A SEO Blog By TJ Liebgott
Google Accelerated Mobile Pages, or Google AMP, is one of Google’s newest projects aimed at speeding up mobile content. The AMP project is open-source so expect it to really grow as more developers adapt to the technology and enhance its core coding.
The project’s aim is to deliver instant content to mobile users that are often subject to clunky speed and lag while trying to surf conventional mobile sites.
Low hanging fruit consists of keywords that you are already ranking for, but that aren’t necessarily your primary keywords. Essentially, these are keywords that are easy pickings in regards to SERPS, meaning they can be obtained easily with little effort.
In order to find low hanging fruit for your site, first login to your Google Webmaster Tools and navigate to your site’s Search Analytics. Make sure you have Clicks, Impressions and Position checked. Then click on the position tab twice (on the right hand side above all your queries). This will order your queries by highest SERP ranking.
Start your content with getting directly to the point. (See what I did there? No intro.)
No one wants to read through 3 paragraphs of text to find the information they came to your site for. That’s why Google snippets work so well. A user needs information, Googles it and get’s direct feedback to their query. If you are writing intros about your subject and lot’s of flowery text, stop doing so immediately. Visitors that have to scan to hard through your content in order to retrieve the information they need will quickly leave your site for a competitor. There is nothing worse than skimming through an article to find the information you want/need at the very end.
Back in 1999, the Internet was a very different place. Odd’s are you were on dial-up (hopefully with a 56kbps modem), using netscape as your browser and having debates over if Webcrawler or AltaVista was a better search engine. Google at the time was just a year old. Only the most tech savvy of businesses and people had a web presence and the most searched term was a young singer by the name of Britney Spears.
Search Engines were pretty bare bones at the time and heavily relied on websites dictating what the content was about. Early Internet marketers took advantage of this and turned it into what is called “The Britney Spears Effect”.
Some people still think a link is a link, is a link and that any backlink pointing to your website is of the same value. Nothing could be further from the truth. Google has complied extensive data about all websites on the web. This data creates a link profile and based on that, weighs a certain amount of power on the link itself. So what does that mean?
In the early days of Google when they still had Pagerank links were more universal. If a site with a Pagerank of 6 linked to you, it had the same power for your site as it would with any other regardless of topic or niche.
Now with new algorithms and a better understanding of the web, Google has weighted these links with new metrics. Although all Google algorithms are highly secretive, other SEO companies have tried to replicate them using metrics that they call Page Authority or Trust Authority, etc.
Whenever I discuss my website’s with friends the topic of money inevitably comes up. I make a few bucks a month running a series of nice flash game websites and after learning this, I can see the gears moving in my friends heads.
“How can I make money off a website” they always say.
The answer I give them is that it’s not an easy road to success. They believe that anyone can create a website, attract traffic and thus make money, but it’s never that easy. It takes a lot of time and work to build an audience for your website and unless you are offering something no one else is or have some kind of differential, odds are you won’t succeed.
What I do suggest, if they are serious, is to start a website that aligns with their interests or hobbies. That way regardless of if they make money or not off their site they will have a sense of satisfaction doing what they love.
The hardest part of online marketing is running out of steam. If you don’t have passion attached to your project, it will inevitably happen when you start hitting those growth humps. If it’s a project you are passionate about, you will not care as much about the road blocks and will push through. If you end up gaining an audience and creating cash flow it will only further your passion.
The other aspect with passion projects is your end goal to make a website successful is to become an authority in your topic. If you have a great love and passion for model trains and create a website on that topic, it’s only a matter of time before you will become an authority in that realm. It’s much easier to succeed when you do something you love.
On the flip side, if your website never makes a cent, you will still have the satisfaction of running a website about a topic you are passionate about.
Passion breeds success.
Passion breeds followers.
Passion breeds greatness.
The money will follow.
301 redirects can be a beautiful thing. A 301 redirect basically tell’s Google or any other search engine that a page has permanently moved. It’s a digital change of address form.
There are a few reasons to use a 301 redirect and many benefits in using one. You can easily set them up either through a WordPress plug-in or through your htaccess file. Let’s take a look at some practical applications of when, why and how to use them.
The Internet is constantly evolving and so should your website. Maybe you moved from Joomla to WordPress or went from creating url’s like www.example.com/article.html to a more streamlined and current url like example.com/article/
You have a shiny new website and maybe you’re getting some organic search traffic, but are looking for other ways to attract visitors. Of course you should be looking at social media to improve your presence, but you don’t know too much about it or perhaps you have limited time, resources or money to spend in social and don’t know where to devote your attention. Let’s take a look at some of the most popular social sites and how each one can help you.
Whether or not speed is a Google ranking indicator is irrelevant. What does matter is in today’s on demand culture, visitors/customers will not wait for your website to load. Your websites sluggishness could not only be losing you traffic, but profit as well. Here are the facts.
Content aside, title and description tags are one of the most over looked and under utilized SEO techniques I have seen. They can also be one of your most powerful allies in dominating in web search.
Case in point, I was working on a SEO project for a small business website. The website itself was nice and clean. They were an established business that had been around before the Internet so their website already had authority and some great links pointing to it. Their biggest problem however was their titles and descriptions.