SEO Tips and Essentials for 2013
Published on by: James H. Hobson
In 2012 Google's two algorithm bombshells were Panda and Penguin. There were numerous other algorithm changes to adjust and refine search results. Visit this link to see the major Google algorithm changes in 2012. As of this week they addeed the "Top Heavy" penalty and the "Exact Match Domain" penalty. Before 2013 arrives we strongly recommend that website owners make a critical assessment of all of their SEO practices for the past two years, and take a hard look at their SEO providers current understanding of best practices.
Out With The Old, In With The New
The Old: Outdated and Harmful SEO
There is a strong possibility that your company website has at least minor associations with outdated or harmful SEO practices. There are "gray hat SEO" practices that are now going to cause ranking losses, and other practices (of any shade) will lose their influence on search engine results pages (SERPs).
You have a very real problem if you have received a message from Google that is similar to the following:
"Dear site owner or webmaster of https://www._____________________/, We've detected that some of your site's pages may be using techniques that are outside Google's Webmaster Guidelines. Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes. We encourage you to make changes to your site so that it meets our quality guidelines. Once you've made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google's search results."
The fourth quarter of 2012 is a good time to make a top to bottom review of your site to do a comprehensive SEO overhaul. You definitely want to be proactive in avoiding search engine's algorithm based penalties, and certainly prevent manual actions taken by Google. Proactive website SEO maintenance can only help your site, and will almost certainly mitigate having a gut wrenching surprise drop in rankings.
The New: Ethical and Sustainable SEO
On-Page SEO things to look at are your page titles and descriptions which should be unique to each page, alt tags and title attributes which should be written to help the user and not for keyword stuffing, eliminate sitewide footer links, use a canonical meta tag, limit outbound links, keep ads below the fold on your pages, correct spelling errors, don't use h-tags in a spammy manner, make sure your page load times are ultra fast, use an XML site map, add Schema markup when applicable, eliminate low quality or near duplicate content pages, and focus on branding in your messaging.
There are very specific requirements, standards and implementation methods for all of the aforementioned items. Google searches for any of these topics will lead you to pages with more detailed information.
Another great way to get an evaluation of how well your website desginer has performed is to check your website for technical errors. Because things like the Google code for the +1 button and publisher attribute do not validate, your website probably will not validate.
Even with such unavoidable issues, your website should have no more than 6-8 errors or warnings. You should correct as many deficiencies as possible.
Stepping Up Your Game
You can make substantial forward progress by rebuilding your site as HTML5 complaint and get superb enhancements by utilizing CSS3 in your design. An HTML5 site with CSS3 delievrs better performance and alleviates some code deficiencies associated with older doc types. The really top tier website designers offer responsive website designs that resize to fit various browsers using a liquid or elastic layout. Can your web designer do this?
Related SEO Considerations
You need to have these tools in place and use them to improve your SEO efforts. Google Analytics provides key user metrics and can provide valuable insights on ways to improve your website. Webmaster Tools enables you to verify your site, confirm technical settings and manage your site within Google standards. If your current SEO provider has not done this for you it's time to find a new SEO company.
If you're uncertain about the state of your website's SEO feel free to leave a question or comment. We welcome phone inquiries about any SEO matters.
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