SEO – Keep Up With The Web

Do You Want to Consolidate Multiple Websites?

Do you have multiple blogs and struggle to maintain them? Have you ever thought about rebranding and combining your websites under one brand? How would you begin? Could it have a negative impact on your SEO efforts?

These are interesting questions and consolidating multiple websites into one is not a strategy that should be taken lightly. It is also a journey that I just went on with Doreen Pendgracs (a published author, travel blogger, speaker and freelance writer).

Over the years, Doreen found herself with four separate websites. Not only was it time consuming to create content for each site, she also found herself torn between which site the content belonged on. Was it about chocolate, travel, writing, lifestyle or one of her books? Sometimes, the answer was yes to all.

So, how and why did Doreen and I decide that the best strategy would be to consolidate her sites? Come along with us as I show you how we made the decision. Hopefully, you’ll gain some insight by taking a look behind the scenes.

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What Is Your Response to Google’s Mobile Friendly Update? #FridayFinds

We’re less than a week away from Google’s April 21^st date to have our sites mobile-friendly. Hopefully, by now, your site already passes Google’s test, you’re implementing a plan to meet the deadline, or you have come to the conclusion that you’ll be okay if your website is not returned in the SERPs (search engine result pages) that are performed from mobile devices. The decision is individual. What we don’t want to do is make rash decisions that could derail our overall business strategy. We need to take a common sense approach to this and not fall prey to the #Mobilegeddon hysteria.

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Are You Confused about Google’s New Ranking Signal?

Last week, in my post Are You Ready for the Google Mobile Friendly Algorithm?, I shared resources about Google’s announcement that on April 21^st, they plan on including mobile responsiveness as a ranking signal. This week, let’s take a closer look at what Google is really trying to achieve here and that is to focus on UX (user experience).

Well, (as I’m sure you know), once Google stated that this change “will have a significant impact in our search results”, the blogosphere went abuzz. Understandably, that sent a lot of us to test our sites using Google’s Mobile Friendly Test. People who were confident that their website looked great on mobile devices suddenly questioned whether they really were.

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Are You Ready for the Google Mobile Friendly Algorithm?

Chances are, you’ve already heard that Google has announced a new algorithm update that will include “mobile friendliness” as a ranking factor. The expected “date” for this algorithm will be April 21, 2015. So what does that mean to you and me? Is the solution to use a responsive WordPress theme? Will a WordPress plugin meet your needs? If you don’t make your site friendly for mobile devices, will this Google algorithm update affect how your site ranks in the SERPs (Search Engine Result pages) for desktop computers as well?

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Does SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Confuse You? #FridayFinds

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could just write content for our blogs and websites and not worry about SEO? Is SEO even important in 2015? What if you don’t do anything special about optimizing your content for the search engines? What if you just write?

Sure, your content may or may not show up in the SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) but if you totally ignore meta-tags, descriptions and alternate text tags, would it matter?

If you don’t pay attention to backlinks (both to and from your site) are you putting yourself at risk of a Google penalty or a manual webspam action or being totally de-indexed by Google? Let’s take a step back today and look at the overall picture of SEO through a #FridayFinds round-up of some great articles that I found for you.

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What SEO Tools Do You Use? #FridayFinds

SEO is one of my favorite topics to cover here in my #FridayFinds series. In the past, I’ve talked about how the Google Panda 4.1 update rewards quality content, how to optimize your sites for SEO, the differences between manual web spam actions and algorithm changes and the importance of Google semantic search to website owners. (Thanks to Jeannette Paladino for authoring that article..)

This week, let’s take a closer look at the SEO PowerSuite tools by Link-Assistant. Also, for those of you who have ever noticed a drop in your organic search traffic, I found a fun infographic that’s actually a flow chart that could help you figure out if you’ve fallen victim to a Panda or Penguin update (or possibly something else like a dreaded manual webspam action).

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Did You Know Google Panda 4.1 Rewards Quality Content? #FridayFinds

Have you been keeping up with the latest Google algorithm changes? Do you know what Panda 4.1 is intended to do? Are you concerned that you could potentially lose significant organic search traffic or are you confident that the recent changes in SEO will reward you for quality content? This week, in my #FridayFinds series, we’re going to take an in-depth look at some of the latest news surrounding Google.

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Are You Confused by Google Semantics? SEO Tips You Need.

Do you feel like I do, that search Engine Optimization (SEO) has always been a bit of a mystery? For years, we’ve been taught that keywords, quality backlinks and “great” content will drive traffic to your site.

But Google seems to be constantly changing the rules on us. Now we need to learn more about semantics. Semantic search isn’t new; it’s just become more important.

This is a complex topic, but in this post I’ll briefly define semantic search and its key elements: structured data markup and rich snippets. Continue reading “Are You Confused by Google Semantics? SEO Tips You Need.”

How Can You Get Started With SEO? #FridayFinds

Love it or hate it, organic search traffic is a very effective method of driving free traffic to your website. People search the Internet when they’re researching and buying. It’s a fact. So, what can you do to optimize your website to be search engine friendly while still writing quality content that your visitors will want to read? Last week, in my #FridayFinds series, I focused on new SEO tactics that you can use to help website visitors find your blog in Google’s SERPs (search engine results pages). One of the resources that I cited suggested that we limit the length of our post titles to 55 characters. In this week’s finds, you’ll learn SEO tips and tools to either get you started with SEO or help take you to the next level.

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Google Website Signals SERPs and Title Tags #FridayFinds

With all the Google manual web spam actions and algorithmic penalties that have been going on in the past year, some bloggers are starting to shy away from SEO. After all, it’s very difficult for the layman to know what they should and should not be doing. Bloggers who seemed to be playing by the rules were suddenly hit by algorithm changes or (worse yet) slapped with manual web spam actions and de-indexed by Google. Many of us, (especially those of us who have either allowed do-follow CommentLuv links on our blog or left URLs on CommentLuv enabled sites) have been scrutinizing our sites for links that Google could deem “unnatural”. This week, in #FridayFinds, let’s take a look at some of the signals that Google looks for, how SEO tactics are changing, the changes to how post titles display in the SERPs and a sneak peek at Chrome Canary.

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