How do I disable Google Sitelinks (Additional Sublinks)

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If you’re wondering how to get sitelinks in the first place, read my Google sitelinks / sublinks article.

If you already have sitelinks for particular phrases I’d suggest you’re extremely lucky and are clearly an established site & a leader in your area (at least in Google’s eyes). I’d also suggest that sitelinks are a google thing as you are taking up more pages real estate than you’re competitors and that can only be a good thing.

However, should you wish you may opt out of the feature and indeed remove your sitelinks.

Removing Sitelinks – Additional Google Sublinks

1. Sign up for a Google Webmaster account.
2. Add & authenticate your website.
3. Under Site configuration, click Sitelinks. If we have sitelinks information for your site, we’ll display a list of sitelinks.
4. Click Block next to the sitelink you want to remove. Please let us know why you want to block the sitelink – it will help us improve the way we generate and display sitelinks.

It’s worth noting that once you’ve done this, it may take some time for your sitelinks to disappear.

Once you’ve blocked a sitelink, it won’t appear in the Google search results for 90 days. This period will be extended every time you visit the Sitelinks page on Webmaster Tools.

Tags: disable sitelinks, google, google sitelinks, search engine optimisation, seo

How do I get those Additional Links in Google (Sublinks / Sitelinks)

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A question I am regularly asked is how I’d go about enabling additional links in the Google search results. You know the ones….

Well the short answer is, I can’t. You can’t. Google automatically (based on their secret algorithm) whether or not to show a set of additional links (called sitelinks) for a particular search query.

There are however some useful tips to be gleaned from the official google answer.

Ensure your site has google, clean navigation structure.
A site must be at the top of the results and have been there for some time (ie. the site is reputable in it’s field).

Therefore more targeted inbound links = more chance of being given sitelinks.

You can of course opt out of sitelinks should you wish (although why anyone would want to do this is beyond me). I’ll have a tutorial on how to do this soon.

Tags: google additional links, google sitelinks, search engine optimisation, seo

I spend alot of time helping on website design & SEO forums. The number of people I come across who are making fundamental mistakes in attempting to market their websites is astounding.

However it is also absolutely understandable.

What is the first thing you want to see once your website is online? Visitors & Good Stats

Here is an actual forum post that I’ve just replied to:

The Question

“I am a newbie and please forgive my ignorance. Yesterday I have seen NP$ STORE at namepros.com…here we have to click on some links provided by namepros and as a result namepros awards us NP$ through which we can buy traffic for our website….Only thing which I liked about it is this service is for FREE. I don’t have money to buy traffic for my site…Are there any other sites which can offer me such kind of services? Currently I am working on back links but I desperately need some traffic for my sites…Please help”

Yes, it’s a little bit confusing so I’ll explain the gist of this:

NamePro’s provide a list of sites that he must click through to & after a certain number of views he earns NamePro Dollars which can in turn be used to buy traffic to his own site.

Here’s the problem with this system:

1. He wants free traffic. He obviously doesn’t see his own time as worth anything if he’s willing to spend X hours clicking other people’s links.

2. I am willing to bet my left arm that he didn’t buy anything or even particularly look at these sites…. therefore wasn’t his visit worthless apart from to bump up the receiving sites statistics?

My Reply

OK how about this….

I’ll give you 100,000 visitors for free.

Let me explain why this is useless:

Traffic to your website must be targeted, that is it must be looking for what you’re selling or offering.

So if you’re site is dealing in office chairs, 100,000 visitors who aren’t looking for office chairs but in fact are looking for Indian curry recipes is a complete waste of time.

Did you buy anything from those websites you clicked on? Did you sign up to their newsletters? If not, what good were you to them apart from making their stats look good? Exactly the same thing will happen to your site.

That’s the reason SEO exists. To get your site onto the first page of Google for search terms that will drive targeted traffic towards your website.

So, don’t even bother with thinking like this. Learn SEO (or ask a professional) and start getting traffic that might actually help your site instead of just make your stats look good.

Got an SEO question, want to know more about who I am & what I do? Drop me a comment & I’ll be happy to help!

Tags: free traffic, newbies, search engine optimisation, seo

10 Tips for Getting more Youtube Views

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Since Google began putting youtube videos directly into their search results it has become more important than ever to leverage the power and userbase of youtube to gain more traffic & views to your videos and therefore hopefully to your website.

Your videos should act as an information resource giving the users relevant, honest information & advice … this builds trust in your service / product / brand & encourages visitors to head across to your main website.

Here are my top 10 tips on how to get more Youtube video views

1. Place good keywords in your video title (eg. Iphone App Review not My thoughts on my friend’s Iphone application).
2. Place the keywords & a link to your site or original article above the “view more” arrows in the video description.
3. Use relevant tags for your videos (eg. iphone app application review reviews not my thoughts on friends iphone application).
4. Correctly categorise your videos.
5. Try posting your video as a video response to another (related) popular video.
6. Ratings – Try to get as many 5 star ratings as possible … higher rated videos will be pushed up the Youtube results & therefore receive more views.
7. Your videos are as important as any other content on your site. Blog about them, Tweet them, share them on social networks & create a buzz.
8. Build links to your videos, just like any other content on your site.
9. Link to your site from your video itself, either at the end or throughout in a corner…. make sure it’s not obscuring content or is annoying though … your video is an information resource not a sales pitch.
10. Don’t just rely on Youtube. There are hundreds of video sharing sites but concentrate on the main ones: Youtube, Vimeo, DailyMotion

Got a tip you’d like to share? Want to know something in particular? Comment below & let me know!

Tags: search engine optimisation, seo, social networking, video optimisation, youtube

How To Get More (100) Results from Google instead of 10

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Quick & easy tutorial here but it’s useful for those new to search engines (and those of us who need to see more results by default) & should act as a reference to the rest.

If you want / need to see 100 results for your queries instead of the default 10. There are two methods.

I prefer the second method for no other reason than I can change it more easily on the fly.

Method 1

• Go to Google.
• Click Advanced Search.
• Under the Results per page: heading choose your number (10, 20, 30, 50 or 100).

Method 2

• Go to google and perform a search.
• Highlight the link in the address bar & add &num=100 on the end.

Top Tip: This will work with any number up to 100 results


&num=27 = This will show the top 27 results.
&num=94 = This will show the top 94 results.
&num=54 = This will show the top 54 results.

Tags: google results, google serps, search engine optimisation, seo

It’s 2010, Everybody needs an Online Presence.

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It’s 2010, we’re done with the cheap websites and half trusted businesses & people. The majority of internet connected people will start their search for a product / company / service & advisor on the internet.

Nowadays it’s not only desirable to have an online presence, in some form, I’d even goes as far as to say it’s pretty much essential.

For a large company to have an online presence is common sense, it provides promotion & more importantly in today’s social based web connectivity to consumers & potential customers.

It’s the same story with a small business, exposure, connectivity & openess are essential tools in building trust, brand recognition & exposure.

However what about the average sole trader? An electrician, a sales rep, a project manager?

Here are two completely unrelated professions but each would certainly benefit from at least a cursory personal online presence.

Plumber

You’re a self employed plumber who specialised in fixing boilers in your local area. Due to the recession you’ve found yourself gradually receiving less & less work.

One night you’re sitting in the pub with a few friends, one of whom has a LinkedIn profile, a facebook page & perhaps even a small 2-3 page website with some recent photo’s of their work & perhaps some testimonials from clients.

You & the rest, unfortunately, do not.

Who do you think is likely to get the work offer first?

Simple, your friend. They have already made small steps to position themselves as authority figures in the local area (giving the appearance that they are better or more knowledgeable than you).

Whether they actually know more than you on any given subject is largely irrelevant. They appear to know more. Impressions are key in any business & however you are able to get those impressions across is also largely irrelevant – use whichever method works best for you (and your customers).

You could set up a simply online profile such as LinkedIn or facebook & direct visitors to it via an email footer. You could also blog regularly, either via a self-hosted blog or a free blog (Blogger, WordPress etc.) this will let potential customers know you actually know and care about the service you are providing.

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Student (Looking for work)

A recent graduate from University is currently out of work but looking for graduate placement schemes or professional work options. They are genuinely interested in their chosen subject and wish to make a long & successful career in their area.

That’s great, but how many other recent graduates around the country (and indeed the world) are also in the same position. You need a way to set yourself apart from your competition. To distinguish you from the average and make sure any potential employers give you the call first.

Start a blog, write about your experiences … perform analysis of your own Uni assignments / case studies … pick holes in your own research … it sounds counter intuitive but shows you’ve learnt from your mistakes (and perhaps more importantly that you’re still willing to learn & aren’t too stubborn to think you know it all).

Attend conferences, take photos & notes. Write them up on your blog. Post this pictures, create mp3 podcasts of your thoughts from the speakers….

Network with others in the industry, even if you consider them a competitor .. you never know when they may be too busy & pass business your way… just be sure to try & return the favour.

All of this shows you’re willing to go the extra step further than your competitors who are sitting waiting for someone to contact them.

To conclude, if you’re not taking advantage of the opportunities available by promoting online then you’re missing out on vital business … even if you don’t consider your business as traditionally web-based.

Tags: online presence, online promotion, search engine optimisation, self promotion, seo, social networking

Importance of Sitemaps for SEO

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Sitemaps are a way of providing a simple, straighforward way to tell search engines & human visitors which pages exist on you site, regardless of how far down the navigation structure they may be.

With large sites, it is easy to get lost and struggle to find the page you are looking for. With a well organized sitemap, your site visitors will be able to use this to easily find the page they are looking for.

Sitemaps are usually simple HTML pages with plain links to the pages, with minimal styling. They are primarily designed to help search engines find and index (read) all your pages.

XML Sitemaps

An XML sitemap is designed for the search engines. The idea being that XML is a standard format so if the search engines read XML maps then they’ll be able to read sitemaps from any website, therefore cutting out any possible incompatibilities.

There are a number of free XML sitemap generators available online & as software downloads that will take your site, crawl it to find all the available pages & automatically create an XML map for you to upload to places such as Google’s Webmaster centre.

Sitemaps are usually linked to from the footer of the website & on each page, therefore giving the search engine the best possible chance of finding it & subsequently spidering each page that the sitemap links to.

Sitemaps are important for SEO because they ensure each page is correctly found & spidered by the search engines, therefore ensuring maximum search engine visibility.

Tags: search engine optimisation, seo, seo sitemaps, sitemap

Flash & SEO – Day 6 – 7 Days of SEO – Fundamentals Explained

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Much like javascript, flash and search engine spiders don’t mix. The spiders can read basic flash & are aware that it’s their but certainly don’t expect them to see the content. It’s for this reason that it is essential that you also provide a plain text version of the content in your flash file. Whether you choose to do some fancy switching so that the page detects what sort of user is visiting the page & serves appropriate content for the (spiders – plain text, users – flash) or simply have the flash movie and the plain text below it. Just be sure to include plain text copy of the content of the flash movie.

Tags: flash, search engine optimisation, seo

Onpage Tags (Headings & Bold Text) – Day 4 – 7 Days of SEO

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Our series continues with a look into some of the most important text you will place on your page. Webmasters needed a way to tell search engines that some text was more important than other parts.

For example, the title of a document would usually be more important than any random sentence plucked from the middle of the document wouldn’t it?

For this we call on Heading tags. These range from Heading 1 to Heading 6. This is what they look like….

Heading 1

Heading 2

Heading 3

Heading 4

Heading 5

Heading 6

The first thing you’ll probably notice is the difference in size. This can be overcome using CSS (Cascading stylesheet) so you can still receive the benefit of using correct Heading (or H) tags without spoiling the layout of your site…. however that’s another article.

An H1 tag is the most important, followed by H2 which is less important than an H1 but more important then H3 and so on….

For SEO purposes, always attempt to have your keywords placed inside an H1 tag … this’ll tell the search engines that this page is heavily related to the text inside the H1 tags.

Bold Text

Bold text is given more weight from the search engines (ie. they believe bold text is more important than standard text, so if possible try and get your keywords into bold wherever possible.

However, don’t overuse it! Look at this:

This paragraph is optimised for the word biscuits. That’s great because I love biscuits, in fact I them so much I made a website specifically about it. You can find it at Biscuits.com

That looks horrible doesn’t it?

Tags: bold, headings, italics, page tags, search engine optimisation, seo

Writing Copy for SEO – Day 5 – 7 Days & Fundamental SEO Concepts Explained

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While it used to be the case that the more times you had a keyphrase written on the page, it certainly doesn’t apply now.

Take this page text (we’re optimising for the word SAAB):

The SAAB dealer network and SAAB buying public received a boost today as a new website was launched to help customers locate all the information they would ever need about SAAB from finding Used SAAB cars online to locating there local SAAB garage.

Read it aloud and you’ll immediately notice it doesn’t sound natural & actually sounds quite “spammy”. The search engines realise this too! Nowadays it is a much better approach to write content so that it sounds natural to a human reader. After all, you’re making the site for humans aren’t you?

This onpage text is a much better:

A new website was launched today aimed at the SAAB dealer network & buying public. The site aims to help dealers & customers locate all available information on any SAAB products or services, including Used cars or local garages.

In extreme cases sites have even been known to be penalised by Google as the search engine sees these pages as having very little value due to the fact that they sound so spammy … and they’d probably be correct 99% of the time!

Semantics

As more people become aware of the importance of being listed at the top of Google (and other search engines) within their industry, the fight for those 10 top spots becomes increasingly difficult.

Search engines are (and will continue to rely more and more heavily on) semantics of onpage text.

That is to say, they analyse the text as a whole and they decide the relevance. Take the
following words for example:

• Lawnmowers
• Lawnmower
• Mower
• Mowing
• Mowing
• Mow
• Lawn
• Grass
• Green

A human would easily recognise that these words are related and that if they were on the same page then that page is about mowing a lawn with a lawnmower perhaps with sections about the grass & how you shouldn’t mow grass that isn’t green.

Search engines used to just see a collection of random words however now research suggests that they are recognising the relationships between words & that it doesn’t necessarily make the page less relevant to the keyword lawnmowers just by having the words green & grass there too … in fact it could make it more relevant & crucially – a better information source (which is what the search engines strive to rank at the top.

Tags: search engine optimisation, seo, seo copywriting