How to Make Your Face Show Up Beside Your Google Search Results

Wherein we expose the voodoo of making your picture show up next to your Google Search results, which can increase your click through rate 150%

Have you noticed lately that Google has begun showing some people’s pictures next to search results? This is known as a “rich snippet” and it’s basically cheating at search engines. Everyone who has a blog and cares about their Google search rank should make this happen, so without further ado, here’s how to make your photo show up next to your search result in Google, and how to test to make sure that you’ve configured everything right. But first, why is having your image show up with your results important?

Benefits of Having Your Photo Show up Beside Google Search Results

Internet marketers know all about the effect a smiling face can have on first impressions and sales conversions. Seeing a human image increases warmth and trust, and generates a better first impression than the same content without a picture. Faces are fascinating, and the effect holds true regardless of the forum. Since people spend mere seconds skimming search results before they click on one, a picture could make the difference between being clicked on or passed over. This is even moreso the case because search engine results are all so competitive and similar, and very few results contain images compared to those that don’t. This is definitely a train worth getting on early!
Having your picture display beside your Google search result will:

• Catch attention
• Increase authority and trust
• Establish a sense of connection between you and your reader
• Humanize your site, which is important in the age of social media

The Real Reason to Use Google+

Google+ was the best thing ever until you finished dragging half the people you’ve ever known into circles, and then you pretty much forgot about it. I’d bet that’s been the life cycle for most users thus far, but I’d also bet that’s about to change. The fact is that Google+ has more impact on Google search results than any other social media platform, and Google is reminding us of this by putting images next to search results when people’s Google+ profiles are linked to their blog. This is Google’s way of urging content creators to use their proprietary social networking platform: you share your content via Google+, we’ll reward you with SEO benefits no other network can provide. Sounds like a good deal to me, and that’s the pretty much the only reason I’ve started using it. If search rank is important to you, I suggest you do as well.

How to Make Your Picture Show up Next to Your Search Results

There are two ways to make this work, one requires having an email @ the same domain that you want your images to show up beside. The other requires a bit of coding or using a plugin in the case of WordPress. You can do all the steps and it’ll probably work better/ faster, but I’m a perfectionist.

How To: If You Have an Email @YourDomain

1. Go to your Google+ profile. If you don’t have one, create one.
2. Make sure that at least one of the emails you list in your profile is from the domain that you want your picture to show up next to the results of. In the case of my website, that’s @fnfweb.com. (If you don’t have an email from your own domain already, you can get one from your host or Google Apps.)
3. Make sure your email is verified. You’ll know that’s the case when a check mark shows up beside the email, as shown in the upper right screencap.
4. Officially link your Google+ profile to the content you create by clicking here and entering the same email you just added to your profile.
5. Go to your Google+ profile and make sure your website is showing up in the “Contributor to” section (step 4 should have done this automatically). If it’s not showing up, add it manually.

How To: If You Do NOT Have an Email @YourDomain, and/or Have a Compulsion to be Thorough

If you’re using WordPress, there are plugins that you can use to do the following steps for you, such as the wonderful Yoast SEO plugin. If you’re not using WordPress or would rather hard code it, continue on.
1. Go to your website and add a link to your Google+ profile using the rel=author tag. The code is below, so no need to get intimidated. Just replace [profile_url] with your own Google+ profile link and add your name after the + sign. There’s some debate as to if you need the +sign and your name, but rumor has it Google likes it to be formatted that way.

<a href="[profile_url]?rel=author">+Your Name</a>

The finished code will look something like this:

<a href="https://plus.google.com/u/0/114348963186279690859/?rel=author">+Kaitlin Reeves</a>

This code can be put anywhere on the site, such as your bio page where you list your social networks or in the footer. It can also be pushed through the header, which is how the plugins tend to do it.

2. Add a reciprocal link from your Google+ profile to the website you just added the link to (if you haven’t already). Edit your profile and add to the “Contributor to” section. Click “Add custom link” and then enter the website URL.

Tips, Tricks and Words to the Wise

• Your profile Google +1′s must be publicly visible for getting your picture beside your results to work.
• Google says that you must have a clear and visible headshot as your Google+ default photo, and it seems pretty well enforced at this point because I haven’t seen logos, LOLcats or genitals displayed beside any search results yet.
• I suggest posting links to your posts from your Google+ profile as status updates. Basically, the more interplay you can provide from your website to Google+ and back will make this work better and faster. Think of it as hot ouroborotic Google+/ your website action.

How Long Does it Take Before it Works?

Rumor has it that it takes 5-7 days to start working, but it really depends on how often Google crawls your site and perhaps other factors. You can use Google’s structured data testing tool and enter your URL to see if Google is picking up your authorship information, and doing so relatively immediately after setting everything up might help put it on Google’s radar faster. If you don’t see your image by your results after running your site link, then the configuration hasn’t been done right. If you do see the image, then it’s just a matter of time before it starts showing up in search results. It’s worth mentioning here that Google does not guarantee to show your image, and that they may stop doing this at any time. This is “experimental” for them, but I think it’s a good move and will get a lot of the content creators pushing Google+ more.

10 Dead Simple Tips to Take Advantage of Google+ for SEO

It's no secret. When engineers built Google+, they constructed an SEO juggernaut to dominate search results above all other social platforms. Although Facebook and Twitter are essential to marketing efforts, both restrict Google from accessing much of their data. This limits their SEO effectiveness.
Not so with Google+.
Here’s an experiment: If you use Google+, perform a search for your name and check the domain distribution of first 100 results. The graph below shows what happens when searching my own name.

Even though I use Twitter and Facebook far more often, Google+ dominates the search results. Google+ even beats SEOmoz and my own blog. Multiply this for 100's of millions of people, and you can begin to comprehend the scope of Google's platform.
Fortunately, there are several ways to take advantage of this SEO domination for your own benefit.

1. Follow your profile links

Consider this: at SEOmoz you must earn 200 Mozpoints before earning a followed profile link (submit good comments!) On the other hand, Google+ not only allows you to link to your other profiles across the web, but you can embed followed links directly into your bio with the anchor text of your choice.

The value of a link from Google+ is, in theory, like any other. It depends on the authority of both the page and domain. My own profile shows the following metrics:

• MozRank: 1.91
• PageAuthority: 49
• PageRank: 3

If you can raise your visibility by getting more people to engage with you, share your posts, or link directly to your profile, the more valuable your profile links become.

2. Embed post links

Like profile links, Google+ also allows you to insert followed links directly into your posts – as many as you want. Simply insert the full URL and Google will automatically format it as a link.
The value of these links increases the number of times the post is shared, linked to and +1’ed.
For example, check out this one sentence post from Alexia Tsotsis, which has a PageRank of 3 and is cached by Google every couple of weeks. (Even though PageRank is not highly correlated with rankings, for Google+ it’s often the only metric available.)

If your post goes viral or is reshared by high-authority profiles, the value of those links increases.

3. Optimize your G+ title tags

The first sentence of your Google+ post becomes part of the title tag, which is highly correlated with rankings and greatly influences click-through rates. Choose your keywords carefully and consider that the first sentence will be the first thing most people see.
Check out how this simple post from Danny Sullivan ranks for its title.

A widely shared post with a good title has an excellent chance of ranking for its given keywords.

4. Unlimited editing power

Google+ is just like your own mini personal blogging platform. This means you can fully edit any of your posts at any time. Not so with Facebook or Twitter. Facebook gives you only limited editing abilities. Twitter, after you tweet, only lets you delete.
This is important if your Google+ post goes viral and you want to make updates or changes. If need be, you can also update the title tag and any attached media as well.
You may not own the platform, but Google+ gives you a broad amount of control over your own content.

5. Index new content lightning fast

If you share new content on Google+, chances are that Google will index the page very quickly.
Rumor has it that new URLs are crawled almost instantly. This makes complete sense as part of the purpose of Google+ was to replace Twitter when creating Google's Realtime Search.
In the old days, if you wanted a website indexed you filled out a webform and waited several weeks. Today, it's as simple as pressing a +1 button.

“Google+ is the new Google Submit URL box.”
- Rand Fishkin, GROW 2012 Source

Share your new content on Google+, as well as your other social networks, for quick indexation.

6. Stalk Connect with influencers

Google+ lists 17 different notification triggers that can help you connect with influencers in your industry.
Depending on the individual's account settings, these notifications can take the form of an email, phone SMS, or the omnipresent red Google notification bar.

17 actions that trigger notifications:

1. Mention them in a post 
2. Share a post with them directly 
3. Share a post and you're in a circle they subscribe to 
4. Comment on a post they created 
5. Comment on a post after they comment on it 
6. Add them to a circle 
7. Suggest new people to add to their circles 
8. Tag them in a photo 
9. Tag one of their photos 
10. Suggest a profile photo for them
11. Comment on a photo after they comment on it 
12. Comment on a photo they are tagged in 
13. Comment on a photo they tagged 
14. Start a conversation with them
15. Send them an invitation or update an event
16. Remind them about events
17. Any activity on events they created 

Several folks have introduced themselves to me on Google+ by "gently" using the methods above.
Be warned: the few who crossed the line into spamminess have been banned from several inboxes forever.

7. Optimize your author pic for more traffic

Last spring, I performed a series of tests with my Google+ author photo that led to an increase in the click-though rate for my websites.

If you successfully implement the author tag and have a catchy photo, it often doesn't matter if you rank 2nd, 3rd or even 4th. With an eye-catching pic you can often grab free traffic away from even your competitor's #1 ranking.

8. Test drive a G+ social media dashboard

Google Analytics has progressed greatly with social media reporting, but if you live and die by social traffic you want to bring the information front and center.
Adam Singer created an awesome social media dashboard that you can use for free. At one glance you can view all your essential metrics from Google+ traffic and all other social networks including:

• On Site Social Actions, i.e. Google +1's
• Revenue per Visit by Social Network
• Overall Traffic Stats by Social Source

Bonus: Install this dashboard for free in your Google Analytics account by clicking here.

9. Check your CircleRank

My favorite new tool is CircleCount. Try it now by pasting in your Google+ URL to chart your daily follower growth, the virality of your posts, and even see your "CircleRank" score compared against all other Google+ profiles.

CircleRanks of note:

• Rand Fishkin: 2,214
• Barack Obama: 43
• Brittany Spears: 1

The election is over. Brittany won.

10. Be an awesome (Late) early adopter

Even with it's explosive growth, only 1 in 4 people use Google+ once a month. The rest log in even less, although this number is growing fast.
None of these tips matter unless you actually use Google+. Out of the 400 folks I've circled in my Google+, only about 75 actively participate. No surprise, these tend to be the more savvy SEO and media types.
There's still time. Folks are catching on. Yes, early adopters win the day.
You can do Google+ in less than 10 minutes a day. This means creating a few simple habits to fit it into your workflow.

• Press the +1 button to spread share worthy comment
• ...  add comments on the truly great stuff
• Add +1 Buttons on Your Own Content
• Engage / Comment / Reshare / Start a Hangout / Create an Event
• Circle Great People
• Make it Easy for People to Circle You...

How to set up Google Authorship and get your photo in search results

There are a lot of tutorials out there on how to set up Google Authorship but I thought I’d run over it in this post quickly to save you looking around. I’ve done a video version and a written out version below.

To get your face in the Google search results you need:

1. A Google+ account
2. A snippet of code added to your blog/posts that you author.
3. A link on your Google+ profile back to that blog/those posts.

So you start by getting a Google+ account if you haven’t done so already. Just go here to get started and make sure you think carefully about which email/Google Account that you use as it will be connected to your emails, YouTube Channel, analytics, etc.
Once you’ve done that go to your blog and open up the code for your About page. You need to add a special link back to your Google+ profile from your About page. Actually, it’s just a regular link but with a special element.
The link should look like this:
<a href=”http://YourGoogle+ProfileAddress” rel=”author”>Google +</a> It is really important that you include the re=”author” part of the code as that is what tells Google that you are the author of that content.
Once you’ve done that, head back to your Google+ account and go the the Profile section.
Click Edit Profile and go to the About tab.
Scroll down until you find the Other Profiles are and then Add a Custom Link back to the page where you just added the special author link.
That’s it! After a few days or weeks you should start to see your face appearing in the search results. You can check my Profile to see what it should look like.
If you’ve authored articles in many places you can repeat the process and add links back to the other sites under Contributor To.

Google SEO Methodology - A Step by Step Guide

We have developed a simple search engine optimization methodology that you can use to optimize a page on your site for a single keyword phrase in Google. We have broken it up into 3 distinct phases: on-page SEO, internal off-page SEO, and then external off-page SEO.
Before you can begin the SEO process for a keyword, you must first select the landing page you hope will rank for the phrase. In most instances, the best landing page to select for Google can be found with the following query: site:example.com keyword phrase. This will show you what page from your site Google considers to be the most relevant for the keyword. If you decide to create a brand new page for the targeted phrase, then you should utilize the keyword in the filename. Once you have selected the landing page you can then begin the following search engine optimization process.

Phase 1 – Optimize your Landing Page (On-Page SEO)

1. Use keyword phrase in the Title tag. Phrase should end within first 70 characters.
2. Use keyword phrase in Meta Description. Phrase should end within first 156 characters.
3. Use keyword phrase in <h1> tag if there is one.
4. The keyword phrase should be used in the page's text-based body content at least twice. On pages more than 500 words in length, make sure that keyword density is at least 1.5% (but no more than 6 or 7%). Keyword usage should be evenly distributed throughout the page.

Phase 2 – Internal Off-Page SEO

1. Identify additional pages on your site that can also be optimized for targeted keyword phrase.
2. Once the support page(s) has been identified, maximize the link relevance passed on to the landing page by: a) using the keyword phrase in page Title and Meta Description, b) using the keyword phrase in non-hyperlinked body content, and c) hyperlinking one instance of the keyword phrase to the intended landing page.
3. Maximize the number of optimal internal links to your landing page. Vary the anchor text going to your landing page by using slight variations of the keyword phrase (e.g. singular/plural, synonyms, long-tail variations, etc.)
4. This phase can be extended by creating more pages support the landing page. But unless you have significantly fewer pages than your competition, then you would probably be better served to move on to Phase 3.

Phase 3 – External Off-Page SEO (Link Building)

After you have optimized as many of your pages as possible and linked them to your landing page, you should then move on to external link building. There is no simple step-by-step process for this phase. You will have to determine how to make your content more linkable so that you can develop links naturally. You should also research your competition to find the most relevant links to your landing page. Keep the following guidelines in mind as you try to build external links for Google search engine optimization:

• Always seek quality instead of quantity. Focus on finding pages that are relevant for your targeted keyword.
• The optimal link from a 3rd party site is the same as an optimal link from one of your own pages. The targeted keyword phrase will ideally be in the Title and Meta Description, body content and the linking anchor text.
• Avoid site-wide (i.e. global, run-of-site) links in all circumstances. This is an especially important guideline if the site is not keyword-relevant. Your landing page will more than likely get filtered for the targeted keyword unless you have high quality links to legitimize the relevancy.
• Brainstorm link bait or link magnet ideas so that inbound links will hopefully develop naturally.
• Unfortunately, the most relevant links are only attainable by providing an incentive to the site owners. Advertising relationships, partnerships and bartering possibilities should be explored to obtain the most valuable links.
• Do not pay for a link from a non-relevant site unless it has significant traffic potential.

SEO for Mobile Site

SEO for Your Mobile Sites

As the world moves towards mobility optimizing your website for desktop search engines is no more sufficient. Note mobile search engines are different from desktop search engines hence the search results will be much different in your smart phones than what you see in your personal computers. If you are new to mobility here are the basics steps what you need:

• How to Create a Mobile Site?
• How does a desktop site converted to a Mobile Site?
• What are the Mobile Site Builders available?
• How to monetize a Mobile Site?
• How to create a Mobile App for my site?
• What are the Mobile App Builders available? And Finally:
• How to optimize a mobile site for search engines? – Which we will discuss in this article.

Indexing Your Mobile Site in Search Engines

Once you setup a redirect in your desktop site to guide the users to your mobile site when viewed from mobile devices, the next important thing you need to do is to check whether your site is indexed in mobile search engines or not. Use “site:yoursitename” in any mobile device and make sure your all your site’s pages are indexed in the search engines. If your site is not indexed then probably your site may have one of the below issues:

• Mobile Crawlers not finding your site:

Search engine’s mobile crawlers need to crawl your site before index your pages in the search data base. If your site is new then you can use your webmaster tools account to check the issues in crawling your mobile site. Here is the way to check your Mobile Sitemap and Robots.txt file is accessible by crawlers or not. Login to your Google Webmaster Tools account and go to Health>Blocked URLs. As shown in the picture enter your site’s URL, select the Googlebot-mobile and then press on the “Test” button. 

Sitemap and Robots.txt Analysis For Your Mobile Site

The result will show you whether valid sitemap is detected by Google and what are the pages blocked by your robots.txt file.

• Submit Your Mobile Sitemap:

Create your mobile sitemap and submit to search engines using webmaster tools account. This will help the mobile-bots to understand your mobile content and crawl easily.

• Access issue for mobile-bots:

Your mobile site may stop the bots accessing your pages due to the reason that the mobile user-agent is not included in your site. Make sure your site is included with the mobile user agents (Googlebot-Mobile for Google) so that the mobile-bots are allowed to access your pages without any issues.

Make sure your mobile URLs are identifiable

After mobile-bots crawled your pages the next step is that mobile-bots verify your URLs are compatible with mobile devices. If your URLs are not compatible then search engines will ignore them without indexing. The important criteria for URL validation is the declaration of Document Type Definition (DTD) in your mobile site. Ensure DTD declaration in your site is using correct mobile setup like XHTML or cHTML.

Document Type Definition for Your Mobile Site

Setup Your Mobile Redirect properly

Once you are ready with a mobile site the important point is to setup a redirect in your desktop site. This redirect will guide the users to take to your mobile site when viewed from a mobile device as well as inform the search engines the corresponding mobile URLs of your desktop pages. Two more additional points are to be considered here when guiding your mobile users:

1. Ensure your pages are equivalently matched in both desktop and mobile version. For example redirecting one of your desktop page contains particular product information to a home page of your mobile site is considered by the search engines as against the mobile webmaster guidelines.
2. Provide your desktop site’s URL in mobile site and vice versa to ensure the navigation of one site to another. This is especially useful when your mobile site does provide all the information from your desktop site due to the size.

Same URL for desktop and Mobile Site

Some of the hosting services offer same URL for your desktop as well as mobile site. (For example – Weebly offers same URL as of now). In this case switching between mobile and desktop are controlled by the user-agent. Check your site in various mobile devices to make sure the design is working in all the devices otherwise you may need to choose appropriate mobile site builders like Dudamobile.

Cloaking

Cloaking is to show different content to search engine bots and the users in order to increase site ranking in the search.  Cloaking is considered as a severe violation from webmaster’s guidelines by the search engines and as a result your site will disappear from the search results. So whether you are using same URL or different URLs for mobile and desktop sites make sure the redirects are appropriately set and the pages are showing relevant content. 

It is absolutely fine to have different content in your mobile and desktop sites due to various reasons but the redirects should lead the users and the search engine bots to appropriate pages.

Dos and Don'ts with Your Mobile Site

Dos Design your mobile content effectively to help the search engines and users to navigate easily. Setup and test your redirects in various mobile devices. Submit mobile sitemap in your webmaster tools account. Make sure mobile URLs are accessible by mobile-bots. Use correct DTD.

Don'ts Avoid cloaking. Congested mobile site stuffed with content.

Content By webnots.com

SEO for Site Promotion

Promoting Your Website in Right Ways

Link building is an important part of website promotion as the sites with more external links are placed top in the search engines results page. Though people interested in your content automatically will link to your pages, this is always not guaranteed even for the very best content. Hence every webmaster needs to promote their site a bit in order to make it popular and to reach the interesting people in the world. Here we discuss simple and search engine friendly promotion methods to get more traffic to your site. Note over doing any of these promotion methods will result your site is being marked as webspam by search engines.

1. Use Your Blog

You can maintain a simple blog to announce a new product addition or new event in your primary site. The advantage of announcing it in a blog is that the blog feed can be made available through various feed readers and interested people can subscribe to your blog and start following your content.

2. Social Media

Social media is actually more powerful than an organic search and every social media companies want to bring their own search engine to the market. This makes a social promotion bit difficult for webmasters since major search engines like Google don’t prefer social traffic from their competitors like Facebook. For example if you are using AdSense ads in your site then you may be banned if few repeat clicks are recorded from social media traffic. Hence it is up to site owners to decide whether to go for a social media traffic or strict to other promotion methods like blog announcements, forum posting and offline promotions.

3. Offline Promotion methods

Offline promotion methods help the user to get your latest content update without visiting your site every time. This includes email subscription, sending newsletter and using business cards.

Site Promotion Methods

4. Using Forums

Another important and easy promotion method is to find out the same interested communities that of your site and start sharing and receiving updates related to your content. This is as effective as organic searches since only the interested webmasters will be communicating with you and read your content. Find related forums of your site and start post your popular contents in the forums and build your community step by step.   

Analysis Tools for Webmasters

It is not sufficient to just promote your site, every webmasters need to analyze their site traffic to make sure the promotion is working in a proper manner. Following are the site analysis tools freely available for webmasters:

1. Webmaster Tools
Every search engine offers free Webmaster Tools account to analyze the site for various parameters as listed. Learn more about Webmaster Tools Here.

• What are the keywords bring traffic to your site
• Top landing pages in your site
• To find out crawling errors 
• Submit sitemap and blog feed

If you wonder why your site does not appear in the searches without any valid reason, you can raise a Reconsideration request in Google Webmaster Tools account to get a review of your site from Google.  

2. Google Analytics
Analytics is the foremost tool offers each and every part of your sites performance. You can easily monitor the results of your site promotion and adjust your activities accordingly. For example you can find landing and leaving pages in your site for a particular search query. With this information you can identify the page users mostly leave your site and correct the content in that page to provide more useful information to the users. If you have chosen social media promotions then Analytics provide a clear differentiation between organic, referral and social traffic.     

3. Ranking Tools
Alexa is one of the reliable site shows the number of links to your along with local and global traffic rank of your site. This gives an overall idea for webmasters about the traffic rate to their site and works on their site to improve the ranking. Google PageRank is an another tool provides a quality of a webpage between the rank 0 to 10 which is also used by Google to decide a position of a page in search engine results page.

Dos and Don'ts:

Dos Use own promotion methods in a limited and useful way Use various tools to optimize the site for search engines	Don'ts Using follow or like exchanges to get free followers Buying links from high PageRank sites to increase your link popularity Promoting every page content in a social media without much interesting topic Entering spam comments in someone’s blog or posting as many as links in the forums.
Content By webnots.com

SEO for Crawlers

Inform Crawlers through robots.txt and Nofollow tag

Crawler or Spider is a piece of script used to collect the information of all the web pages available in the web. Search engine providers give them a name for the ease of understanding like Googlebot or Bingbot. The important part is that you as an owner of your site need to tell these crawlers what are the URL links to be indexed and what are the referring links from your site are to be considered by the search engine.

What is robots.txt?

robots.txt display

A "robots.txt" is a text file in the root directory of every website which informs the search engines whether the webpage is allowed to be crawled or not. 


You can simply enter "www.yoursitename.com/robots.txt" in the browser’s address bar to view robots.txt file of your site.

---

Some of your site’s pages may contain confidential information and if you do not prevent search engines to stop crawling those pages using robots.txt file then all those confidential details will be shown in the search results to the public. Google Webmaster Tools offers a simple robots.txt generator to help you create this file. 

In case of prevent crawling on your subdomains then you need to generate a separate robots.txt file for that subdomain.

Is that enough using robots.txt to hide sensitive information?

It is definitely not a highly secure way to hide your sensitive content from search engines just using robots.txt for the following reasons:

• As anyone can see the robots.txt file in the browser, some curious user may try to analyze the directories and judge the URLs you are hiding
• Some search engines do not follow robots.txt exclusion and continue to index your confidential pages
• Search engines will still show just the URL you blocked (without title and description) if there is a link somewhere on the web pointing your URL

Understanding rel="nofollow" for links

If you do not want certain links on your site to be appeared in the search engine then setting the value of the "rel" attribute of a link to "nofollow" will tell search engines that the link on your site shouldn't be followed.  You need to add “nofollow” to “rel” attribute in your link as shown below:

Adding No Follow Link

Where can I use Nofollow?

Nofollow can be used in many cases, here we explain some of the important cases:

• This is very useful to avoid spammy site links entered in the comment section of your blog since blog comment section is highly vulnerable to comment spam like the one shown below. By using No-follow in rel attribute to these links confirms that you are not giving your page's reputation to a spammy site. More over links to the spammy sites will also affect the reputation of your own site in the search engine results.

Comment Spamming Example

• Nofollow will also be useful in forums, guest books and shout-boards. Most of the blogging and forum providers add nofollow to user comments by default otherwise you need edit your comments manually. You can also use comment moderation like entering CAPTCHA code or using social networking for comment login.
• Nofollow can also be useful when you are referring a link in your site but no interested in passing your outbound link reputation on to it. 
• If you want to nofollow all the links on any of your site’s page use "nofollow" in your robots meta tag, which is placed inside the <head> tag of that page's HTML as shown below:

Nofollow All the links in a Page

Content By webnots.com

SEO for Site Images

Image Optimization for Search Engines

Optimizing images in your site is as equivalent as optimizing your content and HTML tags. An attractive image can easily engage the users to read your content and mostly users use image search to find interested things in the web rather than web search. 

Social networking sites like Pinterest and Instagram also using images to connect the interesting users around the world. Hence, it is a potential opportunity for webmasters to optimize the images in their site for search engines and pull traffic from it. 

The below points are to be considered when you use images in your site.

1. Name of an image

Add a caption or name to every image in your site. This helps the search engines to understand your images and display it in the image search results. 

2. Alternative Text (Alt attribute)

Providing alternate text to your images is the most important thing you are supposed to ensure if you use images in your site. Alt attribute allows you to provide an alternate text for an image in case if the image can’t be displayed. When the browser does not support your images for whatsoever reason the alt text is displayed instead of the image to inform the user about the image. 

Alt Text in non-compatible Image

Another reason why you need to provide alt text is that when you use image as a link, search engines consider the alt text equivalent to the anchor text in the link. 

3. Size of an image

Use appropriate size of the image so that the users can see it clearly. Providing very small or very big image make the user embarrassed and leave your site.

4. Placement of the image

Display your images in a place where users can see it easily and related to the content. Displaying unrelated images or displaying it in inappropriate place will make the user confused about the purpose of the image. This is also applicable for the image ads if you display in your site.

5. Image folder in your site structure

Organize all the images in your site are under the same folder instead of spreading over in too many folders. This helps the search engine to look and grab all the images of your site in once place rather than looking in different places.

6. Appropriate image type

Use general supported image types like PNG, JPEG, GIF and BMP. Each image type serves different purpose and suitable for different occasions so check the quality and size of the images in your site and optimize accordingly. 

7. Image Sitemap

If you use image as a primary source in your site then it’s a good idea you can generate an image sitemap and submit to search engines in the same manner like a normal XML sitemap.

Dos and Don't with Images:

Dos Use descriptive name and alt text related to your content Provide alt text for image links Submit an image sitemap to search engines	Don'ts Generic filenames like “untitles.bmp” or "image1.jpg" Extremely lengthy filename and alt text Keyword stuffing into alt text Extremely using image links for navigation
Content By webnots.com

SEO for Site Content

Quality content is the strength of your site

For every single topic you can find thousands of search results in search engines. In order to perform well in the search engines and stand out in the crowd the primary requirement is that your site should have quality and your own content. Copying the existing content helps neither the users nor the search engines and in long run your site will be marked as webspam by search engines and disappear in the search results. Contrary to this quality content helpful to the users will automatically become more popular with the social media sharing.

The point is standing out in the search engines at the same time providing quality content and there comes the importance of keywords. Writing quality content without high impact keywords is of no use from search engine optimization perspective. Look for different words a user might search for your content and make sure those words are appropriately used in your content.

How to Analyze Keywords for your site?

Google AdWords Keyword Tool is one such a keyword analysis tool helps you find out variation in keywords with local and global search volume for each keyword. You can use this tool without registering for AdWords account and make sure the highly searched keywords are part of your content.

Another simple way is to use the top search queries brought traffic to your site from the Webmaster Tools account. This helps you to adjust your site’s content by understanding the preferences of the users. If you want complete in depth analysis of your content then Google Analytics is the best fit helps to identify geography wise traffic to your site along with top landing pages.

All of these tools are free to use and helps webmasters to optimize their content to fit best for the search engines as well as users.  Following are the best practices consolidated for the benefit of webmasters to help providing a friendly content to user and search engines. 

• Use simple language in your content:

Offering your content in simple and readable format will attract more users. For an English site, it is very important to use a simple words generally used by majority of the people instead of using jargons specially used in your local region. Note most of the users are not a native speaker of English and it makes very difficult for them to understand a complex sentences if used in your site. It’s always advised to stay around your content instead of writing each and everything in your site. This helps the users in a great way that they are in a right place for what they are searching. 

• Update your site with fresh and unique content

While fresh content helps the existing visitors to come back it also brings new visitors to your site. Search engines also give priority to the sites which are getting updated regularly over the static content sites  not updated for years.

• Make content for users and not for search engines

The word SEO means optimizing your site for the search engines and not creating your site only for the purpose of displaying top in the search results. Most of the top listed high pageranked sites not primarily reached through search engine route. For example, no one will search for Facebook to login that is the power of making content for the users. Create your site with easy navigation while offering visitors need is what you need first before optimizing for search engines.

• Design Your Content

Choosing appropriate navigation style and site layout adds more value to your content. Since links are unavoidable part in every site using suitable methods for anchor text ensure more visibility about the link.  Anchor text is the visible text displayed for a link as shown below:

<a href=”…example.html”> Anchor Text </a>

This text will inform the users as well as search engines about the page linked, hence use descriptive text to provide required information about the page you are linking. Normally anchor texts are identified in blue color to differentiate between the regular text and the link, ensure proper colors are used to identify unvisited links, visited links and hover around.

Another aspect of content display is using heading tags to highlight important topics in a page.

Dos and Don'ts:

Dos

• Simple and readable content with effective anchor text and headings
• Analyze keywords and build site primarily for users
• Structure content in search engine and user friendly way

Don'ts

• Content with spelling and grammar errors and Pages without headings and alignments
• Copying existing content and use of copy righted material without permission
• Annoying use of stuffed Keywords only for the purpose of SEO
• Hiding content to users and showing to search engines by displaying it in the white color or making the font size zero
• Generic anchor texts like “internal page” or “Home Page” and links look like a regular text

Content By webnots.com

SEO for Site Navigation

Structure Your Navigation Simple and Easy One of the difficult tasks for the webmasters is to maintain the navigation structure of their site as the site grows in pages. It is very important to decide the navigation style based on your future needs and structure it in your site, this helps in three ways: You as a webmaster can easily control the entire structure of your site which helps adding, removing and modifying the pages easy. Users can easily find the relevant and categorized content they are looking for. Finally, search engines can also index your pages category wise and show it in the search result with sitelinks. For example Google searching “Bing” will show you the below result which is the power of structured navigation.

Structered Sitelinks

Even though search engines show the search results at page level, structured navigation helps search engines understand the important of a particular page compared to the entire site content as the webmasters think.

Choose Your Navigation Style

Navigation consists of two major things – one is your site menu or blog sidebar and the other is your site links. Choose your menu as horizontal or vertical which suits best to your content design and easy grouping. Link your internal pages sensibly through your text content and images.

Site Navigation Style Options

Once you decided your menu navigation style then the step starts with grouping your pages. Every site has a home or index page which is ideally the starting point for you to think how the visitor will go from your home page to a topic specific page. If you have enough content about a specific topic then it is a good idea to create a describing page for all your related content. The structure could be something like this:

Site Menu with Describing Page Link

If you have many hundreds of pages classified under various categories then it’s a good idea to use breadcrumbs. A breadcrumb is an additional navigation link to help the user to understand where exactly the page he is looking currently is located in the site. This also can be horizontal or vertical and placed based on the content design. Some examples of breadcrumbs are shown here:

Breadcrumbs Examples

Make Your Partial URL Work

Sometimes users try to remove the last part of your URL to navigate one level up in your site structure. For example a user visiting "http://www.news.com/news/hotnews/recent.html" may try "http://www.news.com/news/hotnews/" assuming to see all hot news. You have two options in this case – one is to prepare a custom 404 page to show and the other is structure your site accordingly.  

HTML and XML Sitemaps

Sitemap is a guide for the users and search engines to instruct how your site’s pages are categorized and structured. You need to create two sitemaps one in HTML format and the other in XML format. HTML sitemap is to be placed in your site as a sitemap page which is targeting to guide the users to navigate through your site quickly. XML sitemap does the same function but for the search engines. Webmasters tools account facilitates you to submit your XML sitemap to the search engines, every search engines like Google, Bing, Baidu and Yandex offers their own webmasters tools platform for the site owners to submit their XML sitemaps. XML sitemap also inform the search engines about your preferred domain whether you want to show "http://example.com" or "http://www.example.com".  

Nowadays most of the hosting services offer auto sitemap for your site or you can use any of free sitemap generators available in the web. You also have an option to make a simple URL list of your site on your own and use it as a sitemap. Here is an example of this site’s HTML and XML sitemaps:

HTML Sitemap for User Navigation

XML Sitemap for Search Engine Navigation

Use Custom 404 Page For Your Site

Over the period of time maintaining a site with lot of pages grouped into categories becomes very cumbersome task and leads to many broken links in your site. Site updation is an important cause for broken links, when you change a page’s URL the existing links to your old URL will become invalid and most importantly search engines need lot of time to remove your old URL from the search results even though your new URL might be indexed. In normal scenario both of your old and new URLs will be shown in the search for sometimes and the users clicking on your old URL will end up in seeing a 404 Page Not Found page.

The other reason could be user entering a wrong URL in the address bar directly taking him to 404 page. The purpose of custom 404 page is to guide the users in such a page not found cases to retain them in your site.

You can use any broken link checker tools is available in the web to make sure your site is not having any broken links otherwise you can regularly check your Webmaster Tools account to check which page is causing a 404 error and rectify it accordingly. You can provide a link to your home page and other popular related contents in your custom 404 page.

If you are not sure what to link in your custom 404 page simply use Google’s 404 widget. This widget can be embedded in your 404 page and automatically populate useful links.

Dos and Don'ts with Your Site Navigation:

Dos

• Select your navigation style that suits you content, meshing too many visible menus will confuse the users
• Use internal text links effectively to connect your own pages
• Use contextual links to navigate from one page to another page of your site; this will help search engines as well as users to navigate easily throughout your site.
• Using 404 page effectively and hiding it from the search engine.

Don'ts

• Relying completely on the menu for navigation without any contextual links guiding the users and the search engines from one page to another page.
• Using complex navigation styles like inserting navigation menus in-between the content.
• Using flash and image files for navigation, some of the browsers do not support flash content hence users will be lost on your site.
• HTML Sitemap with out of date broken links.
• HTML Sitemap with simple URL list without organizing them into categories.
• 404 page without any further links for the user to navigate and allowing search engines to index your 404 page.

SEO for Meta Description

Use Description Meta Tag for SEO

Description meta tag of a page gives the summary of your page content to every search engines. As we discussed, a Page title may be of few words within which it may not be possible to define a summary of your content, whereas description meta tag might be a bit longer in length having few sentences or a short paragraph. Description meta tag is placed within the <head> tag of a HTML document as shown:

"<html> <head> <title> WebNots Greetings – Buy Cards, View Gallery, Check Price </TITLE> <meta name=”description=” content=”WebNots provides large varieties of greeting for every occasions. Our prices are cheaper and competitive and we also deliver at your door”> </HEAD> <body> <<<< Main Content of Your Page >>> </BODY> </HTML>"

Description Meta tag is shown in Search Results

Generally search engines show the description meta tag of a page in search results which helps user to understand about your page content. If you used very short description then few lines from your page content is also shown along with meta description. The search query is highlighted in all the part of search results.

Meta Desc Display in Google Search

Note sometimes instead of meta description search engines may use a snippet of your content or description of your site from web directories like DMOZ based on the search query matching.

How do I check issues in Description meta Tags of my Website?

Google Webmaster Tools provides an analysis which tells you the various issues of your meta tag like short description, long description and duplicated meta tags. To check, login to your Google Webmaster Tools account and navigate to HTML improvements section under Optimization. 

Meta Description Improvements in Google Webmaster Tools

Dos and Don't with Description Meta Tag

Dos

• Write a description which will increase the user interest to check your site when they see your description in the search results
• Unique description for each page informs both the search engines as well the users about each of your pages
• When multiple pages of your site are shown in a single search result page, users will ignore the important page if all the description are same
• Use auto description meta tag generation methods based on page content if your site has many pages

Don'ts

• Unrelated description meta tag to the content of a page
• Generic descriptions like "This is a web page" or "Page about greeting cards"
• Description stuffed only with keywords
• Single description for all or most of the pages
• Inserting the whole content of a page into the description meta tag

 

SEO for Page Titles

Use Your Page Titles as a SEO Weapon

<Title> tag is used to indicate the title of a Webpage. This is having more importance since both search engines as well as the users will come to know about your topic only based on the title of a webpage.

Since every page of your site may have different content, you need to use unique and relevant title for each page in your website. <TTITLE> tag should be placed inside <HEAD> tag in your webpage’s HTML.

For Example, if you sell a greetings card under the business name WebNots, the following title tag can be used.

"<html> <head> <title> WebNots Greetings – Buy Cards, View Gallery, Check Price </TITLE> </HEAD> <body> <<<< Main Content of Your Page >>> </BODY> </HTML>" Titles are displayed in Search Results: A search result in Google has the following format: Google Search Results Format There are totally four parts in the basic search results: Page Title inside <Title> tag in your webpage Site Title inside <Title> tag in your Home Page Page URL of your webpage Page Description used inside <META> tag of your page, if the description is not sufficient length then the first few lines of the page content will be shown in the search results The search result could be your home page or another page from your site based on the content and the search query and search query words are highlighted in the search results. It is very important to make sure you have a Page Title as well as Site Title and they are relevant to the content. When the user evaluate his search query matches your Title, the more chance he will click and check your site content. If you do not have appropriate titles then there is a less chance that the user will click your site even though your content is of high quality and all your efforts to make a unique content will end in vain. More importantly your page title is also displayed in the web browser when your page is opened. Most of the time users open more than one search results, started checking one page and tend to forget the other opened pages. Your title shown in the browser’s tab as well in the top gives quick information to users and make him read your content. Title Tag Shown in Browser - Firefox How do I Check issues in Title Tags of my Website? Well, if you have a 100 pages site, it is really a difficult task to check or change page by page titles. Here comes the use of Webmaster Tools. Login to your Google Webmaster Tools account and navigate to HTML improvements section under Optimization. Title Tag Improvements in Google Webmaster Tools Webmaster Tools provides errors in your titles and the number of occurrences with detail. The issues are classifieds under Missing titles, Duplicate titles, Long Titles, Short Titles and Non-Informative Titles. You can check each of the errors and rectify it. Learn More Features about Google Webmaster Tools here. Dos and Don'ts with Page Title: Dos Make your title effectively connects the user to your page content Use unique and separate title for each and every page of your site Use your site title different than your page title Use short and meaningful titles Don'ts Generic titles like "Untitled" or "New Page" Single title tag for all or most of the pages Stuffing unnecessary keywords Very long titles which can’t be shown in the search result area

SEO for URL Structure

If you think what is in URL then this article is for you. The name and structure of an URL decides the search ranking of the site in search engine results page. If a search engine can understand the correlation between the URL, content and the search keyword then it is guaranteed that the page will appear top in the search.

Simple and descriptive URLs will easily convey the purpose of the web page both to the users as well as to the search engines. This will also help to organize and categorize the content accordingly and the search engines crawlers can understand the sitemap of your site with ease. Extremely long and confusing URLs with few words as the one shown below may frighten the user to think whether the site is trustworthy or not. 

Confusing URL Structure

In other words, the user will tend to read and share a descriptive URL as the one here. The user can also easily remember the URL and check it later.

Good URL Structure

URL is Displayed in Search Results

Finally, URL of a webpage is displayed in the search results of any search engines. In Google the URL is shown in-between Page Title and Meta Description and the keyword in the URL is also highlighted.

URL Display in Google Search

 

Use hyphens (-) in the URL for the search engines to understand properly and avoid continuous words or using underscore (_).

Good one – "http://www.webnots.com/seo-for-meta-description.html"
Bad one - "http://www.webnots.com/seoformetadescription.html"
Bad one - "http://www.webnots.com/seo_for_meta_desscription.html"

If you are using dynamic URLs it is recommended to rewrite the same to static ones so that the search engines can index it easily. 

URL Picking for Your Domain 

When you choose your domain name or site address ensure the following points are taken care:

• Keep your site URL as short as possible so that the visitor can remember your site easily
• Avoid using numbers and underscores in the URL
• Ensure to use a keyword in your URL related to your content

Dos and Don'ts with URL:

Dos

• URLs containing descriptive words relevant to your site's content and structure are easier for the users to remember and navigate
• Using structured approach helps you to classify your content and easy makes it easy for visitors to know where they are at on your site
• Use appropriate 301 redirects to direct users to the appropriate pages in your site
• Use 404 redirect to inform the user about an alternate page in your site that the user may be interested in or mentioning the home page URL will inform help the user to visit the home page

Don'ts

• Lengthy URLs with confusing parameters like numbers or session ID
• Using generic page names like "untitled.html" or “page1.html”
• Stuffing unnecessary keywords in the URL may lead search engines to demote your site
• Nesting of pages like ".../page1/page2/page3.html"
• URL names having no relation to the content
• Odd capitalization of URLs, better to have a lower case URLs which helps the user to remember easily