The Ridiculously Amazing Case Study about What Basic SEO Can Do, Part Two

This post is by Cathie Dunklee-Donnell, Advanced SEO Analyst and owner of Ducktoes Computer Services Inc. Ms. Dunklee-Donnell is certified In Advanced SEO by Bruce Clay and Yoast SEO. Also trained at Pubcon Master Training several years in a row.

In The Ridiculously Amazing Case Study about What Basic SEO Can Do, Part 1, I showed how a site went up in ranking after I did the minimum amount of essential SEO work on it. I began the case study because I wanted to test for myself how effective a small amount SEO could be on a non-ranking site.

The minimum included both onsite and offsite SEO.  The site I chose was a four-year-old site, Salon-g.ca, a hair salon in Calgary.  I tracked the keyword with the most search queries, the best money keyword: hair salons Calgary.

What I did:

• For the onsite SEO, I created the title and meta description tags, and also added text, keywords, synonyms, and internal links.  

• For offsite SEO, I created eight links, high ranking ones, between 83 and 30 in Majestic Trust Flow. (Since the demise of Google page rank, at Ducktoes we use Majestic's trust flow as a ranking signal and SEO quality indicator.)

• The above SEO work resulted in the site going from not ranking at all to ranking on the fourth page, position 35, in only three weeks. Read more about that here.

Month 3

So now it's been three months since I've done any SEO on the Salon G site, and the site has continued to go up in ranking, but only slightly, and not enough to be where a site needs to be to get any traffic: on the first page.  

It is now on page three, position 28, for its money keyword "hair salons Calgary."  


In the last month, the site went from position 35 to 51 then back up to 28. I'll discuss this volatility later.

Adding Five Citations

So now I'll add five citations to the backlink portfolio for Salon-G and see where the ranking goes from here. Citations are typically done for local search rankings, but they also help organic rankings. 


The five citations are:

1. Foursquare
2. About.me
3. Canada411
4. CTI Directory
5. Wand

For our regular clients, we create many more citations than this, but for this case study I wanted to see what a minimum basic amount of SEO can do.

Tweaking the Title

I also tweaked the title to include the money keyword "hair salons Calgary."

Google Plus Page

I'm also trying to sort out Salon-G's Google plus/Google My Business pages. Salon G had several, for some reason. Every site needs to have a Google Plus/Google My Business Page.  (They work together and give you a map listing in local search results.)


However, while a Google Plus page is absolutely necessary for this or any site, duplicate Google plus pages are problematic. Working with a Google support tech, I deleted the extra Google plus pages and am verifying the remaining one.  We're waiting for the Google postcard to come in the mail with the verification pin.

For local search, if you didn't know, the optimal place is to be is the top three listings for your money keywords.

Wait and See

Now I'll wait and see what happens to Salon G's ranking for its money keyword "hair salons Calgary". Stay tuned.

Month 3, Week 1

I must admit, I'm surprised, if not flabbergasted. I didn't expect Salon-G's rise to the first page for their money keyword this soon. The rankings have been up and down quite radically in the last two weeks, but now in the last two days, Salon-G has been consistently on the first page for "hair salons Calgary"! They're on the bottom of the first page in 10th place, but on the first page nevertheless.

High Volatility for "Hair Salons Calgary"

The ranking for "hair salons Calgary" has been quite volatile, going from 31 to 28 to 49 to 16 to 51 to 10. The rankings for other major keywords are not changing rapidly like this.  See below graph from ProRank.

There must be something particular about this keyword that is causing it to go up and down with Google's algorithmic changes. The only way I've treated this keyword any differently is that I used it for the exact match anchor text for internal links to the home page. If the ranking goes dramatically down again, I'll change up the anchor text.

Wait and See (Again)

Now I'm waiting and seeing again. Stay tuned.

Links Still Most Powerful Ranking Factor

This post is by Cathie Dunklee-Donnell, Advanced SEO Analyst and owner of Ducktoes Computer Services Inc. Ms. Dunklee-Donnell is certified In Advanced SEO by Bruce Clay and Yoast SEO. Also trained at Pubcon Masters Training several years in a row.

To me, as owner of a small online marketing agency in Calgary, Alberta, doing successful SEO for several years, links have always seemed like an effective way to raise ranking. Yet,even though I believed links to be powerful, I wanted definite proof, and have been following research on links as a ranking factor from several sources.

Lately, I found this study from Stone Temple by its founder Eric Enge. (I also just attended a Masters' Training on SEO Traffic Optimization at Pubcon in Vegas and Eric was one of the speakers. He is an incredible trainer with tons of knowledge and expertise on internet marketing. If you get a chance, go to conference like Pubcon, when he is a speaker.  If you can't, at least read his blog.)

 Since then Eric sent me some slides about the research. Here they are:

   

Links As SEO Ranking Factor: Still Very Powerful! from Eric Enge

The study shows conclusively that links are still a powerful ranking factor.  It is important to note, however, that quality links don't compensate for poor quality content or website.  The research proves that if your site has good content, it will rank higher with good links. Without good content, the links will be much less effective.

If you would like more information on our link building or SEO services please call Ducktoes SEO at 403-219-3031 or go to our website's Calgary SEO page.

Finally the Truth about Disavowing

The Most Needed Article Ever about Disavow Myths
In CognitiveSEO's blog, Lyndon Antcliff wrote a much needed article about disavow myths. Eight experts weigh in to "bust" the most common myths about disavowing. The experts include notables Mark Porter from Screaming Frog, Their powerful agreement makes it difficult for anyone to entertain the myths any longer. Here's the article.

Successful Disavows
At Ducktoes, we've often successfully used the disavow tool for client sites that have Penguin or manual penalties, including hacked sites. It usually works well, unless the site has other issues or too few good natural links. Disavowing often leads to recovery. And now that Penguin updates are part of the core, recovery times can be much quicker.

However, at seminars, in podcasts, or blog posts, most of what I read and hear about disavowing just doesn't jive with my experience. This makes me wonder: is it just coincidence that I do a disavowal for a site and the site recovers? Why does it work without link removal and commenting when it's not supposed to? So this post was refreshing. Yes! I said, when I read it.

The "Disavowing Just Doesn't Work" Myth
On the web and in person, I've also come across other colleagues and marketing people who entertain a strong belief that disavowing just doesn't work. I've shown them the sites I've rescued, but they've remained skeptical. Now I have something else to show them: a link to this article.

The "You have to Remove First" Myth
Another myth the article dispels is that you have to do manual link removal first.  This is such a relief to see in print. At workshops, conferences, or in SEO podcasts or blog posts, many, many experts say that both removal of unnatural links and commenting within the disavow file are necessary.

Typically, these seminar speakers say you must write three emails asking for removal of each link. Only then can you add the link to your disavowal file. After which, you need to write a comment in the file, following a hashtag, mentioning the three attempts at removal.

Omg, Are They Serious?
Often there can be thousands upon thousands of unnatural links linking to a site and attempting to remove them by contacting the thousands upon thousands of site owners is tantamount to temporary insanity (or causes it.) You just can't spend the time required.
.
What's unfortunate, is that by following this advice, some poor SEO consultant (or more probaby his assistant), or many of them, will waste countless hours of their their own time and their clients' money trying to remove the links and then commenting within the disavowal file.

Early on, I discovered that comments and most removals weren't necessary. My discovery was based on my own experience and private case studies on client sites. It was reinforced by Marie Haynes's blog (one of the experts in this post). She's been telling us this for years. Thank you, Marie! She is the penalty removal expert of experts. Here's an article she wrote for her own blog.

Removal Can Help Occasionally
Don't get me wrong. Removal can help if it the webmaster is easy to contact and cooperative, and doesn't charge a fee for removal. Ironically, those are the very sites where the link's removal may not be necessary. You might even be able to change the anchor text. If the webmaster is a reasonable and conscientious person, she probably has a reasonable enough site. You might be able to leave your link and be okay. But in 90 to 95% of the cases, you can neither find nor contact the webmaster. Especially the really spammy sites you desperately need to remove. And you should never pay for removal of a link.

Some Reasons Link Removal Doesn't Work:

• There is no contact information on the site. 
• There is contact information, a contact form. But it is broken.
• You look up the who is information of the contact. Yet the information is either inaccurate or unavailable. 
• Unavailable meaning that the owner of the site has purchased privacy for their who is data and you can't access it.
• Inaccurate meaning that the contacts in the who is information are not contacts any longer or never were.
• Someone has copied text from your site and inserted it on their own and hasn't bothered to remove a navigational or other link, linking back to your site. In this case, you can let Google know about a copyright infringement.
• A fee is required to remove a link. (Don't pay.)
• The link is from a PBN (private blog network) where there is no contact information.
• The link is from a neglected or abandoned site. A spammy blogspot or Typepad blog with no contact information is a good examples of this.

Emailing into the Void
Even when you can find a contact to email, usually it's like emailing into the void. No one answers.

No Human Ever Reads the Comments
And according to Google's John Mueller on Twitter, no human ever reads all those comments you've laboriously written and inserted into your disavow file. It is "read" by a machine. No one is persuaded by all your hard but fruitless efforts to remove the bad links, because no one reads it. If no one reads it, then why are you writing it?  Sometimes I use comments as notes to myself, but I know no one else is ever going to read them.

So why are they Spreading Bad Advice?
So I've often wondered why SEO seminar experts entertain and spread the advice.

 Actually I have a pretty good guess. It's because in Google's Search Console Help there is an example of how to use the tool which include commenting and attempts at removal. This is the example:

No wonder people believe you need to remove and comment. Google seems to imply it. This is misleading.

Maybe for good reason. It just seems too easy on blatant spammers to be able disavow everything and not a pay a price. They spam and then get off scot-free without a real change of heart. And I sympathize. Spammers should pay a price, especially if they get out of penalty jail just to go on to spam again. I'd love to see them have to manually remove each link by writing thousands of emails. However, sometimes the real victims are not the spammers but the site owners. They never agreed to the spamming in the first place. Their only crime was being too complacent and allowing themselves to get sucked in by a black hat SEO company or unsavoury SEO consultant.

Unhacking Sites
The disavow tool is also essential to cleaning up hacked sites.  Hacked sites often have thousands of incoming links from other hacked sites with anchor texts for Viagra or payday loans among other dubious terms. Cleaning them up can be onerous. I've done it and have the disavow elbow to prove it. The chore is easier, however, if you disavow hundreds of domains instead of thousands of backlinks.

Another Myth not Mentioned
Another myth not mentioned in the article is that if the disavowed links still appear in the list of incoming sites in Google Search Console, it means the disavow didn't work. This is untrue because the links will usually still be there, but they've been zapped of their negative link juice. They now have the link juice typical of a "nofollow" link. I was reminded of this myth in the comments section in a remark by Sha Menz.

The Ridiculously Amazing Case Study about What Basic SEO Can Do

This post is by Cathie Dunklee-Donnell, Advanced SEO Analyst and owner of Ducktoes Computer Services Inc. Ms. Dunklee-Donnell is certified In Advanced SEO by Bruce Clay and Yoast SEO. Also trained at Pubcon Master Training several years in a row.

I'm doing a case study to show how basic SEO can help a website's ranking in search. Since it can be difficult to tell what particular elements of optimization are causing changes in ranking, I picked a domain that had no prior optimization and did not rank at all for any query except for its own name. Then I did some onsite optimization, internal links, and a few high ranking links. I used only white hat techniques, meaning techniques that follow Google Webmaster Tools guidelines. Now I'll see if and how the ranking changes and how quickly.

Site to be Optimized: The Salon G Website

Salon-g.ca is the site I'm optimizing. It was designed without a title and little text to create an artsy minimalistic style, a choice made by the web designer and the owner of the site. The owner also didn't want SEO at that time. As a result, the site never ranked for its keywords.

As part of the onsite optimization, I added a title and some text to the home page which is why you can see one below.  Before then, the site had no title and very little text.

The front page has a title and text now.

The site is one of many inner city hair salons Calgary: Salon-G.ca. The site and domain are four years old.

Day One

1. Keyword research: I did keyword research with Google Adword's Keyword Planner and found that "hair salons Calgary" is the best money keyword with 1300 searches a month and low competition.
 
2. Yoast and metas: After installing, Yoast SEO plugin, I added the money keyword to the title, meta-description, and body text. But the money keyword Hair Salons Calgary seemed awkward and user-unfriendly within the title, so I reversed the order of the words to Calgary Hair Salon. Awkward or not, I added "hair salon Calgary" to the body text anyway.
 
3. Added body text: Speaking of body text, the site had almost none on the home page, not even a title, so that is one reason the site isn't ranking after four years. I wrote a bit of text but not the 300 words that is recommended for ranking.  I also added some synonyms and closely related terms such as hair cutter, hair stylist, and the singular version of another money keyword "Calgary hair salon."
    
4. Added title: I also added a title using one of the site's keywords.  The lack of a title has serious SEO repercussions which can easily be avoided by adding one. Some SEO experts say the title is the single most important element in a site's SEO. Websites should always have a unique title for every page.  
 
5. Internal links: Since internal links are important for onsite SEO, I created some on all the other pages with the exact match anchor text: "hair salons Calgary" linking to the front page.
 
6. End of day: I checked the rankings of these keywords: Hair salons Calgary, Hair salon Calgary, Calgary hair salons, Calgary hair salon, Calgary hair stylist. The site is not ranking at all within the top 100 results for any of these keywords.
 

Day Two

At the beginning of Day Two, Salon-g.ca is not yet ranking for any keyword, including its best money keyword, "hair salons Calgary."

1. Google Search Console: I added the site to Google Search Console and configured it as per below. A more detailed process is outlined in this post about how to set up Google Search Console.  Here is an infographic of the same information.


• Created a gmail.
• Added properties to Google Search Console.
• Verified through Yoast SEO plugin.
• Set preferred domain.
• Picked international preference.
• Added sitemap.
• Created .htacess
• Created robots.txt file.


2. NAP and site description. I wrote out the NAP, keywords, and site description for use in citations and link building.


3. Built links. I gave the site some high ranking links with these Majestic trust flows:
   
   Link one: 68
   Link two: 46
   Link three: 83
   Link four: 71
   Link five: 42
   Link six: 47
   Link seven: 84

As far as previous backlinks Salon-g.ca already possesses, Majestic found 3 and gives the site a trust flow of zero. Ahrefs found 30 links and gives the site a domain ranking of 13 and a url ranking of  4. Google Search Console, so newly set up, didn't find any backlinks.

Amazingly, at the end of day two, the site is already ranking for one keyword. It is the 84th listing for "Calgary hair stylist." But still not ranking for the best money keyword, hair salons Calgary.

Position on Google search:
Calgary hair stylist: 84

Day Three

I stopped doing SEO on this day, but the site is now ranking for several keywords, including the best money "hair salons Calgary." It's in rank 63, on the 7th page of Google, in only three days!

Position on Google Search:
Calgary hair stylist: 76
Calgary hair salon: 83
Calgary hair salons: 70
hair salons Calgary: 63
hair salon Calgary: 90

Week One

At the end of the first week, the rankings continue to go up.

Position on Google Search:

Calgary hair stylist: 62
Calgary hair salon: 77
Calgary hair salons: 60
hair salons Calgary: 49
hair salon Calgary: 90

If you look at the money keyword "hair salons Calgary", you'll see it went from not ranking at all when I began optimizing, to ranking on the fifth page within the first week. This shows that while basic SEO does not place a previously non-ranking site on the first page within a week, it can propel a site up 51 positions within the first 100 results in the same amount of time.

Week Two

At the end of Week Two, Salon-g.ca is ranking on the fourth page of Google results, better than I would have estimated at the beginning of this case study.  With only basic SEO done onsite and a few high-ranking links, it went from Nth (not ranking) to 34 in two weeks.

And this is significant because the site didn't rank at all for four years before I optimized it a bit. The only change to the site was the optimization I did and the seven backlinks I gave it.

Position on Google Search:

Calgary hair stylist: 54
Calgary hair salon: 69
Calgary hair salons: 45
hair salons Calgary: 34
hair salon Calgary: 66


A month after creating links for Salon-g.ca, it's interesting to note that Majestic has only found two of the eight links I made and ahrefs only three. Google Search Console has only found three as well.

If only a small bit of SEO is so effective, think of what a full SEO campaign could do for this or any site. Of course not every site or campaign will go up as fast as this one has. Nor is this site on the first page of search results which is the only spot on Google which is effective for increased business and revenue.

Yet the power of SEO is clearly demonstrated by this case study.  SEO should not be underestimated or dismissed as a potential way to increase traffic and revenue to a business. If you'd like more information about SEO for your website please see our SEO (Calgary) site.

Google Search Console - Very First Babystep of SEO Infographic

Our intern graphic designer Troy made an infographic that shows how to sign up for and set up a Google Search Console account.

See this post for more information.

Why Being Mobile Friendly is so Important

Great Video on Being Mobile Friendly
I found this great and funny video on mobile responsiveness by Eric Enge and Mark Traphagan of Stone Temple.

 

As Eric and Mark point out in such a fun and informative way, being mobile friendly is an important part of SEO and will effect your ranking, especially on mobile devices. Google wants mobile friendly sites.  And what Google wants, Google gets, or should get, if you want to rank higher, that is. That's important, even essential for SEO, but is not the quintessential, absolutely tiptop, epic, most important, mother of all reasons to be mobile friendly.

The Quintessential, Tiptop, Epic, Most Important, Mother of all Reasons
So what is this mother of all reasons? To be kind to visitors, of course. Didn't your mother teach you that? When you make your site mobile friendly, you are also making it visitor friendly. Visitors come to your site because they need your services or are interested in your content. Many will come on their smart phones or tablets.  They want to do business with you.

Not a Good Welcome Mat
If you make it difficult for these potential business clients to see or use your site, they will become extremely frustrated.  And they are only trying to find your address, for instance, or to read some compelling content (you do have compelling content, don't you?) and are struggling to touch the links or scrolling sideways to read.  Your site's mobile unfriendliness is putting huge obstacles in their way. Not a good welcome mat.. And also a good way to get a higher than average bounce rate.

Your Raison d'Être
Never forget that visitors are who you made your site for, and you should make things easy for them. Visitors are clients and are the whole and sole purpose of making a website in the first place. They are your raison d'être.

Being kind to visitors, and making them happy with a great site and content, is also what Google wants, and is excellent for SEO and ranking, by the way. 

How to do it?
Here`s a short guide on how to make your site mobile responsive by Joshua Van Oosten, web developer at Ducktoes Computer Services.  Also here is another post about how Ducktoes's site is mobile friendly now.

Need More Help?
Ducktoes Web Design of Calgary can make your site mobile friendly if you don't have the time to do it yourself.  We do it all the time.

SEO for Beginners Subreddit!

Hey, we've started an SEO for Beginners subreddit on reddit.com.  Check it out! You can ask for help on SEO for your site or help others.

Ghost Referral Spam is Gone?

I first heard the news on the podcast SEO 101 with hosts Ross Dunn and John Carcutt: Google analytics spam was gone. Wonderful news! Yay, yay, yay, yay. (That's me dancing around the room and high fiving myself.) No longer would we have to filter the spam out of Google Analytics results to get truer data. Google had gotten rid of it. 

But could this really be true? When I googled this news, I couldn't find anything about it anywhere. Nothing. Nada. Zippo. Zilch.

I searched again. Then I found Conor Treacy's mention on Local Search forum. He offered this link to an article on SEM.  Conor has also written his own article on the disappearance.  Right on, Conor, SEM, and SEO 101 Ross and John!  Weird, such a big thing and only a few people talking about it and certainly not Google.

If it is gone, then why is no one talking about it?  Maybe no one is paying attention. Because if you did pay attention, you would have seen a drop in traffic in your Google Analytics data and reports starting in February or March. It's not traffic you'd ever miss, because with its loss you should have a lower bounce rate and a longer average session duration, a good, indeed excellent, thing.

Here is the content within the referral tab results of a site before Google started getting rid of the ghost referral spam.

You can see that the referrals shown are all ghost referral spam and that it is giving the site a very high bounce rate and low average session duration.

Now see the results after Google had started getting rid of the ghost spam.

As you can see, the bounce rate has only improved slightly and the average time on site has gotten worse, because there are still ghost referrals. I gave them a grey ghostly pallor in the above image as they deserve. So maybe this is why few people are mentioning the disappearance of ghost spam, Google hasn't been able to get rid of it all.

You can also see some real referrals from Yahoo, Cylex, Facebook, and Newswire beneath the ghost ones and how that traffic has a much better bounce rate and session duration.  That is why no spam in referrals would be so ideal and why I look forward to this happening in the future.  I hope Google will filter the heck out of the spam.  Otherwise our traffic in GA is not accurate. That is, unless we filter it ourselves, a difficult job.

Ghost referral spammers don't really go to your website at all, it's not real traffic, that's why the word ghost.  Somehow these companies are spamming Google Analytics with false traffic so people like us will notice the urls in our analytics data and go to their, the spammers', websites. They get traffic from their fake traffic, so they can sell us something or give us malware or something else not so fun or funny.  So don't go there.  We don't want to encourage them.

If you need help with your SEO or Google Analytics give us a call 403-219-3031.  Or go to our SEO webpage.

Be the Site Google Wants to See

To do a good job of online marketing for yourself and others you have to have some sense of what Google wants.

So what does Google want?

The answer is, of course:

Money. Google is a business like any other.  They want and need to make a profit. Millions of people use Google's search engine because it provides excellent results for almost any query. Along with those excellent results, Google serves ads, generating a huge profit.  In 2015 Google generated almost 67.39 billion dollars in ad revenue.

If Google no longer provided good search results, they'd lose the visitors to their search engine and all the revenue generated from those searchers when they click on the ads. That would be a staggering loss for them.

Which leads to the next question:

 What does Google not want?

Spam. They don't want manipulation of their search results so poor results are returned instead of excellent ones. In other words, Google doesn't want people to trick them with black hat or grey hat SEO  into serving poor sites when others would be better. Ultimately this would wreck their search engine and their business. They're not about to let that happen. That is why they've developed their search algorithm and Penguin, Panda, Hummingbird, Pigeon, and all the other updates that are safeguarding the quality of their search engine. They will cut you off at the knees if they see you trying to trick them by manipulating their results. You'll be penalized in no time flat with a manual or algorithmic penalty.

What do you need to do then to make your site optimized for Google search? Make your site a search result Google wants to see and, more importantly, would love to return in response to queries.

How do you do that?  With excellent content that users are actually looking for and by making your site attractive and user friendly.  Also by letting Google know about your site's search worthiness by signaling authority and relevance.  There are hundreds of things you can do.  It's a lot of work but it is worth it.

If you want to learn how to do this SEO work yourself read this blog and many others.  If you don't have time, hire an ethical and quality SEO company that will do this for you.

Be the Change you want to see

Most of us have heard Gandhi's saying and excellent advice "Be the change you want to see in the world."  The saying has implications throughout all of life and work including SEO and internet marketing.  For me it says to be proactive and instead of complaining about how things are, act the way you want other people to act.

Google Analytics - The Second Baby Step of SEO

So you have Google Search Console set up and are ready for the next baby step on the road to SEO greatness (and standing among the SEO grown ups.) The next baby step is, drum roll please, setting up Google Analytics.  This will be very exciting, I promise, as only things SEO can be.

1.  To set up Google Analytics, you first need to login to your Google account, the account where your Google Search Console and your Gmail account reside, and go to https://www.google.ca/analytics/
2. Click on "Sign In." See red oval.



3. Next create an account for your business or personal website, blog, and mobile apps. For instance create an account for your business, and choose either the name of your business or some helpful description that will help you identify it should you create more accounts later. To create the account, click the "Admin" tab.



4. Fill in the New Account Form.
   
   
5. Create your properties within your account. For instance, create a property for your website, another for your blog, and another for your mobile app if you have one.  Each will have its own tracking code. You can also have a separate account for each property if you want. Google Support has more detailed information about Accounts and Properties in their Google Analytics Support site.
6. Now you're cooking, good looking. I told you this was exciting.  Next you'll need to put in the tracking code into every web page you want to track. Go to Admin, then Tracking Code.  You'll see a script.  Highlight it to select it, then copy it by hitting Ctrl-C.  Paste it with a Ctrl-V, on every page, right after the opening body tag if this is an html-based site, that is, put it just after this:<body>
7.  Or if it is a WordPress site, you'll want to paste just the account number in an analytics plug-in, which you download within your Dashboard. I usually use Yoast's version because I use Yoast's SEO plug-in too.



Here's a guide to using the Yoast analytics from those excellent folks at Yoast itself.


8. Now you'll want to check what you've done and see if it is working. To do this log in to your Google Analytics account and go to the new property you want to check. Then open a tab in your browser and go to the website itself. Keep that tab open. Go back to Analytics.
9. Select: Real-Time > Overview.  You should see a number 1 meaning you have a visitor on your website.  If there are more visitors you'll have a bigger number. It should look like this:
   
   
   

So you did it and are well on your way to SEO awesomeness!  Applause.  There is a lot more to learn about Google Analytics (you could spend a lifetime) but now your site is added and collecting data.  

If you'd like more help please visit our SEO site and contact us..  We're in Calgary, Alberta but can help anyone, anywhere, remotely as well.

Google Search Console - The Very First Baby Step of SEO

You want to learn SEO, but where to start? The very first baby step on the road to becoming a great SEO analyst standing among the grown ups (or doing your own SEO for your own website) is to get a Google Search Console account previously known as Google Webmaster Tools.  It is a must for anyone wanting to crank the rank of their site and help the right people find you. It is also a must for any webmaster or site owner wanting to enhance their website and use best practices for web design and maintenance.

Google Search Console Training

Video Tutorial
Here's a short video about how Search Console and Google Webmaster Tools can help:

Webmaster Academy

Google also has an excellent course for webmasters called Webmasters Academy.  Within this is course is section 3.1 to help you set up and use the webmaster tools:  Manage your Site with Google Webmaster Tools.

Get a Google Search Console Account

Every website should have a Google Search Console account.  This is the best way to signal Google that your site exists and needs to be indexed. Then you can tie it into your Google Analytics.

How to Get One

To get a Google Search Console account you'll need to have a Gmail account.  If you don't have one go to http://gmail.com and sign up.  Once you have a gmail account, go to https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools". Once you're there, click on "ADD A PROPERTY" in the upper right hand corner of the Search Console.  Of course it will say your name and not "Cathie" in your account but the red rectangle with the ADD A PROPERTY will be the same and in the same place.

Verifying your Site with HTML Site

Now comes the daunting part for SEO beginners: Verifying your site.  That means verifying that you’re the owner of the site.  This takes a little know how no matter which of the methods you use:

• Uploading (with FTP client) an html file to the server.
• Adding a meta tag to your website’s HTML within the header or if your site is a WordPress site within your WordPress dashboard, using an SEO plugin such as Yoast.
• Adding a new DNS record to your domain account with your hosting company.
• Use your Google Tag Manager account.
• Use your Google Analytics  account.

My Preferred Method with an HTML Site

I think putting a meta tag within the HTML of your site is the easiest way to verify. If you have a web designer or webmaster then ask them to help you.  If not, you'll need to cut and paste the meta tag Google Webmaster Tools gives you into the header of your index page. Then within the verification part of Google Webmaster tools, click the verification button.

Verifying with WordPress

If you have WordPress, install and use Yoast SEO plugin then put the verification code within the meta tag (that Google Webmaster tools gives you) into the line labeled for it.  Only put in the code not the script containing it. Then go back into the Webmaster tools and hit verification.

Select your Preferred Version

Two Versions

Google sees two versions of your site, the www version: http://www.yoursite.com and the non-www:  http://yoursite.com. You need to decide which you prefer and tell Google by selecting it within Search Console.  You also must redirect one to the other with your .htaccess file, or Google will see two separate sites and your link juice will be divided between them. Your ranking could suffer. (I'll discuss that in a later blog post.)

How to Select Preferred Version

Within your Search Console account, go to the gears in the upper right corner. Go to "Site Settings." You'll see this:

Select your preferred domain.

Pick Your Country

Now you need to pick the country you're targeting for marketing.  Assuming you're still inside your Google Search Console account, go to "Search Traffic" and "International Targeting."  Now select the tab that says "Country."

Pick the country you want to target.

That's all for International Targeting.

 XML Sitemaps

Next you'll need to make a XML sitemap to make it easy for the Googlebot and other search engine bots to find and index all your pages and resources.  If you have an html and css site you'll need to use specialized XML sitemap software to make the sitemap and then upload it to your website with an ftp tool. If you have a WordPress site, the Yoast plugin will make a sitemap for you.

XML Sitemap for HTML Website

To make an XML sitemap for a typical html/css website go to this XML sitemap generator site called XML Sitemaps.com. 

This is the XML Sitemap Generator Website

After the site generates the XML sitemap for you, you'll need to download it to your computer then ftp it up to your website in the root folder.  I use Dreamweaver to do ftp uploads but there are many other ftp applications.  A free one is called Filezilla.

XML Sitemap for WordPress Site

The Yoast SEO will make an XML sitemap for you automatically.  If you have already installed Yoast SEO plugin then go to the word SEO on the Dashboard and then to XML Sitemaps. If not, you'll have to install it first. 

Yoast SEO Plugin makes it easy to make a sitemap.

Tell Google Search Console about your Sitemap

Now you need to let Google Search Console know about your sitemap.  So go into your Search Console account for that website and go to Crawl > Sitemaps.

Find the "Add/Test Sitemap" button in red in top right corner.

Write in the filename in the text box that opens. Hit "Submit".  Now you'll the sitemap listed and the word "pending" until Google confirms it.

Adding Robots.txt File

Creating your robots.txt for Html Site

Open Notepad for Windows or TextEdit for Macs.  See this post on TextEdit.

Type as per below, using your domain name instead of "www.yoursite.com" and whatever your sitemap file is called. Save it as robots.txt. Later if you need to, you can add more advanced directives to the robots.txt file, but this is good for now.

You can copy and paste the below but make sure to put your own domain in "yourdomain.com.

User-agent:*
Sitemap:http://yourdomain.com/sitemap_index.xml

Using your ftp application, upload the robots.txt to the root of your web directory.

Creating robots.txt with WordPress

If you have a WordPress site, login and go to your Yoast SEO plugin.  It says "SEO" in the Dashboard on the left.  Then go to the "Tools" section and then to the "File Editor."

This is where you find the file editor tool in Yoast.

Inside the File Editor tool you'll see the robots.txt editor.  Type the text as in the robots.txt file above in the "Create your Robots.txt file for Html Site" section. Click the "Save changes" button.

Testing and Submitting your robots.txt

For both types of websites we're discussing here: html and WordPress, you then need to test and submit the robots.txt within Google Search Console.  Go to Crawl, then robot.txt Tester.  Hit the "Test" button in bottom right corner.  Then you'll see "Allowed" if your robots.txt passed.  Then click "Submit"

Click this first.

You'll then see this if your robots.txt is accepted.

Next click this.

If you're successful you'll be able to see the robots.txt live and in the editor box. The editor box doesn't really edit the robots.txt, it is for testing purposes only. 

Congratulations!!! You now have a Google Search Console account and configured it.  You've completed the first baby step toward SEO greatness. Adding a site to Google Search Console is pretty complicated for newbies, so if you've accomplished this first task and skill you're well on your way to mounting the SEO learning curve.  You done good bubba...lol!

If you need assistance doing setting up your Google Search Console or if you'd like to watch while I do it for you remotely, please go to our Calgary search engine optimization webpage and contact us. Or call 403-219-3031. We'd be glad and excited to help you. We can also do all the above for you, if you sign up for our SEO and Online Marketing packages.

Google to Make Websites Faster for Free

Watch out, your site is about to be transcoded by Google on slow mobile devices.

According to a post on Bruce Clay's blog by John Alexander, Google is going to make slow and non-mobile friendly sites to be fast and friendly with its new transcoder. The transcoder makes a much better user-experience for those on a slow mobile connection. Is this a good thing?

You can decide for yourself by checking out the Google transcoder page to see how your site renders when transcoded.

How to view your transcoded website:
1. First go to Google transcoder site.
2. Type in the URL for your site and hit preview.
3. Scan the QR code with your smart phone.
4. Voila, you will see how your site looks once transcoded to the mobile user.

You can also use the method outlined in the Bruce Clay post (cited at top of this post) to render your website on your computer screen.

A couple of worries I have about the transcoder are:

• Will website owners be less motivated to make their web designs faster and mobile-friendly on their own?
• Will some sites not work well with a Google bot optimizing them?  (I tried one of my client sites and it looks not so great.)

If you've taken great pains to make your mobile site look really good on mobile devices, you may not like Google's speeded up version.

If you want help making your site search engine friendly check out Ducktoes Seo Services in Calgary.

Google Sending Mobile-User Friendly Warnings to Webmasters

Twice in the last week I've gotten an email from Google Webmaster Tools telling me that client sites are not mobile friendly.  They look like this:

I really appreciate this because it will motivate my clients and me to get all our client sites mobile-friendly which I want them to be anyway.  It gives me a reason to urge reluctant clients to come onboard with the mobile responsive changes.  Also Google may start including mobile responsiveness as part of their ranking algorithm and this gives my web designers and me a chance to fix them before the ranking begins.

According to Search Engine Land, Google is sending these emails to a massive amount of webmasters and company owners.

Sitemap your Site for SEO

Crank your Rank

There are two different types of sitemaps, .xml and html.  The first you do for bots and the other for people. Both are great for SEO.  Both are white hat SEO techniques if you want to crank up rank without risking Penguin or Panda penalties.

Sitemaps help users and bots find webpages and information on your site.

XML Sitemap
The .xml one you can make with a free tool at XML-Sitemap.com. You then log into your Google Webmaster Tools and upload it. Now the bots are more likely to find and index all the pages on your site.


Html Sitemap
The Html sitemap is just a web page listing all the links within your site, so your users can easily find what they are looking for.  Google and other search engine love user-friendly sites so you can't go wrong with making things easier for the visitors to your site.

Html sitemaps make your site more user-friendly.

You can use important keywords for the various pages on the html one, in fact you should use keywords.  After creating the sitemap, put a link to it in the menu where it is easy to see and use.

Here's an actual Html sitemap for DawsCo Coffee Services, a Calgary office coffee services company.

If you'd like help making your sitemaps, Ducktoes SEO Services of Calgary can do it for you.

Pigeon Unrolled in Canada on December 22

The Pigeon has Landed

Those who know me know I always follow ranking closely, an understatement, since really I'm obsessed with it. It's no surprise then that on December 22, 2014, I noticed right away that most of my sites and client sites had changed ranking in local listings. One of my client sites went from 6th in ranking to 1st organically and to 2nd on the map from 3rd.  Another went 2nd on the map to 1st and 2nd organically.  Another went from the 2nd page to first organically.  Another finally showed up on the map for a keyword.  The SERPs they were a-changing.  So many changed that I knew something major was afoot (should I say awing? Lol.)  I suspected that Google's Pigeon update had just landed in Canada. (And no, I don't mean or am misspelling Penguin, this is a totally different bird and Google update.) Pigeon had unrolled in the US in July and was due to unroll in other English-speaking countries as in Canada, UK and Australia sometime this last fall. Even though I suspected Pigeon right away, I couldn't find confirmation of it online for a few days except for a few random rumblings and tweets from others suspecting the same thing.

Most of my sites went up luckily and only a couple went down on the Google local listings with Pigeon so I was pretty happy. Yet local listings themselves had also changed and in places quite dramatically. Where once seven businesses had been listed on the first page in Google results for certain queries, now were only three. Some search queries even lost their local listing packs completely.

Here is an example of a seven pack listing for the query "Calgary computer repair" previous to the changes:

Now the listings are in a three pack:

As you see can above only three businesses are listed for the same query where before there were seven.  If  your company was number four to seven on the local listings map, it now didn't show at all.

Finally I saw this post on Blumenthal's blog confirming my hunch.  (By the way, if you want to learn more about local search Blumenthal's is the blog to read.) Yes, Pigeon had unrolled! Now local search in Canada is very different and, a week and a half later, still seems to be unsettled and in a bit of turmoil, the site listings shuffling around in ranking and in and out of the smaller three packs.

For more in depth information about Pigeon in general, read this post from Search Engine Land.

If you want to improve local search ranking for your website, Ducktoes SEO can help.  As you can see above we are number one for an important and competitive query.  We can help you achieve similar results.