SEO 3.0 – How to Optimize Your Website For Search Engines

Posted on October 12, 2017 by Scott Gordon

While the importance of ranking highly in relevant search engine queries hasn’t changed in the past 10 years, the process of Search Engine Optimization (aka SEO) has changed dramatically.

One of the foremost authorities on SEO, Moz.com, has published a beginners guide to SEO. This 58 page guide is ideal for business owners who are looking to understand the basics of SEO.

I think that it is one of the most comprehensive guides for SEO beginners that I’ve read in a while, and I highly encourage anyone who utters the word “SEO” in a conversation to read it.

Knowing that we’re all busy, and in the spirit of respecting your time, I’ve created a “cliff notes” version of the Moz.com Search Engine Optimization for Beginners guide (with my notes and comments, having optimized search engines for several years now). This is by no means a substitute for the full guide, which should only take you an hour or so to read. This summary will hopefully make digesting the full guide easier.

Throughout the guide you’ll notice a common theme, which I’ll paraphrase as “don’t try to cheat the system”. Your goal should be to execute a comprehensive digital marketing campaign that makes it easy for search engines to crawl your site and refer visitors to pages on your site that relate to their immediate query. While there are things that you can do to expedite this process, by no means does it happen overnight.

Chapter 1:

Search engines “crawl” your website from page to page, following links. So make sure that the search engines can easily go from page to page by making the link structure simple. They cannot follow search fields, so make sure that you provide links (ideally text links) that they can follow.

Search engines cannot interpret video, flash, nor images (yet!), so make sure that your webpages have lots of text, and use natural language.

Google recomends the following: “Google recommends the following to get better rankings in their search engine: Make pages primarily for users, not for search engines. Don’t deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users, a practice commonly referred to as “cloaking.” Make a site with a clear hierarchy and text links. Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content. Make sure that your <title> elements and ALT attributes are descriptive and accurate. Use keywords to create descriptive, human-friendly URLs. Provide one version of a URL to reach a document, using 301 redirects or the rel=”canonical” attribute to address duplicate content.”

Chapter 2:

Moz.com likes to say “Build for users, not for search engines”. I couldn’t agree with this more. You need to build an online marketing strategy that is natural, and as a bi-product is search engine friendly. Trying to engineer to only support search engines will only lead to your website being de-listed for SEO Fraud.

A search engine’s only goal is to deliver the most relevant answer to the person searching.

You should focus your content on answering questions. Searches fall into three categories: “Do” (I want to do something), “Know” (I want to know something), or Go (“I want to go somewhere – either an event or a webpage).

Search engines still drives a LOT of traffic to websites, and a majority of that traffic goes to the top listings in a search engine query … so it is worthwhile to spend the time / resources to ensure that your website ranks high in search engines.

Chapter 3:

Things that get in the way of search engines include online forms, duplicate content, and other items previously mentioned. Use common terms, make sure that your language is region specific (the Brits are known for spelling words with an S intead of a Z), and make sure that the language aligns with your primary target audience.

Remember that SEO is always evolving, which is another reason that you want to follow “white hat” (aka honest) approaches. You can check how a search engine reads your website by using SEO-Browser.com or Moz.com. Or you can look at Google’s text cache of the page.

The text in the link (eg: <a href = “website.com”>seo advice</a>) is important for SEO.

Use specific, and relevant, keywords. But don’t over abuse them. Make sure that the language is natural.

Chapter 4:

Moz.com recommends for keyword(s) / key phrases:

Use the keyword(s) in the title tag. Use them at least once. You can use them more than once, but remember to keep the language natural.
Use the keyword(s) / key phrases once prominently near the top of the page. For example, as the bolded header at the top of the page. Remember that search engines cannot read images, so make sure that it is “pure text”.
Several times (with different variations) throughout the rest of the webpage.
As part of the alt tag of an image.
Once in the URL of the webpage.
And as part of the Meta Description for the page. Search engines will pull from the Meta Description when creating the “sneak peak” which shows beneath the listing for your site in the query. Not only should the Meta Description include the keyword, but it should be written as a compelling call to action that drives the reader to go to the website!

Chapter 5:

Choosing the right keyword / key phrase is an artform. You need to choose keywords which are not only relevant to the search, but also aren’t so general that you won’t rank highly in the search query. There is an old saying “The riches are in the niches”, and you should think about keyword the same way.

Moz.com’s Keyword Analysis tool can help you understand the competition for a specific keyword or key phrase, and consequently how difficult it will be to rank highly for them.

Chapter 6:

As mentioned earlier, search engines are trying to give searchers the best possible results for their query. Generally, search engines like websites that are:

Easy to navigate and understand.
Provide clear information relevant to the query.
Designed for modern browsers, across numerous platforms (mobile, desktop, etc. ).
Deliver high quality, credible, and unique content.

Chapter 7:

Who links to you, and how they link to you, is important.

Trusted sites like Wikipedia (where there are a lot of communal editors who ensure the quality and accuracy of the content and links) carry a lot of value. Also .gov, .edu, etc. sites.
Related sites (sites that discuss a similar topic) carry value as well.
The Anchor Text is important.
The freshness and frequency of linking is important. This is not a “set it and forget it” activity.
And more recently social sharing is important.

The guide also discusses techniques you can use to build a strong, legitimate linking strategy.

Chapter 8:

This chapter discusses behind the scenes tools like Robots.txt and SiteMaps. These are things your webmaster should setup for your site to make it easier for search engines to crawl the site.

Chapter 9:

Chapter 9 discusses the “black hat” techniques that are likely to negatively impact your listing, like keyword stuffing, etc.

Chapter 10:

Chapter 10 covers the tools you should use to measure the success of your SEO activity. They include:

The search engine share of referring visitors (how many visitors are finding your site via search engines)
The terms and phrases that consumers use when finding your website.
The ultimate conversion ratio of search engine traffic, by keyword or key phrase.
And how many pages benefit from search engine referred traffic.

The chapter also covers which tools you can use to measure these benchmarks, and how to use the tools.

Book Review : Decisive

Posted on May 21, 2016 by Scott Gordon

Decisive Book Review – How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work

Should I or shouldn’t I ? It’s a difficult question that we face every day. Chip and Dan Heath have written a guide to helping you better make difficult decisions, in all aspects of life.

It seems like every time I turn around, there are more opportunities and consequently more choices to make. I’ve found this book tremendously helpful, allowing me to avoid “analysis paralysis” and make better decisions more quickly.

I’ve recommended this book to several friends and colleagues, who have also found Decisive to be a powerful tool.

Here’s an overview of the book.

Chapter 1:

They go over the four key reasons we have difficulty making decisions:

You frame up choices based upon your own, narrow, experience.
Your confirmation bias skews the information you gather.
Your short term emotion tempts you to make bad decisions.
And once you’ve made a decision, you stick with it out of pride and overconfidence.

So how do you solve for this ? By widening your options, reality testing your assumptions, getting a different perspective (expanding your focus) before deciding, and embracing your mistakes (and quickly fixing them!)

Chapter 2: Avoid a narrow frame. Your decisions are typically not binary; you have more than two choices. You can shift your focus from the current options to other options by thinking about the opportunity cost of your decisions. Try eliminating your current options, and forcing yourself to come up with new options. It’s easier if you step outside the solution, and look at it as an outsider.

Chapter 3: Multitracking. Embrace considering numerous options simultaneously, which allows you to shape the problem while keeping egos in check. Just beware of unrealistic options that can lead you, the decision maker, towards an option that only appears to be the best compared to the others. Switch between a mindset that avoids negative outcomes and pursues positive outcomes.

Chapter 4: Find some who has solved your problem. Look internally and externally (even with competitors) to find the best solution, even to problems you may not know that you have.

Chapter 5: Considering the opposite. Acknowledge your confirmation bias, which leads you to confirm you initial assumptions. Encourage groups to bring dissenting opinions. Ask the uncomfortable questions (“why doesn’t it work?”).

Chapter 6: Zoom out, zoom in. The value of your information is critical to your decision making process. You need to pivot your decision making from close up to outside views, to get the best, most accurate, information.

Chapter 7: Ooch. You don’t need to make big decisions. Make many small decisions, and evaluate each one to make sure it is ultimately leading you to the right outcome.

Chapter 8: Overcoming your short term emotion. All of our decisions are impacted by our own biases. We’re apt to hold onto our original ideas out of pride, to stay within our comfort zones, to avoid losing – all of which affect your decision making. Try looking at the decision from the outside, … what would you tell your best friend to do ?

Chapter 9 : Honor your core priorities. By identifying (even documenting) your core priorities, you’ll make your decision making process easier. Zappos does this, and you should too.

Chapter 10 : Bookend the future. Give yourself best case and worst case scenarios (much like investing in stocks) and use those as guidelines. Anticipate problems, create tripwires to quickly identify them, and quickly implement solutions when problems occur.

Chapter 11 : Set a tripwire. Make sure that you’ve documented your ultimate goals, and set up best and worst case tripwires which automatically trigger when you need to make a decision.

Chapter 12 : Trusting the process. Whether you are making a decision alone or with a group, you have to trust the process. For group decisions, make sure that the “rules” are established ahead of time, and that the process is perceived as fair for everyone.

Delivering Happiness, The Review

Posted on June 7, 2010 by Scott Gordon

Before I start my review, let me say this to everyone who was looking at me awkwardly as I spoke (alright, it was close to a rant) about the new FTC rules around reviews and consideration: Ha! It apparently is as important as I was saying, otherwise why would Tony Hsieh have heeded his legal teams advice by asking me to state the following:

I received one or more free copies of his book “Delivering Happiness”, in exchange for my commitment to review it.
My review has not been influenced by the one or more copies of his book that he gave me.

OK – now that the legal jargon is done with (for simplicity sake, I could have just added a #sponsored review and I’m sure you would have gotten the gist, but why not make this an opportunity to promote my other blog post about FTC rule 255?), time to start the review.

In an effort to make the review shorter than the actual book, I’ll bullet point my thoughts:

It’s an easy read, written in a friendly, informal manner. I finished it in about a day.
It walks through his business life, from his first company at age five all the way to present day. His successes, his failures, and how they have influenced his life – both in and out of business.
While I don’t subscribe to all Zapposian guidelines on how to live a balanced and fruitful life – I think it is a valuable tool. Just like everything else, read it, put it into perspective, evaluate it against your own needs, wants, desires, and implement what makes sense for you.
To go a little further, I don’t think that the lessons Tony shares are all or nothing. Just as with his own business career, yours is and will continue to be a learning experience. Successes and failures. Happiness and sadness. Stress and relaxation. Just remember to focus on what is important, and to surround yourself with others who share the same values as you do.

Tony has asked that I include a link to his book (for your benefit, as well as I’m sure a little search engine optimization value). http://www.deliveringhappinessbook.com

In short – it’s a great read. Sometimes we just need a little something to give us focus and direction. Delivering Happiness delivers that. (I wonder how many other reviewers are going to use that line. I intentionally avoided “Delivering Happiness Delivers”. )