Simple SEO Fix: Robots.txt File

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The robots.txt file is a small text file that is placed on your website server that tells web crawlers like Googlebot or Bingbot if they should access a file or not. Improper usage of the robots.txt file can hurt your SEO ranking because the robots.txt file controls how search engine spiders see and interact with the pages on your website.

Do I have a robots.txt file?

You can check this from any browser. The robots.txt file is always located in the same place on every website, so it’s very easy to determine whether a site has one or not. Just add “/robots.txt” to the end of a domain name as shown below.

www.connect4consulting.com/robots.txt

If you have a file there, it is your robots.txt file. You will either find a file with words in it, a blank file, or no file at all.

Is your robots.txt file blocking important files?

When your developer creates your website, he or she will add code to the robots.txt file to make sure that it’s not indexed. This code is User-agent: * Disallow: /”.  If your robots.txt file says this, you won’t appear in Google’s organic search results.

What to do next:

  • If you see “Disallow: /”, talk to your developer immediately. There could be a good reason it’s set up that way, or it may be an oversight. If there’s content after the “Disallow: /”, then the robots.txt file could be set up correctly, but it warrants a discussion with your developer.
  • If you have a complex robots.txt file, like many ecommerce websites, you should review it line-by-line with your developer to make sure it’s correct.

How to add internal links to your website

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Adding internal links to your website is a critical part of SEO as well as improving usability on your website. This post will provide you with the best practices for adding internal links to your website. But before we start, it’s important that you already:

  • have written content – pages or blog posts – on your site.
  • are continuously creating new content. Getting into a regular publishing schedule is important in order for this technique to work effectively.

Link from content-heavy pages to other content-heavy pages

The best internal links are those that connect one article to another. This creates a strong internal linking structure deep within the site. If your website navigation is decent, you’ll have enough linking structure to the site’s main pages such as the homepage, the about page, the contact page, etc. You don’t need to link to these pages!

Create text links using anchor text

The best links use descriptive anchor text. What do I mean by descriptive anchor text? Anchor text is the word or words that are linked to another page.

Your internal links should use anchor text. But not – click here. Click here is not descriptive. It doesn’t tell the user what the click will do or where it will go. I recommend linking using phrases that describe what the target link is about. Here are some examples:

If I want to link to an article about raising sheep, I would do it this way:

If I wanted to link to an article about Google Hummingbird, I would do it this way:

In each of these examples, I’m associating the subject of the link target with relevant phrases.

Do not do these things when creating internal links

  • Do not try to create an exact match between the anchor text and the link target. This technique, known as “exact match anchor text” has been associated in the past with SEO penalties through the Penguin update.
  • Do not use phrases like “click here.” This adds no value.
  • Do not link more than one sentence. An entire hyperlinked paragraph is clunky and unsightly. It makes for a poor user experience. Just stick to a few words or a phrase.

Every time you write an article or blog post, link to four or more old posts.

When you write a new piece of content, you should link to old articles. If you can, try to add five links.

Why? Google likes sites with new content and uses that as part of its ranking algorithm. Links from new pages add new page value to older pages.

Update old blog posts with new internal links

You’ll get the largest boost from your internal links if you combine it with another easy SEO technique – updating old content. When you update old content, Google will scan it again, re-index it, and likely boost its ranking slightly. Here’s a good process to follow when updating old articles:

  • Add a new paragraph of content at the beginning, explaining the updates.
  • Add several new paragraphs throughout, adding additional or updated information.
  • And most importantly, add several new internal links to the content you’ve recently created.

Adding links in places where it’s logical and value-added

Look for areas in the content where the subject matter overlaps. These are logical points of connection to create an internal link.

Broken Backlinks

Make sure you don’t have broken backlinks. These can hurt the final outcome!

 

Use Internal Linking To Boost Your Site’s SEO

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Here is a step-by-step guide that you can use to boost your SEO using internal linking.

What is internal linking?

In case you need a quick overview of internal linking, here it is.

An internal link connects one page of your website to another page on your website.

Sounds pretty simple, right? Every website that has more than one page is connected in this way. It’s a simple issue of website design and website architecture.

Websites have an overall design and architecture that keeps them structured in a logical way, like this common model.

Most websites have a central home page, and branch out into multiple menus and subpages.

One common SEO technique among earlier websites was to organize content into silos, in an attempt to improve keyword presence for a particular keyword category. The silo organizational model was popular until recently. Many SEOs still follow the silo model, because it makes logical sense.

Internal linking can be much simpler! I’ll show you how to perform a simple internal linking method that I’ve created. First, though, it’s helpful to know why internal linking helps.

 

Why is internal linking important?

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Why is internal linking important?

Internal linking is one of the most valuable search engine optimization (SEO) tools.

Why? Because it works.

Google’s algorithm has come a long way since the early days of SEO when it was possible to game the system. Now it is nearly impossible to game the system.

However as advanced as the algorithm is, there are still simple things that you can do that will give you an immediate boost in SEO.

Internal linking is one of them. It’s not a trick or a gimmick, and it’s certainly not hard to do.

Here are some of the benefits of internal linking:

  • internal linking improves the indexation of your website – if your website has strong internal linking, it’s easier for Google’s web crawler to find new content that you publish and link to. If your content is woven together with multiple internal links, Google’s web crawler can get to your new content faster and therefore index your site faster.
  • internal linking increases the backlink earning potential of deep content pages – if you look at where most of your website’s backlinks are coming from, you will see that most come from your home page. What you want to do is create more back links from pages deeper within your site. If you create a strong internal linking structure, you can boost the link earning potential of the internal pages by creating clear click paths throughout your website.
  • internal linking spreads the strength of the site to internal pages – when your website receives a link to the homepage, some of the value of that link is passed on to your internal pages.
  • internal linking with anchor text adds content value to an electronic signal – an internal link is a simple piece of HTML code that links one web page to another. When you create an internal link with anchor text as opposed to an image or navigational text, the value of the internal link increases. Anchor text improves the value of the link by adding keywords an content to the linking process. Just make sure that your anchor text is related to the link.
  • internal linking provides value for your website user – internal linking is an SEO technique but this is perhaps the most important point. Internal linking makes it easier for your website visitor to explore your content.

Not ranking for your brand name? Easy SEO Fix

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Search Engine Optimization can get highly technical and complex quickly, but there are also easy SEO fixes. So before anyone convinces you to tackle an SEO list a mile long, ask the simple question:

Am I ranking for my brand name?

If the answer is no, then this needs to be the very first item you optimize on your website. After all, how will anyone find you if you they can’t even search for your business name?

What to do? Type site:yoursite.com into your google search engine and you’ll immediately see how many pages on your site are being indexed by Google.

site:connect4consulting.com

Connect4 Consulting is ranking for 1,350 results. Looks like all of our blog posts are working well for our brand name ranking.

What to ask:

  • Is that amount the number of results we are expecting to rank?
  • Are there pages in the index that we don’t want ranked?
  • Are there pages that should be appearing that aren’t ranked or indexed?

What to do next:

  • Do another search and and check different groups of pages on your site and see if they are ranking as well.
  • Check and see if subdomains are indexing.
  • Check old versions of your site and see if they are ranking instead of, or in addition to, your new version.
  • Look out for spam – a good indicator if your site was hacked – you could have spam that is on your site and also indexed by Google.
  • Figure out what’s causing all of the indexing problems and then optimize your site for better SEO results.

 

 

 

How to Use Long Tail Keywords in Headlines

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According to Worldometers, every day we are inundated with more than 2 million blog posts and 200 billion emails. No matter what you are writing – blog posts, emails, online ads, or anything else – the headline is a crucial element. How do you get people to stop and read what you write when there’s so much competing content? If you get the headline right, you will probably be positioned at the top of the search results pages. A truly great headline might even prompt people to respond and share your article. Keyword-rich headlines will improve your website rankings and increase engagement with your audience. Your target audience is looking for blog posts that will solve their problems and address the keywords they typed into Google’s search box.

Follow this 3-Step Process for Using Long Tail Keywords in Your Headlines

First Step: Research and choose long-tail search terms.

Let’s stay with Google AdWords Keywords Planner for our example.

On the dashboard, type in your main keyword phrase (e.g., start small business) and click the “Get Ideas” button.

You can see the long-tail keywords that we’ll integrate into our blog post headlines:

starting a small business checklist
best small business to start
steps to starting a small business
help starting a small business

Second step: Model popular and viral headlines.

You can’t just pick long-tail key phrases. You also have to identify viral content specific to your industry, learn from it, and then improve upon it.

When you find headlines that have been shared thousands of times on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc., it means that you can get great results, too. All you have to do is study them and incorporate the underlying strategies into your own content.

How do you find these viral blog post headlines?

Visit BuzzSumo, input your main keyword (i.e., start small business), and click the “search” button.

The two viral headlines are:

5 Simple Ways to Start a Small Business ~ 102,658 Facebook shares
6 Things I Wish Somebody Had Told Me When I Started My Small Business

Third step: Create your headlines using the viral headlines as a model:

Original Headline: 5 Simple Ways to Start a Small Business

Keyword phrase to integrate: steps to starting a small business

Unique and keyword-rich blog post headline based on the model:

7 Steps to Starting a Small Business and Growing It
3 Simple Steps to Start a Small Business That You’ll Love

When I find a headline that makes me click, I’ll copy it, study it, and create a unique and better one.

SEO is not about ranking first

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SEO is no longer about getting your business name in the top search results. I know this will come across as a shock to many people outside of the SEO industry, but think about your user experience with Google. It’s interesting because our SEO expectations are out of alignment with reality. First of all the way we search now is very different from the way we searched a few years back.

We don’t just type tennis shoes into the search bar. Many of us ask a longer type of question. Some of us don’t even use a search engine or browser to ask the question. We use Siri or one of Siri’s sisters instead.

Let’s take a look at a few searches. I searched for tennis shoes and you’ll see that there are 18.3 million results. On the first page Google shows me a list of stores that sell tennis shoes and then a map with local places that sell tennis shoes.

 

Then I searched using a longer tail keyword “law firms in dc” and still find that many of DC’s top law firms are not on the first page of the search engine results.

 

So maybe you’re wondering if it’s even possible to rank on the first page of the Google search results? If you’re committed to finding the right long tail keywords, you can definitely rank on the first page of Google. To be completely transparent, you won’t rank for the term “IBM” or “Yahoo” anytime soon. Those are head terms, not long-tail keywords. They are also trademarked, talked about, and dominated by large and established businesses.

Check out this great Quick Sprout post that explains how to rank on a first page of search results for long tail keywords.

SEO – Optimizing On-Page Content and Generating Backlinks

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A well-optimized webpage can keep sending high quality traffic to your online presence years after it was first published. A web page that is search engine optimized is like a little worker bee. However this also means that your SEO work is never done. SEO should be an ongoing process. Web pages can always be better optimized and they should be refreshed to reflect changes in keyword strategy or to adapt to changes in Google’s SERP strategy – and Google is constantly changing SERP priorities.

Start With On-Page SEO

You have the most control over your on-page SEO. You can start by analyzing what you currently have going on. If it’s been a while since you took a look at your keyword list, time for a fresh look. Perhaps your constituents were previously most concerned with improving their professional certification and credentials. But now maybe they may have greater concerns about their options for climate change. One approach is to take a close look at what new issues people may be emailing you about. What are your people talking about on social media? Find out what new questions and concerns they have. Are they asking similar questions but in different ways.

Brainstorm a new list of keywords based on what you learn. Use the keyword list to refresh existing content and build a new topic list. Then start publishing content that reflects your potential constituents’ new priorities.

A second way to do some ground analysis is to grade your website’s current SEO status. HubSpot’s Website Grader will point out some quick wins and areas that need further development. If your pages load slowly, or your site isn’t optimized for mobile, the Grader will let you know. It will also provide some direct SEO tips where it thinks a page is falling short.

Google constantly changes its SEO algorithm and tag properties. Google recently pushed organic results further down the page by inserting a fourth paid ad spot. Google also expanded the character count for titles and meta descriptions. You may want to rework all (or just some) of your organization’s webpage titles and meta description tags to keep up with the changes.

Also review pages to ensure they’re optimized around one choice keyword, and that all your possible tags and headings are SEO-optimized. Do your blog posts tend to be long stretches of text? Write keyword optimized headers (and tag them appropriately — H1, H2, etc.) for a collection of your most relevant posts. Google reads images – do you have alt-text for all of your images? (BTW – did you know that alt-text for images is used by voice recognition systems for reading aloud your pages. As hands-free laws are becoming more strictly enforced, this tag will become important as people rely more on “Siri” and her counterparts to read your organization’s webpages to them while driving, etc.)

Off-Page Backlinks

Backlinks – links from an outside website to your website – validate your website’s authority and are critical for SEO. You can put social sharing icons on all your pages to help people link to your site, but if you want to take your backlink SEO strategy to the next level, you have to get proactive.

Try including some context-specific sharing Call To Action by your social icons. If you have a blog post reviewing popular professional resources that members of your trade organization might use, you can add copy at the end of the post that specifically encourages your colleagues to share this list with their colleagues. “Share this on Facebook:  Fellow CPAs – heads up! Get the new Guide to financial services standards [yourURL]. Will bring in new clients!”

You could also set up an influencer program. Influencers are people who regularly share content to people who fit your target market. You can start your search for influencers at home by looking at your constituents, board members, and corporate partners to find people with some social media traction.

Make sure you don’t overlook people who aren’t yet part of your organization’s family, such as bloggers who write about your industry and relevant online publications. Do some social media research to find bloggers and sites that are also using your keywords or talking about the same issues as your organization.

Reach out to them individually. See if they’ll write a post for you, or interview one of your association’s executives on a hot topic, or write a review on a piece of your organization’s content that would be of particular interest to them. Many online publications are starving for new content. They’re always on the lookout for posts or new content for their sites.

Are you getting into video yet? Video has begun as the next major shift in online consuming habits. Start your YouTube channel with whatever video content you already have: talks at events, constituent testimonials, education videos. Like a blog post, each video has its own set of SEO tags you can use so it gets found. Each video is also another source to link back to your website or blog. Videos are also highly shareable, which means other people will be generating back links for you as well.

Strive for SEO Success

The key is to never be content. With constantly changing constituents and Google’s equally constant adjustments to search results parameters, you can always find ways to build on your past SEO success.

SEO Tactics That Are No Longer Effective

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SEO is a constantly changing field. What worked on Friday might not even work on Monday! Here are a few SEO tactics that are no longer effective. If you’re considering hiring someone to optimize your website, these SEO tactics should be red flags.

1. Keywords before clicks
2. Heavy use of anchor text on internal links
3. Pages for every keyword variant
4. Directories, paid links, etc.
5. Multiple microsites, separate domains
6. Exact and partial keyword match domains

Keywords before clicks

This used to be called keyword stuffing. You would do your keyword research and then plaster keywords all over your page to get clicks for those keywords. The downside to this approach is that it rarely yielded any conversions because visitors left those web pages immediately upon arrival. Web pages stuffed with keywords are nonsensical gibberish. Don’t do this or risk being penalized by Google.

Heavy use of anchor text on internal links

This is another SEO tactic that risks a Google penalty. In this case, I would suggest that if the internal link is in the navigation, the footer, sidebar, or inside content, and if it’s relevant and well-written and flows well, has high usability, you are safe. However, if it’s sketchy in any way, avoid this SEO tactic at all costs.

Pages for every keyword variant

This is an SEO tactic that many people are still pursuing today but has been ineffective for a long time. The idea was basically that every variation of a keyword should have its own page. It makes far greater sense to focus your energy on creating great content and trying to use the keywords intelligently within the content, the headline, the title, or the meta description.

Directories and paid links

Every single one of these link building, link acquisition techniques that I’m about to mention has either been directly penalized by Google or penalized as part of an update, or we’ve seen sites get hit hard for doing it. This is dangerous stuff, and you want to stay away from all of these at this point.

Avoid all of the following:
• Link directories
• Paid link directories
• Article links
• Comment links
• Reciprocal link pages
• Fiverr or forum link buys
• Private link networks
• Article spinners
• Social link buys
• $99 SEO link packages

Multiple microsites, separate domains with the same audience or topic target

This used to be very common SEO. You would split up content into multiple microsites, often with separate domains like virginiamovingcompany.com and vamovingcompany.com and va-md-dcmovingcompany.com and use the same content for all three domains. The problem is that Google penalizes for duplicate content and linking between sites. Plus there’s a huge additional cost to maintaining and managing all these extra sites and domains.

Exact and partial keyword match domain names

Basically keyword match domains names look sketchy and spammy and usually are. You’ll still find tons of examples online – http://www.truckaccidentattorneysroundtable.com/, for example.
The types of domain names that don’t sound like real brands are actually going to draw clicks away from you and towards your competitors who sound more credible, more competent, and more branded. For that reason alone, you should avoid them.
But also these types of domains do much more poorly with link earning, with content marketing, with being able to have guest content accepted. People don’t trust it. The same is true for public relations and getting press mentions. The press doesn’t trust sites like these.

SEO Tactics That Are No Longer Effective

/in /by

SEO is a constantly changing field. What worked on Friday might not even work on Monday! Here are a few SEO tactics that are no longer effective. If you’re considering hiring someone to optimize your website, these SEO tactics should be red flags.

1. Keywords before clicks
2. Heavy use of anchor text on internal links
3. Pages for every keyword variant
4. Directories, paid links, etc.
5. Multiple microsites, separate domains
6. Exact and partial keyword match domains

Keywords before clicks

This used to be called keyword stuffing. You would do your keyword research and then plaster keywords all over your page to get clicks for those keywords. The downside to this approach is that it rarely yielded any conversions because visitors left those web pages immediately upon arrival. Web pages stuffed with keywords are nonsensical gibberish. Don’t do this or risk being penalized by Google.

Heavy use of anchor text on internal links

This is another SEO tactic that risks a Google penalty. In this case, I would suggest that if the internal link is in the navigation, the footer, sidebar, or inside content, and if it’s relevant and well-written and flows well, has high usability, you are safe. However, if it’s sketchy in any way, avoid this SEO tactic at all costs.

Pages for every keyword variant

This is an SEO tactic that many people are still pursuing today but has been ineffective for a long time. The idea was basically that every variation of a keyword should have its own page. It makes far greater sense to focus your energy on creating great content and trying to use the keywords intelligently within the content, the headline, the title, or the meta description.

Directories and paid links

Every single one of these link building, link acquisition techniques that I’m about to mention has either been directly penalized by Google or penalized as part of an update, or we’ve seen sites get hit hard for doing it. This is dangerous stuff, and you want to stay away from all of these at this point.

Avoid all of the following:
• Link directories
• Paid link directories
• Article links
• Comment links
• Reciprocal link pages
• Fiverr or forum link buys
• Private link networks
• Article spinners
• Social link buys
• $99 SEO link packages

Multiple microsites, separate domains with the same audience or topic target

This used to be very common SEO. You would split up content into multiple microsites, often with separate domains like virginiamovingcompany.com and vamovingcompany.com and va-md-dcmovingcompany.com and use the same content for all three domains. The problem is that Google penalizes for duplicate content and linking between sites. Plus there’s a huge additional cost to maintaining and managing all these extra sites and domains.

Exact and partial keyword match domain names

Basically keyword match domains names look sketchy and spammy and usually are. You’ll still find tons of examples online – http://www.truckaccidentattorneysroundtable.com/, for example.
The types of domain names that don’t sound like real brands are actually going to draw clicks away from you and towards your competitors who sound more credible, more competent, and more branded. For that reason alone, you should avoid them.
But also these types of domains do much more poorly with link earning, with content marketing, with being able to have guest content accepted. People don’t trust it. The same is true for public relations and getting press mentions. The press doesn’t trust sites like these.