrite Engine On) because both domain names will be pointed to the same set of files.  Using a typical 301 rewrite from every page of the website to the new domain in this situation would create an infinite loop any time the new domain is requested.   The rewrite rule will allow me to take any URL from www.glid.us?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss and rewrite it to the same path on www.blendseo.com.?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss  All links will continue to work when the new domain name is switched out.

The post Changing the Business Name and Website Domain Name appeared first on Blend SEO.

The below table of Microsoft Core fonts is no longer freely available from Microsoft, but these free standard fonts are available here, completely legally thanks to the terms of Microsoft’s font license.

Thanks to Nick Shanks for hosting these fonts and sharing his knowledge on them.

The post Core Fonts for SEO Friendly Website Development appeared first on Blend SEO.

Do You want to maximize their SEO benefit?

Being raised with a thrifty mindset and borderline hoarding tendencies, I am compelled to use every website asset to further SEO success.  This article will reveal to you:

1. How to know if your landing pages are causing duplicate content for organic search engines
2. How to eliminate duplicate content penalties
3. How to reclaim unused back links
4. Long term strategy to build organic traffic using your paid search landing pages

Are Your Paid Search Landing Pages Causing Duplicate Content Penalties?

A lot of clients don’t realize that their PPC landing pages end up in the search engine index.  If your landing pages have nearly identical content as each other or other pages of your website, they will potentially cause duplicate content penalties without you realizing.  Your website will not completely drop out of the search results, but those individual pages will waste resources (link authority, PageRank, crawl budget) that should go into other areas.  And, Google will remember that your website has useless duplicate pages, which affects your website’s overall profile.  Over the years Google has told us to disallow, redirect and apply canonical links to those pages.  Depending on how you address duplicate pages can hold back your potential for Google PageRank and high search engine rankings.

Check Google for your landing pages by searching…

site:yourwebsite.com/landingpage.php

A lot of times I find duplicate versions of the same landing page in Google or Bing, the only difference being different strings in the URL.  The URL may have some random looking string at the end such as ?src=W4THMJHWWZRP. Because these have different URLs, the search engines assume they are supposed to be different pages. They may have identical content with only slight differences. Unfortunately, search engines are penalizing you for duplicate content in the organic results.  You can turn this around to your advantage!

So the first thing you’re probably wondering is how do these pages find their way into the Google or Bing index?  You don’t have any links to them, they are complete islands, pages hosted on your server with no links from any part of your website.  So how does Google find them?

Easy… someone else landed on the page from your PPC ad and created a link to the page.

Here’s the proof.  Once you find a page in a search index using the “site” search above, check that page for backlinks. Go to Yahoo Site Explorer and enter the URL for the page. Make sure you click “Inlinks” and chose the drop down “Except from this domain”.  Here you will see other websites that link to that landing page.

How to Eliminate Duplicate Content Penalties

Some people would say to use your robots.txt file to disallow search engines from listing those pages in their results.  For a long time, this has been the standard way of addressing duplicate content.  However, there is always the potential for other websites to link to your landing pages.  Even if you don’t see back links in Yahoo Site Explorer, there may still be back links not shown (search engines just refuse to show you everything they know and there’s nothing we can do about it), you need to plan on the possibility of people creating links in the future.  Using the robots.txt to disallow a page with potential back links does not let you take advantage of potential back links.

How to Regain Unused Back Links

Every back link you have is one more that your competitor may not.  With organic search engine optimization, there are so many factors not under your control.  With all the competing websites each with their individual approach to outrank you, the only way to maximize your success is to make the best use of everything under your control.  You can’t force other websites to link to you.  If they do link to you, take credit for them all.

Instead of using robots.txt to disallow pages with potential back links, use the canonical tag.  The canonical tag can point the back link PageRank to a page intended for organic search engine ranking.

Implementing the canonical tag is something you can do right away with very little effort.

1. First figure out which landing pages would be considered duplicate content.  If you use the same content and only change out a keyword or two, those should be considered duplicates.
2. Next choose a page to represent the duplicates.  This will be your organic landing page.  It may be a page already on your website that your PPC landing pages are patterned after.  Or if your paid landing pages are written differently from any of your organic website, it may be one of your paid landing pages.  You may end up with several groups of duplicate pages where each group has its own representative organic page.
3. Place the canonical tag in the head section of each duplicate landing page.  The canonical tag on each landing page will point to its organic representative. Code for the canonical tag looks like this:

With the canonical tags in place, all your actual and potential back link authority is transferring to preferred organic landing pages.

Strategy to Build Organic Traffic Using Paid Search Landing Pages

As you have time, page by page, you can build out these duplicate pages into powerful organic search landing pages.  We will assume duplicate landing pages are targeting different paid search campaigns.  Content for these pages are slightly different in that they aim to convert a different audience, whether it be based on keyword search, geographic area, time of day, etc.  Let’s assume you did a great landing web page design which may follow this example from John Saddington at Church Create.

Your headlines and content above the fold should be customized for the specific audience.  Since this is slightly different from an existing organic landing page, we will optimize this page to target a variation of that existing page.  We will turn this marginally different page into a completely different page without affecting is as a paid landing page.  The areas we have to work with include:

1. Title tag
2. Meta description tag
3. Content below the fold

Define the theme of this page and choose your targeted keyword phrase(s).  Create an optimized title tag and description.  Make your keyword phrase(s) prominent in the title.  Gear your description to convert your target audience, but be sure to include your keyword phrases here too.

Below your current content, write out 200 or more words of optimized content.  Keep the code for this text simple.  200-400 words of text should not add noticeable load time to the page.  Human visitors may or may not scroll down to read the text, but search engines will definitely read it.  This should be highly optimized with excellent information geared toward or even about the target audience.  This text can be used to further qualify the audience. Talk about their interests and problems.  Break the text apart into paragraphs with H2 coded sub-headings.

Once your content is complete, remove the canonical tag and add this page to your sitemap.  Create links to this page from other pages of the site.  If appropriate, link to this page from your navigation.

Enjoy free traffic on this paid search landing page.  By tackling these pages one by one, you can make transforming your paid landing pages into organic landing pages a long term strategy.

The post Landing Pages, Not Just For PPC. Hello SEO. appeared first on Blend SEO.