Drop In SERPs – What Should You Do?
If you've noticed a recent drop in your search engine rankings you may or may not have a cause for alarm. It's important to understand that frequent fluctuations in the search engine results occurs. You'll rise and fall like the tide. However, large drops that are sudden could be caused by a number of things - not all of them within your control. One reason you could have dropped in the search engine rankings is your site was hacked and you are beginning to see keywords that are not related to your niche appear in your site content. That's not good. You want to remove those as soon as possible. Many times, when this happens to a website the hacker is inserting links back to his or CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
A/B Testing Vs. Multivariate Testing
Testing your landing pages is one of the most important parts about being an effective online marketer. You should be testing constantly. But there are different types of tests. You can run A/B tests or multivariate tests and which one you use on your site depends on a number of factors. A/B testing is when you have two pages, or two elements on the same page, that you want to test side by side. For instance, let's say you have a landing page that currently converts at 5.5%, but you think you can increase that by changing your headline. So you rewrite the headline and test the new headline against the old headline. This is an A/B test. After a predefined number of page views for CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
What’s A Good Conversion Rate?
Before you start to think about search engine optimziation, I always recommend that the content and structure of a website is built with conversion elements. When it comes to conversion rates, they're not all created equal. I have seen conversion rates for clients over the years as high as 15% and as low as 0%. It's one thing to say that 2% is good, but it's quite another to say that 2% is good for landing pages within such-and-such industry. In truth, 2% is not bad for conversion rates. If you can snag a 2% on any of your landing pages then you are doing pretty well. But what did you have to do to get to that? If 2% is your starting point CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Optimize Your Web Pages With Website Optimizer
Google is constantly adding new offerings to help webmasters better optimize their websites and increase their conversions. One tool I'd recommend for any website, beginner or advanced, is Website Optimizer. If you have a Google Webmaster Tools account then using Website Optimizer is a cinch. Even better if you use Google AdWords and/or Google Analytics. Website Optimizer is designed to allow you to test different versions of a landing page to see which one converts better. If you use it correctly then it will do that well. The first step, of course, is to choose the page you want to test. The next step is to create alternate versions of your web page. It's important to note that you can test more than one variable so if CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
The Importance Of HTTP Codes
HTTP codes are one of those areas that most people don't want to know about. The problem is, those codes can ultimately affect how your pages are seen by the search engines. It is handy to have at the very least an overview of the codes and how they affect your site, your visitors and the search engines. JustSearch in the UK has a handy little post on the subject and goes into a little more detail than I will. Having a passing knowledge of code groups is a good start and can give you idea of what problems your site may have. there are five code levels and each covers a different area of your web site. HTTP is basic terms are codes sent CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Should You Use Free Web Templates?
Free website templates are a little bit controversial. A lot of people like them. Some designers will tell you that you're better off with a premium template designed just for you. I won't argue. But you could just as well build an HTML website from scratch. Nevertheless, there are advantages to using a free HTML template. One disadvantage is that free templates require a link back to the designer. This is a customary practice and since you aren't paying hard money for your template you might as well oblige the link back. But that's a small price to pay for the benefits. With a free HTML template you don't have to build your site from scratch. The shell is there for you. All you have to do CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Preventing Malware From Attacking Your Website
If your website has ever been taken off line due to malicious malware issues then you know it can be frustrating. "But I didn't put any malware into my site," you say. Maybe you didn't, but someone did. Malicious malware is not only bad for your site visitors, but it's also bad for your website. If you get so many reports over a 90-day period, Google will take your site off line and issue a big red warning sign to visitors telling them that your website may harm their computers (forget about search engine optimization issues, it provides a horrible user experience). It could end up costing you traffic as some of those visitors may never come your way again. It's a danger of the Web. CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Talking To Robots, Giving Them Direction
Did you know you can direct robots to crawl certain pages on your website or to avoid certain pages altogether? It's true.You can talk to the search engine robots directly from a document called robots.txt. This can drastically help you with your search engine optimization efforts. It's easy to create a robots.txt document. You can do it any text editor such as Notepad or Apple TextEdit. Generally, one robots.txt file can be used for your entire site, however, if you have secure pages on your website then you'll have to have a separate one for those areas. Upload the file to the root directory on your server and from there it will control your own site. So what should go into your robots.txt file? Any instructions to CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
How To Transfer A Domain Name Successfully
Have you ever heard of .yu domain names? If not, then you won't be disappointed that they'll stop working after September 30. If you have one then you might be alarmed. What should you do? The following advice is really for anyone, regardless of whether you have .yu domain or not, who is planning a transfer of domains to a new domain. If you have a .yu domain then you'll need to start making your transfer as soon as possible. I would not recommend waiting until September. You want your new site working before your old site stops working and if you are planning 301 redirects, forget about it. They won't work either. The entire .yu block of domains will be dead and so will any CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
How Important Is Your Server?
New website owners seldom think about the importance of their server in regards to search engine optimization. This is perhaps one of the most overlooked aspects of building a website and it can get you into deep trouble if you don't consider the options soon enough. You have may have heard warnings about linking to bad neighborhoods. All that really means is that the server you are on is critical in terms of who you may be (often unknowingly) associated with. Most new website owners, and many veteran site owners, go with the cheapest hosting plans they can find. This could be hurting you. Those cheap hosting plans are often shared hosting plans, which means that you share the server with several other websites. Do you know CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
How Not To Do A Site Migration
Matt Cutts is changing his domain name. The interesting thing is he is changing several things at once and using a 302 redirect, which is temporary. Ordinarily, this isn't the way you'd do it. Matt says so himself: Note: changing your IP address, webhost, domain name, blog template, and blog version all at the same time is the exact opposite of what you should normally do. It’s better to change only one thing at a time so that if something goes horribly wrong, you can trace what caused it. Also, if you were truly moving a site, a 302 redirect wouldn’t be the right redirect to use--a 301 (permanent) redirect would be better. Which brings up the question, How should you do it? If you were CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
How To Optimize Your Content For All Web Browsers
Browser compatibility is a very important issue for webmasters. With so many browsers on the market today it is imperative that you ensure your content is optimized for the various browsers. Internet Explorer alone has several versions that are popular and your site visitors could be viewing pages from IE5, IE6, IE7, or IE8. Beyond Internet Explorer, you could have site visitors viewing your web pages with any of the following browsers: Firefox Safari Chrome Flock Opera These are the major browsers. There are hundreds of other smaller browsers out there that you could encounter, but at the very least you should make sure that your web pages are optimized for these browsers. How do you do that? A black hat search engine optimization method (I do NOT RECOMMEND) that webmasters have CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Google Analytics For Flash: Tracking Your RIAs
Not long ago Google announced that Google Analytics can track Flash applications. That was a great development for Google Analytics, but how many people have actually used the code or the API for tracking their Rich Internet Applications (RIAs)? If your knowledge of web development is limited to HTML and CSS then you may not know what an RIA is. But that doesn't mean you couldn't benefit from developing one. Matthew McNeely wrote a great piece on using Google Analytics for Flash open source code. At first, I thought the abbreviation for their website folder was gatorflash (as in Gator Flash), but then I realized it stood for Google Analytics For Flash, hence gaforflash, a fine distinction. But that's a CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
How Not To Get Hacked
Website security is one of the most important aspects of running a website. Particularly if you are using a CMS - content management system - because open source systems like Joomla, WordPress, and Drupal are often updated and if you don't use the latest version you could be vulnerable to a security leak or a hack. If you've ever had it happen then you know the dangers. Google Webmaster Central wrote a great blog post today about hacking and website security. I heartily recommend reading this post and you should make an effort to stay abreast of the latest security techniques for whatever system you are using. HTML-based websites are not immune either. They can be hacked just as easily as any other, especially if CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
Use .htaccess To Block Scrapers, Hackers, And Other Nefarious PITAs
Has your website been hacked? Do you have an onerous scraper stealing your content. Or maybe you've been trolled or otherwise snizzled upon (don't ask me what it means, but it sounds nasty doesn't it?)? You can take care of those pesky little pains the arses (PITAs) once and for all just by adding a little snippet of code in your .htaccess. Before I tell you what the code is, let's review what an .htaccess is. It's a little text file that allows you to overwrite some directions within your directories. You can do all sorts of things with your .htaccess including forbidding robots from crawling your site, redirecting some URLs to others, and protecting some pages with passwords. It's a useful document. You can create CLICK HERE TO READ MORE...
SEO Journal is Written by
Brick Marketing Founder,
Nick Stamoulis:
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Tel. - 877-295-0620
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